It was the sin of men who had been specially chosen, long occupied, often approved, and greatly honoured as servants of God. If they, being what they were, fell so easily, how important it is for us earnestly to consider the sin by which they fell! It is another proof of the hold which sin has on our nature, and of the need that we should walk warily, and look for snares at every step. Consider -

I. How THE SIN WAS COMMITTED.

1. It was a sin of inattention. If there was anything which Moses and Aaron should have learned after forty years of service, it was that God's commandments required constant attention and exact obedience. They had a long experience of One who gave details as well as general instructions. Moreover, it was not the first time Moses had been charged to bring water from the rock. At Rephidim God said to him, "Thou shalt smite the rock" (Exodus 17:6). At Kadesh he says, "Speak to the rock." The very difference should have been enough to bring the command distinctly before him. Notice then what serious results simple inattention may bring; we know that thousands of lives have been lost by it. Furthermore, how many have failed in the attainment of salvation and spiritual blessedness through nothing more than lack of attention! They have not run greedily in the way of sin, but simply gone through a decent, reputable life, neglecting the way of salvation. In the things of God attention is required as a regular habit, not only that we may escape loss, but secure real advantage. The more attention there is, the more advantage there will be.

2. It was the inattention, of men whose very experience had made them habitually careful. Whatever Moses and Aaron may have been by nature, they bad been trained to faithfulness in little things. It has not perhaps been sufficiently noticed how diligent and exact Moses must have been in his apprehension of all that God revealed to him. When we think how easy misunderstandings are, how easy it is to get wrong impressions and be confused among details, then we feel how very carefully Moses must have listened. Aaron also in his priestly service was a man of derail.

3. Hence there must have been some extraordinary disturbing cause to throw them out of their usual carefulness. What this was we can hardly make out with certainty. In the murmuring and repining of the people there was nothing new either as to spirit or language. Moses had listened to the same sort of attack before, and through it all kept his meekness and feeling of personal unworthiness. But as the last straw breaks tile camel's back, so even the patience of Moses became at last exhausted. The weight of years and cares united were telling on him. He was now Moses the aged, and though we are assured that when he died his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated, yet we must not so take these words as to free him from every infirmity of age. It was a very hard thing for a man after forty years of service, through all which he had kept the consciousness of a heart true to God and to Israel, to have the people still meet him with the old ingratitude and the old slanders. Thus it was that he went into the presence of God with a mind preoccupied, thinking a great deal more about the rebellious spirit of the people than about the glory of his Master. There is no safety but in keeping God first in our thoughts. We must be like the house founded on the rock, never disconnected from it. The nature of the foundation may seem to matter little in calm weather, but the foundation and our connection with it are everything when the tempest comes. Let a believer wear the whole armour of God, and he is invincible, but let him lay it aside for a single moment, and the waiting, watching enemy may inflict a painful, serious, humiliating wound, even if it be not a mortal one.

II. IN WHAT THE SIN CONSISTED.

1. In a want of faith. "Because ye believed me not." God says nothing about inattention or irritation, but goes at once to the root of the matter. Moses had failed in faith; not altogether, of course, for the very fact that he took the rod and approached the rock shows some faith and some spirit of obedience; but still faith must have been lacking, and to a very serious extent. It has been suggested that, seeing the spirit of the people, Moses was after all in doubt whether another long term of wanderings might not be in store for them. The one clear thing is that God ascribes the sin with its serious consequences to unbelief. Outwardly nothing appears but inattention and irritation; inwardly there is an unbelieving heart. Perhaps even Moses himself may have been startled to hear such a charge, and utterly unconscious that his faith was seriously imperiled. Had he been charged with inattention irritation, want of strict obedience, these were only too plain; but want of faith! Nothing but the clear word of God could make that credible. The lesson to us is that an impaired faith may be the cause of many of our spiritual troubles. We, worse than Moses, may be habitually inattentive and irritable, and afflicted with the sad consciousness that the habits are becoming more and more fixed. To treat them by direct effort is only to mitigate the symptoms of a deep disease, but to get into a truly believing state of mind, to have faith, and to have it more abundantly, will soon weaken and ultimately destroy these harassing spiritual infirmities.

