God was angry with them because of their lack of faith in Him. Faith, or their lack of faith, was a choice here. They chose poorly. Do you see faith as a choice? Faith isn’t a feeling of belief; rather it is a choice to believe when the feeling is not there. It is exercising trust. If God was angry with His Old Covenant people for not exercising faith in Him, does He get angry with His New Covenant people for the same? Is He angry with you today?
Observe Moses’ approach in interceding for the people. We can learn from it how to pray more effectively. What steps can you list that he took, and how can you apply each one to your praying for others?
Caleb and Joshua didn’t contribute to the bad report, and indeed, presented a totally different picture of the land and encouraged the people to trust in God to bring them into it; they would be rewarded for that faith and faithfulness. However, they also had to wait forty years with the rest of the congregation. What does this example of God’s dealing in men’s affairs speak to you about His dealing in your affairs? Isn’t it frightening to think that worthy people, our own dear ones, might suffer unjustly because of our choices? Thank God for this compelling reminder, which is powerful encouragement to us to make better choices.
Verses 14:28-35 are key verses in the book of Numbers. The book began with a census. God promised that every man numbered in that census, those aged twenty years old and older, would die in the wilderness and not see the Promised Land. So the book is really a story about God’s faithfulness to this sad promise.
The people acknowledged that they had sinned, but rejected the consequences of their sin. They did not have the same attitude toward their sin that God had. This is far from the response that God accepts. The sinner who humbles himself before God, seeking forgiveness, intending to forsake the sin, is the one to whom God responds. His plan is that man be saved from sin, not simply acknowledge it. Their refusal to accept the consequences of their sin was the polar opposite of the humble response God would accept. What does this speak to you about your own response to sin?
Their further actions can be instructive as an object lesson for our own actions. They attempted to take possession of the Promised Land contrary to God’s plan and without God’s presence (and thus, His help). Do we try to circumvent God’s plan for our salvation and try to enjoy His promises without His help? Remembering that God’s Old Testament people are showcases for fallen human nature, we must take this story as an opportunity to search our own lives and hearts for the same responses they made, and the attitudes that those responses reveal.
So the nation of Israel was doomed to spend forty years in the wilderness. The entire generation of complainers and grumblers would die in that time and never see the Promised Land. This delayed God’s plan for that time,and didn’t look glorious to that generation of onlookers; nevertheless, He kept them in the wilderness, outside the Promised Land for the full forty years. Isn’t that sad? Eating manna when they could have been enjoying those grapes. Surrounded by gray and brown when they could have been enjoying the green that produces milk and honey. The wilderness becomes an object lesson for us, an object lesson of living outside of God’s promises to us. You’re not doing that, are you?
God used the sad time in the wilderness for good. One good thing that came from it is that Moses used the time to write the first five books of the Bible. God also used the time to instruct them further in His desire for them. What He adds here to the Law is simply giving them the highlights, a broader perspective of what He wants, so that they understand His heart. Some of the highlights:
- They don’t decide what the payment for sin is; God does. Bringing the offering as God specified demonstrated confession (seeing one’s sin as God sees it) and humility before Him.
- He provided a way for them to pay for unintentional sin, but the one who sinned intentionally and deliberately was to be cut off from his people. There was no remedy for such sin.
- He really does intend that the Sabbath be a day of complete rest for them! Punishment of death seems harsh, but it would mean that the people would do this thing that was obviously very important to God.
- Tassels on their garments were important? No, remembrance is. Remembrance that would cause them to obey God’s commands and so be holy to God, rather than “follow after (their) own hearts and (their) own eyes”. Remembrance would cause them to see God for Who He is.
Moses also used his time in the wilderness to dabble in some poetry. Psalm 90 is all the more powerful to me when put into the context of the writer’s circumstances. It is his testimony of finding God even in the sentence of wasting a generation’s worth of time in the wilderness. A brief review of the Psalm teaches how he did so: praising God, acknowledging God’s sovereignty and submitting to it, reflecting on a realistic perspective of life, seeking for God to bring good through the suffering of life so that in the end His people have gained what is truly of value, and asking God for His good graces. What of those speaks most profoundly to you?
He is right in saying that they have been consumed by God’s anger – that is literally, as well as figuratively, true! Yet he seeks to be satisfied with God’s lovingkindness, that they “may sing for joy and be glad all (their) days (verse 14).” Lovingkindness from a God whose anger has consumed them? Satisfaction in that lovingkindness, instead of resentment for dear ones being consumed by the anger, instead of resentment for consuming hope for a life in a land of milk and honey with a sentence of a life wasted in the wilderness? Really? Expectation of joy in that circumstance? Gladness when dying in the wilderness is all they have to look forward to in this life, or for half of them, languishing in the wilderness for a full generation because of sins they didn’t commit? These are worth pondering.