Here was their warrant for entering upon immediate possession. The Lord their God had given them the land and set it before them. It was theirs by His free gift--the gift of His sovereign grace, in pursuance of the covenant made with their fathers. It was His eternal purpose to possess the land of Canaan through the seed of Abraham His friend. This ought to have been enough to set their hearts perfectly at rest, not only as to the character of the land, but also as to their entrance upon it. There was no need of spies. Faith never wants to spy what God has given. It argues that what He has given must be worth having, and that He is able to put us in full possession of all that His grace has bestowed. Israel might have concluded that the same hand that had conducted them "through all that great and terrible wilderness" could bring them in and plant them in their destined inheritance. So Faith would have reasoned; for it always reasons from God down to circumstances, never from circumstances up to God. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" This is Faith's argument, grand in its simplicity and simple in its moral grandeur. When God fills the whole range of the soul's vision, difficulties are little accounted of. They are either not seen, or, if seen, they are viewed as occasions for the display of divine power. Faith exults in seeing God triumphing over difficulties. But, alas! the people were not governed by faith on the occasion now before us, and therefore they had recourse to spies. Of this Moses reminds them, and that, too, in language at once most tender and faithful.--"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.'" Surely, they might well have trusted God for all this. The One who had brought them up out of Egypt, made a way for them through the sea, guided them through the trackless desert, was fully able to bring them into the land. But no; they would send spies, simply because their hearts had not simple confidence in the true, the living, the almighty God.