LifeLink Devotional

Friday, May 3, 2019

Moses and the people of Israel have had many opportunities to see the strength of the Lord during their deliverance from Egypt. His power was displayed in the plaques against Pharaoh, in the parting of the Red Sea, and in the miracles of provision in the desert. Now Moses is asking for a display of God’s real strength, and his request teaches us an important lesson about the strengths of our own lives.

Numbers 14:17-18a “Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.’”

When Moses asks God to display His strength, it is in the context of human rebellion. The people are refusing to walk by faith and take possession of the Promised Land. God expresses His right to destroy them.  He also reminds Moses of His power and willingness to start over with the faithful few. Moses intervenes on behalf of the people and says in essence, “God, I know you are powerful enough to destroy sinners and their sin, but let the real strength of Your character be displayed by loving the sinners and forgiving them.”

I am deeply challenged by this. I find it easy to define strength in human terms, which are primarily physical. I also find it easy to define my responses and reactions to situations as strength because of my ability to accomplish a desired outcome. I remember the time I spent over one hour on the phone with a service provider for our church.  They had overcharged us almost $50 for their mistake and they would not correct it. I got pretty strong with them by our human definition of strength. I’m not proud of who I thought I had to become to bring about my desired outcome.

But there is a level of strength that is modeled by God in His every day responses to our human behavior. It is to be the model for our growing faith and character as well, and it involves 3 things:

1. God is slow to anger. His patience with people’s failures and inconsistencies is incredible, and because of that we survive each day. Maybe there are those around us who need a chance to survive another day.
2. God abounds in love. He never stops doing what is best for others, even when they don’t deserve it. It is not a true act of love if it is earned. Maybe there are others around us who need to see real love.
3. God forgives sin. Moses asked for forgiveness on behalf of the people. They did not realize they even needed it. They were so blinded by their sin that they thought they were right. God forgave them anyway. Maybe there are those around us who need a gift of grace – an act of forgiveness – even though they have not asked for it.

My friends, how do you measure your strength? God’s strength was displayed in its highest form by these three characteristics. May we learn to display strength as He does.

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotional

Thursday, May 2, 2019

How many times a day do you use the word “but”? Probably many more than you realize. It is one of the most influential words in our vocabulary. It has the power to kindle a fire of fear while extinguishing the flames of faith. It is a word of transition from assurance to apprehension. It creates compromise rather than confirming covenant. It results in reconsideration rather than risk.

This one word spread negativity throughout the nation of Israel and impeded their progress when they should have positively accepted the invitation of God to invade.

Numbers 13:27-31 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.” Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”

Two times in the story the 10 spurious spies argue from fear rather than faith and convince the people of Israel to doubt God’s direction. To their credit, the spies did report that the blessings of the land were incredible. They brought back exceptional fruit. To their culpability, they were convinced that the personal risk was far too great for the material benefit. They had forgotten that the foundation of God’s promise to them was not material blessing but spiritual blessing. Their focus shifted from God’s covenant promise that they would be a blessing to all the other nations of the world to the personal benefits that they should receive for their obedience. They did what any of us would do when our focus shifts from God’s purpose to man’s perspective – they saw only man’s power and not God’s omnipotence, and they became afraid. From their human vantage point they saw insurmountable obstacles. From a vantage point of faith they could have seen opportunities for God’s intervention.

The fear that overcame them was so powerful that they began to assume facts not already in evidence. Look closely at Numbers 13:33 – “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

It was one thing for them to admit an insecurity about their own stature and status, but it was totally wrong of them to believe that they knew what the inhabitants of the land were thinking about them. In fact, if they were still thinking with a mind of faith, they would have remembered the promise of God when He said, “I am making a covenant with you. Before all your people I will do wonders never before done in any nation in all the world. The people you live among will see how awesome is the work that I, the LORD, will do for you. Obey what I command you today. I will drive out before you the Amorites, Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.”

God had already promised to make the very people of whom they were now afraid to be filled with fear of them and that He would drive them out.

This story has clear applications to our lives. We use “buts” to renegotiate God’s purpose for our lives. We use “buts” to validate our personal desires and ambitions. We use “buts” to reduce personal risk. We use “buts” to defend our fears. We use “buts” to justify our insecurities. We have shifted our focus from the spiritual to the material, and we have embellished the facts to defend our position.

It is possible that right now you are walking by the sight of man’s perspective rather than by faith in God’s promises. I pray that God will use these insights to challenge that area of your life today, and that you will become a Joshua or Caleb and proclaim with bold faith, “we can certainly do it!”

Pastor John

LifeLink Devotional

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

It’s time for the Israelites to take their next step of faith and enter the Promised Land. Or is it? It seems they still don’t have a correct understanding of faith, and they must learn yet another lesson. Even Moses, had some growing to do.

Numbers 13:1-2, 17-20  The LORD said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.” When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, “Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land.”

There is a constant conflict between faith and human nature. Moses had learned some great lessons about trusting and obeying God. His faith was strong, but he still didn’t completely trust God’s Word. When we read ahead in Numbers 14 we see that he believed that God would take them into the Promised Land, but his actions didn’t reflect his belief. The sending of the spies was not the problem: it was the instructions to the spies that were wrong.

God had promised over and over that He was giving this land to the Israelites. His instructions to Moses were specific and simple – send some men to explore the land. At this point Moses had two options. First, it could have been a mission of military strategy to find out the best possible route to go in and conquer the land. That would have been the faith-based purpose. It would have been the positive-minded purpose. The spies could have been sent with a conqueror’s mentality based on their faith in the promise of God.

But that’s not how they were sent. Moses chose the second option that was available to him. It is the option of human nature and the one we most often choose when confronted with a step of faith. Moses chose to send in the spies with a series of irrelevant questions to be answered that could only be an indication of his own uncertainty. If Moses truly believed that God would give them the land, then what is the relevance of what kind of land it was, or how productive the land was, or how big and strong the people were, or how fortified were their cities? Why did Moses need answers to these questions?

I think it’s for the same reason we ask questions when God gives commands – we want to know more details to determine our willingness to obey. We want to know if the obedience will put us at risk in any way. We want to see some of the fruit of obedience before we choose to obey. When God says, “Go through that door,” we want to open the door just a crack and look inside before we say, “I’ll go.”

Moses laid the groundwork for failure by giving the spies the wrong instructions. As we said before, in the rest of the story Moses is commended along with Aaron, Caleb, and Joshua for being the ones who wanted to obey, but Moses still had something to learn about how to obey. Obedience is not conditional on the outcome, benefits, or risk. Obedience is the product of a mature faith that totally and unconditionally trusts the word of God. When we add our human reasoning to God’s direction we are setting the stage for failure.

Let’s learn from this and apply it to the current situations and directions that God is giving us. Stand strong in faith on the promises of God, and let’s get going!

Pastor John