Deuteronomy 1:23-25a "The saying pleased me well: and I took twelve men of you, one of a tribe: They turned and went up into the mountain, and came to the valley of Eshcol, and searched it out. They took of the fruit of the land in their hands,…" Mark Twain reported in the 1860’s that it was absolutely barren and uninhabitable. He said, "We drove for miles and never saw a living creature, and we went up to Jerusalem, and it was just a heartache and despair, because there was nothing there." Now that was Mark Twain and he wouldn’t lie. But back when God showed it to Israel, it was a variable garden flowing indeed with milk and honey! Now reading on.
Deuteronomy 1:25-28a "And they took of the fruit of the land in their hands, and brought it down to us, and brought us word again, and said, It is a good land which the LORD our God did give us. Notwithstanding you would not go up, (remember Moses is rehearsing all this) but rebelled against the commandment of the LORD your God:" They rebelled! Saying: "And you murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hates us, he has brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us. Whither shall we go up? our brethren have discouraged our heart, saying, The people are greater and taller than we; the cities are great and walled up to heaven;…" Now that was a lie, but what would they rather believe, the truth or a lie? Well, the lie, and it’s the same way today. That’s what Paul means in Romans when he says, "All these things are written for our learning." See, we won’t find the plan of salvation back here, but we will find a pot of gold an a gold mine of learning. If we'll trust the Holy Spirit to reveal the hidden truths within the scriptures. And what’s the example? The world hasn’t changed one little bit. They’ll flock to the lie by the millions, NO billions but you hold up the truth and they’ll scorn it every time. They’ll scorn it, and many of us have experienced it. We try to bring truth into our Sunday School class, and they’ll just about kick it out the back door. Now, not all, but a lot of them will, and that’s exactly the way it’s always been.
So here’s Israel with the truth of God in front of them, but they would rather believe the lie of ten men. We mean it’s enough to make you weep, but that’s the human race the nature of the beast. Now, let’s just keep going on with verse 29.
Deuteronomy 1:29 "Then I said to you, Dread (fear) not, neither be afraid of them. The LORD your God which goes before you, he shall fight for you, according to all that he did for you in Egypt before your eyes;" Now for goodness sake, what happened in Egypt? Well, the plagues. And God put a line around Goshen, an invisible line that the flies didn’t penetrate, and with the exception of the first few plagues, none of them touched Israel. When the death angel flew over, with the blood on the door post, not a Jew lost his life (a figure of Christ's cross). Not a one! So Moses is saying, "The same God that brought you out of Egypt by opening the Red Sea - and if He could open the Red Sea, He could certainly drive out Canaanites. But they just couldn’t believe it, and isn’t it so sad? I mean it’s enough to just break our heart if we'll really get into it.
Then they stood there in abject unbelief and said, "No God, you don’t mean what you tell us. When you talk to us, you lie." That’s basically what they’re saying, see? Now verse 31.
Deuteronomy 1:31 "And in the wilderness, where you have seen how that the LORD you God bare you, as a man does bear his son, in all the way that you went, until you came into this place." What’s he talking about there? He provided water out of the rock, He provided the daily manna, their shoes and clothes didn’t wear out, and everything was provided by God. And with that we’ll have to stop with verse 32.
Deuteronomy 1:32 "Yet in this thing you did not believe the LORD your God," Now we have to remember that in these two chapters, especially three and four, we are almost going to be repeating it and repeating it to the place that we will almost despair of it but it is a rehearsal of Israel’s rejection at Kadesh-Barnea to go in and take the Promised Land because of their unbelief. So the whole thrust of these two chapters in Hebrews is the horror of unbelief.
We always like to point out that it was only just a few weeks previous to the Kadesh-Barnea experience that Israel stooped to the level of demanding that Aaron make a golden calf. You remember that? And in the worship of that golden calf they went down into the very abyss of moral degradation and followed in the steps of the mythological pagan worship of the Egyptians. And, of course, God dealt with it. And yet it is amazing that when they get up to the gateway of Canaan at Kadesh-Barnea and they turned away in unbelief, God doesn’t remind them of the horrible sin of the golden calf. He doesn’t remind them of any other horrible sins that they may have been guilty of, all He is distressed with is - they could not believe what He had told them. They did not simply TRUST Him.
We see, that is the whole problem with the human race. Even today. It’s not the various sins that they are committing. It’s not the drugs, the idolatry, the pagan worship, the alcohol or the immorality. It’s unbelief! Because you see, trust is the opposite of unbelief and faith does everything that squashes these things that we consider as wickedness and sin. So it boils down to the same premise. The human race’s great dilemma is simply – unbelief! That from after the flood is mans downfall because there is also a record of a very small few who were counted as righteous. These men believed God, in other words they took Him at His word and took action based on that word. They trusted Him with a wholehearted trust.
Now the Epistle of Hebrews. Again as we have been rehearsing over and over it is written, yes, to the Hebrews, but it’s not a Book like Romans as we've mentioned, because we do not find the plan of salvation laid out in this Epistle of Hebrews like we would in Romans or even Ephesians or Galatians. But nevertheless, just because it’s addressed to Hebrews does not mean that we ignore it or neglect it. Hebrews is also loaded with things that are still apropos for us in this Age of Grace. It reveals the New Covenant in a way unlike the others. For it reveals Christ and His ministry to all as the New Covenant LORD.
Now, in my own personal opinion (I can’t find that even the great theologians agree) this Epistle of Hebrews is not written to the dispersed Jews in general. For example, turn back with us to the little Book of James, which is right after Hebrews, so it will be real easy to find. James chapter 1 verse 1 and this points up what we've been driving at. Paul does not address this Epistle to the Hebrews in like manner as James does his letter, because look what James says.
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