About twelve years ago a church member in Edgefield gave me an iPhone 4. At the time it was a pretty powerful device. The camera being available all the time and the ability to communicate instantly were big upgrades.
But when I first got it, I ran into a strange problem.
I tried loading some music onto the phone through iTunes, but one of the files didn’t install properly. I didn’t realize it at the time. When I started using the phone, the battery drained incredibly fast. I couldn’t figure out why.
Eventually I learned the issue: the phone kept trying to access a music file that wasn’t actually there. The device was constantly searching for something that didn’t exist. It kept working and working, exhausting itself in the process. If left unchecked, it would have burned through the battery completely.
When I read Numbers chapter 14, I saw something very similar happening to the people of Israel.
The moment recorded in Numbers 14 was the goal of the entire Exodus. God had rescued His people from slavery and brought them all the way to the edge of the Promised Land.
Twelve spies were sent into the land to see what they were facing and to help prepare for the next step.
All twelve agreed on one thing: the land was incredible. They even brought back a massive cluster of grapes so large that two men had to carry it.
But ten of the spies focused on something else. They highlighted the size and strength of the people living in the land.
The voices of those ten men quickly became the loudest voices in the camp.
And the promise of God—to give them this land—was pushed aside.
This is what makes the moment so remarkable. These people had personally watched God defeat Egypt. They had seen the Red Sea part before their eyes. They had eaten manna from heaven and watched water come from a rock.
These weren’t stories from long ago. These were events they had personally experienced.
Yet fear took over.
Numbers 14 shows how destructive fear can be.
First, fear spreads quickly.
Like a stomach virus moving through a household, the fear of the ten spies infected the entire community (Numbers 14:1–2). Soon the whole camp was crying, panicking, and complaining against Moses and Aaron.
Second, fear creates catastrophic predictions.
The people immediately assumed they were going to die in the wilderness and that their wives and children would be taken as plunder (Numbers 14:3). Fear often imagines the worst possible future and treats it as certain.
Third, fear pushes people toward escape instead of faith.
Rather than trusting God and moving forward, they began talking about appointing a new leader and returning to Egypt (Numbers 14:4). They would rather go back to slavery than trust God with the future.
Fourth, fear rejects voices of faith.
When Joshua and Caleb urged the people to trust God and enter the land, the people responded by talking about stoning them (Numbers 14:6–10). Fear often silences the voices that challenge it.
God Himself reminds them of something sobering:
They had seen His power again and again (Numbers 14:22).
Yet they refused to trust Him.
The consequence was severe. That generation would wander in the wilderness for forty years, missing the blessing God had intended for them.
Fear turned what should have been the doorway to God’s promise into decades of wandering.
Fear can do the same thing in our lives.
It causes us to obsess over negative possibilities that may never happen. It blinds us to the goodness of God that has already been proven over and over again.
Sometimes it helps to simply ask a question:
How many of the fears you’ve had in your life actually came true?
If every fear I’ve ever had became reality, fear would have a great track record.
But in my life, fear has been wrong about most of the time.
Listening to fear sometimes leads to wise action—like replacing the batteries in a fire alarm.
But refusing to sleep because your house might catch on fire isn’t wisdom. That’s anxiety.
The disciples struggled with something similar.
Jesus repeatedly told them that He would die and rise again (Mark 8:31; Mark 9:31; Mark 10:33–34). They resisted hearing it and struggled to believe it.
Then Good Friday came, and their worst fear seemed to come true. Jesus died.
On Saturday, silence filled the air. Fear and confusion must have overwhelmed them.
But on Sunday, everything changed.
Jesus rose from the grave.
The greatest fear humanity faces—death itself—was defeated.
And the resurrection reminds us that our lives are held in the hands of a sovereign God.
So instead of letting catastrophic thoughts play on repeat in our minds, we can remember what God has already done.
Because when we look back honestly, we see something clearly:
God has never failed us.
And when we remember that truth, fear loses the power to ruin us.
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