Two motives, one event

Deuteronomy 1:20-22 (ESV)
And I said to you, ''You have come to the hill country of the Amorites, which the LORD our God is giving us. [21] See, the LORD your God has set the land before you. Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed.'' [22] Then all of you came near me and said, ''Let us send men before us, that they may explore the land for us and bring us word again of the way by which we must go up and the cities into which we shall come." [23] The thing seemed good to me, and I took twelve men from you, one man from each tribe.

You have come to the hill country of the Amorites. Israel had reached the land where Abraham once used to sojourn:
Genesis 14:13 (ESV)
Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner. These were allies of Abram.
And it was when he was living in the land of the Amorites that God had confirmed to him by a covenant that his offspring would come back to possess this land and the entire land of Canaan:
Genesis 15:18-21 (ESV)
On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, [19] the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, [20] the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, [21] the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites."

On that day God also let Abraham know when his offspring will possess the land. It would be after the children of Israel spend 400 as servants in Egypt. And not only that, it will be when the sins of the Amorites have reached the peak of God's patience:
Genesis 15:13-16 (ESV)
Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. [14] But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. [15] As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. [16] And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

So it was at the completion of the sins of the Amorites that the fourth generation from Israel would come back to this land to take possession of it. The Amorites' iniquities were, as it were, the 'timer' by which God will begin His destruction work upon the land of Canaan. Sin of the Amorites was perhaps the most wicked of them all, since God gives special attention to this people's sin over others'. It may be that God especially hated the hearts and deeds of the Amorites, and desired to destroy them first and foremost for their prime sin and oppression committed more proudly than other nations.

Thus Moses here is in a sense telling the Israelites they coming to the Amorites is the fulfillment of God's covenant to Abraham. He is saying, 'The iniquity of the Amorites is now complete! It is time to destroy them and all of Canaan with the wrath of God. God is with us. His promise is being fulfilled. His covenant is still sure. Let us go and take possession of it!'

Go up, take possession, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has told you. Do not fear or be dismayed. God had made the promise to these Israelites that they will take possession of this land. Nothing stopped them from taking the land as long as they believed that God was able to do this. It is God that had spoken. It didn't matter if Israel were small and weak and the inhabitants of the land were giants and mighty warriors. It didn't matter if they had sticks for weapons and their enemies had highly fortified walls. If they had put their trust in God's power, they would take possession of the land.

It is the same for us Christians. Jesus our Lord has told us that we will take possession of Heaven. To us it looked impossible to our eyes, but Christ promised that if we only believe in Him, we will pass from death to life and that He will take us there. It doesn't matter how strong our enemies - flesh, world and the devil - are, Christ said if we continue believing in Him, we will see Him as He is. There are no other conditions, for we have failed all other conditions. By faith in His grace we will enter into heaven. Just as Abraham believed that God will give him a child, though his body was as good as dead - we believe that God will take us to heaven though we ourselves have no merits and our righteousness is like filthy rags. We believe that Christ is our Captain who has gone in and conquered all enemies for us, and all we are to do is to follow him into the land. Christ our God is our Salvation. We have no confidence in ourselves, in our flesh, but only in Him. He spoke, and we believed, and by this faith we will enter into heaven no matter how weak we are. It is Christ who has done all things to make our salvation possible.

We need not fear anything. Do we fear judgment? It is Christ who died, and rose again from the dead. We need fear not the devil, for greater is He that is in us, and he who is in the world. We need not fear death, for we know that Christ has taken away the sting of death. Christ has set heaven before us. Let us trust in Him to take us there by His own power, and not by our power. It is He who justifies and who has opened the everlasting doors of heaven by His hands, so that we may enter with Him. Let us not doubt, like this first generation did, who only looked at their own hands and their own weaknesses. Let us look to Christ.

Let us send men before us. In Numbers 13 we read that sending the spies to the land of Canaan was also what God had commanded Moses:
Numbers 13:2 (ESV)
"Send men to spy out the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the people of Israel. From each tribe of their fathers you shall send a man, every one a chief among them."
It may be that God had commanded to send these spies in order that they will bring positive news of the land, so that the whole army may be encouraged to enter in. Indeed this is what Caleb and Joshua did.

We have also need to be faithful witnesses of the Kingdom of God to outsiders. Caleb and Joshua tasted of the fruit of the land, and saw that it was an "exceedingly good" land, and they brought good news to the people. But the evil spies, though they ate of the good fruit of the land, spoke evil of the land and despised God's promise:
Numbers 14:7-8 (ESV)
and said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, "The land, which we passed through to spy it out, is an exceedingly good land. [8] If the LORD delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey.
Numbers 13:27-28,32 (ESV)
And they told him, "We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. [28] However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. [32] So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height.

