Fear Not; Be Not Afraid Part 2

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Fear Not; Be Not Afraid Part 2

(Rev. Barry Johnson and Rev. Rodney Johnson)

Introduction

In part one of our study on fear, we walked through Numbers 13, the record about how the ten spies or tribal leaders responded after they explored the Promised Land that the Lord had given to them. The primary point we brought out in the passage was that they took what they had seen and internalized it and concluded that they could not go in and occupy the land. In other words, because of what they had seen, they were so filled with fear that they forgot about God’s promise to them. Not only had they forgotten about God’s promise to them pertaining to the Promised Land, they literally forgot about what their lives were like in Egypt and what it took to get Pharaoh to release them. They forgot about all the plagues and walking across the Red Sea on dry land – all forgotten because of fear.

And, for us, there are two overarching, yet similar points in this passage. The first point is that fear can cause us to forget God’s promises to us even though the Bible says in Titus 1:2, “in the hope of eternal life which God, Who cannot lie, promised before time began.” And, in a way, the second point follows the first. Because of the initial fear of the ten spies, who convinced the men and women of their tribes that they could not enter the Promised Land, the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

Numbers 14:28-38 records the following;

(28) Say to them, ‘As I live,’ declares the LORD, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you;

(29) your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness, all your numbered men according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me.

(30) ‘By no means will you come into the land where I swore to settle you, except for Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun.

(31) Your children, however, whom you said would become plunder—I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected.

(32) But as for you, your dead bodies will fall in this wilderness.

(33) Also, your sons will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years, and they will suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your bodies perish in the wilderness.

(34) In accordance with the number of days that you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall suffer the punishment for your guilt a year, that is, forty years, and you will know My opposition.

(35) I, the LORD, have spoken, I certainly will do this to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. They shall be worn out in this wilderness, and there they shall die.’

(36) As for the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land, and who returned and led all the congregation to grumble against him by bringing a bad report about the land,

(37) those men who brought the bad report of the land also died by a plague in the presence of the LORD.

(38) But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive out of those men who went to spy out the land.”

The ten spies who brought the negative report based on fear died immediately before the Lord for making the people afraid and causing them to not enter the Promised Land. Then, all the adults aged twenty and above were told that they would wander in the wilderness for forty years, one year for every day the spies spied out the land. After that forty-year span, God would bring their children to the Promised Land and they would get to enjoy what their parents refused. So in those forty years, all of the ones who doubted God and did not believe Him died in the wilderness. Now it’s important to understand that God did not keep the Children of Israel out of the Promised Land.