Numbers 14

How quickly can you forget the promises of God? The Lord had made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, involving, among other things, a land. God delivered His people out of Egypt and had brought them by His mighty hand to the very place and time where that promise was about to be fulfilled.

But the enemies in the land looked like giants to Israel, and the Lord's congregation felt like grasshoppers in their sight.

The Lord had never suggested that they would receive the land because of their own knowledge or strength. The people believed a bad report, a word of fear and faithlessness, and the consequences were devastating. All the congregation raised a loud cry.

They longed for death back in Egypt rather than the gift that the Lord had promised. They wanted to pick a Moses-replacement and make the journey back to slavery.

Moses and Aaron begged the assembly of the people of Israel, and Joshua and Caleb tried to persuade them. Their important message was not only about the goodness of the land but the faithfulness of the Giver. God would bring them in. He could defeat enemies much more challenging than the Anakim. They should not rebel against the Lord.

Their response: The congregation was ready to stone them, but the glory of the Lord appeared to the people.

God told Moses that He was ready to start everything all over with Moses, destroying all the rest. Moses reasoned with the Lord, pleading for mercy based on the Lord's own glory. The Egyptians and the inhabitants of the land must not be allowed to concluded that the Lord was not powerful enough to keep His promises. Moses only begged the Lord to be true to His own character, since the Lord is slow to anger and is able to forgive iniquity. He called to God's own mind His steadfast love and covenant faithfulness. Surely God's heart was expressed by Moses as an inspired intercessor facing the demands of the Lord's holiness. That may be hard to understand, but then the cross is hard to fathom. It is the place where the Lord's mercy and justice meet and we are saved by God's gift of Himself.

The Lord rightly loves His own glory. There is no one like our God. It is right that all the earth should see that He is powerful to save and that He hears the prayers of His servants for their lives, for their families, and for the congregation that is named by His Name.

God did pardon, but that generation would not enter the land, except for Caleb and Joshua. The next generation would be brought into the land. The rest would die in the wilderness over the course of forty years because of their faithlessness.

Moses gave this divine verdict to the people, and the people mourned greatly. They then attempted to change their minds and go into the land as if God had not spoken His mind to them at all. Moses urged them not to go, but they would not listen, and they were defeated.

When we pray as Jesus taught His disciples, we say, “Thy kingdom come.” Yet when we live as if God's promises were not trustworthy, we forget the achievement of the cross and the pledge of the resurrection.

Do we really want the kingdom of God for which the Son of God gave His blood? Let us listen to Jesus Christ and do today what He calls us to do. Let us go where the Spirit of Christ leads. He will surely take us into the land!