These are the journeys of the children of Israel, which went forth out of the land of Egypt with their armies under the hand of Moses and Aaron. … And they pitched by Jordan, from Bethjeshimoth even unto Abelshittim in the plains of Moab. (Numbers 33:1, 49).

Chapter 33 of Numbers lists the starting and stopping points of the Israelites on their journey from Egypt to the plains of Moab. Actually it doesn’t list them all — Exodus provides a few more. Altogether, there were almost fifty. It doesn’t matter, there’s quite enough in this chapter to make the point. There was a lot of wandering. It’s not really clear what the route was. A straight course might have been two hundred and fifty miles. The Israelites might have gone twice as far, and they certainly went around at least one circle. Even so, five hundred miles in forty years was slow going! So what are we to make of all this? Three warnings, perhaps.

I’m sure you know the story. If not, you can read all about it in Numbers 13 and 14. The Lord brought the people to the Wilderness of Paran in only two years. Then, instead of entering in to Canaan they rebelled and entered into thirty eight years of futility.

The point is pretty obvious isn’t it? If God makes it clear what he expects you to do, and makes it possible for you to do it, you’d better get on with it. If you don’t, you might spend a long time wandering aimlessly around not getting anything useful done! Let that be the first warning. 

There’s more to it than just a simple case of disobedience, however. Why did the Israelites disobey? It seems that the news brought back by the party sent to explore Canaan — at least as presented by ten of them — was sufficient to outweigh their trust in God. Numbers 13:1-2 suggests that God instructed the Israelites to send out the twelve spies, but Deuteronomy 1:22 puts it in a different light — “And ye came near unto me every one of you, and said, We will send men before us, and they shall search us out the land, and bring us word again by what way we must go up, and into what cities we shall come.” Perhaps that can be our second warning — If God tells you to do something, it’s better to get on and do it, instead of checking it out to see if He knows what He’s doing. It seems that the Israelites had a faith deficit!

Surely the events of the Exodus should have been sufficient to build their faith? Perhaps we should not forget that they and their forefathers had been four hundred years in Egypt. I am inclined to think that their “faith” might have been very superficial, and polluted by their exposure to foreign God’s. Their behavior with the daughters of Moab (Numbers 25:1) might add weight to such an idea. And there is our third warning. We need to be very careful of the influences that might affect our faith. There is no doubt that we can be exposed to influences just as damaging as those that afflicted the Israelites!

So there we are — three lessons from thirty eight years of aimless wandering. Let’s try to profit from the Israelite’s experience!