Clay Anderson | Walking into Canaan

Sunday Evening, December 7, 2025
Given by Clay Anderson | Pastor of Youth Ministry, Christ Covenant Church

Walking into Canaan

Numbers 13

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Christ Covenant, I do think I should apologize. I was doing my regular sermon prep and realized I didn't request enough Christmas songs this evening. So, that's my mistake. If we want to meet in the parking lot for Jingle Bells afterwards, feel free. Please take your copy of God's word and open with me to Numbers chapter 13. The book of Numbers is famous, or infamous, for being a book of long lists, as Pastor Kevin reminded us this morning. But there is a story tucked in this book. And it's a compelling narrative, if not a particularly happy one. It does detail the rebellion of God's people. We're going to come tonight to Israel, right at the moment before they rebel against their faithful Lord, who delivered them from Egypt. And we will see them at a fork in the road, when they have an opportunity, as individuals and as a body, to choose between what is easy and comfortable and between what is faithful. And that is where we will pick up the narrative and read. Numbers chapter 13; a few verses from chapter 14 as well. It is a long text, but it's given to us in love. Please follow along with me as I read from Numbers chapter 13.

“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people Israel. From each tribe of their fathers, you shall send a man, everyone a chief among them.’ So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran, according to the command of the Lord, all of the men who were heads of the people of Israel. And these were their names: From the tribe of Reuben, Shammua, the son of Zaccur; from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori; from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh; from the tribe of Issachar, Igal, the son of Joseph; from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun; from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu; from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi; from the tribe of Joseph (that is from the tribe of Manasseh), Gaddi the son of Susi; from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli; from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael; from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi; from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi. These were the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun Joshua. 

Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, ‘Go up into the Negeb and up into the hill country, and see what the land is, whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds, and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be of good courage and bring some of the fruit of the land. Now the time was the season of the first ripe grapes. So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob near Lebo-hamath. They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron. Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, were there. Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt. And they came to the valley of Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes. And they carried it on a pole between the two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs. That place was called the Valley of Eshcol because of the cluster that the people of Israel cut down from there. 

At the end of 40 days, they returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the people of Israel in the wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They brought back word to them and to all the congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. And they told him, ‘We came to the land which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. Besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea and along the Jordan.’ 

But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, ‘Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are able to overcome it.’ Then the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.’ So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we have gone to spy it out is a land that devours its inhabitants. And all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim). And we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.’”

Let's pray and ask for the Lord's help to understand and apply this passage. 

Gracious God, we thank you for your word. Your word is truth and light. Lord, we ask that your Holy Spirit would meet us here, that he might open our eyes to be eyes of faith; that we might know more of you and of the duty you require us, Lord; that we might be built up as your people. I ask for myself wisdom and faithfulness as well. And Lord, would you strengthen us by your word tonight, so that we may do and choose faithfulness from here on out. It's in Christ's name we pray these things. Amen.

Imagine for me – for some of you this might not be too hard to imagine – but you have to wake up early tomorrow, get to the Charlotte airport for a flight, because you start a new job, a new work project, and it's going to require some travel. Uh-oh. You have picked the wrong flight. You've booked the wrong flight. You get to the airport. You get on your plane. Good news. It's actually an earlier flight than you needed to take. But this isn't the best thing that could have happened to you, because now you have to wait in whatever airport you land in and just think about this new job, this new opportunity, that you are starting before you meet the new teammates who will be waiting for you at the airport. This did happen to me. I was flying out to start a summer camp, had booked the wrong flight, and ended up having to wait about six hours by myself in the St. Louis airport for the rest of the team to arrive so we could get in a rental car there. And if you know – when you're stuck waiting, it is very easy for your mind to wander. And it would be very natural for all of these questions to emerge. What am I going to be asked to do? Who am I going to be asked to interact with? Will it be easy, hard? Will I have to learn new things? Will I get to show off my strengths? There could be any number of questions. And you can imagine that for whatever precipice you are coming to tomorrow, or may have come to once or twice or many times in your life, there are all kinds of decisions you can make, things you can look back on or things you can imagine happening, when it comes your time to answer the question, am I going to choose what is easy and comfortable or what is faithful? 

