June 8, Evening

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come to pass unto thee or not." — Numbers 11:23 · KJV

God had made a positive promise to Moses that for the space of a whole month He would feed the vast host in the wilderness with meat. Moses, overtaken by a fit of unbelief, looks at the outward means and is at a loss to know how the promise can be fulfilled. He looked to the creature instead of the Creator. But does the Creator expect the creature to fulfill His promise for Him? No; He who makes the promise always fulfills it by His own unaided omnipotence. If He speaks, it is done—done by Himself. His promises do not depend for their fulfillment on the cooperation of man's puny strength. We can see at once the mistake Moses made—and yet how commonly we do the same! God has promised to supply our needs, and we look to the creature to do what God has promised to do; then, because we see that the creature is weak and feeble, we indulge in unbelief. Why look in that direction at all? Will you look to the north pole to gather fruit ripened in the sun? Truly, you would act no more foolishly there than when you look to the weak for strength and to the creature to do the Creator's work. Let us, then, put the question on the right footing. The ground of faith is not the sufficiency of the visible means for the performance of the promise, but the all-sufficiency of the invisible God, who will most surely do as He has said. If, after clearly seeing that the burden lies with the Lord and not with the creature, we still dare to indulge mistrust, the question of God comes home mightily to us: "Is the Lord's hand waxed short?" And may it happen, too, in His mercy, that with the question there flashes upon our souls that blessed declaration, "Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come to pass unto thee or not."