Amazing how we respond to bad news rather than good. All the congregation cried and wept that night. They all complained against Moses and Aaron and said, “If only we had died in the land of Egypt! Or if only we had died in this wilderness! Why has the Lord brought us to this land to fall by the sword, that our wives and children should become victims? Would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” So, they said to one another, “Let us select a leader and return to Egypt.” (v2-4) Moses and Aaron fell on their faces, but Joshua and Caleb, tore their clothes and said, “The land we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us, ‘a land which flows with milk and honey.’ Only do not rebel against the Lord, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread; their protection has departed from them, and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.”
Clearly, they were distraught before the people and sought to encourage them. Again, how we seem to accept bad rather than good news. We can be negative, but that doesn’t mean being naïve or foolish but note that Joshua and Caleb stressed that if it was God’s doing, they would succeed. Their trust was in God not man.
What was the response of the people? Stone them!
What was God’s response? The glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle before them all. (v10) We are not told exactly how God appeared, and I’d be foolish to speculate.
What we are told is that the Lord spoke to Moses and asked how long would these people reject him and not believe him, even though he had performed signs among them? He told Moses that he would strike them with disease and disinherit them. Disaster! However, God had said that he wouldn’t fail them and would keep his promise – “I will make of you a nation greater and mightier than they.” (v12). What more could they need?
Moses interceded for the people and said to the Lord that the Egyptians would think that the Lord wasn’t able to take the Israelites into the land of Canaan and carry out his promises, especially if he put them to death in the wilderness and that the power of the Lord was limited. Moses pleaded with the Lord to display his power and forgive the people their sins.
Moses is evidently thinking of the present people, but the Lord is looking ahead. Moses recognised the power, justice, mercy and forgiveness of God. He reminds God, as if he needed reminding of these attributes, and notice that God does not clear the guilty but confers just punishment on them. This is even though there is forgiveness. I’m often reminded of this speaking to prisoners that God will forgive but they still have to serve their sentences.
Moses asks the Lord to pardon the sin of the people just as he had forgiven them up to then. The Lord assured him of his pardon but to maintain his glory and because they had seen his glory in his mighty works both in Egypt and since they left and had been disobedient, they wouldn’t enter the promised land. Only Caleb would enter (v24) and Joshua (v30) and those under the age of twenty, who had been born after they left Egypt, would enter. No-one else who had let Egypt would enter.
Notice what the Lord said, “My servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully, I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.”
The Lord then spoke to Moses and Aaron, He said that he had heard their complaints and that those over twenty years old would die in the wilderness just as they had complained that they were going to as they said that God was letting them die. Their children who had been born since they left Egypt would enter. The only exceptions were Caleb and Joshua.
They would remain in the wilderness one year for every one day the spies had been in Canaan spying out the land, 40 in total. This was by way of punishment for their unbelief.
When Moses and Aaron told the people they mourned and said they would go up to the place which God had promised. Seems that they were saying that they would even though God had said they wouldn’t. The Lord said that they would be defeated if they went because he was not with them(v42). They ignored God and presumed they could do it and they were attacked and driven back. The Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in the hill country attacked and defeated them and drove them to Hormah (v45).
We see the dangers of presuming that the Lord is with us even when we disobey him.
The Lord told Moses to move out into the wilderness by way of the Red Sea.
