“The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place. Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, who went before you in the way to seek you out a place to pitch your tents, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to show you by what way you should go. And The Lord heard your words and was angered, and he swore, ‘Not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers, except Caleb the Son of Jephunneh.” 1:30-36
“And the Lord said to me, ‘Say to them, Do not go up or fight, for I am not in your midst, lest you be defeated before your enemies.’ So I spoke to you, and you would not listen; but you rebelled against the command of the Lord and presumptuously went up into the hill country.” 42-43
Two mistakes are listed here that are still repeated today. The first is unbelief in the Word of God. The second is presumption upon the word of God.
Why look for examples anywhere else then in my own life. I cannot count how many times and in how many ways God has been miraculously good to me. Yet despite how many times I have seen his outstretched arm on my behalf I still waver in unbelief. Knowing the short term memory loss of humanity is probably one of the reasons why God is constantly reminding his people to remember, to return, and to repent.
Unbelief in the Word of God is tragic. We often don’t realize how tragic it really is because we tend to only think about it from our point of view. But because God is “invested” in his Word, to not believe is to reject God. Such is the great tragedy. We are shown in these verses that the God whom they rejected was not an evil and angry master but a loving and compassionate Father. Like a weak son carried by his father so
Now the second sin listed in this chapter may be a little more serious than the first. Presumption of this kind is rooted in deception. To presume that God has spoken when he is silent can get you killed.
‘Say to them, Do not go up or fight, for I am not in your midst, lest you be defeated before your enemies.’ I think we make this same kind of assumption in many different ways both in our homes and in our churches. We assume that the manifested presence of God is in our midst when he really isn’t. Perhaps this is why we experience so much tragedy and defeat in both our homes and churches. We prophecy “Peace, Peace,” over people when God hasn’t spoken. We pull scriptures out of context to tickle peoples’ ears and end up leading them into greater and greater deception.
