“And the time we took to come from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the Valley of the Zered was thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war was consumed from the midst of the camp, just as the LORD had sworn to them.” (v.14)
If you travel to the Sinai Peninsula today, you find that from Kadesh Barnea to the Brook of Zered is only 50 miles, but it took the children of Israel 38 years to travel that distance. It wasn’t that they were lost; Moses knew how to get there. Rather it was their disobedience and the fact that they would not believe or trust the Lord, even though He was showing His power and faithfulness to them daily, that they wandered all those years.
As a result, God allowed an entire generation of Israelites to die because they would not follow Him to the place where He wanted to bless them. They wasted their lives going in circles and letting the sin of the surrounding peoples rub off on them and their children.
Today many believers still get stuck somewhere between Kedesh Barnea and Zered in their Christian life. Through disobedience and lack of faith, we can wander round and round in circles, never arriving at the place God wants for us. Better to "press towards the goal for the the prize of the upward call of God in Christ," than to wander or settle for less than God has for us because we get tired of the journey.
God also told His people here in chapter 2 not to meddle with certain people groups that they passed. He was warning them not to get entangled in the affairs of the world. And that’s true for us as well; if we ignore the warning of God and get too mixed up in the value system of this unbelieving world, we will find ourselves again going around and around the same mountain, wandering in circles because we ignored God’s will for our lives and attempted to do things our own way.
The Truth: "One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13–14).
