Fri.’s Devo - The Good News

Read: Numbers 16:41-18:32; mark 16:1-20; Psalm 55:1-23; Proverbs 11:7 The day before, God had killed the 250 men who offered incense before the Lord in a challenge to Moses’ and Aaron’s authority. Now the people accused Moses and Aaron of killing those men. That was absurd because they didn’t open the ground and swallow those people - God did. God immediately showed up at the Tabernacle and Moses went to see what He had to say. God told Moses to separate himself from the people because he was going to kill them also. Moses told Aaron to quickly take the incense burner and carry the live coals to the people to purify them and make them right with the Lord. The incense burner represents our prayers. It is our prayers that can make people right with the Lord, not our commands or coercing. The plague had already started, so Aaron stood between the dead and the living and stopped the plague. But not before 14,700 had died. Aaron and Moses returned to the Tabernacle and God told him to have the leaders of each tribe bring a staff with their name carved on the staff. Aaron would place them in the Tabernacle in the Lord’s presence. Then next day, Aaron’s staff had sprouted, budded, blossomed and produced ripe almonds! God was showing everyone that he was chosen to have the priesthood. The people felt doomed because Kohath and proven that the Levites were not perfect and their mistakes affected all the people. They felt doomed to trust in a man. God told them that the responsibility would fall on the Levites alone. If they messed up, they would be held responsible and not the rest of the people. God designated which gifts brought to the Lord would be for the Levites to keep. They were to give the Lord a tithe also of these gifts. It was to be the best part and it would be as though it was they were giving it from their own gardens and vineyards. That reminds me of giving to support ministries who do the work but you benefit in the reward of their work because you supported them. The firstborn of every man and every unclean animal had to be redeemed with five shekels. The firstborn represents our first birth. We have to be born again to be redeemed. The number five is the number that represents redemption so they were bought back with the five shekels. This was all a foreshadowing of the redemption we would have through the blood of Jesus. In Mark, the women went to the tomb the morning after the Sabbath. They found the stone rolled away and an angel sitting on the right. He told them not to be afraid because Jesus wasn’t here, he had risen from the dead and would meet them in Galilee just as he had told them. The women ran to tell the disciples who had a hard time believing them. Two other men came to them and told them they had talked with Jesus and they had a hard time believing them also. Finally, Jesus appeared to them and told them to go and preach the Good News to everyone. The ones who believed what they said would be saved, and they were to baptize them. These things would happen: they would cast out demons in Jesus’ name, they would speak in new languages, handle snakes without be harmed and if they drank poison, it would not hurt them. They would be able to place their hands on the sick and they would be healed. Jesus was then taken up in the clouds to sit at the right hand of God. The disciples obeyed and took the Good News to the world. Lord, may we take your Good News to everyone we meet today.