Confession Without Submission? (Numbers 14:40)

And they rose up early in the morning, and got them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned.

Numbers 14:40

The Lord had told Moses in Numbers 13 to send out spies to search out the land of Canaan. Having done as he was told, twelve spies were sent to search out the land. When they brought the report back to Moses and the people, ten of the twelve spies said that although it was a land of milk and honey, they would never be able to take it from the people of the land. Only two spies said that God was able to give the Israelites the land that He had promised.

Because of Israel’s murmuring and doubting, the Lord told Moses in Numbers 14 that the people would go back into the wilderness and be punished for their unbelief for forty years. Having been told this, verse 40 says the next morning, a part of the people got up early, went to the top of the mountain overlooking the land, and said that they were there and have decided to take the land that was promised to them by the Lord, “for we have sinned”.

These four words, on paper, look commendable, for the people had sinned by rebelling against the Lord through their unbelief. When we, like Israel, know what the Lord has required of us and don’t do it, we should confess our sin. Yet, a true confession must be followed by submission to the Lord’s way. In verses 28-39, the Lord reveals what He is going to do. He says the next forty years, they will be wandering in the wilderness and will die there because of their sin. They should not have gone up on that mountain and told Moses they had come to do what they should have done yesterday. The Lord had spoken, and still they are rebelling in thinking that in spite of what He said concerning them, they could change His mind.

Confessions without submission unto the Lord will not prevent

destruction. If we are unwilling to submit ourselves

unto the Lord, our confessions are useless.