See how plainly they spoke of the fruit of the land "and this is its fruit". They didn't even explain how a single cluster of grapes were so large and heavy that they had to carry it between two men:
Numbers 13:23 (ESV)
And they came to the Valley of Eshcol and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them; they also brought some pomegranates and figs.

Some Christians also explain Christ and His everlasting Gospel in this dull, plain, un-passionate and boring way, and thus bring evil report of the land. They present Christ as just a thing or an idea, not as a living Person who saved them from the everlasting fire by amazing love. They treat the Gospel as any other news, or some story out of a fable, and not as the Greatest Good News that has ever been proclaimed to the ears of man. There is no fire in their hearts that burns with reality and truth. They speak the name of Christ lightly, in vain, and not with a burning emphasis in the glory of His name. To them Christ is NOT "exceedingly good", but just 'good'. Such witnesses only bring evil report for the Kingdom of God. We need witnesses who speak of Christ and Heaven with a weight of reality that can't be denied in the ears of the hearers.

So it was for the purpose of encouragement that God had desired to send the spies. But it seems it is because of fear that the people desired to send the spies. Moses commands them to go bravely and possess the land, but they back down and ask that they send spies instead. Unbelief was growing in their hearts already from this moment. Thus unbelief was the motive on their part, but encouragement of faith was the motive on God's part. Thus there were two motives, but one event.

Motive, the heart of an action, is important. It is what determines the value of an action in the sight of God. For example, a man may exercise and jog everyday for the glory of God, in order to preserve the precious body that God had made and given him, in order that he may serve God to the best of his ability. This is a good motive. On the other hand, a man may jog and exercise for the love of self, for his own glory, that he may gain popularity and have his body worshipped by others. So the action is the same, but the motives are worlds apart - the difference is as far as heaven and hell.

Serving God can also be done with such polar opposite motives. We can serve God out of true love toward God, out of love for the brethren, to the end that God and Christ alone may be glorified. We can also serve God in order to glorify ourselves, to make ourselves famous, in order that we may have some personal gain at the expense of Christ. Same serving, but one pleasing to God and the other an abomination to Him. Let us then purify our hearts of evil motives, and serve Him with the right heart. We may fool man with our outward actions, but we can't fool God. His word reveals the intentions of the heart:
Hebrews 4:12 (ESV)
For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

The death of Jesus Christ was the quintessential event in which the good motive of God and the evil motive of man converged in a single event. God's motive in killing Christ was to offer His Son as a sacrifice to pay for the sins of all His elect, that they may not perish but believe Christ for everlasting life. It was to God the greatest display of His love, that He would offer up His Beloved Son for us, who were His enemies. His motive was for the glory of God, that all nations would worship Him for His grace and His righteousness fulfilled. But the Jewish leaders delivered up Christ for all the wrong motives. They killed Him because of hatred and jealousy. They hated Christ because of all the popularity and glory He stole from them. They could not stand Him, and treated Him as the sons of Israel treated Joseph. They scorned and mocked Him as demon-possessed and a mad man. It was cold-blooded murder of the Son of God.

Death of Christ happened with sinful motives, but God did it with good motives, that He may save the world with a great deliverance. It is as Joseph said to his brethren:
Genesis 50:20 (ESV)
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

And so God always means good in the midst of all the evil that happens. God can work His good through all the sin, destruction and evil. But God remains good because His motives are good, in bringing glory to Him through all things. Man hated Christ and desired to be rid of Him, but God meant that hatred for good, and used it to offer His Son as a pleasing sacrifice for sins of many. Because of this evil event, God saved many from eternities in Hell. The Devil meant it for evil when he destroyed Job's family and everything he had, but God meant it for good that He may prove Job's unconditional love to God, and to reveal precious truths about suffering. God always has His good reasons for all the evil that He allows and works through, though we may not understand them all.

This event of the spies revealed clearly the unbelief in Israel's heart. And through it God could cleanse all the unbelievers in the midst of His congregation that only the believers would be left. This was the good to which God allowed this request to be granted. See how Moses says "This seemed good to me". Even to the great and wise Moses their intentions of the heart could not be read. But Christ knew the intentions of people's heart when He came and He never gave Himself over to those with wrong motives. He still despises those who come to Him for the wrong motives. His eyelids are still testing and proving man's hearts:
Revelation 2:23 (ESV)
and I will strike her children dead. And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

We can't hide our motives before Christ. Let us bow down and worship Him, pouring out our hearts before Him, for He already knows the things that we will say to Him. This is the omniscient God whom we serve. Let us not have double hearts or hypocrisy before Him, treating God as though He is blind. We will all confess to Him and kneel before His Judgement Seat.