God and Boundaries - Day 77 Through the Bible

Crossnore Weavers - Works by the Crossnore Weavers benefit the children of Crossnore School - located about 1 hour from Mt. Celo Church

The LORD's Recap of the Exodus and a Warning with Dire Consequences - Numbers 33 - The LORD commands this, in writing, from Moses - for remembrance - both for the current Israelites and future generations. Then the warning: (50-56) "drive out (the inhabitants)...destroy (the idols)...demolish (the high places)...dispossess (the inhabitants)...dwell (in the Promised Land).  God's warning:  "If you do not...it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell.  Moreover, it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them."

My Lesson/Application - God means what He says - whether it makes sense to us at the time or not.  Fast forward in the lives of the Israelites in the Promised Land (Judges 2: 11. 12 and many other passages), "Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals;and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger."  These warnings with prophecies fulfilled, happen so much in Scripture that it is amazing how we live our lives with little or no thought concerning the prophesied Second Coming of Christ.  I love what James Hudson Taylor (missionary to China for 51 years in the 19th C.) said: "There are three great truths, 1st, That there is a God; 2nd, That He has spoken to us in the Bible; 3rd, That He means what He says." 

The Importance of Established Boundaries - Numbers 34 - The LORD gives very distinct boundaries to the Israelites in the Promised Land - boundaries separating them from other nations and peoples, and boundaries separating the 9 1/2 tribes inheriting the land by lot from God.  (Recall that Reuben, Gad, and the 1/2 tribe of Manasseh were allowed to settle on the other side of the Jordan as long as they fought with the Israelites until all tribes had their land with ascribed boundaries.)

My Lesson/ Application: Why are boundaries so important to God?  In the OT these applied to land and to life (worship, marriage, and more).  In the NT we are given boundaries as well.  One of many is the warning to not be "unequally yoked with unbelievers" (2 Cor. 6:14).  Charles Stanley comments that these boundaries are for defense, accountability, safeguard, protection.  God knows the future; we don't. Here is one example of not maintaining borders in our contemporary world:  "In today's America He (Jesus) has moved from the central figure of world history to source material for late-night comics and pundits who would not dare treat other religious leaders with such disrespect." - David Jeremiah

Mob Mentality / Gratifying the Crowd / Manipulation - Mark 15 - Pilate understood that Jesus was innocent, that the Jewish religious leaders wanted Christ dead out of envy.  He tried to offer the alternative of Barabbas - a murderer- in place of Jesus being crucified.  But... "the chief priests stirred up the crowd so that he should rather release Barabbas to them."  Manipulation of the laws of God, of the courts, of due process, of witnesses, of the mindless mob were the shenanigans of the leaders of that time. Trying to gratify the crowd - say and do what they wanted rather than what was just and right - "men-pleasers rather than God-pleasers" (Eph. 6:14).

My Lesson / Application...Amazing how human nature or the institutions we run do not change through the centuries.  It is very difficult at times to stand alone - to risk all - to be ridiculed, forsaken - for following Christ., but great is our reward if we do so. (Matt. 5:12) I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done. - James Hudson Taylor