Thoughts on Numbers 14

Today’s reading: Numbers 14; Hebrews 8

God is good, patient, loving, and desires the best for us, but that does not mean that He will always protect us, or the people around us, from the consequences of our faithlessness.

Yesterday, in Numbers 13, we saw the spies give a bad report of the land to the Israelites because they were afraid of the people of the land, with only Joshua and Caleb taking a stand on the truth of the goodness of the land and God’s ability to deliver it to them as He promised. And this morning, in Numbers 14, we see the entirety of the Israelite community, including the people of Judah and Ephraim, the tribes of Caleb and Joshua respectively, get in line with the ten spies, even ready to stone Caleb and Joshua for what they were saying on God’s behalf!

The result of the rebellion of the people is that God tells Moses He is going to destroy them and start over, creating a new nation from Moses and his sons instead, until Moses intervenes on behalf of the people and God agrees to show mercy and not wipe them out right then. Instead, God says He is going to go along with what they said would be better when they were crying about the land and said, “Would that we had died in this wilderness!” Israel will continue to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the last of the adults among the people (everyone over the age of 20) dies off because of their faithlessness, and then God will take everyone else into the land at that point.

When the people hear the punishment that is coming down to them for their rebellion they decide to take matters into their own hands and go in and try to take possession of the land without God’s help even though the punishment is for refusing to go in, even with His promise of victory. The result is that the Israelites who go up to fight are quickly defeated and chased out of the land, and the entire people turn and head back out into the wilderness.

As a side note, the irony of this is unbelievable... They were so dead set against going into the land that they were trying to kill Joshua and Caleb for saying they should trust God and go, and they were wanting to leave God there and appoint a new leader and return to Egypt. But when God says the punishment is 40 years wandering in the wilderness, their response is not to return to Egypt like they were already saying they should do, but it was to do exactly what they were refusing to do. If they want to abandon God, they’ve got options, but instead the way they pick to further rebel against God is doing the thing they were trying to murder two men for suggesting they do in the first place… I feel like I’m reading about someone raising toddlers or really young children, not leading a nation…

Anyway, my point in talking about all this today is that the Israelites who rebelled didn’t get a second chance to take hold of the good things God had for them. Now, to be fair, they have had a lot of second chances up to this point already, and God has been more than patient with their continued bouts of faithlessness, but the fact of the matter is that God had something amazing prepared for this group and their failure to trust God and go His way at the border of the promised land meant they missed out on what He had for them, and there was no second chance or round-about way for them to get it.

This should be a very sobering warning to us. We serve an incredibly good and loving God who has prepared good works for us that we should walk in them, but He is also a God who values our free will and will not force us to listen and go His way. That means that there are necessarily opportunities that we will miss out on when we decide not to walk in the good works He has prepared for us. Some might be bigger and more impactful while others might be smaller, but we don’t actually know what the result of our faithfulness (or faithlessness) will be in any given situation.

A lot of people seem to have one (or both) of a couple wrong attitudes about this. On the one hand, some people think that it’s not a big deal because if it’s not them, God will just use someone else. Or on the other hand, some people think that it’s not a big deal because if they don’t go His way now, they can always choose His way next time and it will be as though the first choice to not follow Him never happened. But that’s not how we see things work in Numbers 14…

The Israelites’ choice to turn away from God here impacted God’s intention for humanity on a global scale. They were supposed to go into the land, defeat the remaining giant clans (the last vestiges of the Nephilim, bloodlines born of divine/human rebellion), God would drive the rest of the people out of the land, and then they would establish His nation as a new Eden (hence why there is so much focus on the land being so rich and fertile). But this doesn’t happen. For 40 years the sins of these peoples and the influence of the giant clans are allowed to fester and grow, and you better believe that 40 years of nations existing that were supposed to be removed has a very real impact on the world. God didn’t bring someone else in to do the work they were supposed to do, nor were they allowed to change their minds and just go do the work God originally had for them. The opportunity was lost, the work was left undone, and God’s work and intention for these nations is put on hold for 40 years.

It is easy to comfort ourselves and tell ourselves, “Just because I didn’t listen and go talk to them doesn’t mean they won’t hear the gospel, God will send someone else,” but does He ever promise us that? The Scriptures tell us that God desires every person to come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved, but those same Scriptures also tell us that we are the ones filling up what is lacking in Christ’s affliction; we are the hands and feet of the gospel going out to tell people about the salvation available to them in Jesus. If you comfort yourself with this sentiment, take it to the extreme and ask yourself, “What if every person took the same approach and nobody actually went, would that person still hear the gospel?” It might make us feel better about our own faithless choices, but it’s not biblical. God may call someone else to do the work you refused to do, but there is no guarantee that He will, and even if He does, there is no guarantee they won’t also refuse. 

It is also easy to comfort ourselves and tell ourselves, “Not this time, but next time I’ll go along with what He’s calling me to do,” but, as we’ve seen in our chapter here this morning, there won’t always be a next time. There are ministries and missions that only exist because someone said yes to God at the right time. There are people who know the Lord because, when something happened to soften their hearts to the gospel, a Christian who was sent to them listened and went. Our God is patient with us, but that does not mean we will always have a second or third chance before the opportunity He had prepared for us is gone. Our choices matter, and when we choose not to go His way, there is no guarantee that the consequences of our faithlessness will be small, constrained, or remediated in some other way by God. 

Eternity is impacted by our choices, no matter how much we try to comfort ourselves to the contrary. Whether we like it or not, when we align ourselves with God and place our faith in Christ, He has a role for us in His kingdom work and our faithfulness or faithlessness in that role matters.

Next time God has a step of faith before us, let’s not forget the example of Numbers 14. Let’s not assume that there will be another chance later to listen, or that there will be someone else to fill in the role we are choosing not to fill. Instead, let’s agree together that the next time God calls us to go, even if it scares us or makes us uncomfortable, we will trust that our God is good and step out on His behalf.