“It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea. In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them… saying,
“The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. Turn and take your journey, and go…See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.” – Deuteronomy 1:2-8 {ESV}
Any time I think on the background of these verses I feel like someone kicked the wind out of me. On the surface this passage of scripture seems harmless enough but those who know their bible history receive this chunk of inspired truth like a balled-up fist driven right above the belly-button. This is an account of what-could-have-been. We are reading the flavorless testimony of an awesome gift which was unnecessarily postponed. Herein is the record of what happens when we fail to believe God and live as good stewards of the opportunity He presents us. I don’t like this passage very much, but I want to learn from it again today.
Forty years earlier Israel was poised to enter the land of promise. God told them where to go and affirmed that they would be successful in taking the land which had been pledged to them as a people. It was theirs for the taking but they quaked, cracked and crumbled under the prospect of the challenges ahead of them en route to the victory. In effect, by their unbelief and faithless grumbling, they said to the Almighty that He was unable to deliver. The result? What could have been theirs in eleven days would only become theirs forty years later. This is the experience of the delay of disbelief.
Think on this: approximately 2 million people made the exodus out of Egypt under the hand of Moses. Let’s estimate that one-half of those were adults, leaving us with one million redeemed adults who were mightily brought forth from slavery. These folks saw God part the Red Sea and destroy Pharaoh’s army. They witnessed the pillar of fire which led them by night and the pillar of cloud that led them by day. This was a miracle-experiencing mob! Yet, out of those one million adults only two men had faith to believe God for complete victory. I was never very skilled at math but I deduce that this is not a good percentage. We conservatively estimate that Israel produced the awful statistic of 1 out of every half million people who should have known better possessed victorious faith.
And God committed forty years to even out the numbers in the camp of Israel.
It took forty years to kill off the overt faithlessness in the wilderness. Forty years of wandering. Four decades of waiting. Over 2,000 weeks of grumbling and failing to trust. They could have been commencing to conquering in eleven days but here they were, a half-life later, getting a second chance at believing God. When I think about them I think about us. My mind often rests on the question of what we are missing out on because we really don’t trust God as we could. We struggle with trusting Him for healing because we don’t want our hearts broken if we don’t get healed. There is the wrestling match of the soul regarding the salvation of our loved ones – will they believe or won’t they? We struggle with whether or not God will provide when the economy around us lacks potency. We dream big dreams and think of mighty possibilities in the Kingdom…and then listen as those dreams deflate like an untied balloon because we fail to believe that God would ever bless us like that.
What aspect of your life has been in the penalty box for years when God could have accomplished it in days?
I’m going to chew on this today. You should also. I’ve recognized that it is not failure that intimidates me; oh no, friend, I’m too familiar with failure to be afraid of it any longer. What snarls at me in the night is the prospect of amazing success. Can I believe God for great and thunderous blessing? Would I allow the thought of Him loving me so much that it would bring His inexhaustible heart delight to afford me His very best? It’s easy trusting God when you are daily aware of your smallness and unworthiness – but what do you do when He desires to bless you greatly…and maybe in only eleven days?
I’m learning from Israel that we should receive it as He gives and when He gives it. I don’t like the hot sands of the purposeless wilderness. Give me the milk and honey any day. You’ve trusted Him repeatedly with your sins, failures and hesitations but can you trust God for success? I believe it is time that we start learning how to do so because there is a whole lot more spiritual surface than dry-baked sand out there. Eleven days in faith or forty years in learning how not to distrust God. Hmmmm, do the math and then receive the faith.
I read this passage and it fills me with awe because it tells us that God has a plan and the foolishness of men will not get in the way. Fallen men will always hear the voice of the serpent speaking, “You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
I read this and I see a teaching on election, and how Sovereign Grace is in control. Twelve went into the land to spy it out, 10 went out in their mannishness, two (Caleb and Joshua) went out in Sovereign Grace. The differences in the reports are evident. Caleb and Joshua went out in covenant with God under God’s covenant promise, they as true children of Abraham (the faith seed) saw a land of milk and honey, the ten saw nothing but dread fear.
Thank God for His Sovereign Grace. I pray that all you minister to become Caleb’s and Joshua’s, and that goes for me and you as well.