The High Treason of Ingratitude Text: Psalm 106:24-27
Introduction: The Sin Behind the Sins
Psalm 106 is a long and sorrowful catalogue of Israel's covenant infidelity. It is a national confession, a history lesson in high rebellion. The psalm begins with a call to praise God for His enduring mercy, and then immediately pivots to a detailed list of all the ways Israel did not deserve that mercy. They sinned with their fathers, committed iniquity, and acted wickedly. They forgot His works, lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and provoked Him at every turn.
But in the verses before us today, the psalmist drills down to the very heart of their rebellion. He exposes the root from which all their other bitter fruits grew. The specific incident in view is the report of the twelve spies at Kadesh Barnea, recorded in Numbers 13 and 14. This was the moment of truth. After all the miracles of Egypt, the Red Sea parting, the manna from Heaven, this was the final exam. And they failed spectacularly. But we must not read this as detached historians, clucking our tongues at those stiff-necked Israelites. We must read this with the understanding that our hearts are cut from the same crooked timber. The sin behind their sin is the perennial temptation for all of God's people in every age.
What is that foundational sin? It is the sin of despising God's good gifts because of unbelief. It is the sin of grumbling against the Giver because you do not trust His word. This is not a minor infraction. This is high treason against the King of Heaven. It is to look upon a gift, a glorious gift, a "pleasant land," and to call it contemptible. It is to hear a promise from the mouth of God Himself and to call Him a liar. This is the very logic of the serpent in the Garden, and it is a poison that, once ingested, works its way through the entire body politic, resulting in judgment, death, and exile.
We live in an age that has perfected the art of despising pleasant lands. We have been given the immense blessings of Christian civilization, the heritage of liberty, the prosperity of the gospel, and like spoiled children, we grumble in our tents. We despise our inheritance. We do not believe His Word. And so we must pay careful attention to this passage, because the consequences of this sin are not trivial. God takes an oath against it. And when God swears an oath, reality rearranges itself accordingly.
The Text
Then they despised the pleasant land;
They did not believe in His word,
But grumbled in their tents;
They did not listen to the voice of Yahweh.
So He swore to them
To make them fall in the wilderness,
And to make their seed fall among the nations
And to scatter them in the lands.
(Psalm 106:24-27 LSB)
Despising the Gift (v. 24a)
The indictment begins with a shocking act of contempt.
"Then they despised the pleasant land..." (Psalm 106:24a)
The land of Canaan was God's good gift. It was described as a land "flowing with milk and honey," a tangible picture of God's generous favor. It was the inheritance He had promised to Abraham hundreds of years before. It was the goal of their entire exodus. And when they finally stood on its doorstep, ten of the twelve spies came back with a report that caused the people to despise it. They did not despise it because it was a bad land. The spies admitted it was fruitful. They despised it because of the challenges it presented. "The people who live in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large" (Numbers 13:28).
Their contempt for the gift was a direct result of their evaluation of the cost. They looked at the giants and the high walls, and they concluded that the gift was not worth the fight. This is a profound spiritual diagnostic. We despise God's gifts, not because they are not good, but because we are cowards. We despise the gift of marriage when it requires us to die to ourselves. We despise the gift of children when they require sacrifice and discipline. We despise the gift of the church when it requires us to bear with one another's faults. We despise the pleasant land of sanctification because there are giants of indwelling sin that must be fought.
To despise God's gift is to insult the Giver. It is to say that His taste is poor, His judgment is flawed, and His generosity is actually a trap. It is to look at the pearl of great price and call it a worthless bead because we are unwilling to sell all that we have to obtain it. This is the very heart of ingratitude. It is a profound failure to see the world as God sees it and to value what He values.
The Unbelief Behind the Contempt (v. 24b-25)
The psalmist immediately identifies the source of this despicable attitude: raw unbelief, which manifested itself in audible grumbling.
"They did not believe in His word, But grumbled in their tents; They did not listen to the voice of Yahweh." (Psalm 106:24b-25 LSB)
Here is the chain of spiritual rebellion, laid bare. It begins with the ear. They did not "listen to the voice of Yahweh." God had spoken clearly. He had promised them this land. He had promised to go before them and fight for them. His voice was the voice of absolute, sovereign promise. But they listened to another voice, the voice of the ten faithless spies, which was simply the echo of their own fearful hearts.
