Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

The course of history is littered with “almost” victories. These are battles that could probably have been won, yet some small failure changed the direction of events. The Battle of Gettysburg would have been a very different affair if the Confederate forces had pressed on and occupied the high ground of Little Round Top at the end of the first day, when it was still open. The Battle of Waterloo could easily have gone the other way if the French had succeeded in capturing the crossroads of Quatre Bras. One small misstep for man, but a giant leap in the direction of history.


CONTENDERS AND DEAD-ENDERS

The same may be true in the lives of individuals as well. In the movie On the Waterfront, Marlon Brando played a promising boxer who bowed to Mob pressure and intentionally lost an important bout in return for a small payoff. Years later he was still wracked by the effect that loss had on his life, cutting short his boxing career. Now instead of being a sports superstar he was just another dock laborer, condemned to a dead-end job. His whole existence was summed up in one immortal line, “I could have been a contender.” Having lost his opportunity through one bad decision, could he ever recover it? His once-hopeful life seemed destined for emptiness.

Perhaps that is where we find ourselves. We may be wrestling with a decision that still has to be made, the consequences of which will be lasting. Or maybe we have to decide whether or not to resist the pressures that the forces of evil are exerting on us; it has yet to be determined whether or not we will be a contender. Or we may be struggling with the ongoing effects of a bad decision we made many years ago, the fruit of which is still very much in evidence in our lives. In our case the question is rather, what hope is there for failed contenders? The answers to these questions are addressed in the narrative of Israel’s wanderings in Numbers 13, 14. When the end of their journey seemed to be in sight, the Israelites snatched defeat from the jaws of victory through their unbelief, going from contenders to dead-enders without a blow being struck.


SCOUTING THE LAND

At this point in the story, Israel stood on the brink of entering the Promised Land. The Lord had faithfully brought her out of Egypt and through the wilderness, and now the land of Canaan lay in front of them. He then commanded them to send out a task force to examine the land, made up of representatives from each of the twelve tribes (13:2). Unlike the two men Joshua would later send to Jericho, these men were not really spies in the technical sense of the word. There was no attempt at concealment on their part, which would in any event have been difficult with such a large party. Rather, they were scouts sent out to gather data on the land to be taken, prior to the anticipated military campaign. They were to report on the nature of the land and its inhabitants and to bring back a sample of its fruit (13:17–20). The goal of their mission was not to decide whether entering the land was possible or desirable: the Lord had already reminded Israel that this was the land he was giving to them (13:1). All they had to do was receive it as a gift. Nonetheless, any major military undertaking requires good intelligence so that the best strategy can be evaluated. God’s promise did not eliminate the need for responsible action.

In many respects their trip was a success. The scouts were able to roam the whole land from the southern end, where they entered it, all the way up to the northern border at Lebo-hamath (13:21). The main focus of their time was spent around Hebron (13:22), an area that resonated with memories of historical events that should have stimulated their faith. This was the place where the patriarchs were buried, a place as central to the history of their nation as Plymouth Rock or Fort McHenry are for the history of the United States. There they should have been reminded once again of God’s promise to give this land to Abraham and his descendants and of God’s faithfulness in fulfilling his promises thus far. He had brought them out of Egypt and made them into a great nation, just as he had promised Abraham (Genesis 15:5, 13–15). Certainly the scouts saw for themselves the abundant fruitfulness of the land, in the shape of a single bunch of grapes that was so large it took two people to carry it, along with pomegranates and figs (Numbers 13:23). For forty days they traversed the land safely, scouting it out without opposition or apparent danger.


TWO REPORTS

At the end of that time the tribal representatives brought their conclusions to Moses and the people. Like many committees, they couldn’t reach a consensus and so returned with a majority and a minority report. The facts were not at issue between the two sides. Everyone agreed, on the one hand, that the land was fertile and prosperous and, on the other, that its inhabitants were a powerful force to be reckoned with. The key difference between the majority and the minority was where to put the “but” in their report. For the ten-man majority, the defining “but” was the people who inhabited the land. Every part of the land was occupied; all four of the major geographical regions—the Negeb, the hill country, the area beside the sea, and the Jordan valley—had inhabitants who were powerful and lived in large, fortified cities (13:28, 29). There was no uninhabited portion where they might comfortably occupy the land without opposition. They saw the fortifications of the cities, which were indeed substantial. Archaeological explorations suggest that the walls of these cities were thirty to fifty feet high and fifteen feet thick. What is more, the men who lived in the land looked like giants to them, like the Nephilim of old, who were mighty and fearsome warriors (see Genesis 6:4). Who could hope to prevail against such opposition? In comparison to these enormous giants, the scouts felt like grasshoppers (13:33). Grasshoppers were the smallest edible creature in the ancient world. So we could perhaps render their thoughts into a modern equivalent by translating it as, “We felt like shrimps!”

