Bible Commentaries

Irreligious Fears

Numbers 14:1-25

God gives no speculative commands. When he said—"Send thou men, that they may search the land of Canaan, which I give unto the children of Israel," he meant that the land of Canaan was to be given to Israel whatever difficulties or delays might occur in the process of acquisition. There is no if in the commandments of Heaven that may mean either of two courses or either of two ways. God says,—You shall have this, if you are faithful. But the if relates to the human mind and to the human disposition, and not to the solidity and certainty of the divine purpose or decree. This is true in morals. Along the line that is laid down in the Bible, which is called, happily and properly, the line of salvation, heaven is found—not the mean heaven of selfish indulgence and selfish complacency and release from mere toil and pain, but the great heaven of harmony with God, identification with the Spirit divine, complete restfulness in the movement of the infinite purpose. There will be difficulties on the road; these difficulties will assume various proportions, according to the dispositions of the men who survey them; but the Lord does not propose to give the end without, by implication, proposing also to find the grace and comfort necessary for all the process. We are not at liberty to stop at processes as if they were final points; we have nothing to do with processes but to go through them; the very call to attempt them is a pledge that they may be overcome. But these processes test the quality of men. It is by such processes that we are revealed to ourselves. If everything came easily as a mere matter of course, flowing in sequence that is never disturbed, we should lose some of the highest advantages of this present time school. We are made strong by exercise; we are made wise by failure; we are chastened by disappointment; driven back again and again six days out of the seven, we are taught to value the seventh day the more, that it gives us rest, and breathing time, and opportunity to consider the situation, so that we may begin another week's battle with a whole Sabbath day's power. To some the processes of life are indeed hard; let us never underrate them. Men are not cheered when the difficulties of the way are simply undervalued. No man can sympathise with another until he has learned the exact weight of the other man's trouble and the precise pain of his distress. There is a rough and pointless comfort which proceeds upon the principle that you have only to underrate a man's trials—to make them look as little and contemptible as possible—in order to invigorate his motive and to increase his strength. That is a profound mistake. He can sympathise best who acknowledges that the burden is heavy and the back weak, and the road is long, and the sky dull, and the wind full of ominous moaning;—granted that the sympathising voice can say all this in a tone of real appreciation, it has prepared the listener for words of cheer and inspiration—healthy, sound, intelligent courage. This is just the way of the Bible; it recognises the human lot in all its length and breadth; it addresses itself to circumstances which it describes with adequate minuteness and with copious and pathetic eloquence.

Here you find a number of men, such as live in all ages, who are crushed by material considerations. They report that the people of the country which they were sent to search were "strong," their cities were "walled and very great," and the population was made up of the Anakim—the "giants," the towering and mighty sons of Anak; they reported that some dwelt in "the south," and some "in the mountains," and some "by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan." This was a mean report, it was hardly a report at all,—so nearly may a man come to speak the truth, and yet not to be truthful, so wide is the difference between fact and truth. Many a book is true that is written under the name of fiction; many a book is untrue that lays claim only to the dry arguments of statistics and schedules. Truth is subtle; it is a thing of atmosphere, perspective, unnameable environment, spiritual influence. Not a word of what the truth says may have occurred in what is known as within the boundaries of any individual experience. The fact relates to an individuality; the truth relates to a race. A fact is an incident which occurred; a truth is a gospel which is occurring throughout all the ages of time. The men, therefore, who reported about walled cities, and tall inhabitants, and mountain refuges, and fortresses by the sea, confined themselves to simply material considerations; they overlooked the fact that the fortress might be stronger than the soldier, that the people had nothing but figure, and weight, and bulk, and were destitute of the true spirit which alone is a guarantee of sovereignty of character and conquest of arms. But this is occurring every day. Again and again we come upon terms which might have been written this very year. We are all men of the same class, with an exceptional instance here and there; we look at walls, we receive despatches about the stature of the people and the number of their fortresses, and draw very frightsome and terrible conclusions concerning material resources, forgetting in our eloquent despatches the only thing worth telling, namely: that if we were sent by Providence and are inspired by the Living God and have a true cause and are intent to fight with nobler weapons than gun and sword, the mountains themselves shall melt whilst we look upon them, and they who inhabit the fortresses shall sleep to rise no more. This is what we must do in life—in all life—educational, commercial, religious. We have nothing to do with outsides and appearances, and with resources that can be totalled in so many arithmetical figures; we have to ascertain, first, Did God send us? and secondly, if he sent us, to feel that no man can drive us back. If God did not send us, we shall go down before the savage; if God is not in the battle, it cannot and ought not to succeed, and failure is to be God's answer to our mean and unrighteous and untimely prayer. Who is distressed by appearances? Who is afraid because the labour is very heavy? What young heart quails because the books which lie upon the road which terminates in the temple of wisdom are many in number and severe in composition? We are called to enter the sanctuary of wisdom and of righteousness; therefore we must take up the books as a very little thing and master them, and lay them down, and smile at the difficulties which once made us afraid.

