"You have not believed Me"
Biblical Thoughts
Consider Numbers 20:8-13
8 "Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink."
9 So Moses took the rod from before the LORD, just as He had commanded him;
10 and Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly before the rock. And he said to them, "Listen now, you rebels; shall we bring forth water for you out of this rock?"
11 Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came forth abundantly, and the congregation and their beasts drank.
12 But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them."
13 Those were the waters of Meribah, because the sons of Israel contended with the LORD, and He proved Himself holy among them.
There's been no end of discussion as to exactly what the sin of Moses and Aaron was here. Was it because they didn't speak to the rock, but struck it as God had previously commanded? Was it that they took credit for summoning the water from the rock? Was it that they offered a strong, arrogant rebuke to the people? The debate over these points has been never-ending, but none of these are the most important point in this verse.
Whatever specifically Moses and Aaron did wrong, we can correctly describe it as disobedience. God had commanded them to do one thing, and they did something else. But look how God characterizes their disobedience: Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel...
Did you catch that? They had not believed God and they had not treated Him as holy. How? They disobeyed Him!
God gave a command. They knew what His command was. However, Moses and Aaron believed that they knew better than Jehovah! They believed they had a better way to address the problem of the people. In doing so, God said they did not believe Him.They did not respect or revere Him as the Holy God!
The lesson here? Disobedience is disbelief. Disobedience is saying that God is not holy. When we believe we know better than the God who made us all, we disobey, disbelieve, and mistreat our Creator.
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