“ONE-YEAR JOURNEY OF THE BIBLE
Day 43 -Numbers 1-2 (Are You Prepared for Spiritual Battle?)
“Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying: "Take a census of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male individually, from twenty years old and above--all who are able to go to war in Israel. You and Aaron shall number them by their armies.” (Numbers 1:1-3)
The Israelites had just escaped from their long bondage in Egypt and have spent in the wilderness by the time God spoke to Moses in our text to number all the men of Israel from twenty years old who are able to go to war. Now, God needed to bring them from the wilderness to the promised land. He needed to transform them from a slave people to a promised land people and this is basically the theme of the book of Numbers.
To accomplish God’s purpose of transformation for Israel will be a battle and the people had to be prepared for war. This is the reason behind the census in chapter 1 of the book of Numbers.
“The order to count the potential soldiers was not meant to imply that Israel would take the land because of superior forces or merely the bravery of these men - they would receive the Promised Land by the hand of God. Nevertheless, they still had to fight and know what they had available to them going into battle.” (Guzik)
Those of us who have been saved have escaped from the bondage of sin and God seeks to transform us from a slave (of sin) people to a promised land (heaven) people. Just as God ordered the Israelites to take inventory of their strengths before they face their enemies, God also orders Christians to take inventory of our strengths which are the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to each one of us at the time of salvation.
This is what the apostle Paul was telling his son in the faith Timothy, “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier.” (2 Timothy 2:3,4)
As a soldier of Jesus Christ, you and I must prepare battle and at the core of our preparation is discipline; particularly, discipline in how we order our daily living priorities.
It would be foolish in my opinion for a soldier to be carrying a backpack full of rocks as he goes into the battlefield. And so for some time now, in seeking to be a good soldier of my Commander-in-Chief Jesus, my wife and I have been steadily trying to simplify our lives in order to be as mobile as we can be to move as the Lord directs us to move in our battle. That includes giving away a lot of stuff that we have accumulated over the years that tend to bog us down and steal our time and energy from serving God. I resolve to only keep the stuff that will help me and my family in serving as a good soldier of Jesus.
No comments:
Post a Comment