Newsletter 5

         

Well, it has been a good while since we have been able to get an email out. First off I want to apologize to The Lord for that, and then apologize to all of you. Things have been terribly hectic in our lives, although we were able to squeeze a small vacation in. "But", it is wrong to get tied up in the “world” and fall behind in The Things of God, and that is what we have done.

The reading for this week is “Shelach”, Numbers 13:1 – 15:41. And what a powerful reading it is. I hope that this email doesn’t run long enough to bore anyone, but there is just so much to touch on here!

We open with God telling Moses to “Send Forth” men, if he pleases, to spy out The Land that has been given them. One point that the Hebrew Sages pull out of this statement is that Israel, after all that they had been through, after all the things that God had done for them, after everything that he had shown them…….once again, they were questioning His Word. They didn’t want to just go into Canaan. They wanted to check it out first. They didn’t want to rely on The Word of God. They wanted to see it with their own eyes.

How many of us are guilty of that? I know I am. Far too often, I listen to what the world, the physical realm, (or my eyes) have to say about things, and totally ignore what The Word, His Word, has to say about it. I think many of us truly are guilty of the same sin as Israel was in this respect.

“But”, is a strong word in this teaching. When the spies returned, there was a big “BUT” in their report! In 13:27, the spies (with the exception of Joshua and Caleb) told Moses, and the people (from the text, you can tell that there were people listening also) that yes, there was great fruit and it does flow with milk and honey……….BUT……the people and cities there are great and powerful and there are giants too!!!

Caleb jumps in here and states that surely they can ascend and conquer the land. BUT…..again the rest of the spies come back and say that “we cannot ascend to that people for it is too strong for us”. Here is a little tidbit about this line. The word translated as “us” can also be translated as “Him”! And in reality that is what they were saying. That these people were too strong for HIM, for God! For surely they knew that The Lord would be with them. He had promised that He would. What they were saying is, "I don’t think even God can conquer these people"!

Let’s look at this. They were putting the people “in the land” above God. They were elevating them basically to the point of Godhood. They were saying that God could not defeat them. They were greater than God. In my opinion, the problem here, that the rest of Israel joined in with, and got punished for, was breaking the First Commandment, Thou Shalt Have No Other God Before Me. They had raised the Canaanites above God. They had seen them as stronger than God.

How many times do we raise other Gods? How many things do we put before God? What is our “God”? If you “know” what God says, and what God wants you to do, and you put anything in front of that, then I believe you are breaking the First Commandment.

This past bit, I am afraid that I have raised other Gods. I have let things get in the way of study that I know God wants me to do. I pray to be forgiven.

Another way to say this……whatever gets in the way of God for you, is YOUR GOD. If you don’t want to appear too “hung up” on Jesus because you think that your group of friends will find you strange……then those friends are YOUR GOD. If you say that you “have” to work all the time, and always miss the things that you know God wants you to do……then work is YOUR GOD.  If you say that “something” has come up and you can’t get to what God wants you to do, then that “something” is YOUR GOD!

Now, I am not saying that we can never miss a Church Service, or a Prayer Meeting, this is beyond that. What I am saying is that whatever is coming between you and God, on a regular basis, IS YOUR GOD.

The Israelites were kept out of The Land for Forty Years over this. Let’s not be kept out of our Promised Land by raising other Gods. Look at your life, look at what God wants from you, and DO IT. Just as Caleb said…”We can DO IT”!

Well, I didn’t get to hardly any of the points that I wanted to. But, I never do wind up with what I expect when I write these. I pray that I wind up with what God Expected! Hallelujah!

 

Blessings in The Name of Jesus,

Tony and Robin