1 Corinthians 10:11 Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
Numbers 14:24 But my servant Caleb, because he has a different spirit and has followed me fully, I will bring into the land into which he went, and his descendants shall inherit it.
Numbers 27:18 So the Lord said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him.
For the past two weeks we’ve been building life lessons derived from the Exodus wanderings and from Paul’s exhortations to the church in Corinth. Notice carefully that Paul says, “these were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come”…
…that is, written for us today! – admonitions from Paul to learn lessons from the history of the children of Israel.
Much of what we can learn is how NOT to behave, and what NOT to do. Yet there are also the lessons from the few who were over-comers, Joshua and Caleb particularly. From them, we may grasp what a life of faith, courage, and victory looks like.
While people often say that history repeats itself – it doesn’t mean that people must repeat history. We do have the option of learning from it, and from those who were the over-comers. In the days of the Exodus, only two adult men actually entered the Promised land, out of the thousands that originally left Egypt – only Joshua and Caleb. What was different about them? They followed God fully – and were of a different spirit.
Enjoy your Shabbat rest – and take these lessons from Israel’s history to heart. By learning from their mistakes, and being encouraged by the faithful few, you may avoid repeating (sad) history – and rather, learning from it, enter your own inheritance in the “Promised Land”.
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]So often in ministry, the Lord deals with my own spirit, saying – “You need to step back and get refocused!” And we all know how hard it is at times when we get so busy with the normal every day stresses of life tugging at our limited time.
Throughout the United States today, everyone will be celebrating the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence — a document through which leaders of the colonies in the New World broke free from the King of England.
The Hebrew expression in this verse from Isaiah is rich with meaning. The root “nus” (from the expression “raise up a standard”) is related to or sounds like numerous words which mean “sign”, “miracle”, “to drive away”, “to flee”, “cause to disappear”, “a waving flag”. This abundance of meanings in Isaiah’s poetic style reveals the multiple dimensions of God’s revelation; in this case, the way he deals with evil. The assertion in this word is that the Spirit of YHVH will be powerfully activated when evil comes.
The word contrite in Hebrew is ‘dakah’ which means one that is crushed to pieces. Paul wrote of being a ‘living sacrifice’ holy and acceptable to God. Being a living sacrifice means we often can walk off the altar. To be a continual living sacrifice we need to renew our minds day to day!
Recently, I’ve been impressed by the Lord to address the anxieties many are feeling about the future– how to be strong in the face of the intense opposition we’ll be facing as believers. One of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge, the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible with courage.”
For a season, I worked in Washington, D.C., for one of America’s largest Christian political organizations. Sometimes I saw how politics could get ugly and, more often than not, how it changed people — not for the better…but usually for the worse!
Have you ever felt uneasy, unsettled or unstable? Or maybe a better question is — who hasn’t? How do we overcome these feelings?