Yeah, chapter 15 is such a great chapter of hope and grace in the midst of judgment and failure.

If we just remind ourselves where chapter 14 ended, the very last verse says,

then the Amalekites and the Canaanites who lived in that hill country, came down and defeated them,

and pursued them even to Horma. So the previous chapter ends on this severe note of judgment and failure.

It's kind of leaving the reader to wonder.

Welcome to episode 47 of Bible Talk, a podcast brought to you by Nine Marks. Nine Marks

exists to help pastors build healthy churches. My name is Alex Dukin with me, are my two friends.

Sam Mahadi, Jim Hamilton. Now, guys, when we last left Israel, we were discussing, I believe it was

numbers 12 to 14, something like that, and they were in bad sorts. They were defeated in battle by the Amalekites and the Canaanites, and the Lord had departed

from them in judgment.

Is that right?

You got it.

That's right.

And why did the Lord depart from them?

What had happened again briefly?

Well, they went to spy out the land.

And aside from two spies, Joshua and Caleb, the other spies came back and said, we're not going to go into this land.

There's giants in the land.

We're going to be defeated.

Instead, we should return to Egypt because that's where we had food and that's where we were provided for.

That's where the good life was.

Yeah, there had been a kind of crescendo of good news in numbers for a while, and then it all came crashing down when the people not only grumbled against Moses and Aaron and Miriam, they wanted to kill them. I mean, I just

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