I think some of the saddest verses in the whole of the Bible are these, “These are the ones counted by Moses and Eleazar the priest when they counted the Israelites on the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho. Not one of them was among those counted by Moses and Aaron the priest when they counted the Israelites in the Desert of Sinai. For the Lord had told those Israelites they would surely die in the wilderness, and not one of them was left except Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun.” (Numbers 26:63-65)
They were counted in but they were not counted out. They failed to move forward. They became stuck and died.
Throughout this letter the Pastor will pause from the main subjects to bring a warning to the people. This is the second time in the letter. This time the warning passage is quite long starting in verse 7 and continuing into chapter 4 v 13.
The battle is the same in 2024 as at the time of Israel’s Wilderness years:
- Listen and obey His voice;
- Know His ways
- Watch your heart.
- Continue to move.
“Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? 17 And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? 19 So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” (Hebrews 3 v 16-19)
That generation wasted their opportunity. They blew it and never became all that they could become. Or as Ravenhill’s haunting book title says: They drank from the River and died in the Wilderness. Frightening.
Read it again. They drank from the River (the rock) and died in the Wilderness.
Many go into the desert as a Christian. It is a place where we must travel. But few come out of that experience.
We serve a God who moves out and moves in.
He takes us as we are but loves us so much He will not leave us as we are but bring us into an ever-increasing likeness of His Son, Jesus.
Therefore we need to be counted in, stay in and counted out.
The Wilderness is there to travel through and to learn from not to die in.
Do not blow your experience of God. Don’t give up in the difficult season. Move forward in it.
Missions Paul 