Unbelief is not only a blind and senseless reasoner, but a dark and gloomy murmurer. It neither gets to the right side of things nor to the bright side of things. It is always in the dark, always in the wrong, simply because it shuts out God, and looks only at circumstances. They said, "Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people is greater and taller than we." But they were not greater than Jehovah. "The cities are great and walled up to heaven"—the gross exaggeration of unbelief!—"and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there."
Now, faith would say, "Well, what though the cities be walled up to heaven? our God is above them, for He is in heaven. What are great cities or lofty walls to Him who formed the universe, and sustains it by the word of His power? What are Anakim in the presence of the Almighty God? If the land were covered with walled cities from Dan to Beersheba, and if the giants were as numerous as the leaves of the forest, they would be as the chaff of the threshing floor before the One who has promised to give the land of Canaan to the seed of Abraham, His friend, for an everlasting possession."
But as Israel had not faith, as the inspired Apostle tells us in the third chapter of Hebrews, "They could not enter in because of unbelief." Here lay the great difficulty. The walled cities and the terrible Anakim would soon have been disposed of had. Israel only trusted God. He would have made very short work of all these. But ah! that deplorable unbelief! It ever stands in the way of our blessing. It hinders the outshining of the glory of God; it casts a dark shadow over our souls, and robs us of the privilege of proving the all-sufficiency of our God to meet our every need and remove our every difficulty.
Blessed be His name, He never fails a trusting heart. It is His delight to honor the very largest drafts that faith hands in at His exhaustless treasury. His assuring word to us ever is, "Be not afraid, only believe." And again, "According to your faith be it unto you." Precious, soul-stirring words! May we all realize more fully their living power and sweetness. We may rest assured of this, we can never go too far in counting on God; it would be a simple impossibility. Our grand mistake is that We do not draw more largely upon His infinite resources. "Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?"
Thus we can see why it was that Israel failed to see the glory of God on the occasion before us. They did not believe. The mission of the spies proved a complete failure. As it began, so it ended, in most deplorable unbelief. God was shut out. Difficulties filled their vision.
"They could not enter in." They could not see the glory of God. Hearken to the deeply affecting words of Moses. It does the heart good to read them. They touch the very deepest springs of our renewed being. "Then I said unto you, Dread not, neither be afraid of them. The LORD your God which goeth before you, He shall fight for you"—only think of God fighting for people! Think of Jehovah as a Man of war!—"He shall fight for you, according to all that He did for you in Egypt before your eyes; and in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how that the LORD thy God bare thee, as a man doth bear his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came into this place. Yet in this thing ye did not believe the LORD your God, who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to show you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day."
What moral force, what touching sweetness in this appeal! How clearly we can see here, as indeed on every page of the book, that Deuteronomy is not a barren repetition of facts, but a most powerful commentary on those facts. It is well that the reader should be thoroughly clear as to this. If, in the book of Exodus or Numbers, the inspired lawgiver records the actual facts of Israel's wilderness life, in the book of Deuteronomy he comments on those facts with a pathos that quite melts the heart. And here it is that the exquisite style of Jehovah's acts is pointed out and dwelt upon with such inimitable skill and delicacy. Who could con-
sent to give up the lovely figure set forth in the words, "as a man doth bear his son"? Here we have the style of the action. Could we do without this? Assuredly not. It is the style of an action that touches the heart because it is the style that so peculiarly expresses the heart. If the power of the hand, or the wisdom of the mind is seen in the substance of an action, the love of the heart comes out in the style. Even a little child can understand this, though he might not be able to explain it.