Like I said, this is the moment that the Israelites have arrived. The Lord has brought them out of slavery in Egypt. They have witnessed him enact the ten plagues on the Egyptians. They have witnessed him part the Red Sea, and they have witnessed him bring them to the doorstep of the Promised Land. And now they are in this moment where the Lord says, "Okay, you have seen what I have done. Now go and do." And our passage tonight offers a few reasons – four reasons – for God's people to choose to be faithful when other options are perhaps easier and more comfortable, but faithless. 

The first that I want to draw our attention to is this – and it's not a particularly deep one, but it is an encouraging one – when it comes time to choose to be faithful, the Lord surrounds you with faithful fellowship. Look back to the beginning of our chapter, in Numbers 13 – before things go sour for the people of God, we are reminded what God plans to do for them. The first verse: “Send men (or the second verse, send men) to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel.” The Lord reminds Moses that his promised land – and of course, tied up together with that promise is his promise to live with his people in that land – the Lord reminds Moses that that's a promise for the whole nation of Israel. This is a corporate promise. Taking and living in the land, enjoying God's blessings with God, is a corporate promise. And the scouting mission is a team mission. The Lord also says to Moses, "Alright, bring up with you – send out into this land leaders from the tribes of Israel, men who will represent the whole nation when they go and taste and see the land that I am preparing to give them.” God's vision is that all of Israel would be blessed by the stake that they have together in the promised land. A little – many of you have probably done this before yourselves, if you have small children, when you've left the house, whether it's for a couple of hours or for a week – you've given them a list of chores to do, things to have ready by the time mom and dad get home, because even though you pay the mortgage, even though you found the house, even though you're the one who probably does most of the work, responsibilities inspire ownership. And it's your children's house, too. It was your house that you grew up in when you had to take the clothes out of the dryer or remember to turn off the crock pot when your parents left. And so, God's vision is that the whole nation of Israel, together, would have a stake in this promised land, where they are surrounded by people worshiping and living with God together. 

Now, although we have a long list – it is the book of Numbers – of several of the tribal leaders, and no doubt that this whole group is a crack squad of some of the most capable and competent men that Israel had to offer, there's only two men – and I'm sure you caught their names as we were reading – who are mentioned more than once in this chapter. Back to verse 6 and verse 8: “From the tribe of Judah, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh; and from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea, the son of Nun,” who we learn later is none other than Joshua. Moses gave him this name, Joshua. These two men, as we will see in this text and in some adjacent passages as well, are the only two tribal leaders who will prove to be faithful to God. And I have no doubt that the fact that they went on this mission together, the fact that they were sitting side by side at the council that met to bring the report, was in no small part of their decision to be faithful when the time came. 

Of course, we would probably expect this for someone named Caleb from the tribe of Judah, because if you think back to the end of the book of Genesis when Abraham is giving out blessings to the men who would become the heads of the tribes of Israel, it is the tribe of Judah that he blesses to be the tribe known for its victors and its deliverers. So, it is not really of any surprise to us when we see Caleb emerge as particularly faithful in this chapter. But the tribe of Ephraim is kind of a fun surprise to see here, as the tribe that Joshua is from, because it's not even a full tribe. It's a small tribe, and it's not one where you necessarily would have expected to see great warriors and leaders come from. But the author of this book here reminds us that Joshua had already proved himself to be a man of particularly strong faith – so strong, in fact, that at one point in time Moses changed his name to literally mean “Yahweh saves.” The Lord saves. Joshua was worthy of this name. 

I want us to see, church, that faith and faithfulness is a family effort. We got to see this morning a great blessing as all of the new members of Christ Covenant Church came up here, introduced themselves to us, shared a little bit about themselves with us, and then took vows – took the vows that all church members here at Christ Covenant Church take when they join the church. And part of those vows is that you and I and all communing members would support the church in its work and worship, and also that we would study or promote the church's peace and purity. Beautiful and good vows that remind us when we see this community take them, that we took ourselves, that our growth in godliness and our decisions to be faithful will be a family effort. And that is always how God has designed them. And so tonight, if you are here at the church, and you are wondering or struggling to discern what it means to be faithful tomorrow or in months to come, know that you are not alone. The elders of this church have taken similar vows, to support all of the members of Christ's Covenant Church, to know them, and to feed them, and to lead them, and to protect them – the flock of God that he has given them here at Christ Covenant. This is a family affair, and so, do not expect to be left to your own devices when it comes time to be faithful. 

