They Went Up Anyway and Called It Faith

There is a day in the book of Numbers that I cannot get out of my head, and it lasted about twenty four hours.

On the first day, God told a nation to go up and take a land He had promised them. Twelve men had gone in and looked at it. Ten of them came back and said the people there were too big and the cities were walled and it could not be done. And the whole camp cried all night and said they would rather have died in the desert.

They refused. God said go and they did not go.

And then the next morning, they got up early, and they went.

Same people. Twelve hours later. And they went up to the top of the mountain saying, here we are, we will go up to the place the Lord promised, for we have sinned.

That sounds like repentance. It sounds like faith arriving late. And Moses stood in front of them and said do not go, because the Lord is not among you, and they went anyway, and they were beaten badly.

What I cannot shake is that the second morning almost certainly felt more like faith than the first one did.

The same action on two different days

Read what Moses says, because he names the exact problem.

But they presumed to go up unto the hill top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. (Numbers 14:44, King James Version)

They presumed. That is the word for it, and it is not a word about the action, it is a word about the authority behind the action.

Going up that hill was the right thing to do on Tuesday. On Wednesday it was presumption. The action did not change at all. What changed is that on Tuesday it was obedience to something God said, and on Wednesday it was a decision they made about God's plan without Him.

That is what makes this so hard for honest people. Presumption almost never looks reckless from the inside. It usually looks like courage, and it often looks like faith arriving after a failure, which is the most sympathetic version of it there is.

You are able to tell the difference, and God has never once hidden it from somebody who genuinely wanted to know. That is not me making a hard thing simple. Numbers 14:44 uses the word presumed about an action that was correct one day earlier, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives a person the ability to check the authority behind their own determination.

Determination is not evidence

Here is the thing this passage takes away, and it is worth losing.

A lot of people use the strength of their own conviction as proof that a thing is from God. It feels so strong. I cannot let it go. I have thought about it for years.

Those people were extremely determined on Wednesday. Look at the details: they rose up early. That is the language of somebody who could not wait. They were sincere, they were sorry, they were motivated, and they were wrong.

Feeling strongly about something is information about you and it is not information about God's will. Those are two different subjects, and it took me a long time to accept that, because my own certainty has always felt like the most reliable thing in the room.

You are not being measured by how sure you feel, and certainty has never once been the same thing as a word. Numbers 14:40 has them up early and eager and outside God's word at the same time, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person hold their own conviction loosely enough to test it.

How the presumption started

Here is what I think is the real lesson and it is one verse back from where people usually stop.

The presumption on Wednesday was not a new sin. It was the same sin as Tuesday's, in a different direction.

On Tuesday they decided the outcome themselves: it cannot be done. On Wednesday they decided the outcome themselves: it can. Both days, the decision was theirs. Both days, what God actually said was not the deciding factor.

That is why the fix is not to be bolder. Boldness was Wednesday. The fix is to go back to what He actually said, which is the only thing that was missing on either day.

You have access to what He actually said, and He has never once been silent to somebody who came back to ask. Numbers 14:41 has Moses ask why they are transgressing the commandment when it will not prosper, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a person back to a word instead of to a mood.

The honest hard part

I have to say the part that is uncomfortable, and I want to say it as somebody who has been wrong.

There is no formula in this. I cannot hand anybody a test that tells them whether their determination is faith or presumption, and any man who says he has one is selling something.

What I have found is that a few things help. Presumption usually will not tolerate a question, and faith will sit still while somebody asks one. Presumption has a hurry in it, and God is rarely in a hurry with people, and the times He is, He says so plainly. And presumption usually cannot name a word, only a feeling, and when you ask it what God actually said it changes the subject to how strongly it feels.

None of that is a formula. It is just what I have noticed, mostly from the inside.

You are allowed to test this without insulting God, and asking has never once been the same as doubting. Numbers 14 shows a nation that never once stopped to ask, and the Spirit of God is the one who searches a person's own motives with them rather than against them.