Good Morning FRIENDS! Prayers for you all today. You continue to seek the Lord for your daily lives and trust that God is very present. He will never leave you nor forsake you. Keep trusting Him daily!
Numbers chapter 15.
God is telling the Israelites that when they enter the Promise Land they are to offer special offerings including giving a portion of the food they eat there to the Lord. Special offerings are their way of celebrating what God has done for them and for his provisions. Can you imagine how ungrateful it would have appeared if after entering the Promised Land they acted like it was no big deal? And as they ate the wonderful food from the Promised Land, how ungrateful it would have appeared that they acted like it was no big deal?
What concerns me even more is how often I probably show a lack of appreciation for the blessings God has given me!
- How often do I grab the food at my meal and eat it without showing any appreciation to the Lord? I often bow my head in public or at home and give thanks to God for the food, but do I REALLY APPRECIATE it or am I just praying out of habit? Is my heart behind it?
- When's the last time I stopped and just said: Thank you for my house, or even thank you for this warm house? Because there are honestly homeless people searching for warm places to sleep.
- To show appreciation to God for all we have is our way of acknowledging it's by God's might and power that we are blessed and not our own.
To neglect to say thank you is a way to say look at what I did versus look at what God did. It is Self Glory versus God Glory.
A Sabbath breaker was stoned to death. I realize this could sound pretty harsh. I'm not saying I like this because I too have broken the Sabbath and have deserved death more than once. But God's grace is there. So what can I learn from this?
- I feel like God is trying to make a point. God desires to be so important in our lives. He wants to be number one in our lives. When the Sabbath comes he wants to have even more special attention as a way of acknowledging our dearest love for him versus being distracted from selfish loves at home or with someone else.
- Think of all the excuses we use to stay home vs going to church. Of course there are times it can't be helped but generally speaking are we one who wants to be in church for fellowship with God and God's people? Are we more apt to try and stay home doing our own pleasures or being with certain people versus God?
- You can't neglect God's message to us: love him with all our hearts and the love we love for other people or thing should not even compare with our love for God. Once our love for other things or other people starts to replace our time with God on the Sabbath or even in our everyday walk, then those things or people have become our real god.
- Be careful. This is important. How can we be better at keeping the Sabbath? How can we be better at devoting our hearts more to the Lord?
Lastly, just as God asked the Israelites to make tassels as a reminder to obey and keep God's commands, so let us be in God's word every day as a reminder to obey and keep his commands and love one another!
This struck me…..32 While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day……36 So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses.
Where the people who found the wood gather without sin?
Being stoned for collecting wood seems a bit harsh, but it’s GODS law, follow HIS law or die. Maybe today we need to instill a little discipline into our children and parents.
Yes PB we need to be thankful for all we have….including the ability to share the Bible with each other
We see how serious it is to keep the Sabbath in this chapter. The punishment for breaking it was death. That seems harsh, but it was what God required. I would think that not too many people would want to have the same thing happen to them so the tone was set. I also think that we get a better picture of the heart of God about the Sabbath whenever we see Jesus walking on the earth in the New Testament. You can probably imagine how the religious leaders were all stirred up in anger at Jesus whenever He spoke about the Sabbath. He certainly didn’t say what they wanted to hear. God showed us that Jesus is Lord of all, even of the Sabbath. This was a BIG deal and what Jesus speaks about it does appear to be quite a change from what we read in Numbers 15. Check out Mark 2: 27-28. And He (Jesus) said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
The whole perspective is different in my opinion. Keep the Sabbath or else you will die versus God made the Sabbath for you to rest and focus on worshiping Him. My thoughts are that it went from being observed out of a fear of God’s wrath and turned more into celebrating the freedom that Christ gives us in Him.
This and the next 10 chapters tell the sad story of God’s people wandering in the wilderness instead of marching into the Promised Land. While it is a sad section of Scripture, it has a tremendous warning to us today to believe that God will do what He promised to do. I can delay His blessing for 40 minutes, hours, days or years but I cannot delay His purpose. I should focus on going with the flow of what God determined all history to do and be one with Christ; focus on Christ; live for Christ. (See Ephesians 1:9,10)
Jesus never asks us to do what He doesn’t empower us to do. The blue tassels (the color of heaven) on their garments reminded the people to obey God’s commandments. Jesus said in John 14:1,2 that we shouldn’t let our hearts be troubled, to believe in His father and in Him and that He was preparing a place for us in heaven. The key is to remember that we are headed for heaven – it’s close at hand – where all those things I wish I could redo, where all the opportunities I missed and mistakes I made will be set right. The key to being happy here is to live for heaven.
The lesson from the man killed for collecting firewood on the Sabbath seems a bit extreme to us but he willfully broke God’s commandment. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14). Our Creator, our Father, gave us some instructions about the way life works in our bodies – why wouldn’t we follow the Manufacturer’s instructions? There is no doubt in my mind that stress, nervous conditions, depression and ulcers can be the result of not following the simple, practical instruction of our Maker to kickback, slow down, and refocus one day in seven. Praise the Lord for giving us His Word to help us on our walk.