Because they did not listen to God's voice, they "did not believe in His word." Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Unbelief comes by not hearing, by tuning God out and turning up the volume on the world, the flesh, and the devil. They weighed God's promise against the sight of the Anakim, and their senses won. They walked by sight, not by faith. To not believe God's word is to call Him a liar. It is to say that His character is untrustworthy and His power is insufficient. It is the primal sin of the Garden, questioning God's veracity: "Did God really say?"
And what is the practical outworking of this unbelief? They "grumbled in their tents." Unbelief is never silent for long. It is a sour, fermenting thing in the heart, and it must find a vent. Grumbling is the native language of a faithless heart. It is the sound of discontent. The Israelites were not just whispering; they were weeping, wailing all night, murmuring against Moses and Aaron, and wishing they had died in Egypt (Numbers 14:1-2). This was not constructive criticism. This was a full-throated, corporate rejection of God's leadership and provision. Grumbling is verbalized contempt for God's providence. It is to accuse God of mismanagement. It is to say, "If I were in charge, things would be much better." And it is utterly inconsistent with worship. As the apostle Paul warns, we are to do all things without grumbling or disputing (Philippians 2:14).
The Divine Oath of Judgment (v. 26-27)
This act of high treason could not go unanswered. God's response was not simply anger; it was a solemn, unalterable oath.
"So He swore to them To make them fall in the wilderness, And to make their seed fall among the nations And to scatter them in the lands." (Psalm 106:26-27 LSB)
God "swore to them." Literally, He lifted His hand, a gesture of taking a solemn oath. An oath is a sacred thing, an act of worship where God is called as a witness. When God Himself takes an oath, He is swearing by His own immutable character. There is no higher court of appeal. This is divine, settled reality. The author of Hebrews reminds us of the gravity of this moment: "For with whom was He angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient?" (Hebrews 3:17-18).
The judgment had two parts. First, for that generation, their unbelief would have a direct and terrible consequence. They would "fall in the wilderness." They wanted to die in the wilderness, and God granted their request. Their carcasses littered the desert for forty years. They would not see the pleasant land they had despised. God took them at their grumbling word. This is a terrifying principle. God often judges us by giving us what our sinful hearts demand.
Second, the judgment had a long tail. He swore "to make their seed fall among the nations And to scatter them in the lands." This looks beyond the immediate generation to the long and tragic history of Israel's future exiles, to the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. The seeds of the exile were sown right here, at the border of the promised land. Their rejection of God's gift of a homeland would ultimately result in their descendants being violently thrown out of that land. This is the principle of covenantal consequences. Sins are not isolated acts; they set trajectories for generations. The unbelief of the fathers soured the grapes for the children.
Conclusion: Entering His Rest
This historical account is not in Scripture to make us feel superior to the Israelites. It is there as a solemn warning for us. The author of Hebrews applies this very incident directly to the Christian church. He warns us, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God" (Hebrews 3:12).
The pleasant land for us is not a geographical location; it is the entire life of salvation in Jesus Christ. It is the "rest" that we are called to enter by faith. This rest is our justification, our peace with God. It is our sanctification, the process of conquering the land and driving out the giants of sin. It is our glorification, the final inheritance in the New Jerusalem.
And the temptation for us is exactly the same as it was for Israel. We look at the Christian life, and we see the giants. We see the cost of discipleship, the call to suffer, the command to mortify sin, the difficulty of loving our enemies. And an evil, unbelieving heart begins to whisper. "Is it really worth it? Is this pleasant land really that pleasant? Wouldn't it be easier to go back to Egypt, back to the comfortable slavery of our old sins?"
When that voice of the faithless spy begins to speak, it must be silenced. We must listen to the voice of Yahweh. We must believe His Word. We have a better promise. We have a better High Priest, Jesus, who has already gone before us and conquered our ultimate enemies: sin, death, and the devil. The report from our Joshua is not mixed. It is a declaration of total victory. He has secured the pleasant land for us.
Therefore, let us not grumble in our tents. Let us not despise the gift. Let us fear lest, a promise being left us of entering His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.