There was a minority report to be considered as well, however. Joshua and Caleb saw exactly the same sights as the other ten did but drew different conclusions. Caleb blurted out the summary conclusion of their assessment: “We should definitely go up and take possession of the land, for we are certainly able to do so” (13:30).4 Joshua gave the expanded version of their report in chapter 14. He started out with the basic facts: the land they surveyed was not merely good but “exceedingly good” (14:7). He didn’t contest the powerful nature of the inhabitants of the land; yet the defining “but” in his report was not the size of the opposition but the presence or absence of God’s favor. If the Lord was pleased with them, he would lead them into the land and give it to them (14:8). Far from the Israelites being at risk of being turned into shrimp cocktail by the Anakites, it was the inhabitants of the land who were on the menu: they would be food (leḥem) for the Israelites to consume (14:9). Their gods could not protect them against the Lord; their shelter was gone (14:9). So long as the Israelites did not rebel against the Lord, they had nothing to fear from the inhabitants of the land.


WHY THE DIFFERENCE?

How could these two groups come up with such different assessments of the same facts? The answer is not hard to find. The majority completely left God out of the equation. They described the land they toured as “the land to which you [Moses] sent us” (13:27), not “the land the Lord is giving us” (compare 13:2). They saw the size and number of the inhabitants of its cities and concluded, very reasonably according to their presuppositions, that invading that land was impossible. With such adversaries and with their own limited resources, they felt they had no chance of being a contender. Like the Israelites who centuries later faced another giant foe, Goliath, they looked at the odds stacked against them and saw a task that was too great for ordinary humans to tackle. They forgot the Lord, and so they feared their enemies.

Joshua and Caleb, however, looked at precisely the same facts but from the perspective of faith, not unbelief. Joshua’s very name expressed his faith in the Lord. His name at birth was Hoshea, “salvation,” but Moses gave him the name Yehoshua or Joshua, “the Lord saves”—a small shift, yet a crucial one (13:16). It is one thing to have faith in salvation. That may simply represent the generic hope expressed in a thousand Hollywood movies that if you only believe strongly enough, something will turn up at the crucial moment. It may simply be faith in faith, belief in the power of believing. The name Yehoshua, however, expressed the specific hope that at the crucial moment someone would turn up. Joshua had faith in the saving presence of the Lord, Israel’s God.

That specific faith in the Lord’s presence and favor with his people was what drove Joshua and Caleb’s interpretation of the facts in front of them. They saw the same warriors as the majority did, protected by the same city walls, and yet concluded that those pagan nations not only could be but must be defeated. Like David facing Goliath, they saw their opponents according to a true scale. The difference between the majority and the minority reports was simply that the minority included God in their calculation. David saw Goliath not as a giant to be tackled by a small and ill-equipped shepherd boy but as a wild animal who had reared up against the sovereign Lord and would inevitably face the deadly consequences. So too Joshua and Caleb saw the inhabitants of Canaan merely as mighty obstacles that God would inevitably overcome so his purposes could be fulfilled. The Lord who had parted the Red Sea in front of his people would not abandon them now. Giants may seem enormous from the perspective of the shrimps, but comparing them with the power of the Almighty tends to cut them down to size. If you fear the Lord, you will be free from the fear of your enemies; if you forget God, you will inevitably fear men.


THE EYE OF FAITH

The same is also true in our experience. If we simply consider the obstacles that face our churches or the difficulties that we face as individuals, it is easy to conclude that we are overmatched and must inevitably fall short and fail. Humanly speaking, that may be an accurate assessment of reality. We have all sometimes felt like grasshoppers surrounded by giants on all sides. Our lives are full of impossible challenges, humanly speaking. Do you or I have the power within us to bring our neighbor to faith in Christ or to persevere in a difficult relationship at home or at work or to conquer a personal besetting sin? Humanly speaking, none of us do.

