Encouragement, good and bad, and the importance of “Today”

When God told the people to go in and he would give them his promise "Today," they did not trust he was good. So they believed their fears instead. As a result, they could not go in, as he had said, "tomorrow."

This post continues the discussion of the importance of listening to God “today,” while he is still speaking to me, as illustrated by the story of the children of Israel’s journey through the wilderness, led by Moses.

In the story, we are now ready to leave Mount Sinai. After the people so quickly turned aside to idolatry, God was ready to destroy them, and give his covenant to Moses and his descendants alone. Exodus 32:9-10. But Moses begged God to forgive his people, and God granted his request. Exodus 32:11-14, 30-34.

Unfortunately, from that point on for the next 40 years, things just got worse. God first had Moses lead the people though a series of temporary stops in the wilderness on the way to the border of the Promised Land. Exodus 40:34-38; Numbers 9:15-12:16. The length of time involved is nowhere stated, and only three of the stopping places are actually named. But all along this way, God was testing the people to see whether they would trust him to give them what they needed and be content with the food and leadership he provided. And, collectively, the people failed each test.

First, they complained about their hardships in being led through a wilderness, stopping whenever the cloud that manifested God’s presence stopped, and sometimes staying at the same location in the middle of the desert for months at a time. They couldn’t complain that God didn’t provide for them–he provided water and manna–the bread of angels–and kept their clothing from wearing out. And he personally led them and protected them from all their enemies. But they complained because it was hard to wait, and “the fire of God burned among them,” until they called out and he removed his fire. Numbers 11:1-2.

Next they began to crave food like the food they had eaten as slaves in Egypt, which they now found more tasty and desirable than manna. Even Moses started to complain–about the people who were constantly complaining to him, as if he could provide what they wanted. So God provided what the people wanted, quail in the desert, who dropped in large numbers on the ground in front of them. But he also struck them with a plague before they could eat the meat. This was followed by a challenge to Moses’ authority by his own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, supported by the people.

The next major event was the Israelites’ greatest failure. God led them to the border of the Promised Land, then told Moses to send in twelve spies, one from each of the tribes, each a leader in his own tribe. Numbers 13:1-3. When the spies returned, they were unanimous in reporting that it was exactly the kind of land God had promised: “it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit.” Numbers 13:27. They were able to show a cluster of grapes so large one person could not carry it.

What the spies were unable to agree about was whether the people should obey God’s command to enter the land and take it for themselves. The people needed encouragement to do the great thing God was telling them to do Today.

But encourage one another every day, as long as it is still called “today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Hebrews 3:13 (NASB)

Two spies, Caleb and Joshua, encouraged the people to trust God and enter the land, “because we can certainly do it.” Numbers 13:30.

The other ten spies, instead of seeing God in the land, instead saw its large fortified cities containing people from known warrior ethnicities with giants (Nephilim) living among them. They felt small and weak–like grasshoppers–next to these people. Surely God was no match for them!

So the ten spies also encouraged the people–to turn around and go back into the wilderness.

This was the encouragement the people had been preparing themselves to hear ever since they left Egypt. They had hardened their hearts, trusting their own way and grumbling against God’s way at every opportunity.

This is exactly the “deceitfulness” of sin. It looks reasonable and attainable, though only partially satisfying. If we have made ourselves accustomed to following our own way, we may even recognize that its satisfactions are futile. But it is possible–its pleasures look like something we can reach.

On the other hand, the way God tries to show us looks absolutely wonderful–like the report of a land flowing with milk and honey that grows fruit very abundantly–but it also looks impossible to attain. It is nothing, we tell ourselves, but an illusion–“pie in the sky, bye and bye, when we die”–if all of those giants in the ways don’t keep us out! So we do what the Israelites did–refuse to go in, and beg to return to Egypt, where, at least, our servitude had some scant pleasures and was secure and predictable.

And the people listened to the ten spies, refused to enter the land, and started complaining to God once again. But everything that had happened since they left Egypt had prepared them for this moment. Every time God challenged them to come closer to him, they had hardened their hearts and refused. Ane now, with hard hearts, they refused to enter into the Promise, even though they had acknowledged how good it was.

It is for this reason that Hebrews uses exactly this series of events as its prime example of both encouragement and hardened hearts:

For we have become partakers of Christ if we keep the beginning of our commitment firm until the end, while it is said,

“Today if you hear His voice,

Do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked Me.”  

For who provoked Him when they had heard? Indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose dead bodies fell in the wilderness?  And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?  And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief.

Hebrews 3:14-19 (NASB)

Their unbelief and disobedience were flip sides of the same coin. They believed their fears, and acted on them, just exactly because they did not believe–and trust–God’s promise to do them good by freely giving them the promised land. They did not believe God is good, and did not want to yield control of their steps to him.

He had already told them they would not have to conquer the land in their own strength–all they had to do was follow his leading and let him give it to them. That was the one thing they were unwilling to do “today”–the day God told them to move forward and take what he had prepared for them.

Of course, after God then responded to their unbelief by telling them they would not enter the land because of it–but that they would all die wandering in the wilderness and their children would enter–they felt sorry for their sin. They wept all night. Then, the next day, they said they were sorry, and NOW they would go on in and take the land.

But “Today,” the time of the promise, had passed. Those who tried to go in a that time had not really repented, they were merely sorry for their sin, and were still trying to do things their own way. This is true even though the thing they were trying to do had been God’s will for them–yesterday!

But they had missed “Today.” When they tried to go in “tomorrow,” to do what they had been told to do “Today,” they were defeated.

Next (for now): Unity and Answers to Prayer

The Voice of God (God Speaking to Us) Outline