The closing paragraph of our chapter teaches us another holy lesson—let us apply our hearts to it with all diligence. “And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel: and the people mourned greatly. And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, ‘Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned.’ And Moses said, ‘Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? but it shall not prosper. Go not up, for the Lord is not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies. For the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword: because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be with you.’ But they presumed to go up unto the hill-top: nevertheless the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the camp. Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites which dwelt in that hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah.” What a mass of contradictions is the human heart! When exhorted to go up at once, in the energy of faith, and possess the land, they shrank back and refused to go. They fell down and wept when they ought to have gone up and conquered. In vain did the faithful Caleb assure them that the Lord would bring them in and plant them in the mountain of His inheritance—that He was able to do it. They would not go up, because they could not trust God. But now, instead of bowing their heads and accepting the governmental dealings of God, they _would_ go up, presumptuously, trusting in themselves. But, ah! how vain to move without the living God in their midst! Without Him they could do nothing. And yet, when they might have had Him, they were afraid of the Amalekites; but now, they presume to face those very people without Him. “Lo, we be here, and _will_ go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised.” This was more easily said than done. An Israelite without God was no match for an Amalekite; and it is very remarkable that when Israel refused to act in the energy of faith—when they fell under the power of a God-dishonoring unbelief, Moses points out to them the very difficulties to which they themselves had referred. He tells them “_the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you_.” This is full of instruction. They, by their unbelief, had shut out God; and therefore it was obviously a question between Israel and the Canaanites. Faith would have made it a question between God and the Canaanites. This was precisely the way in which Joshua and Caleb viewed the matter when they said, “If the Lord delight in us, then He will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey. Only rebel not ye against the Lord, _neither fear ye the people of the land_; for they are bread for us: their defense is departed from them, and _the Lord is with us: fear them not_.”