Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 1 of 5
Devotional: August 18th

Numbers 13:1-26

The people are getting near the promised land. Moses sends out twelve men as scouts, their mission to explore the country and to bring back both information and some of its fruits. Forty days are necessary for this reconnaissance. The spies go up to Hebron, a place with which we are already familiar; it is there that Abraham bought the cave of Machpelah for a tomb. They bring back a bunch of grapes so heavy that it needs two men to carry it.

For us the promised land is heaven. Like the people, we are still in the wilderness, type of this world. We have not seen the inheritance into which God is going to bring us. But there is One who knows it and can speak to us of it; this is the Holy Spirit, who occupies us with heavenly things. Just as the grapes of Eshcol brought proof positive of the richness of the country, the Spirit gives us an earnest, that is to say a foretaste of the joys of heaven. He makes us know the things of God (1 Corinthians 2:12). He receives what is Christ’s and shows it to us (John 16:14). Although we are still in a world which morally is a desert to our souls, we can already be occupied with the One whom having not seen, we love (1 Peter 1:8).