“They Did Not Believe His
Word”
Psalm 106:24-27
24 Then they despised the
pleasant land; They did not believe His word,
25 But complained in their
tents, And did not heed the voice of the LORD.
26 Therefore He raised up His
hand in an oath against them, To overthrow them in the wilderness,
27 To overthrow their
descendants among the nations, And to scatter them in the lands.
In Psalm 106:12-23, we see the
dangerous decline of the people of Israel soon after they were delivered out of
their bondage in Egypt. It started with,
“they soon forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel” (v. 13).
Then notice in verse 21, the next thing they did was, “They forgot God their
Savior”. And after that now in verse
24, “Then they despised the pleasant land; They did not believe His word.” When we forget what the Lord has done for us,
we start leaving God out of our lives and then we even despised His promises of
blessings and refuse to believe His word of victory over our enemies and
problems.
Now in verses 24-27, we see the tragic failure they
experienced because of their unbelief. Israel had been out of Egypt about two
years when the Lord brought them to Kadesh Barnea on the border of the Promised
Land (Num. 13-14). Instead of trusting God to give them the land, the people
asked Moses to appoint a committee to survey the land. The truth is that God had
already done this for them according to Ezekiel 20:6, “On that day I raised
my hand in an oath to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land
that I had searched out for them, ‘flowing with milk and honey’, the glory of
all lands.”
But Israel did not need more facts; they needed more faith.
It was a "pleasant [beautiful] land" (v. 24; Jer. 3:19; 12:10) and a
"good land" (Deut. 8:7-9), but ten of the twelve spies reported that
Canaan was a dangerous land filled with giants, high-walled cities, and
formidable armies. The people reverted to their usual crisis mode of weeping, complaining,
and planning to return to Egypt (Num. 14:1-10). Sounds a lot like most
Christians today in our churches in America. How sad!
The Lord announced that the generation twenty years and
older would all die in the wilderness during the next thirty-eight years, and
then He sent a plague that killed the ten unbelieving spies. What should have
been a triumphant victory march became a tragic funeral march. That is what
happens when we want our own way and refuse to trust the Lord and obey Him.
May the
Lord give us grace, strength, and courage to believe Him and His Word so that
we don’t have to wander around in the wilderness during our time on earth!
God bless!
