Numbers 33

Have you ever had to move a lot? I only moved 3 times in my life and two of those times have been since I have been married. I know some people that have moved more than 5 times, some even 8, and one person has moved 10 times. That is so much work to move. It takes so much time and energy to go from one place with all your possessions and then move to another.  I will be honest, I hate moving. Each time we move, my wife and I think back about some our memories at each place. We remember the good times as well as the bad. In this chapter Moses is remembering Israel’s steps from the time they left Egypt to the place where they are now. Israel has had to move several times and in each place there are significant events. Some were good as God showed his provision some were not so good as Israel rebelled against God. 

Reflection: 

Reflection is a good thing for us as Christians to do.  Moses did this just to reflect on where their journey had taken them. Maybe there was some in the congregation that remembered some of those events. Some heard from their fathers about God taking them out of the land of Egypt. We should reflect not to dwell on the past but to show where God has taken us. How we have fallen and how God has redeemed. We should reflect to grow closer to God and cling to Him even more. 

Now Israel is Getting Ready to Move into the Land:

God has them ready and has given them a command to drive out the inhabitants of the land. There is a couple of reasons for this. One, this was the land that God had promised them and Abraham occupied it before. Second, God did not want the idols of the people to influence and be a stumbling block for the people. In verses 55 and 56 he explains that if they do not drive out the inhabitants in the land, they will be as barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in different ways. 

We may not have to go into a land and drive people out but we should have the same motive with sin in our life. We should drive it out like Hebrews 12:1 says. We should get rid of it. If not then sin will become a problem and certain areas that we have not killed sin will become barbs to our eyes and thorns to our sides. We should drive sin out and live in the Promise we have in Jesus Christ.  Not throwing off sin that we have in our life will be our downfall. As we see Israel now with this warning keep it in the back of your mind because we will see how true this will be for them. 

Numbers 32

 In our study of Numbers we see that the tribes of Reuben and Gad were asking Moses and the leaders if they could not cross the Jordan but stay in Gilead because the land was good for its flocks. Moses asked if they stay there will they still help in the conquest of the land.  If these two tribes did not help in war, their numbers for battle would be affected. Moses asked what their true motives were which they explained that they would help when called for war. They would still be part of the people. 

The warning

In verse 23 we see the warning from God. But if you will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the Lord, and be sure your sin will find you out. These were the words of Moses to the leaders of the tribes. They needed to make sure that they did not abandon the whole community for their own efforts. They could be separate but needed to be connected to the community.We as Christians sometimes get settled where we are in the world. We may think we found the right place and become comfortable. We may think were we are spiritually is the best place and not want to cross the river and do more work. What these tribes did was not necessarily bad but we will see future events taking place which does not help them. When you separate yourself from the family of God you will shortly fall. It is so important for us to be in fellowship with other believers because we should be building each other and keeping each other accountable. The goal was for Israel to fight for the promise land together and we are to fight in this race together for the Promise that we have in Christ Jesus. 

Numbers 26

Have you ever had something that you were looking forward to? Like right now, I am looking forward to our surfing and camping trip coming up this weekend. I love this trip because we have a chance to be right there and enjoy God’s creation, the ocean and the beach. It is something that I always look forward to every year. In this chapter God told Moses to take another census but this time it would be the new generation. This was the group of young people that were too young to be part of the generation that could not enter into the promise land. Remember, the old generation were the ones that did not have faith in God to enter into the promise land. In Numbers 13 we read about  the spies reporting back the news about the land and that the people of Israel were full of fear and that they could not fight and win against the enemy. This generation was a new generation. The only people from the older generation that are allowed in the promise land are Caleb and Joshua. The new generation will be allowed in the promise land and we see that the census is being taken for that. We may not have an old generation not allowed into a promise land but we are responsible for a new generation to be raised up.  May we be a generation seeking after God as he is our promise which is His Son, Jesus Christ. We do live in a different type of people than our parents grew up in. We have many great technological advances as well as many great freedoms, but with that comes the easiness for sin to come into our lives. Philippians 2:15 tells us that we need to be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. May we stand strong in this crooked generation. May we learn from the mistakes of our parents and our selves and hold to the great promise which is our salvation

Numbers 25

Did you ever had a friend that you knew was bringing you down? They were definitely not a good influence on you? Some how you still liked them and the things they did, it was different and they challenged authority. In this particular passage we see Israel giving into stuff that really was against what God commanded them to do. It all started because of Balaam who was a sorcerer wanted to bring bad stuff upon Israel and could not curse them because God told him not to decided to bring Israel down another way, tempt them with idol worship. In Numbers 31:16 it was Balaam that encouraged the people of Midian to tempt the people of Israel. The people sent the women of Midian to tempt the men and get them involved in Baal worship. The sad thing is, Israel did. It says in verse 5 that they yoked themselves with these women and their false god, Baal. They would offer sacrifices to Baal and even bow down before him which means they were breaking the 1st Commandment, they shall have no other gods. Because of this sin there was a plague that broke out among the people in their sin.

