Good seed, but bad soil

In chapter 13 of the book of Numbers we have the familiar story of when the Israelites are in the desert, and Moses sends spies to scout the land of Canaan before entering and invading it.

Before coming to the desert, the Hebrews had lived for centuries in Egypt, part of that time as captives. They had been slaves, and in reality God had allowed them to dwell in Egypt only as they grew and became a large and viable people, and then brought them out and into the Promised Land.

The Hebrews grew numerically, and the time came when they had already reached a very large number — more than a million people — and God decided to bring them out of Egypt. And the Lord — we all remember the story — sent Moses as a deliverer and delivered the Hebrew people from the clutches of the Egyptians.

God's purpose was to bring them to Canaan, a land He had in store for them in another part of the Middle East. And there the Lord had prepared a great blessing for them, great provision, great abundance for his people. A land, he says, flowing with milk and honey — of great abundance.

God had decreed that the tribes, the nations that possessed those lands of Canaan, should be exterminated, they had to be eradicated from the land for their great wickedness, their great sin. They had become morally corrupted with human sacrifices, great sexual perversities, all kinds of corruption. And God had decreed that those nations had to be expelled from the land so that it would be given to the Hebrews.

We also know that Abraham, centuries before the Hebrews went to Egypt, when he was simply a nomadic man, had traveled those lands and had marked them for God and his future people.

Centuries ago, God already had the purpose of giving those lands to his people, and everything that came between Abraham's exploratory journey and the arrival of the Hebrews in Canaan was simply God's preparation, throughout history. God was setting the stage so that finally the Hebrews could reach the promised land.

And here we have then in Chapter 13 of Numbers that the Hebrews are already very close to entering Canaan. They have left Egypt and everything is ready for them to enter the land that God has destined for them. God already intends it to be so.

Let us observe this: the Hebrews are already on the very brink of entering the blessing, the inheritance that God has prepared for them since the foundation of the world.

In the future we will see that, despite God's good purposes, that first generation of Hebrews who left Egypt could not enter into the blessing that God had intended for them. They all died in the desert.

Because there was unbelief in them, they could not enter into God's rest. Only Caleb and Josué got the blessing, because they believed God. We want to be like Caleb and Josué. We want to be good soil, so that when the word of blessing falls on us, it finds an attitude of faith ready to receive it and allow it to grow.

I want you to grow in your faith, and become fertile ground for the seeds of blessing that God wants to plant in you.