There is also a warning when it comes to how brothers and sisters in Christ, at least in this passage, can support each other in their faithfulness. And I would challenge you, church, that it is our charge not to punish other believers for their efforts to be faithful. When you see other people come to that fork in the road between what is easy and what is faithful, it can be a trap, a temptation, to roll your eyes and to elbow your friends and to insist upon how you would do it differently, or to list all of the ways that you might disagree with someone before you take time to encourage them. It's very easy to label someone as trying too hard or doing too much in pursuit of godliness when they always want to talk about God and his things and his works. And it can be safe to make sure that we distinguish ourselves from people who are being faithful a little bit differently than we are. Of course, I'm not talking about people who claim to know the Lord, who claim to be faithful, when they're actually disobeying God's words, but the body here that listens to Caleb's and later Joshua's testimony that God will be faithful and that his people can take the promised land and then who turn around and instead create a false and negative report for the people of Israel, this passage is a shame to them. And later on in this book, God will curse them because of their faithlessness to him, but also because of how they stirred up the people of Israel against Joshua and Caleb trying to be faithful. I will admit, I think that can be more of a temptation for the younger members of the church, who are still wrestling with carving out a place in this world, whether it's teenagers or young professionals, and you are going to places daily that are not full of believers, and it can become easy for you, again, to stake your claim as someone who would do it very differently. But I also would challenge those of you in our body tonight who have more experience and more wisdom to offer: when you hear someone with less experience and less wisdom than you describe a step that they are going to take in pursuit of faithfulness, is your first instinct to list all of the reasons why that might be risky, or all of the reasons why that might be difficult, or why that might call their safety and comfort into question? Let me close this point by saying a simple thing we can take from this picture here is that when you don't know how to be faithful, sometimes it is faithful enough for you to be the reason that one of your brothers or sisters in Christ can stand up and say, "We are able to overcome." I'm sure that Caleb was conscious of Joshua by his side in this moment. Karaoke solos are a lot less fun than karaoke duets. Likewise, evangelism, service, outreach, even suffering – those things that make up the daily parts of faithful Christian living are best enjoyed in fellowship. 

There is another encouragement to choose faithfulness here, the second one tonight, and that is this: another simple one – the Lord makes you promises. Again, verses 1 and 3 of our chapter, God reminds his people as they stand on the doorstep that this is a land that he is giving to them. We read in our Old Testament reading from Genesis chapter 17 that God had made this promise before. If you'll turn in your Bibles to Exodus 6, God will repeat this promise with even more detail. He will remind his people in Exodus 6:2-8, first to Moses when he speaks to Moses privately, he says, 

"I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say, therefore, to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord." 

This was not a new promise for God's people, and the fact that this promise was tied up with who God was, with who God is, was also not a new fact for God's people. God decided this reminder wasn't enough. And so, he made this promise an integral part of the feast that his people then celebrated every single year. Flip a few pages over to Exodus chapter 13, and in verse 3, Moses reminds his people this. It says, "Then Moses said to the people, ‘Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt out of the house of slavery, for by a strong hand the Lord brought you from out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. Today in the month of Abib, you are going out. And when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this service in this month.’” Those are all the same people groups that the Lord will drive out in the book of Numbers and the following book of Joshua. And you see the promise stuck in not just the minds, but the regular habits of life, as God’s people. 

Finally, you don't have to flip there, but this detail is repeated again. What is this promise going to look like when it comes to fruition? Well, in Leviticus chapter 20, the Lord reminds his people, “I have said to you, you shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and with honey. I'm the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples.” The essence of the promise is this: the land already belonged to the Israelites. It was the Lord's to give, and it was his decision to give it to his people. And the moment that those spies wandered through and saw honey and milk flowing, they saw full bunches of grapes hanging from trees, and pomegranates and figs. They saw a land that was so abundant they could steal from it unnoticed. It was theirs to remember that God was their God, and he had promised to give them this land. Many of you have probably done this yourself, or you've seen your children or grandchildren do this – when you take them out for ice cream and they order at the counter, and before you even have a chance to pay and leave the store, they're already halfway done with their cone. They know that the promised ice cream is handed to them, it's theirs to eat. It's not staying locked behind some cash register or some store employee. Likewise, the promised land was God's for his people. 

