The Caleb Perspective
Numbers 14:
20-25 Then the L ord
said, "I will pardon them as you have requested. But as surely as I live, and
as surely as the earth is filled with the L ord 's
glory, not one of these people will ever enter that land. They have all seen my
glorious presence and the miraculous signs I performed both in
What perspective do you view your life with? Through whose eyes do you see your existence? It may seem an odd question but an important one as we consider our approach to God. How we approach God will determine our relationship with Him, our blessings from Him, and our future with Him. Are we appropriately grateful toward God and all He has done? Or are we whiners, like the Israelites were in our key verses today. It is an important question because there are many parallels we can draw from the behavior of the Israelites in these early days and our walk today with God. We need to learn from the mistakes of the Israelites if we are to avoid the consequences they ended up facing.
The first thing the Israelites took for granted is where God had brought them from. Four hundred years after Joseph we find the Israelites oppressed in slavery in Egypt. The conditions of their slavery were described as ruthless:
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. Exodus 1: 11-14 (NIV)
Their lives were filled with bitterness, oppression and enslavement. This is the same condition God finds us in. Enslaved to sin. Bound by the bitterness of the world; oppressed. God frees us from the bondage of the world just as He freed the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt. Yet sometimes we too can sound just as unappreciative toward God for where He has saved us from:
That night all the members of the community raised their voices and wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron, and the whole assembly said to them, "If only we had died in Egypt! Or in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn't it be better for us to go back to Egypt?" And they said to each other, "We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt." Numbers 14: 1-4 (NIV)
Can you imagine? Preferring to return to the enslavement and ruthless treatment. Preferring to be shackled, oppressed and bitter. Yet too often in our Christian walk, we too can become forgetful of how far God had to reach down to save us. It is a dangerous position for a Christian to forget where God found you. The Apostle Paul never forgot:
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 1Corinthians 15: 9 (NIV)
