Numbers 13-14
And they said to one another, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.”
Numbers 14:4
There you have it: the birthplace of democracy! Don’t get me wrong. Looking at current and historical forms of government, I’ll take the Constitution of the U.S.A. over just about any other, and I’m quite happy to keep my citizenship right here, thank you very much. But let’s not kid ourselves. The will of the majority rarely reflects obedience to God.
And that is certainly the case here. Twelve spies go into the Promised Land to look it over. They all see the same things. They all recognize the land’s beauty and fruitfulness, that it is a land that flows with milk and honey. (Num. 13:27) But only two of the twelve spies, Joshua and Caleb, see through eyes of faith and obedience. The other ten analyze the situation in human terms, choose prudence over risk, and conclude the challenge is too great. They vote to reject the LORD’s promise. And the crowd democratically agrees.
The LORD’s response to Israel’s rejection is to say, “Have it your way!” If the people do not want to enter the Promised Land, then they never will. They will instead wander in the wilderness for forty years until that whole adult population dies off. And so an entire generation of Israelites democratically misses its golden opportunity.
In a fit of false repentance the people say “Oops!” and go ahead and try to enter the Promised Land on their own, apart from the LORD’s leading, and they are easily defeated. I call it “false repentance” because although they are ostensibly reversing their previous decision, they are nonetheless persisting in disobedience. They are not submitting to the LORD’s authority. They are not following His lead. True repentance means obedience.
And so it is for us today. We each have a choice. We can listen to the world around us and do what the world does, or we can be different. We can join with the ten unfaithful spies and our culture and actively work against God; we can sit silently by and just passively let the majority prevail; or we can stand up alongside Joshua and Caleb and walk in faith and obedience. So what will it be?