However, the eye of faith recognizes that in this world, reality is not accurately measured whenever we are “humanly speaking.” This is God’s world, in which his Word and his promises must ultimately prevail. No matter how great the opposition, if the Lord is pleased with us, our future is assured. If God is calling a neighbor to himself, then even our weak and fumbling words can be the door to eternal life for him or her. If the Lord strengthens us, then not only can we endure a difficult relationship, but we can shine within it as beacons of godly, self-sacrificial love. If God is at work in our hearts, we have not only the hope but the assurance that one day we will be done even with our most pervasive besetting sins. This knowledge is the bedrock that has enabled the saints of the past to endure great persecution and to step out in radical acts of faith and obedience. Humanly speaking, Joshua and Caleb’s actions may have looked utterly foolish; but God was pleased with them, and so they endured. They feared God, and so they were freed from the fear of men.


THE IRRATIONALITY OF UNBELIEF

Unfortunately, the response of the people of Israel was not faith in the Lord but grumbling and rebellion. Instead of being motivated to obey, they sought to stone Joshua and Caleb for their words of faith (14:10). They believed the assessment of the majority report and grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said,

Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt? (14:2, 3)

They were even ready to elect a new leader and go back to Egypt, reversing the whole course of the exodus. This entailed a complete rejection of the Lord and of Moses, a rejection of the salvation the Lord had promised them and the mediator he had chosen to lead them.

Notice, though, how fundamentally irrational their unbelief was. The majority report was logically flawed. Contradicting the good report about the nature of the land that the scouts gave Moses at first, the majority spread a bad report among the people, saying that the land devoured those living in it (13:32). Yet in the very next breath they went on to describe its inhabitants as giants! Think about that for a moment. How could a barren land produce such fearsomely well-nourished inhabitants? It doesn’t add up. Nor does the complaint of the people make any more sense. How could it be better for them to have died in Egypt or in the wilderness than to face death at the hands of the Anakim? Is certain death sooner preferable to possible death later? Does it make sense to believe that the Lord poured out earth-shattering plagues on Egypt, parted the Red Sea in front of his people, and then fed them miraculously with manna in the wilderness only to have them fall at the hands of the inhabitants of the Promised Land? Does God do one dramatic series of miracles in the lives of his people only to fail at the last hurdle, leaving them tantalizingly short of what he promised? That doesn’t make sense.

Isn’t our unbelief equally irrational though? We believe and proclaim that our God created the universe out of nothing; yet we find it hard to believe that the results of a particular medical test belong to him. We believe and proclaim that our God directs the courses of kings and nations and that he has transformed our own dead hearts into living, responsive flesh; yet we find it hard to believe that he can bring our stubborn friends and neighbors to faith in himself. We believe and proclaim that our God entered history as a baby in Bethlehem; yet we find it hard to believe that he is active in our own personal history, holding our hand through the events of this week and the next. We believe and proclaim that he suffered on the cross for our sins and rose again triumphant from the grave to free us from our sins; yet we find it hard to believe that this particular sin of ours could ever be forgiven or that the power of that sinful habit could ever be broken. Our unbelief is always fundamentally irrational, a sinful refusal to fear God, which results equally inevitably in a sinful fear of people and circumstances. It is as irrational for us to cling to our unbelief as it is for a drowning man to cling to a heavy stone.


GOD’S VERDICT ON ISRAEL

The decisive verdict in this story in the book of Numbers, though, was not Israel’s verdict on their God but his verdict on them. Ultimately their fate rested not on what they thought of him so much as it did on what he thought of them. Just as there are two verdicts by the scouts on the land, so there were two verdicts by God on his people—an initial verdict of judgment and a final verdict of salvation.

The initial verdict of God was the threat of death upon the whole people and a new beginning for Israel through Moses. God declared in his wrath:
 
How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they. (14:11, 12)

This was not the first time that God had made such a threat. He said the same thing to Moses in Exodus 32:9, 10 after the incident with the golden calf. Had the Lord really intended to carry through such a judgment on his people, he could easily have carried it through immediately. Given their persistent infidelity, Israel would hardly have had grounds for complaint. Yet in both places it is striking that God spoke the threat to Moses instead of executing it at once. It is almost as if God was cuing Moses to intercede on behalf of his people so that they might be spared.6 In each case that is exactly what Moses did, and the threat was then (partially) lifted. Through the intercession of Moses, lives were spared—if not the lives of the adult generation, at least those of their children, and their children’s children who were as yet unborn.


