Someone once asked a Bible teacher, “What does the LORD want from me?” The teacher wisely answered, “What God wants most of all is to be believed.” Unbelief is the opposite of faith, which is the way of salvation (Romans 5:1). We know that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). But as we continue our study of Psalm 106, we are reminded of the time God was ready to give His people the promised land and they refused to believe His promises were trustworthy. They only saw the obstacles and figured that God’s Word must have been faulty. Because of their sin of unbelief, God sent the nation of Israel on a forty-year camping trip in the desert. None of that generation lived to see “the pleasant land” He wanted to give them (v 24-27). How often do we also miss the good that God has for us, simply because we will not trust His promises and act upon them? We fear that following Christ may somehow cause us to miss out on “the good life,” refusing to believe His promise that no good thing will be withheld from those who walk uprightly. He is a sun and a shield, offering joy and protection, but we must trust Him. During their wilderness wanderings, Israel provoked the LORD to anger by getting involved with the worship of Baal. It started when Israelite men engaged in sexual immorality with Moabite women. The moral compromise led to religious compromise, with the corruption becoming so severe that the LORD sent a plague among the people. When Phinehas, a grandson of Aaron the priest, ran a spear through one couple who was flaunting their immorality, the plague finally stopped. And God rewarded him with a lasting priesthood. The intervention of Phinehas “was counted to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.” As a second Moses, Phineas satisfied God’s righteous anger, a type or shadow of the perfect Mediator to come. Through His cross, Jesus absorbed the divine wrath in His own body so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have eternal life (v 28-31). The final representative sin of Israel’s wilderness period took place “at the waters of Meribah.” This was the time when even Moses sinned in frustration at the stubborn unbelief of the people. God told him to speak to a rock in order to bring forth water, but with “his spirit bitter,” Moses struck it instead. He also “spoke rashly,” taking some of God’s glory to himself and Aaron when he said, “Hear now, you rebels: shall we bring water for you out of this rock?” For this sin, though it may seem minor to us, Moses was also prohibited from entering the Promised Land (v 32-33). What God wants most of all is to be believed. For further meditation: