Numbers 32:5;Numbers 33:53;Numbers 33:55;Mark 10:5

S Numbers 32:5 If we have found favor with you, please let us have this land as our property instead of giving us land across the Jordan River.

Numbers 33:53 Take possession of the land and settle in it, because I have given it to you to occupy.

Numbers 33:55 But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live.

Mark 10:5 But Jesus responded, “He wrote those instructions only as a concession to your hard-hearted wickedness.”

O In 32:5 the people of Reuben and Gad ask Moses very simply to have a land that they just conquered. This land was not the Promised Land, but one that they had to transverse to get to the Promised Land. In 33:53 the command of God is given to possess the land, not the land on the way. Moses caves in and agrees that if they fight for the land they can have another land (Questions. How hard are they going to fight for land they can’t keep? Are they not willing to trust their families to God? Why are they settling for less?) In 33:55 God also warns them that failure is not an option, 40 years of encampments are listed as a reminder to a past generations failure (ancestral sins). This 40 years is also so the people will not beg to go back. The people in the desert begged to go back to Egypt, but the next generation would have no where to go back to. Never again do we hear the people of God wanting to go back to the desert, except to get vision. God knows how to break people who complain when he is working on something good for them.

A I often ask God to hurry up his plan, or to do something without regard to his greater direction/plan. I believe sometimes like Reuben and Gad people are permitted to make a deal or go on their own tangent, but most of the time in my life I am pushed forward. God has goals that he pushes us towards and I can’t stop and say this place is good enough, when paradise or something better is two steps ahead. I believe God’s people must push forward and possess fully what God has called for. Mark 10:5 reminds me that Moses made concessions. Reuben and gad didn’t follow, but conceded like the Pharisees, they changes things to suit themselves. Reuben and Gad kept a land, Pharisees held onto power and Law, what do I hold onto. I find that I do things in church that I want to do, and I have visited many churches, to see what I like and don’t like. I don’t want to just do things I like and be that selfish person that has nothing to give. It is selfish toward god and others.

Hymns, really long sermons, certain sermon styles= BORING! If I would stop and consider others, and what the spirit is doing I wouldn’t change eliminate or change a lot of things to suit my needs.

P God help me and my wife to not go outside of your will for our lives. Help us seek you with selflessness! Help us follow you with reckless abandon. Help us to not fall short of your promises.

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