Numbers 32:1 - You want to do what!! - Day 142

Good afternoon saints in Christ,

We have heard a lot about unity and union from a political perspective over the last day.  Today's devotional is about unity from spiritual perspective.  It will be important for us to understand the differences in the weeks and months ahead.  For example, what is the source of political unity and what is the source of spiritual unity?

Blessings,

Jeff

Here we go again.  Moses must have been tearing his hair out.  This new generation had grown up in the wilderness because their parents and grand parents were disobedient.  While Gad and Reuben were not refusing to cross the Jordan, their desire to have the land outside of Canaan proper must have been discouraging to the other tribes.  

Notice that Moses does not take this request to God.  We have seen other times when questions about the application of the law were taken to the Lord.  Neither do we see discipline from God for this agreement.  This made me think about what exactly was the "Promised Land"

Went back to Genesis 15:17-21 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.  On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,  the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim,  the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” 

God promised Abram a lot of land, not just the strip between the Jordan the Mediterranean.   That strip was certainly the starting point.  So Gilead and the rest of the land east of the Jordan was also part of the promise.  

Instruction - What does God expect? It is sad that Q-Anon has co-opted the phrase "Where we go one, we go all".  Or as the 3 musketeers said "all for one, one for all".  Each tribe within Israel was affected by the actions of the others.  So too, the body of Christ.  Romans 12:4-5.  For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Each believer and each body of believers needs to consider how their words and deeds affect the rest of the body.  

Thanksgiving - Your glory is over all the earth, not just my little part.  You are the King of kings.  The Son is given to the church as the head of rule and authority.  The whole world is the Promised Land to the Son.

Confession - a very myopic vision of the body of Christ.  

Petition - Make me aware of what the head of the church desires for the Body, not what I think is best for TCCS and me.