INTERCESSION

The intersection of God’s eternal sovereign will and our prayers of intercession is, on some levels, a profound mystery. The best theological minds through the ages have had difficulty in expressing fully how a sovereign, eternal God can listen and respond to the prayers of temporal human beings while still carrying out all of his holy will exactly as he designed it from all eternity. Yet the reality and effectiveness of intercession on behalf of others is a constant Biblical theme, albeit one we are far more likely to confess with our mouths than act on consistently. The Bible tells us that the non-Christian world around us stands under God’s judgment of death. They have earned the verdict of eternal separation from God as the wages of their “God-free” lifestyle. Yet it also states that by means of our intercession, we may see some of those prisoners freed from condemnation. By the power of prayer, sinners are brought from death to eternal life. If we really heeded the cues that follow from that Scriptural truth, how much more time would we spend on our knees daily, interceding for our friends and neighbors?

Moses’ prayer of intercession was based on two equally fundamental Scriptural truths: the requirements of God’s glory and God’s merciful nature. He pleaded for his fellow-Israelites first on the basis of the requirements of God’s glory (14:13–16). If the Lord were to blot out the Israelites at this point, the Gentile nations around them would misunderstand his reasons. They had heard that the Lord’s name was linked with this people, that he had brought them out of Egypt, and that he had gone through the wilderness with them. If God were to kill them now, the nations might think it was because he was unable to bring his people into the land, and they would be confirmed in their unbelief. The Lord’s glory might be tarnished.

Second, though, Moses pleaded for the people on the basis of God’s mercy (14:17–19). He quoted the Lord’s own description of himself from Exodus 34:6, 7: the Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love, and forgiving sin and rebellion, yet not leaving the guilty unpunished. He does not falsify the Scriptural record by only quoting the first half of God’s self-description. On the contrary, Moses acknowledges that the Lord is a God of both justice and of mercy; yet he asks that in accordance with his great ḥesed, the Lord’s covenantal faithfulness to his people, he would be reconciled with them in spite of their continuing record of sin.

Both of these motivations should feature prominently in our own prayers of intercession. Why do we ask God to respond to our prayers? It is “for your name’s sake,” so that he might receive the glory he deserves. Why do we ask him to change our neighbor’s heart toward him? It is so that the Lord might be glorified by another soul captivated by his beauty. Why do we ask him to strengthen our churches and add new people to them? It is so that we might more adequately and fully declare his praises in those places. Why do we ask for victory over our sins? It is so that our hearts might be more free to glorify him and delight in his presence. Praying for the sake of God’s glory will dramatically reshape what we pray for and the way we pray for ourselves and those around us.

What is more, if we ask, motivated by God’s glory, we will also be comforted when he does not answer our prayers in the way we had hoped. If God is more glorified in my continuing weakness, suffering, or even failure, then my prayer has nonetheless been answered when I remain weak or suffering. If God is more glorified by enabling me to rejoice in him in spite of a door being closed in front of me or a deep longing in my heart going unfulfilled, then my prayer for his glory has been answered. If God is more glorified by my failure than he would be by my success, then my prayer has been answered even when my best endeavors to serve him have been shipwrecked. If God is my servant or my partner, then my failure means that God has let me down. However, if God is my Master who does all things for my good as well as for his glory, then I can know that he has a glorious purpose in even the most inglorious circumstances of my life. It would be perverse indeed for me to pray for something and then complain because God gave it to me wrapped in a different form from the one I had anticipated.


JUSTICE AND MERCY

We should also pray with awareness of God’s nature as a God of both justice and mercy. Often we tend to reduce God down to our size in one direction or the other. Either we conceive in our minds a God who is all justice, ready to condemn us for the least infraction and uncaring about the fate of those whom he created, or conversely (and more commonly in our culture) we think of God as being all love and compassion, easily placated by a cursory nod from us in his direction while we continue to live our lives in rebellion against him. Neither of these pictures is Biblical. God is indeed slow to anger, compassionate, and gracious toward those who are his people. Yet he is also a God of flaming and uncompromised justice who cannot simply ignore rebellion and sin. We must recognize both aspects of God’s character in our prayers: he is a God who has the right to condemn us to eternal judgment with perfect justice, yet has also promised to be a faithful and loving God to all who come to him through faith in Christ. He has promised to be our God and the God of our children after us and the God of all those whom he calls to himself (Acts 2:39). That is the basis for our bold and passionate intercession on behalf of the children of believers and for others around us who do not yet know him, asking God by his grace and mercy to call them too into a living relationship with himself.

