The Israelites learn Repentance even with the right Deeds and Words, means nothing without a change of Heart.

Numbers 14:36-45 The Immediate Consequences of the Israelites’ Disobedience

Day 61 and still no word from our Premier on further openings in our province. No problem, we’re getting used to this.  But, hey, that’s exactly what they want. More and more in the world are standing up for their rights. Politicians just need a little more time to “save face”.  No problem. Meanwhile we’re finding gems in our study of Numbers.

The Passage

³⁶ As for the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land and who returned and made all the congregation grumble against him by bringing out a bad report concerning the land,³⁷ even those men who brought out the very bad report of the land died by a plague before the Lord. ³⁸ But Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh remained alive out of those men who went to spy out the land.

³⁹ When Moses spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people mourned greatly.⁴⁰ In the morning, however, they rose up early and went up to the ^[a]ridge of the hill country, saying, “Here we are; ^[b]we have indeed sinned, but we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised.” ⁴¹ But Moses said, “Why then are you transgressing the ^[c]commandment of the Lord, when it will not succeed? ⁴² Do not go up, or you will be struck down before your enemies, for the Lord is not among you. ⁴³ For the Amalekites and the Canaanites will be there in front of you, and you will fall by the sword, inasmuch as you have turned back from following the Lord. And the Lord will not be with you.”⁴⁴ But they went up heedlessly to the ^[d]ridge of the hill country; neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses left the camp.

⁴⁵ Then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down, and struck them and beat them down as far as Hormah.

Footnotes

1. Numbers 14:40 Or top of the mountain
2. Numbers 14:40 Or and we will go up...for we have sinned
3. Numbers 14:41 Lit mouth
4. Numbers 14:44 Or top of the mountain

Thoughts on the Passage

The people grumbled, Moses intercedes, God forgives (again) but issues His justice (none of the grumblers will enter into the Promised Land), and the Israelites will spend forty more years in the wilderness. But are there are immediate consequences? Absolutely. This passage tells us that all those that caused the grumbling or stirred up the grumblers, plus all the spies that gave a negative report died by a plague God allowed. And of course, that caused all to mourn. But as Matthew Henry suggests, by these deaths God was communicating a message to the people – He could have wiped them all out just like that; just like the spies. Sometimes we have close calls due to our sinning or disobedience and we still fail to recognize the lesson God is trying to teach us.

The spies that had faith in God’s ability to deliver, Caleb and Joshua, were spared. These days, living in the 21^stcentury, it is not always acceptable to answer the question of why did so and so live, while others die by saying “perhaps because God wanted to spare them due to their faith and obedience to Him”.  That wouldn’t fly well today, but yet that is exactly the situation we have in this passage. And I believe it is still sometimes (not always) the situation as we try to address that question of “why”?

But by the morning, the people had come to their senses, albeit too late. They realized they had sinned and now wanted to go the land God had promised them. There was no more talk of returning to Egypt. Yes, they were sorry, no doubt like many of us are often sorry about the sins we commit. But as David Guzik says perhaps they were not sorry enough to turn their hearts into a genuine trust and reliance on the Lord going forward. Uttering the right words and even doing the right things without a change of heart does not cut it in these circumstances. Sometimes, folks, we take too long to come to our senses. Sometimes we run to make things right without really seeking to change in the way God wants us to change. As a consequence, we get to watch the train we missed leave the station.

Moses tries to knock some real sense into their heads knowing that God had said that had they gone to get the land now, it would be a disaster. He warned them not to go up and try to take the Promised Land because the Lord was not “among them” at this time. Doing so now would be further sin against the Lord. And it would also be outright insanely dangerous. Thank God for some people that God sends to warn us of potential disaster. But did the Israelites listen even then?

No? Instead, they went right up to the land to take it. We are told that the ark of the covenant and Moses (and we assume Aaron, Caleb, and Joshua, among others) remained behind in the camp.

And like clockwork, as God had said, and as Moses had warned them of, the Amalekites and the Canaanites came down and “struck them and beat them down” as far as Hormah. We cannot change what God has determined will happen. For the Israelites, Hormah represents the beginning of the judgment that was to last forty years – allowing the carcases of the “old men” to die in the wilderness.

Hormah, means “devotion – a place laid waste” and according to Robert Jamieson was named afterwards as such in memory of the immense slaughter of the Israelites on this occasion. We need to be cautious of our potential “Hormah” and avoid it all costs.

