A Scary Story

I got really scared this week as I read Deuteronomy 1. The Lord had told the Israelites to take possession of the land He had placed before them and that they should not fear or be dismayed. However, the next thing they did was devise their own plan to send a man from each tribe to go into the area and to see which way they should go. Now, the Lord had been leading them for years throughout the wilderness. The omnipresent and omniscient God went ahead of them to guide them with fire by night and cloud by day because He knew the way they should go. Despite this, Moses thought this was a good plan and so the twelve went to spy out the land.  They returned and reported that the land was good, which the Lord was giving them.  Of course it would be. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. Nevertheless, the Israelites didn’t want to go to this good land that the Lord had for them because they listened to ten of the spies who had said that the people were bigger and taller than them. The Israelites started to complain that the Lord hated them and brought them out of Egypt to be destroyed, even though Moses assured them that the Lord would go ahead of them and fight for them so they should not be afraid. But whose report did they believe? God had told them He was giving them the land. If He said it, He would do it as He is not a man that He should lie. However, they didn’t obey Him and chose to listen to the ten spies who saw themselves and the Israelites as grasshoppers. Therefore, they refused to take possession of what God was giving them because they feared the people of the land rather than God and so He was angry.

“Then the Lord heard the sound of your words, and He was angry and took an oath, saying, ‘Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land which I swore to give your fathers, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and to his sons I will give the land on which he has set foot, because he has followed the Lord fully.’ The Lord was angry with me also on your account, saying, ‘Not even you shall enter there. Joshua the son of Nun, who stands before you, he shall enter there; encourage him, for he will cause Israel to inherit it. Moreover, your little ones who you said would become a prey, and your sons, who this day have no knowledge of good or evil, shall enter there, and I will give it to them and they shall possess it. But as for you, turn around and set out for the wilderness by the way to the Red Sea.’ Deuteronomy 1:34-40

The Lord was angry, so they lost the inheritance He was going to give them and He turned them away from the Promised Land. Only two men from their generation entered the land along with their children who they thought would be prey. Not even Moses entered the land because of His disobedience. When the people realized God was angry and they had sinned against Him, they decided that they would go into the land and fight. There was one big problem. The Lord was not with them so Moses told them not to go because they would be defeated. They didn’t listen to Moses and went anyway.  Hence, in their presumptuousness, they were chased and crushed by the people they went to fight.

This recount by Moses scares me because there was so much rebellion and presumption as they did not listen to godly advice. Have you ever done anything like this? Well, I have, and it didn’t end well. When God says to do something, we need to do it. It doesn’t matter how big the giants seem, they are not bigger than the Lord. We need to stop listening to what other people say when God has already spoken. However, we must be certain that it is God’s voice we are listening to. If we are not ready to be like sheep and hear the Good Shepherd’s voice, then we will listen to the stranger’s voice and be led astray. That is what The Israelites did. They listened to the voice of the ten men who told them that the land was good, but not to go because they would be destroyed. They forgot that God was with them and so choose to defy Him. We need to look at our own hearts to see if we are truly listening to God’s voice or the voice of those who will take us off His path.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, in the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’  So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ” Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God. Hebrews 3:7-12

The writer of Hebrews sums up well what happened in the wilderness and makes it apply to our lives even today while prompting us to recognize that our unbelief is sinful. We need to make sure we are not hardening our hearts to the voice of God. This results in rebellion, and we will pay the consequences. Let me caution you and to let you know that even what you think is a good thing may not be God’s thing and may lead to dire consequences. It is human to question God’s will and that it is why we must crucify the “old man”’ in our lives and die to our old nature or else what God says may not make sense and we may want to test it, rather than rest in it. It is important to walk by the Spirit and not by the flesh. When we walk by God’s Spirit we will walk by faith and not by sight, therefore we will not be paralyzed by fear because of what is happening around us, and we will be bold and courageous going into the unknown knowing He is with us.