Numbers 14:20-23 And the LORD said, I have pardoned according to your word:… It was a weary journey from Kibroth-hataavah to Hazeroth, and thence to Kadesh, probably the weariest of the entire route. Moses spoke of it afterwards as "that great and terrible wilderness." And so at last the hosts came to Kadesh-barnea, on the very borders of the Land of Promise, within sight of the low hills, the flying buttresses, so to speak, of the verdant table-land which first arrests the eye of the traveller coming up from the vast limestone plain of the desert. How welcome that spectacle, after the four hundred miles of journey which had occupied the people for the past fifteen months! Welcome as the land-haze to Columbus, or as his native village nestling in the embrace of the hills to the returning traveller. It must have been specially grateful to the eye of Moses. I. HIS HOPES. As yet God had graciously veiled from him the weary journeys of the forty years that were to succeed. From the words he addressed to the people he evidently counted on a comparatively brief struggle, sharp but short, through which they would pass to their possession (Deuteronomy 1:19-21). As he said these words must there not have been, deep in his heart, a sigh of relief now his task was almost done and he might lay down his weighty responsibilities? Who can doubt that some such hopes and thoughts as these filled his soul, and whispered the one deep sweet word, "Rest! rest!" No more the daily gathering of manna, because it was a land of wheat and barley, in which they should eat bread without scarceness. Is it not thus that we all picture to ourselves some blessed landscape, lying warm and sunny under the smile of Heaven? Life is pretty hard just now — a march over a great and terrible wilderness, a stern fight. But never mind, it cannot last; there must be respite; the long lane must have a turning, the wilderness-march must have a Canaan. But suppose it be not so! What if He who loves us better than we love ourselves has marked out stations in a desert-march that lead right up to the mount from which we are to ascend to our Father's home! What if we are to fight with Moab, and meet Balaam, and see every one of those with whom we commenced life droop around us! II. THE QUARTER FROM WHICH HIS DISAPPOINTMENT CAME. It came entirely from the people. 1. Their first mistake was in desiring to spy out the land (chap. Numbers 13:1). But the proposal did not emanate from the Lord; it had another origin. As in the case of Saul, the King of Israel, God gave them what they would have. It was a profound mistake. Had not God promised to give them the land, and could they not trust His choice? They had but, as Moses said, to go up and possess that which He had given. 2. Their second mistake was in receiving the discouraging report of the majority of the spies. The difference between the two lay in this, that the ten looked at God through the difficulties, as when you look at the sun through a reversed telescope and it seems indefinitely distant and shorn of its glory, while the two looked at difficulties through God. And the people sided with the ten. Here was a fatal mistake. Unbelief never gets beyond the difficulties, the cities, the walls, the giants. Faith, on the other hand, never minimises them, but looks them steadily in the face, turns from them, and looks up into the face of God and counts on Him. Note, that they lost Canaan not because of the graves of lust, but because of their unbelief. My brother, do not sit down beside that grave of lust and suppose that that is going to settle your future. Never 1 Know thou this, that the only thing which can exclude thee thence is that thou wilt not believe in a forgiveness and grace which are like the blue arch of heaven above thee or like the immensity of eternity itself. 3. Their next mistake was in their murmuring, which proposed to substitute a captain for their tried friend and God-given leader. "All the congregation lifted up their voice and cried, and the people wept that night. And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron," &c. This was perhaps the bitterest hour in Moses' life. They had proposed to elect a captain before, but it was when he was away; but this was proposed before his face. What unutterable agony rent his breast, not only that he should be thus set aside, but that the anger of God should be thus provoked by the people He loved! And as he lay there did he not also, in those dark, sad moments, see the crumbling of his fairy vision, the falling of a shadow over the fair prospect of his hopes, as when a pelting shower of rain hides all a landscape which a moment before had lain radiant in the summer light? So it has befallen in our own experience not once nor twice. We had been on the point of realising some long-cherished hope. We were within a day's march of it. And suddenly there is some one or more to whom we are tied, and their education is not complete. They cannot yet go over into the good land. Because they cannot we may not. And as we stand there the voice says, "To-morrow turn and get you back into the wilderness by the way of the Red Sea." III. HIS REFUSAL TO ESCAPE THE DISAPPOINTMENT. The dream of Moses for a speedy entrance into the land might even yet have been realised. If all the people were cut off, and he spared to be a second Abraham, the founder of the nation, it might be possible even yet for him to pass into the good land, and, like Abraham, settle there. And so the trial was put into his life. Satan tempts us to reveal the evil in us, God to reveal the good. So God, knowing the hidden nobleness of His faithful servant, and eager that it should be revealed to all the world, suggested to him a proposal that He should smite the people with pestilence and disinherit them, and make of him a nation greater and mightier than they. "Accept it," said the spirit of the self-life; "thou hast had trouble enough with them." "No," said his nobler, truer self; "it may not be. What would become of Jehovah's fame? and how can I endure to see my people cut off?" There are few grander passages in the whole Bible than that in which Moses puts away the testing suggestion as impossible. And so he turned away from the open gate into paradise, and again chose rather to suffer with the people in their afflictions than enjoy the pleasures of Canaan alone. IV. A CONTRAST TO HIS ENDURANCE OF DISAPPOINTMENT. When the people heard that they were to wander in the wilderness for forty years, till their carcases fell in its wastes, they rose up early in the morning and gut them up to the top of the mountain, saying, "Lo, we are here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised. But Moses and the ark of the Lord departed not out of the camp." By force of will and energy they sought to reverse the sentence just passed on them. Moses meekly bowed his head to it, and accepted the discipline of those long years. Do not times come into our lives like this? We have come to the brink of some great opportunity, and the prize has seemed within our reach; but by some outburst we have shown ourselves unable or unfit to possess it. God puts us back. He says in effect, "You are not fit to enjoy the blessing yet. You must go back to the common round, sit at the daily task, plod around the dull millwheel." But we will not submit to it. "Nay, but we will go up." We will storm the position; we will not be thwarted. It is a hapless and useless resolve. You cannot force the gate. Better a hundred times wait meekly outside, learning the lesson of patience and faith. The obscure journeyings of the forty years will then yield their harvest of blessing. V. MOSES' SOLACE IN DISAPPOINTMENT. Yet there were springs at which that weary spirit slaked its thirst. The sense that he did the will of God; the blessedness which unselfishness always brings to the elect spirit; the joy of seeing the result of the Divine discipline in the growing earnestness and strength of His people; the reception of daily grace for daily need — all these were his. But even better than these, there was the growing realisation that the true rest of which he dreamed was not to be found in any earthly Canaan, however enticing, but in that rest of heart, that repose of the nature in God which is alone permanent and satisfying, amid the change and transience of all human and earthly conditions. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD said, I have pardoned according to thy word: |
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