But one man at least spoke up and said,—We must go; this thing is to be done:—"Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it." Was Caleb, then, a giant—larger than any of the sons of Anak? Was he a Hercules and a Samson in one? Was his arm so terrific that every stroke of it was a conquest? We are not told so; the one thing we are told about Caleb is that he was a man of "another spirit." That determines the quality of the man. Character is a question of spirit. It is an affair of inward and spiritual glow. Caleb had been upon the preliminary search; Caleb had seen the walls, and the Anakim, and the fortresses, and he came back saying,—We can do this, not because we have so many arms only or so many resources of a material kind—but because he was a man of "another spirit." In the long run, spirit wins; in the outcome of all history, spirit will be uppermost. The great battles of life are not controversies of body against body, but, as far as God is in them, they are a question of spirit against body, thought against iron, prayer against storming and blustering of boastful men. While the cloud hangs over the field, and the dust of the strife is very thick, and the tumult roars until it deafens those who listen, we cannot see the exact proportions, colours, and bearings of things; but if we read history instead of studying the events of the day which have not yet settled themselves into order and final meaning, we shall discover that spirit is mightier than body, that "knowledge is power," that "righteousness exalteth a nation," and that they who bear the white banner of a pure cause ultimately triumph because God is with them.

How little the people had grown! They hear of the walled cities, and the great towns, and the tall men—the Amalekites, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and they lifted up their voices and wept—and wept all night! You have only to make noise enough in the ears of some men to make them afraid; you have simply to keep on repeating a catalogue of names, and they think you are reciting the resources of almightiness; mention one opposition, and possibly they may overcome the suggestion of danger: but have your mouth well-filled with hostile names and be able to roll off the catalogue without halt or stammer, and you pour upon the fainting heart a cataract which cannot be resisted. The people had grown but little: they were still in the school of fear; they were still in the desert of despair; they were childish, cowardly, spiritless; they had no heart for prayer; they forgot the only thing worth remembering, the pledge and covenant of God. Let us not condemn them. It is easy to condemn ancient Israelites and forgotten unbelievers. How stands the case with us? Precisely as it stood with the people of whom we are now reading. We are not an inch ahead of them. Christians are to-day just as fearful as the children of Israel were thousands of years ago: they have only to hear of certain bulks, forces, sizes, Numbers 14:13-16).

What book but the Bible has the courage to represent a man standing in this attitude before his God and addressing his Sovereign in such persuasive terms? This incident brings before us the vast subject of the collateral considerations which are always operating in human life. Things are not straight and simple, lying in rows of direct lines to be numbered off, checked off and done with. Lines bisect and intersect and thicken into great knots and tangle, and who can unravel or disentangle the great heap? Things bear relations which can only be detected by the imagination, which cannot be compassed by arithmetical Numbers 14:43

