Numbers 12-13

Numbers 12-13

The first real test within Moses’ own family came when Miriam opposed him in Numbers 12. For the first time, someone was directly questioning Moses’ leadership. There had been previous times when the Israelites had questioned God about why they had left Egypt only to endure the trials of their journey to the Promised Land, but they were not as personal as when Miriam questioned Moses’ actions. God made it clear to both her and Aaron that He had specifically chosen Moses to lead Israel, and that the decisions he had made up to this point in his life had all been approved by God. God spoke one-on-one with Moses on a regular basis, in a way that He did not speak with anyone else. So God took offense to the fact that Miriam was questioning the things Moses did. As a result He punished her with leprosy and made her endure its consequences, being set outside the camp for 7 days. But He also allowed her the time to heal and once again be considered as clean, not permitting the Israelites to proceed until her time was up. We must never think that we are too good or that we will not be punished for our sins just because of some role we may have in life. God did not give Miriam a free ride just because she was the sister of Moses. She had to endure the consequences just like everyone else.

At this point the Israelites were just south of the Promised Land, ready to enter and possess it just as God had promised. So God had Moses in Numbers 13 round up a group of “spies” to go into the land of Canaan and see what it was like. They were supposed to take everything into account and determine whether they would be able to inhabit it at this time, where they could go to live, and many other decisions that would have to be made once they got there. Most notably, Joshua and Caleb were included among the group of spies. Joshua has already been mentioned once in the book of Numbers as Moses’ assistant, now he is mentioned again as one of the men given this very large task of spying out the land.

The spies return after 40 days in the Promised Land and report back to Moses that it was basically all that they had ever heard. It flowed with milk and honey and had plenty of food. They knew that it was the land that God had promised them, and knew that it was everything that He had promised. However, many of the spies were frightened by the obstacles that they would have to face in conquering the land. They did not want to think about the fact that they would have to take this land away from some rather large people groups. But they forgot two important factors. One of these was the fact that the land was not the land of these various large people groups. They inherited the land after all of Jacob’s (Israel’s) family had left during the famine to go to Egypt. The land had originally been Abraham’s, Isaac’s, and Jacob’s. They were not taking it away from these other nations; they were just taking it back.

The second and most important thing that they forgot was the fact that they had God on their side, which is what Caleb and Joshua pointed out. The task placed before the Israelites was huge, and God knew that. But He had also promised the land to them, and He was not going to allow them to lose it after two years of preparing them for it. If God allowed these other people groups to conquer the Israelites at this point, then all He had done for them since they left Egypt would have been for nothing. But somehow, the Israelites had forgotten about God’s power and therefore questioned whether they would be able to gain possession of the land.

From this point forward in Scripture it is going to become really easy to be hard on the Israelites. It will seem as if they continue to forget about God’s power, and all that He had done for them in the past. From our perspective, it is easy to wonder how they could have missed it so many times and not learn from their previous mistakes. But we must remember that we are the same way today. We might not want to admit it, but we question God’s authority in our lives. We wonder if He will see us through the tough situations that come up. We forget about the ways in which He has protected us in the past. In many ways, we are no different than the Israelites. So instead of criticizing the Israelites for their mistakes, we need to pay close attention to their mistakes so that we will not make the same ones in our lives. Like Caleb and Joshua, we must always look to God for guidance and depend on His power.

Matt