Deuteronomy 1:28

"And you murmured in your tents." Unbelief is not only a blind and senseless reasoner, but a dark and gloomy murmurer. It neither gets to the right side of things, nor the bright side of things. It is always in the dark, always in the wrong, simply because it shuts out God and looks only at circumstances. They said, "Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, 'The people are greater and taller than we.'" But they were not greater than the LORD. "And the cities are great and walled up to heaven" — the gross exaggeration of unbelief! — "and moreover, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there."

To all this the spies bore witness, yet they laid the chief stress upon the walled-up cities and the imposing greatness of the sons of Anak. They stated, truly enough, that they were no match for these giants. But being men of no faith, they left God completely out of their thoughts — all of them, that is, except Caleb and Joshua. As a result they measured themselves against the giants and their cities, and passed on their unbelieving fears to the mass of the people.

Then comes the account of the inner motives for sending the spies. This is worth noting, as we would not have discovered it from the Book of Numbers. What we have here is not a repetition. It leads us into things that were hidden — what was at work in the people and hindered their blessing. The main point to notice is that there was no spirit of obedience in the people, and they lacked it because they had no faith in God.

The cities are walled up to heaven, the Anakim were there, we were like grasshoppers. This was to forget God. Was He like a grasshopper before the Anakim? And what did the walls up to heaven do? They fell down at the sound of a ram's horn.

Israel did not trust in Him who gave the promise, and they fell under the fear of man. They should have remembered that giants and walled cities were only grasshoppers before the word of God. Unbelief reverses the word, and they become the grasshoppers. Faith is powerful to pull down the strongholds of sin and Satan; unbelief builds them up... What a bright opportunity for the confidence of faith! And how many such opportunities do believers now lose through fear of man! A victory is brought within our reach; we fail, and the opportunity is gone forever. We fail, not in the fight, but in faith to meet the foe.

But Israel had no faith. As the inspired apostle tells us in the third chapter of Hebrews, "they were unable to enter because of unbelief." Here lay the great difficulty. The walled cities and the fearsome Anakim would soon have been dealt with if Israel had only trusted God... But that deplorable unbelief! It always stands in the way of our blessing. It hinders the shining out of the glory of God. It casts a dark shadow over our souls. It robs us of the privilege of proving that our God is enough to meet our every need and remove our every difficulty.