Holding Out Your Hands

The LORD said to Moses, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? . . . They will never even see the land I swore to give their ancestors.”   Numbers 14:11, 23

It is important to understand the point of what God says here. God was faithful to the people, even in the desert. They were still God’s people, and God provided food for them every day. He never left them. The point is not that they were saved and then somehow lost. The point is that this generation of people who had experienced the abundant grace of God contributed nothing to advancing the purpose of God.

If your commitment to the will of God is conditional on your personal comfort, then you are treating God with contempt. That is, you are glad to receive his good gifts but care little for him personally. God saw his people holding out their hands every day for fresh blessings, but they were not willing to serve him if that involved going outside their comfort zones. God found that to be personally insulting.

The apostle Paul applied this story to a local church where some people had become complacent. He reminded the believers that “God was not pleased with most of [the generation that had left Egypt], and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness” (1 Corinthians 10:5). In effect, Paul said, “Be careful that you don’t become unprofitable like the generation that rebelled in the desert.” He told them this was why he exercised self-discipline in his own life. Having preached to other people, he did not want to become unprofitable, someone who is of little use in advancing the purposes of God (see 9:26-27).

It would be very easy for us to live as redeemed children of God within our own comfort zones, holding worship services, rejoicing in the love of Christ, and doing nothing significant to advance the purposes of God. Similarly, it’s easy for churches that have been greatly blessed to grieve the Spirit and become unprofitable in the purposes of God. Once we see the danger, the great question is, how are we going to avoid being like that?

For further reading, see Ephesians 4