Gods Sabbath

54

E NTERING INTO G OD ’ S S ABBATH R EST

one which always attends human efforts to usurp God’s role of Plan Maker. The spies were instructed to investigate much further than one day’s travel or warfare could take them. They were directed to make a comprehensive survey of the entire country. They were to bring back detailed and accurate assessments of the pop ulation density and distribution, the extent of military strength and preparation for war, the level of morale, the number and for tifications of the cities, and how formidable would be the task of subduing the whole country. All this directly violated the divine principle of leaving tomorrow and its responsibilities in God’s ca pable hands. It was a formula guaranteed to break their faith, turn them away from God to self-sufficiency, and lead them to disaster. And so it turned out to be. When those twelve spies returned, they initially gave an ac curate report of what they had seen on their perilous journey. But then ten of them related, in dismaying detail, all that lay be fore them. By so doing they loaded upon themselves a burden the Lord had not given them, and which they were incapable of bearing. Had they known and confined themselves to God’s per fect ways, He would have revealed what lay before them on a day-by-day basis. This they could have borne. There is a great difference between being faced with the pow er of a single city and with the combined resources of a confed eration of cities. Their faith could have borne the confrontation of the cities one by one, but not the whole of Canaan simultane ously. It is for this reason that when they entered the land ac cording to God’s ways, about forty years later, they were progres sively brought face to face with their enemies. Thus, when they saw Jericho’s fortifications and soldiery, they were not overawed by a view of all the other powers within the land. These they were to meet one at a time. Sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. Because they permitted God to assign them their work on a daily basis, their faith was not shattered the second time around, and the work went forward successfully. How different their history would have been had they followed this divinely re vealed method when they first came to Kadesh! For God, the possession of complete foreknowledge is no dan ger, because He does not have our problem of a weak faith. Je