The Fatal Flaw of Fear

Have you ever heard a tiger roar? It's a terrifying experience to hear it up close. I once read an article from the Fauna Communication Research Institute that read,

"When the tiger roars it lets out sound waves that are audible – the ones that sound terrifying – and its also lets out sound at a frequency so low you can’t hear it, but you can feel it. And so, as the tiger emerges from the undergrowth the flashing of its colours, the sound of its roar and the impact of the unheard but felt sound waves combine to provide an all out assault on your senses. The effect is that you are momentarily paralysed"

Fear has a paralyzing effect in our lives as well doesn't it. Such is the case in Numbers 14 as the people of Israel stand on the edge of what should have been their destiny, but fear paralyzes them. It was their fatal flaw. Here's what God showed me in Numbers 13 & 14.

Highlight:

'Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: “How long must I endure this evil community that keeps complaining about me? I have heard the Israelites’ complaints that they make against me. Tell them: As surely as I live — this is the Lord ’s declaration — I will do to you exactly as I heard you say. Your corpses will fall in this wilderness — all of you who were registered in the census, the entire number of you twenty years old or more — because you have complained about me. I swear that none of you will enter the land I promised to settle you in, except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. I will bring your children whom you said would become plunder into the land you rejected, and they will enjoy it. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years and bear the penalty for your acts of unfaithfulness until all your corpses lie scattered in the wilderness. You will bear the consequences of your iniquities forty years based on the number of the forty days that you scouted the land, a year for each day. You will know my displeasure. I, the Lord , have spoken. I swear that I will do this to the entire evil community that has conspired against me. They will come to an end in the wilderness, and there they will die.” ' Numbers 14:26-35

Explain:

This people who had seen all the miracles of the preceding months.

• They’d watched in awe as God heard their cries of oppression in Egypt, remembered His covenant, and come to deliver them.

• They’d been amazed at God’s display of supremacy over the gods of Egypt thwarting each of them individually with a plague.

• They’d obeyed God’s commands at the Passover and watched God emancipate them in a single night.

• They’d gazed at the cloud by day and the fire by night that led them.

• They’d watched in awe as that cloud then circled behind them shielding them from the approaching armies of the Egyptians while behind them felt the breeze that blew the waters of the Red Sea up in a heap making a way when there was no way.

• They’d tasted the bread from heaven that fell every morning, just enough to keep them dependent on Him daily.

• They’d drank the cool water from the rock in a desert.

• They’d seen how the water that was bitter, now made fit to drink with Moses throwing a stick in it.

• They’d heard the deafening voice of God and beheld the majesty of God settled down on the mountain before them.

• They’d felt the joy of God’s forgiveness of their violation of His law against idolatry in Exodus 32.

• They’d heard the promises of God in Leviticus 26 when He promised to be with them, to go before them, to drive out the people with a sword, to protect them from lions, to give them a good harvest.

• They’d also heard the warnings of the consequences of their disobedience, and now with all of that as a back drop, they come to the edge of the fulfillment of the destiny God has for them.

The promise that spanned 500 years, God is, in a moment, about to fulfill. God sends out a party of 12 men to scope out the land and when they return, all the anticipation of Exodus and Leviticus hangs in the balance as the whole community waits to hear of the land that God has promised to give them. Everything hangs in the balance in this crucible of faith; and their fear got the best of them. They look at the land and then the obstacles instead of looking at the land and then the God who would give it to them. All but two of them respond in fear to what is ahead of them. Never mind the miracles behind them, all they can do is respond in fear to what is ahead of them, and it forces them to romanticize the past, to reconstruct the memories of their slavery and they ‘d rather embrace slavery than fight for freedom.

Their account is so exaggerated. They say the sons of Anak are the Nephilim (God destroys them obviously in Genesis 6). They say the land will devour them as a grasshopper. Grasshoppers were delicacies eaten by the people of that day and they are saying they are going to be swallowed up by the land. They are convinced that their children will become slaves and they’d rather go back to Egypt than pursue the destiny that God had done so much to bring them to. He has promised them He would be with them. But it’s just too hard, and they can’t do it, their faith is too weak.

God means to wipe them from the face of the earth but Moses reminds God how it will look as if God wasn’t able to bring them in, if He kills them, so He leaves them to the consequences of their fear, and they die wandering around in the wilderness because their fear won’t let them pursue what God is calling them to do.

Apply:

Why is that fear has such a grip on the people of God who have seen first hand the glory of God and His power and His provision and His supremacy and His ability and His favor? We often come to the edge of what God has for us, and all that is required is to have faith and obey and instead all we can do is have fear and complain.

People who refuse to embrace the future destiny God has called them to out of fear often end up just complaining about the present conditions of their lives and romanticizing the past that they once had. The sad end to those people is that their corpses fall in the wilderness and they never achieve what God had promised to give them. God redeemed them for so much more than they experienced. God redeemed these people from their slavery so He could display to the world His power and character in dealing with them. Fear is their fatal flaw, the only thing that can stop them is what's inside their own heads. Isn't this the fatal flaw in us as well? The only thing they had to fear, was fear itself.

Respond:

God give me the Spirit of Caleb that says, if the Lord is with us, nothing can stop us. We may be grasshoppers in their eyes, but they are grasshoppers in His. May our view of God’s glory dwarf the fear of the giants in the land. May we hold fast to God’s promises and stir up in our remembrance the power and the majesty of our God. Guard me from the temptation to fear and may I recognize my fear when I am tempted to complain. There is always a relationship between fear of the future, complaint of the present, and romanticizing of the past. Keep me grounded in my future destiny girded by faith in Your faithfulness to me. I can either romanticize the past, complain in the present, because of my fear of the future, or I can have confidence and hope for the future by remembering in the present the past faithfulness of my God. May I speak and live victory rather than complain. May You be glorified in my faith.