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Numb. 10: 33 - 14: 45.
God's breach of promise.
A | 10: 33 - 11: 3.
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The ark goes before to search out a place of rest.
TABERAH.
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The people complain. Fire consumes them.
B | 11: 4-35.
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The mixed multitude. The people wept (11: 4).
KIRBOTH-
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Exaggerated remembrance of Egypt (11: 5).
HATTAAVAH.
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Its food: fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks,
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onions, garlick (11: 5).
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A month of days for eating flesh (11: 20).
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"Why came we out of Egypt?" (11: 20).
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Seventy elders appointed (11: 24).
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Moses resists temptation to be jealous (11: 29).
C | 12:
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Miriam and Aaron speak against Moses.
HZAEROTH.
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Moses' meekness emphasized.
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They object to Cushite (while hankering after Egypt).
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Miriam a leper for seven days.
B | 13: 1 -
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The ten rulers report. People wept (13: 31; 14: 1).
14: 38.
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Exaggerated remembrance of Canaan (13: 32, 33).
PARAN.
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Its food: grapes, pomegranates, figs,
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milk and honey (13: 23-27).
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Forty days' search ends in disaster (13: 25; 14: 34).
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"Would God we had died in Egypt!" (14: 2).
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Twelve rulers appointed (13: 4-16).
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Moses resists offer to become head of great nation (14: 12).
A | 14: 39-45.
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The ark departed not out of the camp.
KADESH.
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The people presume. The Amalekites discomfit them.
Quite a number of items that bear upon the teaching associated with Philippians and
our own calling call for attention. Let us briefly pass them in review.
The ark goes before to search out a place of rest. Can we not find help here?
Speaking to those who were His disciples, the Lord said: "I go to prepare a place for
you" (John 14: 2), and this blessed promise is precede by a statement of principle: "If it
were not so I would have told you." This is still true for the Church of the One Body. To
learn of the hope, we need to know where Christ is now, and if details and explanations
are not always given, surely the promise still holds good: "I would have told you." We
shall see presently that the sending of the spies was a contradiction of trust in this fact.
The mixed multitude, and the ten spies, are a type of the effect upon the believer of
failure to abide by such scriptures as:--
"Why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances" (Col. 2: 20).
"No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of his livelihood" (II Tim. 2: 4).
Ephesians says to us "Remember"; Philippians says to us "Forget". We are to
remember that we were hopeless aliens, but Israel remembered the onions and garlick
instead. We are to forget the things that are behind, and to set our mind on things above.