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When Moses told these words to all the people of Israel, the people mourned greatly. And they rose early in the morning and went up to the heights of the hill country, saying, “Here we are. We will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned.” But Moses said, “Why now are you transgressing the command of the Lord, when that will not succeed? Do not go up, for the Lord is not among you, lest you be struck down before your enemies. For there the Amalekites and the Canaanites are facing you, and you shall fall by the sword. Because you have turned back from following the Lord, the Lord will not be with you.” But they presumed to go up to the heights of the hill country, although neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses departed out of the camp. Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated them and pursued them, even to Hormah. Numbers 14:39-45, ESV.
Have you ever sought after something that you knew the Lord would not want you to have? I imagine that each one of us would have to confess that we have. Sometimes we justify the pursuit by pretending we don’t know what God would say about it. At other times we forge ahead in full awareness of God’s prohibition, hoping to get away with it because He has been gracious to us in the past. In other instances, we seek the forbidden fruit simply because we believe we deserve it. It is hard to tell exactly what motivates Israel to enter the Promised Land after God had just struck dead the faithless spies and revealed His wilderness judgment against the faithless people. Their words are strange; “Here we are. We will go up to the place that the Lord has promised, for we have sinned.” Knowing their sin, they choose to sin again? When the door was open to the land, they refused to enter because they feared giants. Now that the door is closed, they are determined to enter. Their hearts are filled with rebellion. Moses condemns their folly and calls for them to reconsider, but to no avail. They enter the land. They enter alone—God is not with them. They meet the very end they feared in the first place. They experience defeat in battle and are chased back out of the land. For all their efforts, now they will begin the forty-year journey as a defeated people. Twice they choose to follow the path outside of God’s will—a path that leads them from sorrow to sorrow. Friends, my prayer for you today is that you will not follow the path trod by the people of Israel in this passage. May you instead seek the will of God, find it, follow it, and be blessed. Pastor Don And the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying, “How long shall this wicked congregation grumble against me? I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel, which they grumble against me. Say to them, ‘As I live, declares the Lord, what you have said in my hearing I will do to you: your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness, and of all your number, listed in the census from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against me, not one shall come into the land where I swore that I would make you dwell, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, who you said would become a prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness. Numbers 14:26-33, ESV.
Can you imagine what it was like to be an eighteen-year-old Israelite when God’s judgment fell on His people for their faithlessness? God sentenced them to forty years of wilderness journeying and suffering, during which all of those who were twenty years old or older would die. All, that is, but Caleb and Joshua. Our hypothetical eighteen-year-old would be one of the “shepherds in the wilderness forty years.” He would watch nearly all of his elders die. At the end of the four decades, he would enter the Promised Land as a fifty-eight-year-old. He would likely be one of the elders in Israel. God promises to spare a generation of His people and bring them into the land of promise. In sparing them, He is also preparing them. Their experience would be a ready reminder that He was God and that sin has consequences. It would also be a reminder of His love. They will have seen His judgment and seen His grace by the time comes for them to enter the land. Life is that way. It is not always easy. Nonetheless, even in the struggles of life, we can know that God is ever active in our lives. Sometimes we suffer the consequences of other people’s sin. Sometimes we experience long hardship that we might learn of our God. Sometimes He is disciplining us. Sometimes He is teaching us of His grace. Sometimes He is preparing us for a blessing to come. My prayer today is that you will trust God in whatever you are going through, looking forward to the day when we will enter our eternal land of promise. Pastor Don Then the Lord said, “I have pardoned, according to your word. But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord, none of the men who have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have put me to the test these ten times and have not obeyed my voice, shall see the land that I swore to give to their fathers. And none of those who despised me shall see it. But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall possess it. Now, since the Amalekites and the Canaanites dwell in the valleys, turn tomorrow and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.” Numbers 14:20-25, ESV.
Sin has consequences. Man cannot act out in wicked rebellion against God and escape punishment. At times we might doubt this because the consequences do not always appear immediately. Nonetheless, sin has consequences. The ten spies who doubted the power of God to grant the Promised Land to Israel learned this lesson the hard way. These ten men had declared that the might of people of the land was too much for God to overcome and Israel took their word for it. God proposed abandoning them to their foolishness and starting over with Moses. Moses begged for mercy based on the reputation and character of God. Now, in today’s passage and what follows, God chooses not to abandon the people, but to wear them out in the wilderness. He announces this as a judgment against their leaders, the ten men. Only Caleb and Joshua will be allowed to see the land. God is gracious in this; only one generation suffers loss. All those under 20 years of age are spared. The covenant with His people is preserved and God’s reputation amongst the nations is preserved. The example of divine grace is a foreshadowing of things to come for us. Since we are all sinners, having doubted the goodness and the greatness of our God, we all deserve punishment for our sin. In fact, the infinite holiness of God demands that our sin receive an infinite punishment. That is why hell is eternal. On our own, we are helpless and doomed. Praise God that we are not on our own. God’s grace has appeared in its most magnificent form in the person and work of Jesus, God in the flesh. Jesus took the sins of men upon Himself and, though He was a sinless man, suffered for them on the cross. He absorbed the full punishment and rose again on the third day. Those who repent of their sin and trust in Him can know they are entirely forgiven. What a glorious Savior! I pray that you know this forgiveness and that it will be your joy today. Pastor Don Then all the congregation said to stone them with stones. But the glory of the Lord appeared at the tent of meeting to all the people of Israel. And the Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, in spite of all the signs that I have done among them? I will strike them with the pestilence and disinherit them, and I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” Numbers 14:10-12, ESV.
The story is familiar to most. The ten spies tell the people that the land was too dangerous. Caleb and Joshua counter with a call to take the land by faith. The people weep and whine. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces. Caleb and Joshua again call the people to faith in the promises of God. The people, caught up in fear, seek their death. Then God shows up at the tabernacle. He declares that the people’s lack of faith in Him and His promises is an act of hatred toward His person. He has brought them out of Egypt with miraculous sign after miraculous sign, but they still do not trust Him. So, He will put an end to His relationship with them, bring disease to them, and start over with a new people from the line of Moses. Unbelief is an egregious sin. It reveals itself when life’s circumstances seem to turn against us. In our day, it shows up when we put more faith in news reports, political pontification, scientific studies, and social media posts than we do in the promises of God. Then, by trusting in them instead of the promises of God, we declare our hatred for Him. We would be foolish to think that He who was ready to be done with Israel would tolerate such behavior from us. As we continue in Numbers, we will see God show His grace to His people once more, but we do well to consider this lesson about God’s judgment against unbelief before we turn that page. Now is the time for us to consider the promises of God to His people, trust those promises, and take the “land” he has given us. What is our land? The New Testament offers us some clues. Hebrews 11:10 tells us that even Abraham, the patriarch who received the first land promise, “was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” Paul writes of “the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world . . . through the righteousness of faith.” I pray that you will see the world through the promises of God today and walk by faith. Pastor Don |
From Pastor DonWriting about the Bible and praying that it will be of some good for someone. Archives
June 2021
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