Gods Sabbath

F AITH W ITHOUT W ORKS IS D EAT

95

Israel had degenerated from the grim situation of having faith without God’s works, to a worse one where they had nei ther faith nor God’s works. Because of God’s accurate assess ment of their condition of unbelief and stubborn refusal to re pent of their basic problem, He knew that they had no hope of entering the promised land. As we have seen, God loved them too much to attempt to lead them in under these circumstances, for He would not commit them to inevitable slaughter. The Lord sadly communicated through Moses the only solu tion left to them. They must turn back into the wilderness for for ty years, the time required for death to cleanse from the camp ev ery one of those incurably rebellious people. This would free the next generation to exercise faith and proper procedures where their parents had failed. When we consider the awful price paid by those people for trusting themselves as plan makers in God’s place, we can recognize that under no circumstances was such a price worth it. The people had lost all and gained nothing, apart from the doubtful prestige of being in command of God’s work. The best the Israelites could do at this point was to acknowl edge that their course had brought them nothing but sorrow and loss, and in true repentance and humble confession, accept the sad judgment. They should have been grateful that, even after

all their rebellious mis takes, the Lord was still prepared to do the best He could for them. At first they truly seemed to repent of their wrong course of action (see Numbers 14:39). To the casual ob server, their subdued spirit and deep mourn ing would appear to in dicate genuine displays of true repentance. But the people still failed to permit the Holy Spirit to open their eyes

… was it worth it?