 Kill sin in your life

Moses was commanded by God to get rid of those who allowed this sin to take place and corrupt the camp. He hung the chiefs of the tribes because they were the ones responsible in allowing this idol worship. Not only were the chiefs of each family held responsible but the judges of Israel were commanded to kill the men who have yoked themselves with Baal and the Midian women. They were commanded to not have relations with the surrounding nations and the men of Israel were sinning against God.In order for us to conquer sin in our life it must be killed. Now we can not take a knife and start killing sin that way but we must eliminate it in ours. We need to constantly evaluate our lives and see what areas are weak and what areas there are sin so we can move on and not be weighed down by it.

Blatant sin

As Israel was being repentant of their sin a man blatantly took a Midian woman and brought her to his family as if he was trying to encourage his family into pagan worship. He took the woman in site all of Israel and most importantly in the eyes of God and disobeyed him. This is called blatant sin, when you know something is bad and you do it anyway. I think we all are guilty of this one time or another because temptation wins in our lives and that is why we need to fight temptation the right way, God’s way! Eleazar, Aaron’s son was so mad about this blatant sin in the camp that he took a spear and went to this man’s tent and killed him and this woman as they were in the act of sin. The plague that was happening upon Israel stopped because the sin stopped. The death toll for Israel was 24,000. Jesus said in Matthew 5:27–30 what we need to do with temptation and the answer is to get rid of it. We are faced with multiple types of temptation and we need to be able to stand against it (1st Corinthians 10:13). Sin is a plague in our lives and if we do not stand up against it, it will kill us. We need to not just let it be in our lives but we need to kill it and actually fight against sin. How do you value what this world says is ok? Do you view sin as sin or maybe do you view it as not that bad? The closer we are to sin the more it seems ok, and good. May we be able to fight it in our lives as well as encourage those around us to stay away from the snares that the Devil has for us to fall.

Numbers 23

Balaam and Balak are our theme characters and we last read about Balaam being commissioned to curse Israel because the king of Moab was afraid that Israel would conquer them. In this chapter Balaam realizes that he is only allowed to speak what God tells him to speak.Here is King Balak on top of a mountain with Balaam overlooking and seeing a part of Israel and Balak is getting ready to hear the curse of Balaam. He was getting excited because once the curse fell upon Israel then he would come in with his army and finish the job. Instead of hearing a curse being brought about upon these two million people we see the opposite taking place. Balaam starts to bless Israel. As Balaam tells the king that he has been commanded by God to bless Israel because Israel is blessed by God, the king does not understand. Balaam tells him that he can not say anything that did not tell him to say.Despite all that is going on with Israel and their lack of respect to God and his provision and even with Moses and his downfall we see God still standing on the side of Israel.  And God stands for his children as even Paul said in Romans that should we keep on sinning so Grace can abound, no but we see how great God’s grace is. God loves his children and takes care of them. We are considered his children because we have the family trait, Jesus’ blood that has washed us clean of our sin and dirtiness. I am also reminded of how certain people will try to come against the Christian and in a way curse them. God has our back, he will allow trials of various kinds to come (James 1:2) but he also is on our side. He blesses us every single day and again and again even when we mess up and do not deserve it. 

Numbers 22

We take a short break from Israel being the center of the narrative to now someone else, Balak and Balaam. Balak was king of Moab and the Moabites were afraid of the Israelites because they did not want to be dead. Because of the fear, King Balak sent word to get a sorcerer, Balaam, to curse the people of Israel so he could defeat them in battle.

God speaks to Balaam and asked “what do these men want with you?” Balaam told God that the Moabites wanted him to curse the people of Israel and God told Balaam that he could not do that. A second time King Balak asked and Balaam said no, but this time God said go.

As Balaam was going an angel of the Lord was standing in the way and only his donkey saw it. The donkey moved one way to another to try to avoid the angel. Balaam thought his donkey was going nuts and he hit the donkey. Then all of sudden the donkey starts to talk. The thing that is more interesting than this is that Balaam responded as this was a normal conversation. This was not Mr. Ed the talking horse this was the talking donkey. God opened Balaam’s eyes and he saw the angel of the Lord. In this Balaam realized that he needed to submit to God in his request. Balak and Balaam go up on the mount and they were able to see a fraction of the people.

God’s speaks

In this chapter we can see this false prophet Balaam being used for a reason. We will see more of Balaam in the next few chapters. What would your reaction be if your animal started to talk? I am not talking about the donkey in Shrek or anything but like your dog just said something and you responded.  Now, if God communicated to you would you listen? God first showed himself to Balaam and Balaam somewhat listened but he also had false motives. He was going to go to curse the people of Israel still. God had to stop him in his tracks and God sometimes has to stop us in our tracks to get our attention. God desries for us to listen to him completely, not just partially. Do you let God speak to you through his word?