Read: Numbers 11:24-13:33; Mark 14:22-52; Psalm 52:1-9; Proverbs 11:1-3
There is a great take-away from reading verses 24-30. When the Holy Spirit is being poured out, he is no respecter of persons. He falls on anyone who will let it. When these new men started prophesying, Joshua tried to get Moses to make them stop. Moses refused to be jealous but rejoiced with them, instead.
That needs to be our response when we see God’s blessings fall on others. We are one body so when another Christian being blessed, we should sincerely rejoice with them.
Yesterday, we read that the Egyptians stirred up the Israelites to crave meat and complain about the daily supply of manna. This is a great lesson to remember. Manna was food from heaven that had every nutrient they could need. The complainers remembered their past pleasures and lusted after them - food from the earth. God gave them so much of what they craved that they ate themselves to death. Their gluttony stirred up God’s anger to send a plague that killed many of them. Second Peter 2:20-22 explains this perfectly:
“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning.
21 For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
22 But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.”
Miriam and Aaron probably felt neglected when Moses added the 70 leaders instead of giving them the responsibility. To get back at Moses, they criticized his marriage to Zipporah since she wasn’t an Israelite. God stepped in and took up for Moses.
Bottom line is we should never criticize our leaders. God is the only one who should do that and he knows just how to do it. God has a chain of command and we are to honor those in authority over us, knowing that God is the chief and he will take care of his officers.
The sending out of the spies is one of the saddest stories. They were on the outskirts of the promised land and about to go in and get the reward of all their slavery and oppression in Egypt. Instead of seeing with eyes of faith and remembering all God had done for them in the past, all they could see was the giants in the land. Joshua and Caleb were the only ones who saw the fruit and believed God could take care of the giants.
In Mark, we continue to see man’s failures. Peter will deny Jesus three times, the disciples weren’t able to stay awake to pray even for an hour, and one of Jesus’ own disciples betrayed him with a kiss. As depressing as this is, it is also encouraging because God was not surprised at any of these things and yet he chose these men to be Jesus’ disciples because he knew the story would not end in defeat. They would be empowered by his spirit and change the world…later.
We have no idea, who will end up changing the world for Jesus, but we can know this - it is not over till God says it is over, and we are not the judge. God loves to take the most unassuming person and change them into a man after his own heart.
Lord, let it be us who are after your heart and change our world for you. Help us to see people as what they can become and not what they are now. Give us Your perspective.
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