Day 33 – October 14, 2023: Numbers 6-10 and Jude

There are a couple of chapters that literally repeat the same phrase over and over again. If you take Numbers 7 you will find the offerings that each tribe presented is identical to what the others tribes have given, and yet it is repeated 12 times. That reminds us that what the Lord requires, he requires of all of us. There is not a generational pass that goes with those who have served longer or those who have served shorter. The Lord requires devotion, full devotion, from all of us.

Don’t get lost in the details and miss the beauty of Numbers 6:24-26. The priestly blessing is very applicable to us today and is not something that we can relegate to the past. Probably if I had to do it over again, I would close all of my services with this benediction, but as it is I close with the benediction that my father used and which we can find in the New Testament. But this one is definitely solid. At the end of Numbers we see the people of Israel moving out for the first time after the Lord has given them the tabernacle and all of the instructions on how to move and how to take care of it. They begin moving and they begin to leave Sinai. This is before God becomes angry with Moses and relegates the entire nation of Israel to the wilderness for 40 years. That is coming up.

What can we say about Jude? It is a warning to beware of those within the church who are imbuing the community with false teachings. They can be hard to distinguish. There are false teachings on both side of the political aisle. There are those who would completely separate the authority of Scripture and say that our experience has the power to overrule Scripture. There are also those who see safety and security within our nation as the overriding goal and so seem to silo their faith from their patriotism and the two shall never meet. It is quite an old sin to establish gods within our lives that seem more important than our relationship with God and that relationship which is based up on the Scripture that we read.