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The Beginning of the End
which you have despised.” And of Caleb He said, “My servant Caleb,
because he has a different spirit in him and has followed Me fully,
I will bring into the land where he went, and his descendants shall
inherit it.” As the spies had spent forty days in their journey, so the
people of Israel were to be wanderers in the wilderness for forty
years.
An Example of False Repentance
When Moses told the people God’s decision, they knew that
their punishment was fair. The ten unfaithful spies, struck by God
with the plague, died in the sight of all Israel, and in their death the
people could see their own doom.
Now they seemed to repent sincerely, but they were sorry for
the result of their evil course rather than from a sense of their un-
thankfulness and disobedience. When they found that the Lord did
not change His decision, their self-will came back and they declared
that they would not return into the wilderness. In telling them to
go back, God tested their outward submission and proved it was
not real. Their hearts were unchanged, and they only needed an
excuse to start a similar outbreak. If they had been sorry for their sin
when it was faithfully pointed out to them, this sentence would not
have been pronounced; but they were only sorry about the judgment.
Their sorrow was not repentance and could not give them a change
of their sentence.
The people spent that night sorrowing, but in the morning they
decided to redeem their lack of bravery. When God had told them to
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go up and take the land, they had refused; and now when He directed
them to retreat, they were equally rebellious.
God had made it their privilege and duty to enter the land at the
time He had appointed, but through their willful refusal that permis-
sion had been withdrawn. Now, in the face of God’s forbidding,
Satan urged them on to do the very thing that they had refused to do
when God required it, leading them to rebel the second time. “We
have sinned against the Lord,” they cried. “We will go up and fight,
just as the Lord our God commanded us” (
Deuteronomy 1:41
). They
had become so terribly blinded! The Lord had never commanded