Readings for today: Numbers 11:24-13, Mark 14:22-52, Psalms 52, Proverbs 11:1-3
God’s ways are not our ways. Just as soon as we try to squeeze God into some kind of box, He breaks out. 70 elders are raised up to help lead the nation. They gather at the sanctuary to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is poured out and shockingly, two men who remained in the camp start to prophesy. Joshua, jealous for his mentor Moses, wants to stop them but Moses recognizes God cannot be confined to Joshua’s box. Israel receives the Law of God forbidding intermarriage with those who are not part of God’s poeple. Miriam and Aaron want to apply God’s law to Moses’ marriage. They believe his marriage to a Cushite woman disqualifies him on some level from being the supreme leader of Israel. But God reminds them He will not be confined to their box. “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth...And God said, "Hear my words: If there is a prophet among you, I the Lord make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the Lord." (Numbers 12:3, 6, 8) Twelve spies are sent into the Promised Land. They find it to be a good land. A fruitful land. A blessed land. Flowing in milk and honey. It is everything God promised. But there is a problem. "We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are...The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (Numbers 13:31-33) In their fear, they take their eyes off of God. Despite all the miracles they’ve seen and experienced, they still put God in a box.
How often do we make the same mistake? How much do we limit God through our disbelief? How many times do we stick God in a box? Maybe it’s our theology. We believe more in our theological system than we do in Christ. Maybe it’s our culture. We believe more in our cultural understandings of the gospel than we do in the gospel itself. Maybe it’s our human frailty. We trust more in our own wisdom and strength than we do in God.
This is deeply challenging and deeply practical. The other day, I spent time with several middle and high school boys. We talked about how Jesus requires us to sacrifice everything in order to follow Him. Our wealth. Our gifts and talents and abilities. Our success. Our future. Everything that we have and all that we are is to be surrendered to the Lordship of Christ. In return, Jesus offers us eternal life. Abundant life. Kingdom life. Life so precious and beautiful and glorious, it absolutely dwarfs whatever we may experience in this world. But we live in this world. And the expectations of this world too often frame how we understand God. So we have to fight to stay focused on Jesus. To see the world through His eyes. To let His expectations shape our expectations and His promises shape our understanding of life, the world, and our future.
Readings for tomorrow: Numbers 14:1-15:16, Mark 14:53-72, Psalms 53, Proverbs 11:4