They didn’t believe God could do what He said He was going to do, and as a result, they lost out on all the promises He made to them. They did not get to enter in to that land of peace and rest where God had desired to take them and bless them. (1 Cor. 10:5; Heb. 3:17-19)

Their bodies were scattered about in the wilderness after wandering there for forty years. And it’s important to note that Paul highlights what happened to them as a warning to us, “upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” (1 Cor. 10:11). I would not advise dismissing his warning nor taking it lightly.

This is in response to the ‘extra credit’ portion of the ‘pop quiz’ I gave yesterday. If you took the time to read Numbers 13-14, you learned the background as to when that group of people ‘crossed the line’ with God’s patience and lost out in the most tragic way. And basically...it boiled down to them simply not believing God could do what He said He was going to do for them. It all centered around whether they could overcome the Canaanite nations that were on the land and needed to come off and be removed for good.

God had given plenty of advance notice that these were wicked nations who were mightier and stronger than them (the Israelites) but were not to be feared because God was going to empower His people to overcome them all, and remove then ‘little by little’. God was also very clear about what would happen if they failed to follow through in obeying Him and what they could expect if they let these people remain. This was all a blueprint of what God’s ultimate plan was for us. We have a land to possess today. (Heb. 4:1) However, it is not some physical piece of real estate God wants us to take possession of; it is our hearts that need ‘cleansing and purifying’. (Mark 7:21-23) These are the ‘Canaanite nations’ that cause us to sin and rebel against God, and the great promise that comes through the gospel of repentance is we will also overcome all those ‘nations’.

And yet, if you ask many, if not most professing ‘believers’ today, they sound more like that group we read of in Numbers 13:31-14:4. They are convinced they cannot overcome sin and will remain sinners ‘until they get to heaven’ someday. Sadly, we can spend more time and energy explaining, if not justifying why we continue to sin, than we do overcoming it. That's why I fear the 'church' has become more of an 'enabler' to 'sinners'.  We quickly skim over passages like John 8:34-35, 1 Pet. 4:1-2, 1 John 3:6-9 while dismissing such words and then seek to explain why that cannot possibly be truth. So much for the promise we quote all the time in Phil. 4:13. ( “I can do ALL things through Christ...”)

Oh, in case you missed it, there were two men who were not of the same mindset as the rest of that generation of Israelites. Joshua and Caleb were their names and they had the audacity to actually agree with what God had declared and tried to encourage the people they could indeed go in and possess this land. Did you happen to catch what the crowds wanted to do? You might go read Numbers 14:6-10 and make note of vs. 10. Now days, instead of stoning them with rocks, we just tend to call them deluded heretics teaching false doctrine. But that could always change and most likely will. (Matt. 10:21-22)