Deuteronomy 1

CHAPTER 1THEME: Israel’s failure at Kadesh-barneaMoses is reviewing the journeys of the children of Israel and interpreting a great deal of what had taken place. All of that generation is now dead, with the exception of Caleb and Joshua. He is preparing the new generation to enter the land, and rehearsing the experiences of their fathers so that they might profit from them rather than repeat the failures.

Deuteronomy 1:1

In that same area I stood on Mount NeboI have pictures which I made thereand I actually could see the city of Jerusalem from that elevation. What I saw did not look like a promised land at all. It looked like a total waste, and this reveals what has happened to that land down through the centuries. When Moses looked at it, I think he was seeing a green and a good land. Today it is a desert. It looks like the desert area of California and Arizona.

Deuteronomy 1:2

Mount Sinai is in Horeb. It was a journey of eleven days from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea, which was the entrance point into the Land of Promise. Israel spent thirty-eight years wandering when it should have taken them only eleven days to get into the land. Why? Because of their unbelief. Their marching was turned to wandering, and they became just strangers and pilgrims in that desert. Because they were slow to learn, they wandered for thirty-eight years in that great and terrible wilderness. We also are slow to learn, friends. I think we would characterize ourselves by saying we have low spiritual I.Q.’s. It seems as if the Lord must burn down the school in order to get some of us out of it!

Deuteronomy 1:3

At the close of their time of wandering, Moses delivers his first oration to them. Obviously his words were first given orally and then were written down later. The critics formerly found fault with this, claiming there was no writing at the time of Moses. Of course, now it has been shown that writing was in existence long before Moses. Moses was the spokesman who gave the oration, yet he makes it clear that this was given him by the Lord. In reviewing their history and in going over their journeys in detail, Moses mentions his great mistake.

Deuteronomy 1:9

We find the account of this back in Exodus 18. Moses became provoked, burdened, and frustrated. He thought he alone carried the burden of Israel. The Lord permitted him to appoint elders; so a committee of seventy was appointed. This later became the Sanhedrin, the organization which committed Christ to death many years later. Moses, in his frustration, lost sight of the fact that God was bearing Israel. Moses was God’s appointed leader; he didn’t need a board or a committee. Moses made a real mistake and he mentions it here. Very few people will mention their mistakes, but Moses does. He says it sounded so good, but it didn’t work and it caused a great deal of difficulty. This same thing can happen in a church. I think one of the worst things that can happen to a church is a board that will not follow the pastor. In that kind of conflict, either the board should go or the pastor should go. If the pastor is standing for the Word of God and is preaching it, then it is the duty of the board to support him. If they don’t like the way the pastor parts his hair, they should get out. Unfortunately, usually they stay on, split the church, and try to crucify the preacher. Do you want to know Moses’ estimation of the wilderness they went through?

Deuteronomy 1:12

We find the account of this back in Exodus 18. Moses became provoked, burdened, and frustrated. He thought he alone carried the burden of Israel. The Lord permitted him to appoint elders; so a committee of seventy was appointed. This later became the Sanhedrin, the organization which committed Christ to death many years later. Moses, in his frustration, lost sight of the fact that God was bearing Israel. Moses was God’s appointed leader; he didn’t need a board or a committee. Moses made a real mistake and he mentions it here. Very few people will mention their mistakes, but Moses does. He says it sounded so good, but it didn’t work and it caused a great deal of difficulty. This same thing can happen in a church. I think one of the worst things that can happen to a church is a board that will not follow the pastor. In that kind of conflict, either the board should go or the pastor should go. If the pastor is standing for the Word of God and is preaching it, then it is the duty of the board to support him. If they don’t like the way the pastor parts his hair, they should get out. Unfortunately, usually they stay on, split the church, and try to crucify the preacher. Do you want to know Moses’ estimation of the wilderness they went through?

Deuteronomy 1:19

I’ll take his word for it, because he was there. It was both great and terrible. The wilderness march was no nice daisy trail which they were following. The second mistake which Moses records was the decision at Kadesh-barnea. This was a mistake of the people. Again, it was the problem of having a board or committee.

Deuteronomy 1:20

Here we go again! We must have a board or a committee to go in and search out the land. God had already searched it out! God had said it was a land of milk and honey. Sure, there were giants in the land, but God had said that He would take care of them. The people wanted a board; Moses wanted a board. Look what happened. This was the reason they were turned back into that awful wilderness. The basic problem is unbelief. God had said it was a good land. The spies looked it over and agreed that it was a good land. But they said there were giants in the land. God had said that He would take care of the giants because He would enable Israel. They did not believe God. Many times the Christian today finds himself confronted by giants in his life. I’m sure that as a child of God you have found yourself in giant country. Believe me, it is difficult to know how to handle a giant when you are just a pygmy yourself. God has given us the same promise that He is able to handle the giants for us. It is wonderful to know that. It is not our circumstances on the outside which are our real problem. It is the circumstance on the inside of us, the unbelief in our hearts, which is the cause of our problems. Now God makes it clear to them that the whole generation which came up to Kadesh-barnea and turned back in unbelief will die. Only two men of the old generation will be permitted to enter the land. They are Joshua and Caleb.

