Numbers 21 - 22 (4th Mar) - Vivien

Numbers 21
There are a few accounts just in this one chapter:

1) As the Israelites continued their journey to the Promise land, they were faced with enemies. Arad – where the Canaanite king was in control – attacked and captured some of the Israelites when they were moving along Atharim. However when the people prayed together, God gave them victory.
Similarly, as we journey through life to reach our destiny, there will be challenges ahead of us. It is not about how many attacks we have, but how we react to them. And prayers are powerful! I believe it pleased God a lot when He sees His people unite and fight for a common goal. And He is more than willing to give victories.

2) The next account is rather peculiar. The Israelites grew impatient and grumble against God and Moses. And notice they were very fond of looking back to their past. Every time they grumble, they would dig out the past and compare it with current situation. Don’t you feel irritated when time and again they took their past to complain about their current situation? Can you imagine? Somebody that you had done wrong to and you thought the air was cleared after a sincere apology. Years later an argument happened and that person started to dig out the past, and accuse you for the things done in the past. What has passed is indeed past. Whether good or bad. Looking back gives a sense of wanting to escape instead of facing the challenges. And of course, this give Satan a chance to attack us, which hinders us from God blessing.

The peculiar part is why did God ask Moses to make a snake and put it on a pole as a sign of Israel’s faith since earlier God forbade them to make a likeness “of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath” (Ex 20:4) But the image here was not intended as an idol for worship. It is a form of just testing their belief in God’s words. One example I can think of is, remember when you are young (yah… most of us are still rather young. Just think back with me when you were in your lower primary school days), when your friends told you that when you see a shooting star, quickly make a wish and it will come true (or actually some of us still believe in this myth right… =P) so we actually believed the words of our friends. So when the Israelites, who got bitten by the snake, look at the pole, they got healed not because there is power in the image, but because they believed in what God told them, which resulted in faith in God. However the sad part is that the image was misunderstood by later generation as an object of worship (2Kings18:4)

3) God was with them despite their unfaithfulness, and gave their enemies over to them. God really loved them.

Numbers 22

In this chapter, we meet with the Moabites, and when they heard the Israelites were coming, the king of Moab was terrified, as they were numerous. So he resorted to getting Balaam to curse Israel. However God spoke to him, and told him not to curse His people, he obeyed. However the king was persistent and God allow Balaam to go with them.

Now here is an appearance of the talking donkey! Can you imagine a talking animal? Yup, that’s the power of God. Here actually the donkey saved Balaam’s life. God is in control. Heard of people got saved from sharks by dolphins? Dogs saving lives? Mother gorilla putting a toddler to safety when he fell into the gorilla cage? God is in control.

If God is for us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31b =)