I hate throing aay something I've ued thi long but if you think you don't ue thoe letter muh you hould really try going ithout them for ahile. Your bigget hallenge ill be getting on the orld ide eb.
Moving on,
Leviticus 26:23,24 And if by these things you are not reformed by Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I also will walk contrary to you, and I will punish you yet seven times for your sins.
There is something scarily ominous in these verses. For years of my life I didn't walk with God, but I never felt as though He was walking contrary to me. That seems like another thing altogether. Another scary thing altogether. I
Numbers 7:11 - 89 click the reference to see the verses.
What I learn from these verses? God likes to teach me patience.
Numbers 8:19 And I have given the Levites as a gift to Aaron and his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the work for the children of Israel, in the tabernacle of meeting and to make atonement for the children of Israel that there by no plague among the children of Israel when the children of Israel come near the sanctuary.
God's not the least bit afraid to be repetitive if He wants to make Himself v e r y c l e a r.
Numbers 11:1 Now when the people complained, it displeased the Lord; for the LORD heard it, and His anger was aroused. So the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some in the outskirts of the camp.
Simply put - I am SO glad no one has mentioned Him doing that anymore.
Numbers 12:8 (God is speaking about Moses to Miriam and Aaron) I speak with him face to face, even plainly, and not in dark sayings.
If there is one complaint I have with God, it's that I spend half my time with Him trying to figure out what He's telling me. Dark sayings? Dark sayings??? Trying to figure out where God is leading and what He is saying today is often like trying to see black crayon on black paper. You can't read the words, but you can kinda feel something is there.
Numbers 14:28 (God is speaking here) Say to them, 'As I live,' says the LORD, 'just as you have spoken in My hearing, so I will do to you:
To give you just a small glimpse of what happened before these verses - the children of Israel have said, (and I'm paraphrasing here) "This "Promised Land" is unattainable, we will die here."
And in verse 28 God responds, "OK, you will then."
That verse... It's a verse that could be preached on a thousand times, songs should be written about it, poems should rhyme about it, and Aesop should have fabled it.
I just hope God never says that to me.
The whole story is very eloquent -not to mention one of my favorites- and actually pretty short, the brunt of the story starts at Numbers 13:17 and ends at 14:10 at least that's the verse where they decide to stone Joshua and Caleb.
Number 16:15 Then Moses was very angry, and said to the Lord, "Do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them, nor have I hurt one of them."
I don't know about anyone else but, even when I'm angry I can't imagine approaching God and saying "DO NOT DO THIS!" But then, I don't spend a lot of time talking to God face to face like Moses did either.
Numbers 14:13-19 & 16:22,45,46
It's a few too many verses to post so I'm just going to give you the gist of them. If you click on the scripture references in bold above, it will take you to the scriptures.
Each of those scriptures represents a time when God is ready to strike the children of Israel, and each and every time Moses tries to convince God not to kill them all off. Each and every time it makes me wonder all sorts of things. The biggest of which are:
First: Does God bluff? If He destroyed them like He wanted to it seems like He would have broken His promise to Abraham. Is there some way around that that I'm not seeing?
And second, He wanted to kill them because of their grumbling... I shudder to think how many times Christ has had to intercede on my behalf to keep Him from throwing me in front of a bus or something.
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