What is the-big picture lesson for us? For me, at least, it is this: God is not to be ignored for He has the right to do with us as He said He would, both with respect to our obedience and more critically for us, in respect to our disobedience. I often ask myself, even at my age, “Have I really learned that lesson yet?” And I often wonder how many more times God will say about me as He said about the Israelites to Moses, “How long shall I bear with this evil man who is sinning against Me?”  May He, remembering the years of prayers my mother (and after her, my wife) uttered on my behalf, and also say, “I have pardoned him [again] according to their word.” May it be like that for you as well.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

God's Mercy and Grace is Exercised with Justice w.r.t. the Israelites

Numbers 14:20-35 God Responds Again to the Grumbling and to Moses’ Plea

Day 60. It is a Sunday and as I have done for three weeks now (with my wife accompanying me for two) we met a friend at the parking lot of our church. The Associate pastor came out to say hello and we gave him our offering (saves the postage) and asked him to pray with us. We just don’t want to get too comfortably out of practice of going to church and we know the Enemy has that very thing in mind. But with no shopping to do today, the rest of the day has us staying in our homes or outside in our yards.  I feel sorry for those that don’t have them although parks are now supposedly open. We press on.  Last time, we studied how the Israelites once again grumbled against God and how Moses pleaded with God to forgive them. And now we study God’s response.

The Passage

²⁰ So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; ²¹ but indeed, as I live, ^[i]all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. ²² Surely all the men who have seen My glory and My signs which I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have put Me to the test these ten times and have not listened to My voice, ²³ shall by no means see the land which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who spurned Me see it. ²⁴ But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully, ^[j]I will bring into the land ^[k]which he entered, and his ^[l]descendants shall take possession of it. ²⁵ Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites live in the valleys; turn tomorrow and set out to the wilderness by the way of the ^[m]Red Sea.”

²⁶ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, ²⁷ “How long shall I bear with this evil congregation who are grumbling against Me? I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are ^[n]making against Me. ²⁸ Say to them, ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; ²⁹ your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your ^[o]numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. ³⁰ Surely you shall not come into the land in which I ^[p]swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. ³¹ Your children, however, whom you said would become a prey—I will bring them in, and they will know the land which you have rejected. ³² But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. ³³ Your sons shall be shepherds for forty years in the wilderness, and they will ^[q]suffer for your ^[r]unfaithfulness, until your corpses ^[s]lie in the wilderness. ³⁴ According to the number of days which you spied out the land, forty days, for every day you shall bear your ^[t]guilt a year, even forty years, and you will know My opposition. ³⁵ I, the Lord, have spoken, surely this I will do to all this evil congregation who are gathered together against Me. In this wilderness they shall be destroyed, and there they will die.’”

Footnotes

i.      and all

j.      him I

k.     where

l.      seed

m.   Sea of Reeds

n.     Complaining

o.     mustered

p.      raised My hand

q.     bear

r.      fornications

s.     are finished

t.      or iniquities

Thoughts on the Passage

God right away responds to Moses and once again grants his prayer immediately. He pardons His people. What is key for us to note here is that the fervent prayer of those who love others is not wasted on God. Our prayers can and do make a difference – perhaps not always the way we want or to the degree that we want, but I believe God listens and consider our prayers, and where appropriate may ‘adjust’ (for lack of a better word) His judgment on those on whose behalf we are petitioning Him.  God said He did this, the pardoning, “according to [Moses’] word”.

However, those who have seen God’s glory and signs, and were yet testing Him (the passage says “ten times” – really just means “many times”), or who spurned Him, were not to see the Promised Land. Those two verses of this 14^th chapter – verses 22 and 23 are seen by many as the most key verses in the whole book. You can be pardoned by God, and all may not be lost – but you may not necessarily have the easiest of lives for the rest of your days. We must remember that sinning against God in this most blatant manner as carried out by the Israelites is not a small matter. There are still consequences to our sins. David Guzik has an interesting comment on this. He points out that we should remember how earlier they were saying, “Oh, if only we had died in this wilderness.” We studied that recently. Well, God, was going to grant the grumblers that wish or complaint as well. The alternative Matthew Henry points out is that God could have cut them off all at once (including the children) and disinherited them. One could almost say the Israelites got a deal that day.

Caleb, on the other hand, would see the land because of his different “spirit” and because he had followed God “fully”. And his descendants were also to benefit from that. Robert Jamieson says that Caleb was perhaps not named here because he was already not among the people that God wanted addressed as he was already assigned to be a constant attendant to Moses.

Is there something there for us? Caleb would see the Promised Land because of his heart and obedience, and so would his descendants. Is there a possibility that God might save our descendants simply because of our heart and obedience? But doesn’t the New Testament require each of us to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as savior on our own? It does. So, did something change between the two Testaments? I don’t think so. I think we need more study here. One possibility is that Canaan and heaven are not one and the same. So we can’t draw the same conclusion for who can get into heaven by looking at who God allowed to enter Canaan.

