DEEPER IN UNBELIEF
I. MOSES IN HIS REPLY SNOWS AN IMPERFECT APPRECIATION OF WHAT GOD HAD SAID.
1. As to God's purpose. He had spoken in holy anger, promising flesh, but threatening retribution along with it. The threat is quite as emphatic,s the promise, but somehow Moses does not heed. At Sinai, when the people made the golden calf, he was so oppressed with the sense of their great sin, and so solicitous for their pardon, as to beg if the pardon were not granted that he might himself be blotted out of God's book. Where was this anxiety now? His great concern is, not how God may be propitiated and the people spared, but how the people may be propitiated and he himself spared. Contrast Moses here with Christ at all times. Think of the Son's never-failing remembrance of the Father's glory. The Son saw and appreciated all things the Father showed him; hence the confidence with which we look to Christ for a revelation of all God's purposes concerning us, so far as it is right for us to know them. Jesus could ever go out and declare in fitting words and with proper emphasis all the will of God, for he had a perfect appreciation of that will himself. But how was Moses to go out and speak properly to the people when he himself had only half-heard, as it were, what God had said to him? Doubtless he repeated the message of God in the very same words; but one fears that while he made it quite clear to the people they should have flesh, he made it not quite so clear that God was sending it in anger. Let us ever get to the spirit of God's messages to us; never content till their fullness of meaning has passed into our heart, so that something like the fullness of service may pass out of it again.
2. As to God's power. History repeats itself. Unbelief, natural ignorance of God, slowness of heart to take in what he has spoken,—these repeat themselves in their manner of receiving God's promises. Moses talks here as the disciples did at the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:15). And yet, after all his wonderful experiences, there should not have been the slightest difficulty in receiving what God had said. Of all possible convictions, this should have rested on solid ground—that what God had promised he assuredly had power to perform. Is not this one of the great differences between God and men? Men promise and forget, or fall short; God is always better than his promises, for they have to be spoken in defective human words, while they are fulfilled in complete Divine actions.
II. THE CAUSE OF THIS IMPERFECT APPRECIATION. Can we not detect, and especially in the light of his subsequent language, something like doubt, something like leaning upon creature supports instead of God, in the invitation which he gave to Hobab? If this be so, we wonder little at his language of bitter complaint and despair (Numbers 11:11-15); and we wonder less that he so soon showed himself out of sympathy with the Divine purposes. The eye of faith had become dim; self-preservation, escape from an intolerable burden, occupied his thoughts. Was it astonishing that, unbelief having found a temporary lodgment in the heart of the leader, the followers should have failed to take in all the purport of God's message? Learn from this how carefully spirituality of mind needs to be guarded. We must not be seduced into leaning upon men instead of trusting in God. Men may solace and encourage us as companions; they are never to take the place of Providence. So neither are we to be terrified and paralyzed by sudden and stupendous revelations of human wickedness. In the midst of them all we hear the one voice speaking, "Be still, and know that I am God."—Y.