The Israelites just can't get it right. At first, they reject the advice of Caleb to go and take the land, choosing instead to pine for Egypt and consider returning to their lives of slavery. They even talk of stoning Joshua and Caleb! Then, after stirring up God's wrath against them for their faithlessness, they try to go and take the Promised Land in their own strength without His help. The result is a slaughter.
After their rejection of His plan, God is so angry at the people that He threatens (once again) to destroy them all and start over with Moses, building a new nation out of him. But Moses reminds God that the Egyptians and other nations are watching, and will make conclusions about the Lord based on what happens to the Israelite people.
So God turns from His wrath and vows not to destroy them all at once. Still, He maintains that the generation that came out of Egypt will not be the one to enter the Promised Land. Apart from Caleb and Joshua, the rest of the nation must experience a complete turn over before they receive their inheritance. In fact, God proclaims that the people will wander in the wilderness for forty years - one year for every day that was spent by the spies exploring the land of Canaan.
It is this news which causes the people to have a change of heart and realize that they should have listened to God in the first place. It is too late for them now, but they refuse to believe it. It takes a defeat at the hands of the Canaanites and Amalekites to show them that when God withdraws His blessing and protection, they are left defenseless.
This was a hard lesson for the Israelites to learn, but hopefully their fate still speaks yet today. Have we learned that the time is always NOW to obey what the Lord is telling us to do?
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