THE MELTED HEART PT. 2

NOW let’s go to Joshua Chapter 14. This is approx. 45 years after the spies gave the evil report. Joshua has become the leader and taken them into the promised land.
Joshua 14:6-7 KJV.
6. Then the children of Judah came unto Joshua in Gilgal: and Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenezite said unto him, Thou knowest the thing that the LORD said unto Moses the man of God concerning me and thee in Kadeshbarnea.
7. Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.
Caleb said speaking of the spy mission that he had back the word AS IT WAS IN HIS HEART.
What was that word. This is that word spoken by Caleb, " Let us go up at once and possess it for we are well able. CALEB SPOKE FROM HIS HEART.
2 Corinthians 4:13
13. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;
Now the 10 spies report after Caleb’s report was this.
Numbers 13:30-33
30. And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.
31. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.
32. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.
33. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Joshua 14:7-8
7. Forty years old was I when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadeshbarnea to espy out the land; and I brought him word again as it was in mine heart.
8. Nevertheless my brethren that went up with me made the heart of the people melt: but I wholly followed the LORD my God.
We must learn from this. Caleb spoke what he believed, and the 10 spies spoke as a result of what they saw. Caleb had faith in what God had said, and the spies had fear of what they had seen.
Proverbs 16:23 KJV.
23. The heart of the wise teacheth his mouth, and addeth learning to his lips.
2 Corinthians 5:7
7. (For we walk by faith, not by sight
Proverbs 16:23 tells us that the heart of the wise teaches his mouth and adds learning to his lips. 2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us to walk by faith and not by sight. Caleb was a man of faith, and he kept his mouth hooked to his heart. The 10 spies walked by sight and kept there lips hooked to their flesh and mind. If you don’t watch it you will get your mouth hooked up to your flesh and mind and be distracted by what you see and hear.
Moses tells the account of sending in the spies in Numbers chapters 13 and 14, and also in Deuteronomy 1:22-28. Let’s look at the account in Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy 1:22-32
22. And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.
23. And the saying pleased me well: and I took twelve men of you, one of a tribe:
24. And they turned and went up into the mountain, and came unto the valley of Eshcol, and searched it out.
25. And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down unto us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the LORD our God doth give us.
26. Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God:
27. And ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.
28. Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there.
29. Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them.
30. The LORD your God which goeth before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes;
31. And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place.
32. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God,
33. Who went in the
The spies were sent in to give a report on what the people were like and what the cities were like and what the land was like. They were not sent in to make a judgement on whether they were able to conquer it, for they had God’s word on the fact that it was given unto them already. The truth of how easy it was going to be is revealed in Exodus chapter 23. It didn’t matter how big the giants were. The fight was the Lords. He had prepared an army of Hornets to do the battle. And also given them a time table on how long it would take and why.
Let’s look
Exodus 23:24-33
24. Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images.
25. And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee.
26. There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.
27. I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee.
28. And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee.
29. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee.
30. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.
31. And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.
32. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.
33. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.
When taking a hunter safety course I learned about the process of succession. What the Lord was doing here is causing succession in one area and stopping it in another area.
Succession: the act or process of one person's taking the place of another in the enjoyment of or liability for rights or duties or both
If the Israelites would obey and go in an possess the land as the Lord had wanted, he would have sent in hornets to drive the giants out little by little. Little by little in the process of time the land would become the Israelites. A succession of the land from the giants to them.
The other side of succession that the Lord would stop is this. If you clear land over time the succession process will cause the land to return back to a wild state. So if the Lord cleared out the whole land all at once, and the Israelite’s didn’t have enough people to inhabit the land, and the wild beasts would come in and multiply against them before they were populated enough to fill the land. So God’s plan was to slowly move out the giants and allow the Israelites to multiply and move in and fully occupy the land which would not take less than a year. It would take some time, but they would not have to fight any battles.
Back to Deuteronomy 1:28
28. Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakims there.
DISCOURAGED in verse 28 means Melted, or Fainted.
The original plan for the spies was to find out the best route into the land to travel by, and what cities they would encounter along the way. They had a lot of people to move and needed to know the best way. They got distracted by the giants and the walled cities and forgot that the Lord would fight their battles for them.
Another word for the melted heart is Cast Down.
Psalms 42:5-6 KJV.
5. Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.
6. O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.
Another sign of a melted heart is being Overwhelmed.
Psalms 61:1-2
1. Hear my cry, O God; attend unto my prayer.
2. From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
When you see the melted heart it is speaking of a heart that is distracted, fainted, discouraged, cast down, and overwhelmed. The melted heart comes in by two doors. What we see, and what we hear. ( when they (we) heard, and when they (we) saw) It is possible for a persons heart to become melted. And it is possible for this to occur through what we see, watch, view, and what we hear, listen to, and think on.
The most important issue is what will occur if we allow our hearts to become melted. As we examine the fruits of the melted heart it is going to be possible to not only spot those who may be melted in their hearts, but we may find areas of our own lives where our heart is melted. You can be melted in one area and not another. As I study deeper into this I have found areas where my heart was melted, and I see people all around with melted hearts concerning their marriages, children, jobs, and security concerning their future.