Our journey may change but God is our inheritance; Christ is our destiny

Numbers 14:1-45 from the daily reading in the One Year Bible

Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. ² All the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron; and the whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! ³ Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become plunder; would it not be better for us to return to Egypt?” ⁴ So they said to one another, “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt.”

⁵ Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces in the presence of all the assembly of the congregation of the sons of Israel. ⁶ Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes; ⁷ and they spoke to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, saying, “The land which we passed through to spy out is an exceedingly good land. ⁸ If the Lord is pleased with us, then He will bring us into this land and give it to us—a land which flows with milk and honey. ⁹ Only do not rebel against the Lord; and do not fear the people of the land, for they will be our prey. Their protection has been removed from them, and the Lord is with us; do not fear them.” ¹⁰ But all the congregation said to stone them with stones. Then the glory of the Lord appeared in the tent of meeting to all the sons of Israel.

¹¹ The Lord said to Moses, “How long will this people spurn Me? And how long will they not believe in Me, despite all the signs which I have performed in their midst? ¹² I will smite them with pestilence and dispossess them, and I will make you into a nation greater and mightier than they.”

¹³ But Moses said to the Lord, “Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for by Your strength You brought up this people from their midst, ¹⁴ and they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that You, O Lord, are in the midst of this people, for You, O Lord, are seen eye to eye, while Your cloud stands over them; and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. ¹⁵ Now if You slay this people as one man, then the nations who have heard of Your fame will say, ¹⁶ ‘Because the Lord could not bring this people into the land which He promised them by oath, therefore He slaughtered them in the wilderness.’ ¹⁷ But now, I pray, let the power of the Lord be great, just as You have declared, ¹⁸ ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generations.’ ¹⁹ Pardon, I pray, the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of Your lovingkindness, just as You also have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”

²⁰ So the Lord said, “I have pardoned them according to your word; ²¹ but indeed, as I live, 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, I will bring into the land which he entered, and his 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 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 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 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 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 suffer for your unfaithfulness, until your corpses 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 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.’”

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 ridge of the hill country, saying, “Here we are; 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 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 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.

Often we confuse the consequences of sin with God’s punishment. It was not God’s plan or His intention that the Israelites should wander in the wilderness those forty years and that they would not possess the land that God had promised them. Their wandering and their perishing in the wilderness was a consequence of their actions and their deciding to go against God.  God said:  I have heard the complaints of the sons of Israel, which they are making against Me. Say to them, ‘As I live,’ ‘just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will surely do to you; your corpses will fall in this wilderness, even all your numbered men, according to your complete number from twenty years old and upward, who have grumbled against Me. Surely you shall not come into the land in which I swore to settle you, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh and Joshua the son of Nun. 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. But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness.   God allowed them to experience what they feared rather than experiencing His promise in faith. When we experience the consequences of our actions we should not blame God that we got what we said, rather than what He promised.

The text also gives us a key to why very often our repentance fails. The text says:  When Moses spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people mourned greatly. In the morning, however, they rose up early and went up to the ridge of the hill country, saying, “Here we are; we have indeed sinned, but we will go up to the place which the Lord has promised.” But Moses said, “Why then are you transgressing the commandment of the Lord, when it will not succeed? Do not go up, or you will be struck down before your enemies, for the Lord is not among you. 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.” But they went up heedlessly to the ridge of the hill country; neither the ark of the covenant of the Lord nor Moses left the camp. 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.   Like the Israelites, often we tend to be sorry for what has happened or what has not happened to us. We are sorry for what we have lost or cost ourselves. Repentance is much more than being sorry for what we’ve lost or even being sorry for what our actions may have done to hurt others. Repentance is changing the way we act and think. It is turning from doing things our way to doing things God’s way, regardless of what His way is. If the Israelites had truly repented, they would have turned to God, followed Him and done as He said. Repenting doesn’t mean that we receive what could have been. Our true inheritance is being conformed to the image of Christ. Romans 8:28-29 says: We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.  God will use even our wrong decisions and choices for our good, to conform us to the image of Christ. If we repent and turn to God, we become brethren of Christ, children of God and heirs of all that is His.  

If God is truly our inheritance, then we are better off journeying with Him in the wilderness, even if we perish there, than we are fighting against His will and His word and perishing in the struggle against Him. Our journey and our path may change based on the consequences of our decisions and our actions, but our destination is always to be found in Christ.

Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ; precious Holy Spirit Thank You for being my inheritance. I may not have received all that You intended for me because of my decisions along the way. But, because of the redeeming power of the cross, I have my true full inheritance in You. May I never look back with regret at what could have been, but always rejoice in what is and will be in my journey with You and my destiny in Christ.  Amen.