Monday,
March 6, 2023
Then the people of Israel set out
from Mount Hor, taking the road to the Red Sea to go around the land of
Edom. But the people grew impatient with
the long journey, and they began to speak against God and Moses. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die
here in the wilderness?” they complained. “There is nothing to eat here and
nothing to drink. And we hate this
horrible manna!” So the Lord sent
poisonous snakes among the people, and many were bitten and died. Then
the people came to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned by speaking against
the Lord and against you. Pray
that the Lord will take away the snakes.” So Moses prayed for the people. Then the Lord told him, “Make a replica
of a poisonous snake and attach it to a pole. All who are bitten will live if
they simply look at it!” So Moses made a snake out of
bronze and attached it to a pole. Then
anyone who was bitten by a snake could look at the bronze snake and be healed! Numbers 21:4-9
Have you ever wondered why a prayer you lifted to Heaven never got
answered? You’re not alone. Most people are reluctant to say that out loud,
fearing perhaps God might immediately strike them dead with a lightning bolt,
or, at the least, they’ll be embarrassed.
I think the answer to the question about why a
prayer seemingly goes unanswered has to do with our lack of believing
behavior. We fail to see how
this thing we’ve asked for will be answered, and our expectation becomes our reality;
nothing happens. It’s like a golfer
taking a half-hearted swing at the ball, because he really wasn’t confident he
could make the shot. The result is what
he expected deep down, not what he wanted.
His behavior wasn’t believing.
In the case of God’s children in the wilderness, they wanted a change
from manna, that supernatural, gracious provision from Heaven. They weren’t satisfied and began to blame God
and Moses for bringing them out to the wilderness and providing everything they
needed on their journey to the Promised Land…also freely offered to them by
their God. That whole snake thing could
have been avoided, but their unbelief in the way God was releasing them from
Egyptian bondage, made their behavior a stench in Heaven’s nostrils.
Horrified by the thought of being exterminated by the serpents, one
painful bite at a time, they turned in repentance. They cried-out loudly: We have sinned! Notice
however, God didn’t just make the snakes disappear; he had Moses make another
snake, bronzed and on a pole. Their faith
wasn’t behavioral obedience until they looked to the serpent on the pole.
In following through (like a golfer, confident in his shot would follow
through) those who had been bitten would be healed. Perhaps, like any good father would expect
from a child who has broken the rules, the LORD wanted to see if their belief
would truly become behavior.
For You Today
There are about 2,500 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper explore
some of these: Snake On a Pole and Fall, Repent, Repeat
Title Image: via Wikimedia.org Images without citation are in public
domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted
from The New Living Translation©