Even that is a word of comfort. The comfort is not far to fetch, even from the desert of this stern fact. The comfort is found in the fact that the Lord will be with those who have not turned away from him. The law operates in two opposite ways. Law is love, when rightly seized and applied; and love is law, having all the pillars of its security and all the dignity of its righteousness to support it in all the transitions of its experience. The reason why we fail is that God has gone from us. Putting the case Numbers 14:21

No bolder word was ever uttered even by a Christian apostle.—This prediction is founded upon the philosophy of the principles which it represented; that is to say such is the adaptation of divine thought to human need, that it must in the long run put down all competition, and prove itself to be the one thought which is full of rational satisfaction.—It is not to be supposed that one set of principles is to get the better of some other set, as the result of a kind of pitched battle in which the one side has been cleverer than the other.—Christianity is to triumph by virtue of its adaptation to every necessity of human need.—By addressing itself to the experience of mankind, by waiting with long patience for a full reception into the heart, and an honest trial in the life, by answering questions which no other religion can settle, and in every way to the ministry of thought, Christianity will show itself to be the one religion which abundantly covers the whole space of human necessity.—Other religions address themselves to races or kingdoms, to particular climates and modes of life; Christianity looks abroad upon the whole earth and proposes one blessing, the blessing of adoption and pardon for every member of the human race.—The promise seems to be founded upon the very constitution of God: the terms are, "As truly as I live"; this is not a mere exclamation, or a varied form of oath, least of all is it a rhetorical embellishment; it would seem to be that the filling of the whole earth with the glory of God is a necessity of the very nature of God.—God is love; God is light; love and light have undertaken to fill the whole earth with beauty and splendour.—This is not the God of a mechanician who does so much work for so much reward, and who is willing to do a directly opposite work for higher compensation; it is the ministry of love, the energy of light, and the pressure of eternity.—God will have all things like himself.—He is holy, he is good, he is wise, and what he is he means all responsible creatures to be in their degree.—The Christian worker is to conduct his service under the inspiration of this prediction.—He is not to look at temporary discouragements, or vexatious details, or personal infirmity, or the supposed strength of an enemy; he is to stand upon the rock of divine promise, and daily sustain his confidence by the pledge of God.—Love and light must always succeed.—They are the forces which give energy to the Christian ministry in all its forms and activities, and because they are of the very nature and quality of God they cannot ultimately fail of their purpose.

Divine Sovereignty

Numbers 14:26-45

Is this ancient history? Is there no inquiry of this kind propounded in heaven to-day? Has the generation ceased to be evil? and is God no longer made angry by repeated and aggravated disobedience? Because the thing was once written, we must not conclude that it was only once done. There are some things we cannot keep on writing, and we cannot continue to speak; we write them once, and the words must stand for ever as our one testimony; other things we say once for all: we could not bear to Numbers 14:27.

This is really a parental inquiry.—The proof of this is in the very agony of the terms.—A tyrant could have crushed the difficulty, a mere ruler might have been haughtily indifferent to it, but where tyrants and rulers are exhausted fatherhood begins to put its most anxious inquiries.—God has never been readily received into the human heart.—His rejection has in some cases been grounded upon the mystery of his nature; in others, on the difficulties of his providence; and in others upon the love of self-indulgence which characterises all human affections.—The terms of the inquiry assume that the forbearance has been long continued.—God does not ask such a question at an early period of his attempts to subdue the heart and will of man.—The inquiry, which is here put as to a congregation, is addressed to every human creature in his individuality.—Every man has justified the inquiry.—No man can satisfactorily answer the inquiry.—Every man is witness in his own case that the forbearance of God has been continuous and tender.—It is evident that forbearance has only been equal to the occasion created by human rebellion.—This circumstance having been amply proved, we come upon the discovery that forbearance has been completed by redemption.—The cross is not only an expression of forbearing love, it is the mystery of pardon wrought by righteousness.—If the cross should fail, God has no other resources so far as revelation can guide us.—Our forbearance expresses our love.—Where there is little love there will belittle forbearance.—Where there is much love the anxious inquiry will often arise, How can I give thee up?—This is the inquiry which is culminated in the cross of Christ.