Knock, Knock (no joking...)

We recently installed a doorbell camera at our house. This one not only shows who is at the door, but also allows audio interaction with the visitor through an app in our phones. So now, not only can I ignore someone who I know that I don’t want to talk to, but if I believe that I may not want to I don’t have to get off my rear end to find out. It’s awesome (even though in four months I have probably used it twice). It proves that seeing is believing, right?

No, it doesn’t. As cool as that gadget is, it’s just a convenience, for me, to satisfy MY curiosity. If “seeing is believing,” then “curiosity killed the cat.”

That, in one sense, is the message I took from my reading of Deuteronomy 1 this morning. In this chapter, Moses is talking to the people of Israel, whom he had just led on a 40-year journey through the wilderness and who are on the threshold of Canaan, their promised land, and are about to enter. This is the land God had promised them, about 500-700 years earlier in a covenant with Abraham. In his speech to them he gives them a pep-talk to motivate them to treat the land right (by being obedient to God).

His talk with them, though, is not just a pep-talk. He also gives a summary of those 40 years, to put in perspective the significance of what they are about to do. And that summary is not all a rosy picture. In verses 19-46 he reminds them of the reason they spent 40 years wandering. They had been on that threshold at the beginning of those years, and could have entered then. Just before they were to go into the land, and engage in battle with the current occupants, they thought it would be wise for them to send a group of spies ahead of them to survey the land and, more specifically, what they would be up against from a military standpoint.

That turned out to be their faux pas, so to speak. See,

1.      God had already promised to give the land to them.

2.      He had proven that He could be trusted,

“The LORD your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes” (Deut. 1:30), and

3.      He loved them, carrying them “as a man carries his son” (v. 31).

Despite all of this, though, they needed to see for themselves. They wouldn’t believe unless they saw with their own eyes that they could do what He said He would do. They asked Moses to send spies, and God told him to send them. God could have said no. But, having already told them what would happen, He allowed them to act as free-will beings.

Just because God allows something, it does not mean that it is blessed by Him. He certainly does not authorize our sins, but allows us to act according to our will. Just like us, though, they would suffer the consequences – which they did by not being allowed to enter that land, just across the river, for another 40 years,

“According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.” (Num. 14:34)

Here’s the twist, though. If it looks like they were penalized for disobedience, or for breaking one of His laws, they weren’t. They had broken laws before and not suffered this penalty (making of the golden calf – Ex. 32:1-6, etc…). What justified this penalty was their unbelief. They did not trust that what God had told them was something that could be unquestionably counted upon by them. They needed to see for themselves, or as Matthew Henry said, “They needed to light a candle to the sun.”

The judgement against them, though, was much more than having to wait 40 more years. See, those that rose up to send the spies (and rebelled after receiving a bad report from those spies), were not allowed to enter at all. In fact, God sentenced them, all age 20 and above, to immediate death. Only at the pleading of Moses did He stay that execution, but He established that they (20 and above) would not be allowed to enter Canaan. (So, these to whom Moses was giving this recap were either younger than 20 at the time of that rebellion, or not yet born.) All the people who were 20 or older had now died, in the natural course of life, except for Joshua and Caleb, who had denounced the bad report and urged the people to trust God, and Moses, who would die before they went into Canaan.

Forty years earlier, all the people had been on the doorstep of their promised land, and were days from entering it. But, on the threshold of His kingdom is not in His kingdom. Their unbelief kept them out. And, it will keep us out too. Matthew Henry puts it as such, “…distrust of His power and goodness flows from a disbelief of His Word.” At the end, it is too late to trust. At the end, the unbeliever will be like the one who knocks on the door, to whom Jesus will say,

“Truly I say to you, I do not know you.” (Matt. 25:12)

Disbelief, distrust in His Word, makes one an unbeliever. It is rebellion against that which is certain that will keep us from crossing the threshold, thinking the cost too great to trust Him. The cost of not trusting Him, though, is all the greater.

I hope that when I ring the doorbell, Jesus pushes the talk button and says, “Hey Don, I’ll be right there.”