Blessings and Curses
March 5, 2008
Today's daily reading is a wonderful contrast if you take the time to read it all through. It is terribly ironic as well. Take some time if you can to read Numbers 23 through 25. The story actually starts in Numbers 22 but you will get a good feel for it.
Balak is the King of Moab. He gets together with the Midianites, and wants to get rid of the Israelites on their common border. Both of these groups are followers of Baal who was a local God. Balak calls for a local prophet, Balaam to come and curse the Israelites. We all know the story, God tells him not to go, he goes. Even his donkey was smart enough to tell him not to go, but he goes anyway. In the end,Balaam winds up blessing the people and cannot curse them if he wanted to. In fact, the curse gets put upon Balak and his country. Story over, Balaam goes back to his home country, Midian.
What a wonderful story. God blesses His people. No bad can come to them at all, right? Wrong. Read chapter 25. The King of Moab fails so he turns to his partner the King of Midian, yes the same country that Balaam goes back to. I do not know if they got inside information from him. I do know he gets killed later along with some bad people so there is a chance he did. What the Midianites do next is a contrast to the blessing the Israelite got though.
Numbers 25:1-4 LITV
(1) And Israel lived in Shittim. And the people began to fornicate with the daughters of Moab.
(2) And they called the people to the sacrifices of their gods. And the people ate and bowed themselves to their gods.
(3) And Israel was joined to Baal-peor, and the anger of Jehovah burned against Israel.
(4) And Jehovah said to Moses, Take all the leaders of the people and hang them up to Jehovah before the sun, that the fierce anger of Jehovah may be turned away from Israel.
They did not know they were blessed, they only knew they had needs they felt were not getting met. And since Balak could not get them one way, his teammate did. They could not be destroyed from the outside, so they god destroyed from the inside.
That is just like the Devil in our lives. He would love to destroy us from outside. It is easy to get people to give bad reports about us. If he can not do it that way though, he will send someone into the camp to deceive us. It got so brazen that one of the people brought a Moabite woman into the camp and walked by the Tabernacle. Satan will do that. Make stuff look good to you and you will let it in. In the case of that woman however, she and her lover were killed by a man who was zealous for God. We need to be that way in our life. Something may look good but we need to make sure that if it is not Godly, it is gone.
Read through the Bible in one year in Historical order
Today
Numbers 23:1-25:18
Tomorrow
Numbers 26:1-27:23
http://tinyurl.com/24beby for a daily reading tool
