Listen:  they begin to complain, to criticise.  God patiently says nothing but provides for their needs.  But Moses has not yet reached the high level that later experiences brought him.  He is standing to them for God.  Yet he is very un-Godlike.  Angrily, with hot word, he smites the rock.  Once smiting was God’s plan; then the quiet word ever after.  How many a time has the once smitten Rock been smitten again in our impatience! The waters came!  Just like God!  They were cared for, though He had been disobeyed and dishonoured.  And there are the crowds eagerly drinking with faces down; and up yonder in the shadow standeth God grieved, deeply grieved at the false picture this immature people had gotten of Him that day through Moses.  Moses’ hot tongue and flashing eye made a deep moral scar upon their minds, that it would take years to remove.  Something must be done for the people’s sake.  Moses disobeyed God.  He dishonoured God.  Yet the waters came, for they needed water.  And God is ever tender-hearted.  But they must be taught the need of obedience, the evil of disobedience.  Taught it so they never could forget.

Moses was a leader.  Leaders may not do as common men.  And leaders may not be dealt with as followers.  They stand too high in the air.  They affect too many lives.  So God said to Moses:—­“You will not go into Canaan.  You may lead them clear up to the line; you may even see over, but you may not go in.”  That hurt Moses deep down.  It hurt God deeper down, in a heart more sensitive to hurt than was Moses’.  Without doubt it was said with reluctance, for Moses’ sake.  But it was said, plainly, irrevocably, for their sakes.  Moses’ petition was for a reversal of this decision.  Once and again he asked.  He wanted to see that wondrous land of God’s choosing.  He felt the sting too.  The edge of the knife of discipline cut keenly, and the blood spurted.  But God said:—­“Do not speak to Me again of this.”  The decision was not to be changed.  For Moses’ sake only He would gladly have changed, judging by His previous conduct.  For the sake of the nation—­aye, for the sake of the prodigal world to be won back through this nation, the petition might not be granted.  That ungranted petition taught those millions the lesson of obedience, of reverence, as no command, or smoking mount, or drowning Egyptians had done.  It became common talk in every tent, by every camp-fire of the tented nation.  “Moses disobeyed,—­he failed to reverence God;—­he cannot enter Canaan.”—­With hushed tones, and awed hearts and moved, strangely moved faces it passed from lip to lip.  Some of the women and children wept.  They all loved Moses.  They revered him.  How gladly they would have had him go over.  The double-sided truth—­obedience—­disobedience—­kept burning in through the years.