So we see why God forbid His people to interact with the people living in Canaan. They weren’t even in the Promised Land yet, and they had already disobeyed that command. And promptly gave in to the lure of worshiping other gods. That experience reinforces that God’s commands, harsh as they seemed, were protection for His people. Their observance would have protected the people from straying.
Once again, Israel’s experience offers us an opportunity to check ourselves, hopefully before we have to suffer the ugly consequences of sin. Do you feel safe flouting God’s (admittedly restrictive) warnings, which are given for your own protection, because you believe you are immune to the danger? God’s warnings are there for a reason. We may seem child-like to live by them rather than exercise our own judgment about the danger, but we must understand that God’s knows the danger better than we do.
The census taken at the end of the forty years in the wilderness is a reminder to us of God’s faithfulness to His promises, both for our good and our bad. The numbers indicate that God fulfilled His promise to Jacob to make his descendants into a great nation while they were in Egypt (Genesis 46:3), which of course also fulfilled His promise to Abraham to multiply his descendants. It also fulfilled His promise to the generation who rejected the Promised Land; not one of them were left except Caleb and Joshua. If He stuck to His promise to prevent their entrance into the Promised Land, will He also prevent sinners from entering the place of promised rest for eternity? Today’s reading is a sobering reminder to us, and an opportunity to evaluate where we stand so that we are prepared to be welcomed instead of rejected when we face Jesus.