- Numbers 10:1 - 11:23
- Numbers 11:24 - 13:33
Numbers 10:1 - 13:33
I decided to continue on in my reading of Numbers today because the first reading stopped in the middle of a story I was interested in finishing. The Israelites were once again complaining, this time about meat.
The complaining must have gotten really bad because Moses got very mad and told the Lord so. The verses where Moses spoke against the Lord are contained in 10:11 - 15. I was surprised with the candor of his speech to the Lord. Moses asks the Lord what he did to deserve this burden, and why must he carry them in his arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? Moses ends it by telling the Lord to go ahead and kill him.
Have you ever been extremely angry with the Lord? I honestly can't think of a time that I have. I think I'm too afraid to be angry at the Lord. Moses didn't seem afraid though. He must have been insanely frustrated to go off like that. I can't say I blame him either. Just reading about how the Israelites moaned about everything, and how many times they said they were better off as slaves in Egypt. That's a topic I've covered before (multiple times even), and is a topic for another day. All I can say is it's surprising Moses didn't blow up earlier.
At this point the Lord told Moses to gather 70 elders and leaders from amongst the people of Israel. The Lord then sent His spirit upon those 70 so that Moses would have help with this burden. I have commented time and time again how wonderful it would have been in those days to live with the Lord's actual presence. My post from yesterday reflected heavily on this.
It seems I was making one very wrong assumption about how wonderful it would be to be guided by the Lord's presence -- I was making the assumption that His spirit would both be within me at the same time. As we know, however, God's relationship with people has changed over these last few millennium. I realize now that I much prefer this very personal relationship I have with the Lord through Jesus Christ to one where I was just a person following the presence of the Lord, but not experiencing the changes within my heart and spirit that comes with that today.
I guess the ultimate experience that I long for is the one that I will have when I die, or when Jesus returns -- whichever comes first. When that time comes I imagine I will have the whole package, both pieces to the whole. The Lord's presence will be inside me and His presence will be all around me, and I will have no doubt of His will and will live to serve Him. And He will be wonderful to all of us -- all the blessings we have received on earth will not even come close to comparing to the good things that await us then. We will know nothing but happiness, nothing but His will for us, nothing but life as He wanted us to have from the beginning. It's a fate too wondrous to fathom with my mortal mind.
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