"And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, but they said, 'We will not come up! Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you should keep acting like a prince over us? Moreover you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards.'" (Nu. 16:12-14)
Okay, let me get this straight. I thought The Word of God told them Canaan, AKA, "The Promised Land," was the, "land flowing with milk and honey." Now here are these, as the Word of God describes them, "sinners against their own souls," calling the land of slavery, where they had known nothing but whips and depravation, "a land flowing with milk and honey." Maybe they were the originators of the idiom, "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't," or as someone defined it, "better to stay in a bad situation rather than risk a change and end up in a spot that's even worse."
God declares, "I am God,.. declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying 'My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure....'" Yet how many times in life we are as the men in our text; we put up with slavery just because we don't believe, "The Word of God," Jesus Christ! "[Jesus] speaks," the hymn says, "and the sound of His voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing." Really? Why then do we so often embrace the "voice of strangers," those who come across the television news networks, the printed media, the water cooler experts, or that know-it-all-uncle?
What is needed in me daily is the attitude of Job, "Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand," or as Barnes interprets it, "I have pronounced an opinion on subjects altogether too profound for my comprehension"-- behold, Dathan and Abiram. They yielded to the temptation that what they knew was better than what they did not. I say, better to confess with Paul, "Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature------ have this mind"!
Father, in Jesus' Name, I regret the years I called my way, "milk and honey," when only You are, "Milk and Honey." Amen.
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Two great new articles, one entitled, "Obama's Top Ten Insults Against Israel: www.apf327.blogspot.com
When an 18 year old Norwegian "heard the call to evangelize China, he not only emptied his wallet into the collection plate, but included a small note with the words, 'and my life.'"
"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2
