Sunday 4th August
Read Psalm 68
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This is a fairly lengthy Psalm with a verse quoted in the New Testament which we will come to shortly. It is a Psalm for the Old Testament people in Temple worship to praise God for his power in saving them and defeating their enemies. Praise of God always looks back to thank God for his goodness to us whether as the Church corporately or as individuals.
Ephesians 4:8 quotes v18 in a spiritual sense of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, “When you ascended on high, you took many captives” which could mean that his enemies were defeated, or that those who had been enemies were now his saved people. Possibly it is the latter sense that Paul intends it for the end of the reference is about “gifts from/ or to people” which he takes as referring to the gifts God gives to his people to build the Church up.
Lets give thanks to God for people in the Church that he has given us for our common benefit.
READINGS FOR THE WEEK AHEAD
When the Israelites came out of Egypt they ate a special meal during the time the Angel of Death swept through the land killing all the firstborn. The Israelite people who sheltered in their houses, marked with blood, were delivered because the Angel passed over them on that terrible day (Exodus 12). God instructed that it be celebrated every year and so that is what happened as they started out, however a problem arose that there could be those who could not celebrate the Passover because they were ceremonially unclean due to having to be in contact with a dead body during funeral rites. This was serious in that God’s command was that the Passover must be celebrated but he had also excluded unclean people from participating. The people came to Moses with that question. Notice that Moses didn’t just give an answer out of himself, he sought God’s word on it. Always a good thing to do.
God’s answer was that they celebrate the Passover on the second instead of the first month with everybody else. This resolved the matter.
There also an instruction that any foreigners living with them must celebrate the Passover too (v14). After the Passover their journey was to begin.
Tuesday Numbers 9:15-23
The latter half of Chapter 9 tells us of the movements of the people all their 40 years in the wilderness. It is a supernatural leading by the presence of God. When the tabernacle was finished a cloud hovered above, when night came this cloud became a pillar of fire, so that at every time the presence of God was seen by the people. When the clod lifted from the tent they were to move and when it rested they were to stay. It might stay for only a day or a year or longer but the people’s movements were to be governed by it.
Think of what this means for the life of the Church and of its members. Some are anxious to be moving and doing, while others are happy for things to stay put. Perhaps you can recognise yourself in that. Moving and staying are to be governed by God and him alone. There are times when moving is to be the order of the day and there are others when that is not the case. Discovering when this is the case is the task of those to whom God gives his spirit of discernment, whose ‘eyes’ are always on God. For others it is a quiet acceptance and patience before the will of God.
Ah, how communications have changed! Trumpets were heard for centuries – fanfares for royal entrances, bugles for battles, but then there were runners with written messages and telegrams and radio, now we have emails and texts.
The bugles that God commanded to be made had a summoning, assembling and advancing function as well as a rejoicing element at festivals. God knew that communication between his people was important and so he gave Moses these instructions and how the trumpets were to be used. We can’t say that is less important today. We need to have ways, understood by all, of communicating with each other in Church and outside. We should always think as to whether our ways of doing this are good.
Here we find that on the 20th day of the 2nd month of the 2nd year the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle which was the sign that the people were to get ready to move. This is the start of the wilderness movements which were to last 40 years. Starting with v14 the verses tell of how they were to march and those in charge of each division of the tribes. The importance of the tabernacle is seen in that it was to be set up first when, or before, the people arrived. The centrality of the tabernacle and its important ark of the covenant, symbolic of the presence of God, shows how the movement of the people was to be firmly joined to the presence of God.
The community of God’s people, Old or New Testament, can’t branch out on their own, the leading must always be from God.
Up until this time the family of Moses wife, Zipporah, had been with them but here, as they set out, Moses asks Hobab, the son of Reuel (or Jethro) Moses Father-in-Law, to come with them. He says, no, but Moses pleads with him to come because being of nomadic desert people he would be of help to them. The text doesn’t tell us whether he went with them but many years later we do find that his descendants settled in Judah (Joshua 1:16) after the conquest of the land.
Christian people should always be ready to seek others to accompany them on their Christian journey. Like Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress, some will, some won’t.
Here we are introduced to a complaining people. Have you ever been a complainer? How much, how often, what about? But you didn’t complain to God did you, or did you? Because complaints in the long run are complaints against him. The people here complained about the hardships they were having to endure in their wilderness journeyings and the first verses speak about a fire from God which consumed some. We would think that was a warning which would have been heeded but the next verses tell us of a further complaint – they didn’t like the food that was supplied which was the manna, whilst they had had fish and cucumbers and melons and leeks and more back in Egypt, forgetting the slavery and hardships. Moses became the brunt of all the complaints and he turned to God and complained. He complains that he doesn’t know how to be a leader and nurse-maid of this recalcitrant people and tells God he didn’t ask for this. We are given a quite stark recounting of his prayer before God – “If this is how you are going to treat me, go ahead and kill me” (v15). You can only speak with God like this when you have gone far along life’s road with him and learnt about him, learnt how to be close, giving all yourself to him but having done that such words are not amiss. Learn to know God and to be close to him.
Saturday Numbers 11:16-35
Moses complained that he wasn’t able on his own to look after this people and so God gave him instructions to gather 70 of Israel’s elders, leaders and officials, among the people and he will imbue them with some of the power of the Spirit that was on Moses so they could help him in his task over the people. When Moses gathered the elders and had them stand around the tent of meeting the Lord came down in a cloud and did what he promised, sending the Spirit on them such that they prophesied, which was the oldest form of religious ecstasy. Interestingly there were two who hadn’t been at the tent – Eldad and Medad – yet the Spirit came on them too. We don’t know why there weren’t there, but it could have been an understandable reason such as age or ill health.
Then because of the people’s complaints about their diet, particularly not having any meat, God said they will have meat but not for one or two days but for a month until they were sick and tired of it. Moses was astounded at this because of the number of people and the lack of animals but God said he would do it and later caused the camp to be inundated with Quails, a small game bird like a tiny partridge. Whether they caused the severe plaque that struck them or not, it was true that many died, and it was seen as a judgement of God for their complaints.