God’s mercy does not eliminate justice in his dealings with Israel. The Lord responded to Moses’ intercession by agreeing to continue his relationship with this people, as Moses requested. Nonetheless, his passion for his glory meant that he could not overlook their sin. This generation that saw his glory in the exodus and yet still did not believe would end up given over to a fitting punishment (14:21–35). Would they rather die in the wilderness than enter the land? So be it; that would be their fate (14:29). Would they rather go back to Egypt than enter the Promised Land? So be it: the next leg of their journey would be back toward the Red Sea rather than onward to Canaan (14:25). The children whom the parents feared would become slaves would be the ones who would experience the freedom of life in the land, while the older generation would die out over forty years in the wilderness—one year for every day of the scouting party’s journey (14:31–34). Out of the original generation, only Joshua and Caleb would live to see God’s promise fulfilled. The remainder of the scouting party were immediately struck down with a plague, a kind of firstfruits of the larger judgment to come (14:37).

If God is a God of justice as well as mercy, though, how can any of us survive? The people of Israel were not radically transformed by their experience of the Lord’s mercy. Even though they mourned bitterly, they were far from repentant in their hearts. They were sorry for the effects of their sin, but not for the sin itself. You can see that was the case from the fact that their very next act was a continuation of their unbelief. Instead of following the Lord’s instructions and setting out back toward the Red Sea, they set out to try and take Canaan in their own strength (14:40). In spite of Moses’ warning that they would not succeed, they set off presumptuously to try to reverse the judgment on themselves. Earlier they refused to enter the land because of unbelief; now they tried to enter the land out of unbelief. Unsurprisingly, they were frustrated and ended up beaten back by the inhabitants of the land (14:45). Without the Lord’s help, they should indeed have been afraid to take on the giants who occupied the land.


MERCY AND FAITHFULNESS

What could God do with such a stubborn and rebellious people? How long would he continue to bear with a people who showed him such contempt? The answer is, however long it would take to accomplish his sovereign purposes and fulfill his promises. He would not abandon them but would instead do exactly what he had promised. This is good news for us too. We also daily fail to obey him, choosing to believe in the promises of our idols rather than in the word of the living God. We too daily fail to attempt the things he has commanded us because of unbelief. We too daily set out to try to accomplish all manner of good things, but in our own strength, without his presence, as if it didn’t really matter whether we had God’s blessing or not. We too daily seek to confront our sins, husband our wives, parent our children, pursue our careers, and build our homes on the world’s terms, or in accordance with the Lord’s terms but without the Lord’s presence. We truly deserve nothing other than God’s judgment and contempt.


THE TRIUMPH OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Yet such is not what God has shown us. God’s mercy and faithfulness triumph even over our persistent sin. Instead of condemning us for our unbelief and putting us to death in the wilderness, he has taken our faithlessness and laid it on Jesus Christ. This sacrifice is how the Lord can be a God of both justice and mercy. At the cross, mercy and justice joined hands as God’s glory was made manifest most fully. Jesus Christ, our faithful pioneer, walked through this sin-tangled world with perfect righteousness not for forty days but for thirty-three years. In so doing, he earned life through his faithfulness, not just for himself but for all those who are united to him by faith. In his perfect life, God’s righteous demands on us are satisfied. In his substitutionary death, God’s justice is satisfied, and at the same time his mercy is displayed to outcasts and rebels. Everyone who looks to him and cries out in the wilderness, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner” finds in him God’s invitation to eternal rest. That offer is open to you, no matter who you are or what you have done. You don’t need to strive in your own strength any longer or to lament the depth of your failure. You are indeed no contender in the fight for eternal significance and never could have been, but Jesus Christ has contended for you and has won the victory on your behalf.

If that is true, what opposition in this world shall we fear? If Christ has completed the pilgrimage on our behalf, what can successfully stand in our way as we follow in his footsteps? If the Lord is pleased with us, for Jesus’ sake, then no giants can bar our passage to Heaven, no walls can keep us from our heavenly inheritance. Unbelief is the only thing that can bar our access into Heaven and our enjoyment of peace along our earthly pilgrimage. Yet if Christ walks with us every step of the way, we will have a firm foundation for bold living and faith-filled obedience. Lord, we believe—help our unbelief! Ravish our hearts with such a grasp of your glory and goodness that we are overwhelmed by your presence. In the words of John Bunyan, may it be said of us:

  Who would true valor see,
  Let him come hither;
  One here will constant be,
  Come wind, come weather;
  There’s no discouragement
  Shall make him once relent
  To be a pilgrim.

  Whoso beset him round
  With dismal stories,
  Do but themselves confound—
  No lion can him fright;
  He’ll with a giant fight,
  But he will have a right
  To be a pilgrim.

  Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
  Can daunt his spirit;
  He knows he at the end
  Shall life inherit.
  Then fancies fly away,
  He’ll fear not what men say;
  He’ll labor night and day
  To be a pilgrim.


Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 167–178). Crossway Books.