It's no surprise to any of us that despite the promises of God, the world is full of people – some of them young and immature believers, many of them those that hate you because they hate your God – who do say that you cannot simply walk into Canaan. The world says it this way: you can't simply read your Bible and pray and go to church and expect to become a better person. You can't really expect to be content with that small of a salary. You can't simply be a good athlete without devoting every Sunday to your sport. You can't simply believe that you'll be satisfied with your wife if you wait until marriage to sleep together. The faithless in the world cannot imagine that you and I would be able to achieve the Lord's will by using the Lord's appointed means. They cannot imagine that you and I would enjoy the blessings of the Lord when we obey the Lord's charge to go and to do and to be faithful. 

So I would ask you all here tonight, leaders in this church – this this passage heavily talks to and communicates to the leaders of God's people, because it marks on their failure, and there is an encouragement to us all – pastors, elders, parents, teachers – to consider what assumptions about the Lord God you are passing on to the people that you are responsible to care for. The book of Numbers is a book about the failure of Israel's leaders to bring themselves, yes, but also their children into God's promises. And so, there is an encouragement for us to consider that, yes, teaching the next generation, teaching those younger than us, is certainly an important responsibility, but living and moving and breathing as though you are sure that the living and true God has promised to make a home for you is the most precious inheritance that you can pass on. 

Now, this last point here: the fruit of the spies that we just looked at brings us also to a picture of the next encouragement, the next reason for God's people to be faithful. And that is this: the Lord gives you tastes of victory before victory is realized. In verse 22, when we see the spies making their journey through Canaan, they get to see not just all the giants they'll have to fight against and the fortified cities that they will have to tear down, they get to see the fruit of the land. And in verse 26 and 27, we get to see them bringing this back to Moses and to the people and showing them that, yes, the land has everything in it that God said it would have. It has milk. It has honey. It has grapes. It has pomegranates. It has figs. What more could you need? I think it's an encouragement to us to see that the Lord, in asking for faithfulness, in desiring faithfulness from me and from you, does not demand blind faith. Moses is not yet faithless here when he sends out the scouts, and the scouts are not yet faithless when they do what Moses has called them to do and when they consider what the land has to offer and when they bring that very first report back to the people. It's not until their faithless hearts are revealed that the passage begins to shine a negative light on most of the leaders of the tribes here. I want you to consider, church, that the Lord has given you things to look for, small evidences of fruit, tastes of his victory, so that you can latch on – grasp more and more the fact that he is the kind of God who honors his promises. This might look a little bit different in each of our lives, but consider that when you join a church, like we saw those new members do today, you look not just for any church sign on the street, but you look for the marks of a faithful church that preaches God's word, that has people who love each other, that has people who serve each other in it, and you see small tastes of the fact that, yes, the Lord will bless your effort to be a part of his local body wherever he has provided for you. In the same way, when you're looking for a spouse, you don't just marry anyone and hope that the Lord will work everything out for good. You are encouraged in Scripture to marry believers and, in fact, to look for people who will not just believe all the same things as you, but will help you grow in godliness. And when we're sharing the gospel, when we are going and doing faithfulness in that most basic way, yes, you can and you may have chances to just shout from the street corners, but also it's prudent for God's people to look for opportunities. Look for the softened hearts that the Holy Spirit is placing in people around you. You see small evidences of victories. When it comes to the pursuit of faithfulness, we're not always guaranteed control or comfort or ease, but we are guaranteed from the Lord direction, a place to go and a way to do things that will please him. 

I'll ask another question for us to consider tonight. What are some of these other tastes of the fruits of victory? I mentioned a second ago a positive conversation with an unbeliever – evidence that someday you and I will live in a world where we and those around us don't need to be taught God's word anymore, because we will live with the living word. Parents, teachers, you might look in your children and see not big, not leaps and bounds in growth in grace, but small fruits. They are waiting and giving deference to other people in the room with them. They are beginning to act like they aren't always the most important person everywhere that they go. They are extending themselves to people who otherwise wouldn't have people extend toward them. Some of you may have seen or had delivered to you meals in times of need. Some of you may have delivered those meals – evidences of the fact that we anticipate one day sitting down for a feast that never ends or no one will be hungry. We live in a country that often has great governors, and we see moral laws passed and upheld, and we see justice defended, anticipating a time when we will enjoy the benefits of Christ's perfect rule all day and every day. And when you pray and are blessed with the peace of God in a particularly tense or stressful moment – when you're 30,000 feet in the air and you don't care to fly, or when you are about to reunite with family who you haven't seen in a long time, and you enjoy God's peace in that moment – we anticipate a time when he will be so present with us all the time that we won't even need the sun anymore, because God himself will be our light. He fills our world and our life with these small tastes of the victory that he promises to us. 

