Deuteronomy 1:32, 36 Yet in this thing ye did not believe the Lord your God…Save Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the Lord.
Unbelief may be the worst, most harmful, yet most common response to God, as this story exemplifies. Unbelief is considered by some to be the first and the worst sin, which causes all the death and misery of our life. This unbelieving generation of Israel was not allowed to enter the promised land.
Now, it is not easy to believe God. In fact, it is impossible for a sinful man alone to believe. The Holy Spirit by the power of the Gospel must bring us to faith. And He does. God promises to give Israel the land; God promises they can and will possess the land. The Lord had led them out of Egypt and bore them in the wilderness and brought them to this place. Yet they did not believe. They did not believe God would keep His promise; they did not believe God would be strong to overcome the giant problems they were facing; they not believe God would be good, again. The problems they could see looked bigger to their eyes than the God they could not see. Who could blame them? Well, Moses, and God.
We also must also deal with giants who try to prevent us from living in the Kingdom, or at least from enjoying it to the full. We have been given eternal life and we possess it, but sometimes it seems that earthly life drowns it out, overwhelms it, and defeats it to the point where we don’t even know it is real. Unbelief is a very real and present danger: maybe Jesus isn’t as strong or as good as I hoped. But unbelief keeps us from possessing what God gives, the full enjoyment of life in the Kingdom.
On the other hand, Caleb will get the land because he wholly followed the Lord, that is, he believed God. God said it; I believe it; it’s settled. Jesus is with us; the Kingdom is within us; no one can tell us otherwise, though they try. No matter what it looks like to the naked eye, the kingdom ours remaineth.