Notwithstanding ye would not go up, but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God:
Israel stood on the very borders of Canaan when the command came to go up and enter and take possession of the promised land, and would not go up but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord their God even after the spies brought back a good report. Fear and unbelief took hold, and murmuring and fearful complaints spread through the people and through the camp. They murmured that God had brought them out of Egypt to destroy them, though He had promised them the land and had gone before them.
The refusal broke the people's agreement to follow the Lord's directions, for they acted against that agreement in murmuring and complaining. It was rooted in distrust and unbelief, and in pride, impatience, and fear. Their disobedience showed that cooperating with God's plans mattered for their present and future good and for their eternal welfare.
Because they did not wholly follow Him but discouraged the heart of Israel from entering, the Lord refused entrance to the adult army that left Egypt, to the men from twenty years old and upward, save Caleb and Joshua who wholly followed Him. He altered His purpose toward them and made Israel wander in the wilderness forty years until all that evil generation was consumed. In this way their disobedience and broken pledge brought delay and forfeited the fathers' favor.
The long wandering and delay in possessing Canaan was not God's fault or a failure of His faithfulness. God was more grieved by the delay than they were, for He wanted to bring them into immediate possession to display His mighty and protecting power in their deliverance before all nations. They were unprepared to enter or to represent a people whose God is the Lord because they did not bear His character of purity, goodness, and benevolence, and had they yielded in faith to His direction, governed by His judgments and walking in His ordinances, they would long before have been settled in Canaan as a prosperous, holy, happy people. Their perversity prevented that display, while their delay to enter the goodly land dishonored God and detracted from His glory before surrounding nations. His promised blessings would not fail, but they are upon condition of obedience and holiness, of keeping His statutes and judgments, which is the condition of life in them.
The refusal belongs to the failures and victories of the forty years of wandering given through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy just before the possession of Jericho. Moses was instructed to repeat such lessons over and over. They are to be kept before God's people to strengthen faith and to be rehearsed more often, showing that every new move is to be a carrying out of the principles God gave Israel at that time.
The chapter with Deuteronomy 8 is the word of the Lord to be read and heeded as admonition to those living at the end of the world, on whom the ends of the world are come. It warns against refusing God's command and rebelling against Him, against trusting personal judgment, following His guidance only up to the point that agrees with personal judgment, then holding to one's own ideas, resisting His guidance, and refusing to be molded after His similitude. Everything must be tested by asking if it is the will of the Lord and viewed in the light of the example of Christ, who is the truth, rejecting feeble human standards for the Lord's standard of perfection of character in self-denial and self-sacrifice. For the same disobedience, unthankfulness, and unholiness now hinders God's work, delays the sealing of His servants, and prolongs time so all may hear the last message of mercy.
Israel stood on the very borders of Canaan when the command came to go up and enter and take possession of the promised land, and would not go up but rebelled against the commandment of the Lord their God even after the spies brought back a good report. Fear and unbelief took hold, and murmuring and fearful complaints spread through the people and through the camp. They murmured that God had brought them out of Egypt to destroy them, though He had promised them the land and had gone before them.
The refusal broke the people's agreement to follow the Lord's directions, for they acted against that agreement in murmuring and complaining. It was rooted in distrust and unbelief, and in pride, impatience, and fear. Their disobedience showed that cooperating with God's plans mattered for their present and future good and for their eternal welfare.
Because they did not wholly follow Him but discouraged the heart of Israel from entering, the Lord refused entrance to the adult army that left Egypt, to the men from twenty years old and upward, save Caleb and Joshua who wholly followed Him. He altered His purpose toward them and made Israel wander in the wilderness forty years until all that evil generation was consumed. In this way their disobedience and broken pledge brought delay and forfeited the fathers' favor.
The long wandering and delay in possessing Canaan was not God's fault or a failure of His faithfulness. God was more grieved by the delay than they were, for He wanted to bring them into immediate possession to display His mighty and protecting power in their deliverance before all nations. They were unprepared to enter or to represent a people whose God is the Lord because they did not bear His character of purity, goodness, and benevolence, and had they yielded in faith to His direction, governed by His judgments and walking in His ordinances, they would long before have been settled in Canaan as a prosperous, holy, happy people. Their perversity prevented that display, while their delay to enter the goodly land dishonored God and detracted from His glory before surrounding nations. His promised blessings would not fail, but they are upon condition of obedience and holiness, of keeping His statutes and judgments, which is the condition of life in them.
The refusal belongs to the failures and victories of the forty years of wandering given through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy just before the possession of Jericho. Moses was instructed to repeat such lessons over and over. They are to be kept before God's people to strengthen faith and to be rehearsed more often, showing that every new move is to be a carrying out of the principles God gave Israel at that time.
The chapter with Deuteronomy 8 is the word of the Lord to be read and heeded as admonition to those living at the end of the world, on whom the ends of the world are come. It warns against refusing God's command and rebelling against Him, against trusting personal judgment, following His guidance only up to the point that agrees with personal judgment, then holding to one's own ideas, resisting His guidance, and refusing to be molded after His similitude. Everything must be tested by asking if it is the will of the Lord and viewed in the light of the example of Christ, who is the truth, rejecting feeble human standards for the Lord's standard of perfection of character in self-denial and self-sacrifice. For the same disobedience, unthankfulness, and unholiness now hinders God's work, delays the sealing of His servants, and prolongs time so all may hear the last message of mercy.