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Welcome, I'm Cliff Hedges. This is Pastor Cliff's Notes. This is a podcast where we are studying the Bible. We're working our way through the book of Numbers. Today is episode 1626, and we're looking at Numbers chapter 14, verses 39 through 45. So the Israelites are at the edge of the promised land. God rescued them from Egypt, brought them up to Mount Sinai, spent a good bit of time there, where he was preparing them to be his people and to take possession of Canaan. And Moses sent twelve scouts, one from each tribe, to see what the land looked like. And they traveled throughout the land for forty days and came back and gave this report to Moses and the people. They said the land was bountiful, but the cities were large and fortified, and there were giants in the land. The people panicked. They talked about stoning Moses and Aaron, appointing a new leader, going back to Egypt, and they were basically out of control. Then the glory of the Lord appeared, and God gave his judgment. He said, None of the men who had been counted in the census of chapter one would go into the promised land, except Caleb and Joshua. Those two had remained faithful. The rest of them they would die in the wilderness, and the next generation would be the ones to enter the land of Canaan. That brings us to Numbers 14, verse 39. When Moses reported these words to all the Israelites, the people were overcome with grief. Well, it's a pretty serious judgment they've been told about. They're going to die in the wilderness. They are not going to get to go to the promised land. And that's what the Lord has said. So yes, they are overcome with grief. So what's their response? Verse 40. They got up early the next morning and went up the ridge of the hill country, saying, Let's go to the place the Lord promised, for we were wrong. Okay, you have a confession of being wrong. What do they mean here? They've confessed their sin. Well, have they? They say they're wrong because the Lord said, Go take the land. They said it can't be done. And now they understand, okay, we were wrong to say we won't go in and take the land. But they don't seem to address the whole issue of rejecting God. When they said we want to go back to Egypt, they said basically, we don't want to be God's people anymore. When he said, Let's kill Moses at Aaron, they said we don't accept the leader that God has given us. And we don't accept God's plan for us as a people. So they have an absolute, utter rejection of God. So I think they may need a little more repentance than just we were wrong. And then how are they going to fix this? We're going to go up to the hill country, say, let's go to the place the Lord promised. God wants us to take the promised land. Well, we'll go take the promised land now. We were wrong to say no. So they seem to be sorry for the effects of the sin. The promised land is no longer yours, but they don't seem to be all that sorry for the sin itself, at least not really fully realizing what the sin is. So we'll go take the promised land. That'll make God happy. Verse 41. But Moses responded, Why are you going against the Lord's command? Because we go back and say, What did God tell them to do now? He said, Turn around and go back toward the Red Sea. And so they're trying to fix their disobedience to God by disobeying God. They say, Well, we'll go fix it. We'll make God like us now. We'll go conquer the promised land. No, no, God told you to go back toward the Red Sea. And so Moses said, Why are you going against what God told you to do? It won't succeed. Verse 42, don't go, because the Lord is not among you, and you will be defeated by your enemies. The Amalekites and Canaanites are right in front of you, and you will fall by the sword. The Lord won't be with you since you have turned from following him. So most saying, Yeah, you have not really addressed the sin that is the problem here. Yes, you said we're not going to the promised land, but you had this absolute rebellion and rejection. You turned from following him. So you can't fix it now by saying, Okay, we will go into the promised land. And he says, The Amalekites and the Canaanites are right in front of you. Remember back in verse 25, God said, Since the Amalekites and Canaanites are in the lowlands, go back toward the Red Sea. So God's point there was, you're not going to go toe-to-toe against the Amalekites and the Canaanites. You're going to go back to the Red Sea. It won't be until the next generation is going to go toe-to-toe with the Amalekites and Canaanites. And Moses warns them, don't do it, it's not going to work. Verse 44. But they dared to go up to the ridge of the hill country, even though the Ark of the Lord's covenant and Moses did not leave the camp. Then the Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in that part of the hill country came down, attacked them, and routed them as far as Ormah. So they were afraid to go with God's protection. But now they dare to go without God's protection. Why? This doesn't make sense. Oh, exactly. And the problem here is unbelief. They don't believe God, they don't trust God. They're making up their own ways to quote follow God that they're not really doing. So they dared to go. Yeah, they dare to go without God. There's some confusion here about the Amalekites and Canaanites. God told him verse 25, he said, the Amalekites and Canaanites are in the lowlands. A lot of translations say in the valley. But here it seems to imply that they were in the hill country. The problem here is we really don't know the geography well. We can't pinpoint any of these places. So what valley are we really talking about? What lowlands are we really talking about? What ridge are we really talking about? What hill country are we really talking about? The Bible, we don't know. And so obviously, there's the Amalekites and the Canaanites in the lowlands in the valley were seen to be a fairly immediate problem for them. That's why God told them to move the other direction. So did they actually cross the valley to get to the hill country? Or was there a hill between the Israelites and the Amalekites and Canaanites in the lowlands to where they went up the hill and actually started to encounter them and got turned back immediately? Some people think no, they actually traveled into the promised land, went quite a ways, way up into, because the northern part of Canaan is hill country. They went up to there and got pushed back. Well, they got pushed back to Hormah, and probably don't have any clue where that is. So you really can't draw a scenario here because we don't know what where these places are. And that's not the point. The point is they were disobedient to God. They were rebelling against God, they were rejecting God, and they're now thinking, okay, the problem is we said no to going to the land of Canaan. We'll fix it by going to the land of Canaan. So they're fixing their disobedience by being disobedient. They're trying to prove that they're faithful by being unfaithful. And so that's the real problem. And we see the results of it. God is not with them. A very visible aspect. The Ark of the Covenant did not go before them. That was a symbol of God's presence. Moses did not go with them. God's appointed leader for them. So they went without God. They went on their own. And amazingly enough, it didn't work. They did get pushed back. Now we're not giving any details like how many of them died in this little campaign, but they went up and the Amalekites and Canaanites attacked them and routed. Routed means beat them badly and chased them out of the land of Canaan. So the Israelites have come to the edge of the promised land, had an absolute breakdown of faith. They would not believe God, could not believe God, and even disobey God further. And now they're basically moving back away from the promised land. The generation who was counted in the census of Numbers chapter one, they've been told they're going to die in the wilderness. And it will be their next generation, the children who will actually enter the promised land. Thanks for joining me. Join me again next time as we continue working through Numbers.