And God does not want to debate His decision with Moses, but simply told him that the Canaanites and Amalekites lived in the valley before them, and the next day he was to lead the people back to the wilderness by way of the Red Sea, and away from the land they were to have possessed.

Some English translations put this comment amount the Canaanites and Amalekites in parenthesis, as a secondary comment.  It is not.  This was central to the story. God did not want even these faithless and unprepared, spiritually and perhaps physically, people and their children to be slaughtered by those they feared. But would the people obey Moses instructions? (We’ll find out in our next study.) For now, we know that God had brought them to the borders or edges of the Promised Land – they could have possessed it, they could have taken it – with His help. But they lost their faith and they were disobedient.  So, it was back to “boot camp” in the wilderness for more training that would allow, not them but their descendants, to take the land. Forty more years – what a price to pay for disobedience.

Then God addressed Moses and Aaron together. He asked them how long He was expected to put up with these ‘evil’ grumblers. He wanted Moses and Aaron to tell them that they would fall dead in the wilderness – every single one of those that grumbled and were over twenty years of age. Only Caleb and Joshua were going to make it to the land that God had promised. And here God next extends His goodness to their generations as well. They would see the Promised Land that their fathers rejected. And by the way, the Israelites were to be told that they were to spend forty years in the wilderness as shepherds suffering in life for the unfaithfulness of their fathers.

If you remember back to Numbers 14 and verse 3, the Israelites had accused God of not caring for their children and that He was gone to allow them to be murdered in the wilderness. Well, as Guzik points out, ironically, God was going to see that their children made it to the promised and that they, the parents, were going to die in the wilderness.

But did you notice that not even Moses or Aaron were excluded from those that would not make it? No sir. They didn’t make it for their own separate reasons as we’ll learn later. But even here, we can point out that Moses also played a part in God’s anger as he had agreed to sending spies to the land rather than trusting God and just going in and taking it.

In fact, God said that the number of years the Israelites had to spend in the desert were based on the number of days the spies spied out the land. During that period, they would bear their guilt and know His anger and opposition to their behavior. [The King James version says His “breach of promise” but I see it as a temporary breach of forty years.] So, God pronounced a verdict and He was going to carry it out -- death in the wilderness after a forty-year period of suffering. Wow. You see, God was not going to allow any “old man of disbelief” into His promised land. They had to die in the wilderness. Similarly, there is no room for those who are unbelievers in the Kingdom.

But perhaps there were other reasons why God sent them back into the wilderness for forty years. Henry suggests the following. First, that time was needed for another adult generation to grow up and be able to take the land in battle. Second, and perhaps more representative of the character of God was that now, in the wilderness, having understood their sin, having been forgiven, some of the grumblers could get their hearts and lives right before, and with, God. Henry says it this way:

“That hereby they might be brought to repentance, and find mercy with God in the other world, whatever became of them in this. Now they had time to bethink themselves, and to consider their ways.”

Once again, God shows us that “mercy there was great” in His dealings with His people.  It reminds me of the that wonderful hymn, At Calvary by the Collingsworth family.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.

This Leviticus Scripture Has a lot to say about Yesterday's Sin, and much more.

Leviticus Chapter 22: More Priesthood Laws

Leviticus 22:1-16 What Priests Can’t Do

Day 22 of social distancing. Its end is being talked about but with no certainty. As my daughter observed, “We really can’t start the countdown yet, can we?”  So, we press on. One of our small groups that we are involved with meets for the second time virtually tonight. I am teaching a course next week virtually. I’ve started a set of collective bargaining negotiations via email this week. Life is changing. But hey I love some of the changes. Maybe we’ll keep some of them long after this is over. So, hang in there. I’m continuing my study in Leviticus about the priesthood. I really love delving into the mind and thinking of God as He shared it with Moses. Hope you’re enjoying it too.

