The
Moabites, remember, are the descendants of Abraham’s nephew, Lot. Their beginnings were at the cave outside
Sodom after its demise when Lot’s daughters got him drunk and had sex with him
to get pregnant. They were, therefore, a
despised race as their origins bespoke their mores. Here, the king fears the Israelites although
he simply refers to them as a people who have come out of Egypt and who cover
the face of the earth (sounds like the command from Genesis). The king believes that the prophet Balaam has
the power to bless and curse, little does he seem to know about God’s promise
to the father of these people that those who bless them will themselves be
blessed and those who curse them will be cursed, the prophet’s powers were
limited with respect to these particular people. The question is, does Balaam know who this
God is who is speaking to him. He refers
to Him as the Lord, my God, but does that mean he knows this God is Yahweh?
Did Jesus
curse the fig tree because He was angry or because He was teaching? It would be silly to be angry at the fig tree
for failing to produce fruit at this particular time of year so there must have
been something more at work. The nation
of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and their righteousness and the
resultant blessing was to be a testimony to the entire world concerning their God
and they had failed to produce the fruit intended. They had, in fact, abandoned the mission and
in setting up the moneychangers and sellers of sacrificial animals in the
temple courts they had blocked the Gentiles from knowing the Lord as they could
not get close to hear and see. It may
have been deliberate on their part since they were under foreign occupation and
hated those who ruled over them, but they had become insulated from the world,
hiding their light from others, keeping God to themselves. Sounds a bit like the church doesn’t it?
If we
continue to live like the world and chase after the same things that the world
values, do we not also fail to reveal Him to the world? We have been set free from the chains that
hold the world in bondage to the things of earth. We are no longer slaves, but we don’t always
know how to handle our freedom well.
Grace is not license to live as we please. We have been set free so that we may pursue
the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that we might have the same goals and
desires that Jesus did, to glorify the Name of the Lord in our lives. When we do we reveal something about Him and
about our redeemed humanity to the world.
We are to be those who have come out of the matrix and our lives should
cause others to seek the freedom we have, allowing us to witness to the One who
redeemed us. When was the last time
anyone asked you about your freedom? You
have been given the grace to know Him by Name.
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