Numbers 13.
THE moving camp of Israel had now reached a place as near to the promised land of Canaan as they were to see for about thirty-seven years. We shall see, if the Lord will, why they did not go right on to the end of their journey, but we have read enough in the last two chapters to feel sure that their ways and thoughts were very far from God’s. Without faith to believe God, though they were quite willing to eat the food He gave them, and to have His protecting care and guidance, they needed some of their number to go on ahead to see if what God had said about their new home was true. In the first chapter of Deuteronomy we learn that Moses, having told the people to go on to the promised land, not to be afraid or discouraged, they came to him, saying,
“We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.”
In our chapter this is not told us; God, knowing what the host of Israel wanted, knowing their hearts too, told Moses to send men to search the land.
They were to be prominent men, leaders of the people, who were to go on this mission. Even their names speak of that, Shammua, the first one named, means, “Famous”, and his father’s name means, “well remembered”; one means “belonging to fortune” (Gaddi), and several speak of God. But God sees deeper than the surface; profession is nothing without possession, and only two of the men who went into the land were men of faith, —men who trusted God.
And did the twelve men find that what God says is true? They surely did.
“Surely,” they said (verse 27), “the land floweth with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. If you will open your Bible at Exodus 3:88And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. (Exodus 3:8) and 17 you will find that God said just that, “a land flowing with milk and honey.” He had told them, too, of enemies, —six nations of very wicked people, who lived in that land, but He had said in Exodus 33:22And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: (Exodus 33:2) “I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite,” and all the others. This the spies and the people forgot or did not believe; they evidently had no thought of God being for them, nor of trusting Him to lead them.
ML 01/27/1924