Deuteronomy 1:34

Caleb and Joshua were different from the others. They were spies who believed God and had brought back an accurate report, a good report. The fact of the matter is that Caleb will lay hold of the land that he wanted. We will find later, in the Book of Joshua, that he was a remarkable man. He walked up and down the land, and he claimed the mountain where the giants lived! “This is what I want,” he said, and God gave it to him for an inheritance. By the way, what do you want of God, friend? Are you a parent? Are you a young person starting out in life? What do you want of God? Let me say this: If you think you can sit on the sidelines and get it, you are wrong. There are a great many folk who think they should just sit and pray and pray and pray.

I certainly agree that we must pray and live in fellowship with Him, but, my friend, you are going to have to go out there and take it. Did you know that? God said He would give to Caleb the land that he had trodden upon. A great many of us today are not being blessed because we are spending too much time sitting down. That is the wrong place to be if we want the blessing of God. We are to walk.

There is a great deal said in the Scriptures about the Christian’s walk and very little said about the Christian’s sitting down. We need to lay hold of God’s promises. Joshua is the man who is to become the leader to succeed Moses. Why was he chosen? Well, he is a man of experience, and he is a man who wholly followed God. He and Caleb brought back the good report because they believed God. Faith was the essential thing. They believed God and they were willing to step out in faith. Friend, you don’t believe God by just sitting down and claiming great blessings. You have to step out in faith for Him.

Deuteronomy 1:39

There are some very important things here that we don’t want to miss. First, the age of responsibility is older than we may think it is. Some of these folk who entered the land were teenagers at Kadesh-barnea. We know from Num_14:29 that God set the age at 20, and all from twenty years old and upward died in the wilderness. Something else to note here is that children who die in infancy are saved. How do I know? God did not hold responsible those young folk who had not reached the age of accountability when their elders refused to enter the land. He permitted them to enter the land. You see, the older generation had said they did not want to enter the land because they feared for their children’s safetythey were thinking of their children. God made it very clear to them that this was not their real reason.

They were insulting God; they were really saying that God didn’t care for their children. In effect God says to them, “I do care for your children, and those little ones whom you thought would be in such danger are the very ones who are going to enter the land.” Now it is that generation of young folk who have come to the border of the land and are ready to enter the Promised Land. It is to them that Moses is speaking.

Deuteronomy 1:40

After the children of Israel refuse to go into the land at Kadesh-barnea, they face a terrible dilemma. They face the wilderness if they turn backremember that Moses called it “that great and terrible wilderness.” Realizing they have sinned, and realizing they face the wilderness if they turn back, they decide to go into the Promised Land after all.

Deuteronomy 1:42

May I say to you that such a type of fighting is no good. Do you know why? Because they were out of the will of God. The reason they were willing to fight at this time was not because they believed God but because they were afraid. Their motivation was fear, not faith! They were motivated by fear, not by faith in God.

Deuteronomy 1:43

This was not faith, you see. If they had gone up at the beginning because they believed God, that would have been one thing. This now is acting presumptuously and is altogether different. I think there is a very fine distinction between faith and presumption. In the course of my ministry, I have counseled with many people. One man told me, “You know, Brother McGee, I believed God and I thought He would bless my business. I went into business believing He would bless me, but He didn’t. In fact, I went bankrupt.” Well, friend, was it faith in God or was it presumption? When we got down to the nitty-gritty, I learned that this man had heard another business man speak at a banquet.

His message had been that he had taken as his motto, “God is my partner,” and he had been very successful in business. He told about how he had taken God into partnership with him, and God had blessed and prospered him. Obviously, God led that man; I’m confident of that. However, I believe that my friend went home and presumptuously said, “Well, if God will make me prosperous, I’ll take Him as my partner in business.” God didn’t lead him, you see. Believe me, friends, there is a difference between faith and presumption.

Deuteronomy 1:44

Notice this. They came before the Lord and they shed crocodile tears. They wept, and they repented. Yes, but what kind of a repentance was this? Listen to Paul in 2Co_7:10: “For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” Did they weep because they disobeyed God? No. They wept because the Amorites had chased them. Their defeat was the reason for their weeping. You know of incidents when a thief is caught, and he begins to shed tears and repent. But wait a minute. What kind of tears are they? Does he weep because he is a thief? No, he weeps because he has been caught. There is a world of difference in that. This is exactly the case with these people. As a result of all this, they apparently spent a lot of time at Kadesh.