This Wicked Congregation

Reading in Numbers 14.35, this morning, where God refers to the generation of the Exodus as This Wicked Congregation. He could not have chosen harsher words. The remarkable thing is that this generation saw God move in power like perhaps no generation has seen before or since, except maybe the generation of Christ. They witnessed the ten plagues; they lived through the release from Egypt; they walked across the Red Sea between two walls of water; they experienced the miracle of manna; they saw water come from a rock in the desert, and yet when it came to take the land God had given them, they shrank back, to their own destruction; thus earning the name, This Wicked Congregation.

What to take from this? First Hebrews uses them as an object lesson on (lack of) faith. The writer says, "don't shrink back from following the Lord like his own people shrank back; they did not enter God's rest because of their unbelief. Don't miss out on God's rest because of your own unbelief." Second, a lesson for us is to trust God's promises despite appearances. This Wicked Congregation became distracted by appearances and refused to trust in what God had promised.