Devotionals

Don't Be Afraid, Grasshopper

by Jerry Ousley
10/28/22
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Don’t be Afraid, Grasshopper

Jerry D. Ousley

Second grade can be quite intimidating.  The school was within walking distance of our home and so, my sister and I started home one crisp, fall day.  I was the second-grader and she was in the first grade.  The shortest route to our home was to walk behind the school and through the ball field area.  Once we rounded the corner of the school this tough boy came up behind us.  He was bigger than I was (which wasn’t saying much in those days.  Up until I hit thirty-five, I was a skinny runt).  This guy made only one tough request.  “I like your sister,” he said, “and I want to hold her hand.”  She didn’t want to.  So, he turned on me, “If she doesn’t hold my hand, I’m going to pound you!”  For our current generation the word “pound” used in this sentence meant that I was about to suffer pain.  As I said, he was much bigger than me and I am ashamed to say that I was so afraid of this guy that I made my sister hold his hand.  I always regretted that because in my opinion it was an act of cowardice.  I always wished that I could have mustered up some bravery and stood up to that guy on my sister’s behalf.  But I didn’t and so I have this story to tell.

The Israeli people found themselves in such a predicament.  The difference was that it was on a much larger scale than a bully wanting to hold a sister’s hand.  You can read of this situation in Exodus 13-14.  They had come to the edge of entering into the land God had promised centuries before to Abraham.  It was the land God had sent Moses to lead them to - From slavery in Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.

They chose twelve men to spy out the land before they entered.  After forty days the men returned carrying a very large clump of grapes to display to the people, signifying the abundance of the land.  They told of all they had seen there.  It was just as Moses had said – a land of plenty.

Then one of the men, Caleb by name, jumped up and exclaimed, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it. (Exodus 13:30).”  He knew that they had the LORD on their side and that they could do it, just as He had promised them.

But before they could shout out in excitement ten of the men had this to say: (Exodus 13:31-33) “But 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.’  And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature.  There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”

How sad.  Had they not been afraid, and given in to their fear, they might have saved an entire generation of people, because in punishment of their fear, cowardice and disobedience to God, the only two men from that generation that got to finally enter the land of promise were the two that had brought the good report, Joshua and Caleb.  All the rest of the men of that generation died over the next forty years of wandering around in the wilderness.

But are we so different?  How would we have felt in the same situation?  What if those men had been us?  Would we have done things any differently?  Remember they were a nation of slaves.  All they had known for four hundred years was slavery.  And now they were to be warriors and conquer a land.  They men saw themselves as grasshoppers.  No one in the land called them that.  Basically, they had said, “We felt insignificant, like grasshoppers next to them, and so they must have thought of us.”

We really aren’t told in this situation how the people who were to be conquered thought of the Israeli people.  But later, after that generation had died and under the leadership of Joshua, they once again were about to enter the land and we are told this of the inhabitants by Rahab, the harlot who had hidden the two spies, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, that the terror of you has fallen on us, and that all the inhabitants of the land are fainthearted because of you.  For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sihon and Og, whom you utterly destroyed.  And as soon as we heard these things, our hearts melted; neither did there remain any more courage in anyone because of you, for the LORD your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.”  (Joshua 2:9-11).

We make judgment on ourselves.  “I can’t do it.  I can’t live it.  I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”  This is what we say.  However, when we have come to the Lord and accepted His free gift of salvation, the enemy (the devil and his demonic hoard) is really afraid of us.  Oh, he isn’t afraid of me.  But he is terrified of the Spirit of God living in me.  And so he is of you too, if you have accepted His free gift of salvation and stand firm in His promises.

We might be stricken with fright inside, just like I was with that bully, and just like the ten spies who brought back the report of fear to the Israelites.  But if we overcome our fear, if we hold tightly to the hand of God, we can shake off the grasshopper mentality and say with the mighty apostle, John, “You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4).