I do want to close with one more encouragement to choose faithfulness. And I have to admit I've done a little bit of a disservice here, because where the previous three points have been things that the Lord gives us, my last point, the encouragement from Numbers chapter 13 here, is this – that the Lord gives us reasons to be faithful, because he is not a practical God. Let me explain what I mean by this. Look with me at verse 30, and read one more time Caleb's charge, when he quiets the counsel around him, the fearful and angry mob who's ready to, as we see later in Numbers 14, actually turn back, and they want to go to Egypt again. Caleb stands, and he says, "Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are able to overcome it.” Notice what is not in Caleb's statement here. He doesn't give a counter-report. He doesn't stand up and deny everything that the other spies said was waiting for them in the land. He doesn't look behind to him and say, "Yeah, that's all true, but look at Israel. Look at how many people we've got. Look at all these, you know, super strong people who just spent their whole careers, you know, making bricks in slavery." He doesn't point to some superior technology that the Israelites have. At this point in their time, they have very little. In fact, if you were to just look at them from a purely strategic lens, it doesn't seem like they would be able to take this land. Caleb doesn't even take the opportunity to double down: “But guys, there's so much milk and honey, you don't understand. We've got to get in there as fast as possible.” Caleb's charge is a mark of faithfulness for us, because it reveals that in his heart he knows that the Lord is with them, and that that is enough. 

If you look at a few verses along with me, Joshua will echo this same faith in chapter 14, verse 9. He will also stand before the assembly of Israel, just a page over, and say this: “Only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land, for they are bread for us. Their protection is removed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.” The Lord is only concerned with the Canaanites – their size, their cities. He's only concerned with how big they are and how fortified that they are, because the bigger and more fortified they are, the greater he will appear to his people when he levels them. And Caleb and Joshua trust that they will not know exactly what God's presence looks like in Canaan until they march into Canaan and God goes with them. It's a little bit like when you are looking for your sunglasses and they've been on your head the whole time. What's the problem with that? It's not that the sunglasses are in the last place that you look. It's not that you forgot that you put them on your head. It's that your sunglasses are following you around everywhere, and they don't normally do that. 

Likewise, God will follow his people. He will be with his people, and so, he will surprise them. He will produce surprising results in them because he doesn't ask them to consider what might be practical or efficient or expedient. He asks them to remember that he is there, and he is their God. It was not efficient or practical or expedient for God to leave his people in Israel for hundreds of years of slavery and then redeem them through ten strange plagues and then lead them to walk over a sea that he splits and sends them across on dry land. It wasn't a practical thing for him to charge them to win Canaan when he could have just had it waiting for them. It wasn't a practical thing for the Israelites to march around Jericho seven times times seven times and blow trumpets and expect that to be the reason that the walls fall down. It wasn't practical for the creator and sustainer of the whole universe to become a baby and to spend nine months in the womb of a human virgin so that you and I might know that the Lord will honor his promises to be with his people. It wasn't practical for that Lord Jesus Christ to grow up and to say, "I will make the descent into hell myself and face death myself so that all sinners who place faith in me might know salvation and might know the fulfillment of the promises that I have been making since I created them." It wasn't practical for you to be saved by something as simple and, as Scripture says, as foolish as human preachers preaching from a physical copy of the word of God. 

The good news is that we don't want and we don't need a practical God. Husbands in the room, you can test it out this week – go home and tell your wife, "You know what? I'm not that worried about romance anymore. Now my goal is to be efficient with you." We want a God who is steadfast, who is eternal, who is unchangeable, not a God who is practical, efficient, and expedient. And so, it is a blessing for us, an encouragement to us, that the Lord is not a practical God, that he would charge his people to go and to do and to be faithful when other options are easier and more comfortable and safer. We need a God who is steadfast, eternal, and loving, and with us, and who desires only faithfulness from us. Let's pray and praise God for this reality. 

Gracious Lord, we thank you for this encouragement. Lord, we thank you for not shying away with the history of your people from us, so that we might be built up, affirmed, and warned and exhorted and rebuked because of it. We thank you for your word given in love. Lord, we ask that your Spirit would meet in us and press in us your promises, that you would reveal to us so many tastes of future victory, and that you would bless us with your presence where we go, and that you would equip us to be faithful where you call. It's in Christ's name we pray all of these things. Amen.