There is a great deal of danger in knowing God’s will and not doing it. The tendency for all of us is to seek His will, or His leadership in a matter, then keep our eyes focused upon our own personal will and desires.
The story of Moses’ error at Kadesh is a good lesson for us to learn before we seek God’s will, find it, then fail to follow it.
On more than a few occasions, the children of Israel complained to Moses and or to God when things weren’t going to suit their desires. They turned on the leaders, Moses and Aaron, to blame them for what seemed to be problems with impossible good endings.
They were coming to the end of their long wilderness journey. The older beloved sister of Moses and Aaron, Miriam, died (Num. 20:1) and there was no water in Kadesh.
The lack of water caused a new uprising against Moses and Aaron. The people said, “If only we had died when our brethren died before the Lord! Why have you brought up the assembly of the Lord into this wilderness, that we and our animals should die here?” (20:3-4).
Chapter 16 of Numbers describes the uprising of Korah and others in the congregation of the children of Israel. They said to Moses, “Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness?”
In the uprising in chapter 20, the leaders brought up their wonderful life back in Egypt. It was like they thought their life in Egypt was paradise.
They seem to have forgotten that back in Egypt they were slaves! They had to gather the materials for brick-making and then fill their quota of production. Egypt wasn’t paradise for the children of Israel; they were slaves to the Egyptians.
That’s kind of like a drunk, when confronted with the life a Christian should demonstrate, saying that it was a great life, when he or she was so drunk they didn’t know what they were doing.
Too often the confessing Christian remembers the wayward life of sinful living to the point of thinking that the old life was better than a sin-washed life of purity before a holy and just God in Heaven.
Moses and Aaron went to the door of the tabernacle and fell on their faces before God. The Lord spoke to Moses and gave him instructions.
He was to bring the people together and with the anointed rod of God in his hand, before the gathered assembly, he was to speak to the rock. God would then show His glory, and water would come from the rock.
In an earlier experience (Exodus 17:6) when at Horeb, God told Moses to do the same thing. The exception on this occasion was that he was to strike the rock. And God supplied water from the rock.
At Miriam, God instructed Moses to “speak” to the rock. He prayed to God for an answer to his problem.
God gave him His answer, but Moses instead, as on the occasion before, struck the rock. And God gave the water for the people and for their animals. This satisfied the congregation but didn’t satisfy God.
Because of his disobedience, God told Moses, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them” (20:12).
Later in the chapter Aaron died, and through the remainder of the book, Moses instructed the people how they were to conduct themselves once in the land.
Then in Deuteronomy 34:5-6, the scripture tells us, “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth Peor; but no one knows his grave to this day.”
In the next book, the book of Joshua, we find, “Moses My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them” (1:2).
And Joshua picks up the mantle of Moses’ leadership.
We need to discover the will of God for our lives and then follow His leadership. He knows to where He desires to guide us, even though at times the way might not seem clear and the way might be rougher then we would like.
When we are confident of His will for our lives, we can live each day knowing everything will be all right because we are living according to His will for our lives.
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E-mail Rev. Jackson at ojapaj@yahoo.com or visit www.inspireandinfo.com.