2. In a consequent failure to sanctify God in the eyes of the people. The unbelief of Moses was not only a loss to him personally, but those who were out of the way already it led still further out of the way. All eyes were looking to Moses; his fall was not that of some obscure man. Furthermore, he made God's action appear stern and wrathful just at the very time when it was intended to be specially gracious. For forty years the people had been under God's displeasure. Now the gloomy cloud was breaking, the time for entrance into Canaan drawing near, and at the very place where God had once appeared in wrath he evidently intends now to appear in grace and mercy. But the conduct of Moses and Aaron spoils all this beautiful revelation. It was a strange reversal of what had hitherto happened. We no longer see God threatening wrath, and Moses offering ingenious pleas for mercy, but God is now gracious, overlooking a time of ignorance, and Moses, whom one would have expected to see radiant with benignity and satisfaction, goes to the very extreme of denunciation. The grace of the benefit was utterly spoiled. It seemed as if God threw down a supply for the people's need, as a churlish hand might fling a loaf at a beggar. We must labour to live as Christ would have us live, so that men may glorify God in us, and find no occasion to blaspheme; following in the footsteps of him who was able to say, "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (John 17:4).

III. THE WAY IN WHICH THE SIN WAS PUNISHED. Those who fail to sanctify God before the people, and make his glory to appear, must in turn bear humiliation before the people. This was not a private intimation to Moses and Aaron, so that only they knew the reason why they were to die before entrance on the promised land. The publication of the doom was needed. Moses himself at the beginning of Deuteronomy (Numbers 1:37) seems to make some allusion to this doom upon him: "The Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither;" though certainly there is some difficulty arising from the blending of these words with the general doom on the Israelites forty years before. Anyway it is plain that the people knew Moses was to die with the doomed generation. His death happening as it did was a kind of blotting out of all that seemed harsh in the giving of the water. It was an. impressive reminder to all future generations of what God had meant to be done. We must not exaggerate this penalty beyond its proper extent and purpose. To the people it would seem very great, and to Moses also at that time it would seem great. But, at the worst, it was only a temporal deprivation. Moses lost the earthly Canaan, but the better land he did not lose. Who was it that appeared in glory to Jesus on the mount? This very Moses, with whom God for a time dealt so sternly. The greatest of temporal losses, the one that now brings most pain, and seems as if it never could be made up, will look a very little thing from among the attainments of eternity. What shall it hurt a man if he lose the whole world and gain a place in the inheritance of the saints in light? Learn, lastly, that none can humiliate us or bring us into loss but ourselves. It may not be our own fault if we are ridiculed; it is always our own fault if we are ridiculous. Moses had suffered many things from the people in the way of scorn and threatening, but through all these things he moves with unimpaired hopes and possessions. It is his own unbelief that brings this bitter disappointment. One traitor within the gates is more dangerous than all the army outside. - Y.

The fortieth year is now running its course. The time of the curse has nearly expired. And now preparations may be begun for entering a second time on the march to Canaan, where a new generation must vindicate the claim of Israel to be indeed "the hosts of the Lord," by taking possession of the land of promise. It was at Kadesh that the sentence had been pronounced which doomed their fathers to these dreary years of wandering. It is at Kadesh again that the camp is reorganised. It seems likely that during the interval there was no definite aim or object before the people, so that they moved about as suited their convenience or necessities, very much as the wandering tribes of the desert do still. This would lead to a relaxation of discipline and order in the camp, and more or less scattering of the people. Their unity was indeed to a certain extent kept up, and their marching orders given as of old, probably at long intervals. So at least we would infer from the itinerary in chap. Numbers 33.; but there must have been no little disorganisation and dispersion, rendering it necessary that there should be a reassembling of the forces. For this purpose no place could be better or more appropriate than Kadesh, not only because it must have been so familiar to all, but also because, by making it their point of departure, they resumed the thread that had been broken by the unbelief of their fathers. The total loss of the long interval of time, moreover, is more distinctly marked by the gathering of the people together at the old halting-place. There is a striking contrast between the new departure and the old. The first began with the numbering and mustering of the armed men, and all the bustle, activity, and energy of a youthful host setting out to victory. The second seems to have a much less hopeful beginning. The twentieth of Numbers is one of the saddest chapters in the book. It begins with the death of her who had been the leader in the song of victory on the shores of the Red Sea. It ends with the death of him who had so long been the honoured representative of Israel in the Holy and the Most Holy Place. And, between the two, we have the old story of murmuring on the part of the people, and mercy on the part of God, but with this sad addition, that Moses himself has a fall — a fall so serious that it leads to his own, as well as Aaron's, exclusion from the land of promise. It seems a hopeless beginning indeed. But was there not something hopeful in its very hopelessness? Recall that scene of wrestling at Peniel, when the patriarch Jacob gained the new name of Israel. How did he gain it? By his own strength? Nay. It was through weakness that he was made strong. It was when his power was utterly broken that his hope of victory began. This will illustrate what we mean when we say that there is something hopeful in the very hopelessness of this chapter. And this prepares the way for the great lesson of the next chapter, which may be expressed in the very words which follow the passage just quoted from the 146th Psalm, "Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God."

(J. M. Gibson, D. D.)