The Passage

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Tell Aaron and his sons to be careful with the holy gifts of the sons of Israel, which they dedicate to Me, so as not to profane My holy name; I am the Lord. ³ Say to them, ‘If any man among all your ^[a]descendants throughout your generations approaches the holy gifts which the sons of Israel dedicate to the Lord, while he has an uncleanness, that person shall be cut off from before Me; I am the Lord. ⁴ No man of the ^[b]descendants of Aaron, who is a leper or who has a discharge, may eat of the holy gifts until he is clean. And if one touches anything made unclean by a corpse or if a man has a seminal emission, ⁵ or if a man touches any teeming things by which he is made unclean, or any man by whom he is made unclean, whatever his uncleanness; ⁶ a ^[c]person who touches any such shall be unclean until evening, and shall not eat of the holy gifts unless he has bathed his ^[d]body in water. ⁷ But when the sun sets, he will be clean, and afterward he shall eat of the holy gifts, for it is his ^[e]food. ⁸ He shall not eat an animal which dies or is torn by beasts, becoming unclean by it; I am the Lord. ⁹ They shall therefore keep My charge, so that they will not bear sin because of it and die thereby because they profane it; I am the Lord who sanctifies them.

¹⁰ ‘No ^[f]layman, however, is to eat the holy gift; a sojourner with the priest or a hired man shall not eat of the holy gift. ¹¹ But if a priest buys a ^[g]slave as his property with his money, ^[h]that one may eat of it, and those who are born in his house may eat of his ^[i]food. ¹² If a priest’s daughter is married to a ^[j]layman, she shall not eat of the ^[k]offering of the gifts. ¹³ But if a priest’s daughter becomes a widow or divorced, and has no child and returns to her father’s house as in her youth, she shall eat of her father’s ^[l]food; but no ^[m]layman shall eat of it. ¹⁴ But if a man eats a holy gift unintentionally, then he shall add to it a fifth of it and shall give the holy gift to the priest. ¹⁵ They shall not profane the holy gifts of the sons of Israel which they offer to the Lord, ¹⁶ and so cause them to bear ^[n]punishment for guilt by eating their holy gifts; for I am the Lord who sanctifies them.’”

Footnotes:

1. Leviticus 22:3 Lit seed
2. Leviticus 22:4 Lit seed
3. Leviticus 22:6 Lit soul
4. Leviticus 22:6 Lit flesh
5. Leviticus 22:7 Lit bread
6. Leviticus 22:10 Lit stranger
7. Leviticus 22:11 Lit soul
8. Leviticus 22:11 Lit he may
9. Leviticus 22:11 Lit bread
10. Leviticus 22:12 Lit stranger
11. Leviticus 22:12 Lit heave offering
12. Leviticus 22:13 Lit bread
13. Leviticus 22:13 Lit stranger
14. Leviticus 22:16 Or iniquity requiring a guilt offering

Thoughts on the Passage

The first nine verses of this chapter are specifically directed towards those who are from the family of Aaron – the Levitical family of the priesthood throughout the ages. They repeat, for all intents and purposes, the same restrictions that were uttered earlier in the book of Leviticus.

There is a lesson for us in verse 7, however. Notice the unclean person referred to there is only unclean until sunset, and then he is clean. David Guzik has this helpful information for us:

The Jews start their days at sundown, not sunrise or midnight. With this description God indicates that one can start the new day clean and pure to the Lord. No matter how we might have failed the day before, we can begin each new day pure and close to the Lord. His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:23).  In application, we can stop beating our self up for yesterday’s sin. We should confess it, repent of it, and then get on with the business of walking with Lord today. 

In verse ten, the focus shifts to how the priests interact with the layperson. The priests are forgiven to give the holy food offered to God to a layperson, a sojourner, or a hired hand.

Verse 11 make an exception for the slave that the priest has bought with his own money. The exception also applies, I would assume from this verse, to all slaves born in the priest’s house, or maybe even to those born to sojourners who are in the priest’s house.

In his commentary, Guzik correctly points to the difference between a purchased servant and a hired hand. As Christians we have been bought with the blood of Jesus and belong to His family. We are not hired hands to accomplish some divine mission although we are called to work with God in His mission for mankind. What a privilege.

Verse 13 indicates that once a priest’s daughter marries a layman, she cannot participate of this food from the offerings. The daughter of a priest who becomes a widow or is divorced and has no child and returns to the priest’s house ‘in her youth’ – she is able to partake of the food of offering. And then God repeats, “no layman shall eat of it.” Robert Jamieson says it is important to note that if such a widow or divorcee . . .

had become a mother, as her children had no right to the privileges of the priesthood, she was under a necessity of finding support for them elsewhere than under her father’s roof.

Verse 14 covers food eaten by error. If someone does that, he must increase the amount eaten by 20% and give it to the priest.

Matthew Henry sees this whole passage as a reminder to our own pastors and other clergy that they are not to just allow everyone to partake in certain sacraments (communion comes to mind) without making sure they have been adopted into the family of God by accepting Christ as their Savior. I often observe communion services where the leader does not remind those in audience of what the qualifications (being born again) are for partaking in holy communion.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.