Numbers 15 made me think about that beautiful conceptual idea that Israel is the bride of the Lord, or the spouse is another way of putting it. Have you thought about that before?
I know in the modern church we talk about ‘the bride of Christ’ etc but we don’t often look at it in the historical context, with Israel.
In Numbers 15, the people are learning all about offerings, the difference between offerings for sins of ignorance, and what happens to the presumptuous – or high-handed ones.
They are told to ‘remember all the commandments and do them:
That ye seek not after your own heart,
And your own eyes
After which you use to go a whoring.
(Numbers 14:39)
I was fascinated by the ‘whoring’ here. Admittedly it’s old King James English used here, but what is it saying to Israel?
When you go after what’s in your own heart, and your own eyes, it’s like adultery, against your spouse, Jehovah.
This principle is still at work today.
He is mine, and I am his.
He is jealous over his people.
But how many live as this is truth? Spiritual things are far more real than what we see in the natural, even if we don’t conceive it.
THE ‘ME TOO’ CLAIM AGAINST GOD’S ANOINTED
Numbers 16 is a cracker! And scary. My mind is always taking what I read, and setting it in the modern context, with what I’ve witnessed and know about the church and Christians.
One man leads to the death of not just himself, and 250 of his closest ‘me-too’ friends, but also 14,700 more people, dead.
Do we understand what it means when God has anointed someone? Given them authority? Especially as an Apostle, known by the ‘signs of an Apostle’, as Paul says? Hmm.. I don’t think so, generally speaking.
Most of us say ‘we’re all human’, or ‘he’s just a man’ or ‘I only listen to God, it’s not about the person’…
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I beg to differ.
Scripture proves over and over and over and over again, that it’s human beings God uses.
*** Human beings he puts in authority.
### Human beings he gives power.
!!!!! Human beings he puts in a framework, if you like, of levels of authority.
This is called the body of Christ.
And some have been given that responsibility.
Why do we try to put all the divine back onto God?
These questions always fascinate me. The scriptures throw up incredible principles that most of us let pass us by, we’re so used to considering ourselves ordinary, or not holy enough. Wrong!
‘YOU TAKE TOO MUCH UPON YOU’
In other words, Moses you think you’re someone special, you’ve set yourself above us, you’ve made yourself a leader….
ALL of us are special
God loves ALL of us the same, he is with ALL of us..
What makes YOU so special…
Ah… that age old rally against God’s anointed leader.
Especially by those that see themselves as ‘leadership’ potential. Or more right. More good. Better ideas.
They think it is a ‘small thing’ what God has done for them.
They think it’s a ‘small thing’ that God separated them, saved them, called them to himself.
They think it’s all about the glory of the ‘big man’.
So they rally people around them to oust the leader. They vote them off the board. Get the majority to tell them they’re not the boss anymore…..
God was NOT happy – AT ALL!
He wanted to wipe them all out. God, these people, do they never learn.
Do we ever learn?
God I hope so.
Moses says ‘these works: I have not done them of mine own mind’ Numbers 16:28.
In Chapter 14 I was stunned – all day yesterday – by the words that God said to Moses: 
>>>>>>>“I HAVE PARDONED THEM ACCORDING TO THY WORD”…
God, pardoned the people, because Moses asked him.
Why would God listen to Moses?
And now, Moses says, the Lord is going to do a new thing and open the earth and swallow you’…
Did God tell him to say that?
No, he didn’t.
Moses declared it. Must like he had to lift the rod to open the Red Sea. If he didn’t do that, Israel would not have been able to cross, and the Egyptian army would not have been wiped out.
So here, Moses is saying, God is going to do a sign to prove whether you’re right or wrong.
And God did it.
Is this principle still at work today? That’s my question to you.
God’s anointed Apostles, the ones God has appointed, the ones, if you like, that seem odd to the rest but whom the Spirit of God leads a different way, who is meek, who speaks with command…can they still operate with God this way?
It’s something to consider, right?
So Korah, his family, 250 around him, die. The earth opens up, swallows them.
Everyone else runs screaming and crying. It terrified them.
The next day, they are blaming Moses, ‘you killed them’.
God is so fed up. He says, it’s too late, I’ve let a plague out, I’m wiping them out’.
And it is a testament to Moses and Aaron, what they do. They run to make atonement for the people. Aaron runs and ‘stood between the dead the living’ and the plague was stayed.
But 14,700 died already. Everyone else survived. But seriously, most of them, by this stage, were on borrowed time…
How many Christians are dying when they don’t need to?
How many churches are being wiped out, when they shouldn’t be?
How many cities are being destroyed because we don’t understand these things?
Spiritual things matter.
Honour, Respect, Obedience to God – matter.
Being ‘espoused’ to God, not looking anywhere else for satisfaction or fulfilment.
Trusting God. Allowing that bible to help you understand him, to believe!
Of course, we have the New Covenant. Jesus Christ, our High Priest, even better than Aaron.
Standing between us and death.
But as Paul says, ‘do not take the grace of God in vain’…
He calls out the Christians by saying ‘who has bewitched you??’
God, forgive us. We trust you. We love you. We bow our knee only to you.
We serve you. We will do, all we can, to obey you, and obey your word.
The earth is Lords, and the fullness thereof…
