THE ONE YEAR BIBLE CLUB

           WELL, poor Balaam is killed...and once again this confirms the idea in our previous reading, that God will use the wicked, but eventually He will judge them.   Balaam was the wicked one that was hired to curse Israel, but even Balaam turns around and says, " I cannot curse those whom God has not cursed " and we love that scripture, don't we! The problem is, we fail to read on because the people of Israel end up being cursed regardless, so in the end God's people are cursed. So if our aim is " not to be cursed " it is not enough to simply quote one random text from God's word but to understand the full idea of the story of Balaam.  Verse 15 to 16 goes on to tell us that Balaam could not curse them  directly or by his own  will, BUT Balaam thought of a better way to curse God's people, Balaam figured out that he could get them to  curse themselves .  "They were the ones who follo...

 I wrote a mini e-book, available on smashwords.com entitled “The Reality of God”. How important it is that we have the ever and present Reality of God in our lives. How important it was back then, but even more, how important it is today. We can discuss all day long the significant aspects to all these offerings, but one thing we can say for sure, without speculation, is that it kept God, His purposes, His reality, at the forefront of the minds of His people. It is so easy to get caught up in the business of life and become distracted and lured away, from this relationship with this invisible God. In obeying these commands to have these frequent offerings, no matter how busy they were, this had to be done and it brought them constantly back to the place God wanted them. Today, we don’t have these laws, we don’t have these constant offerings, sacrifices, rituals, so what keeps God at the forefront of our minds? When Jesus describes the seeds (the Word of God) that the sower sows in...

  WE want to bury the past, but the past cannot be buried, the past becomes part of our history. Stop bringing up my past! Well, sorry, we are! Because if we don’t remember the past, we repeat it. What will your history be? Well let’s ask, “who are you banding with?”      “ Our father died in the wilderness. He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the LORD "      Why is this coming up now? Because the past, our history always comes back. Men who forget history repeat the same mistakes, this we know! Israel has certain reference points (a history) just as we do. Korah and what happened is part of their history and will be until their death. Mahlah and her sisters are quick to mention that their father was not part of the group that "banded together" against the Lord. A few thoughts here, #1. It was not against the Lord that they banded, I thought it was against Moses? But when God inspires this text to be written, it is...

      Such a short verse here, slipped in the midst of all the numbers and counting, but did you catch that?  Vs. 9 "...were among Korah's followers when they rebelled against the Lord".  Moses must be mistaken here, so I went back and read the story where it actually happened.  It seems as I read the story that Korah approaches Moses, with his gang, to confront Moses. Korah says, "why do you set yourself above the people, we are all holy too!".  So at first appearance, it seems like Korah is not rebelling against the Lord (after all, who would do that?) Korah is merely rebelling against the leadership.       I like (actually I don't) how we separate the two. "I love the Lord and would do anything He tells me, it's just this incompetent leadership I am rebelling against. And not only will I rebel, but I will spend my time convincing others to join me, against him. Rebels in the Church are always pretty convinced that they are rebell...

  HOW spiritual are you? Of course nobody likes "super spiritual" people, but that does not mean we should not be spiritual. "Super Spiritual" people are those who try to spiritualize matters that are more practical in nature than anything else, they also try to hide their flaws and judgmentalism behind "spirituality"...., well we know all about them, but let's talk about us. We are proud that nobody would call us "super spiritual" but would anybody call us "spiritual" ??? THE FACT IS some of us are more spiritual, more in tune with God and seem to have more of his Spirit, than others. Paul prayed, "that they may be filled to FULL measure with His Spirit". Full meaning that any Christian can be from a quarter empty to overflowing full (just like a gas tank) with God's Spirit. If only we had a gage like our gas tank, to show us where we are at. Aside from violations & money problems, the balance of divorces stems fr...

 Balaam is a confusing character to many people. At first when we are reading about him going over to meet Balak to partner with him against Israel. However when Balaam pronounces blessing on Israel instead of cursing; Balak sends him off angry so now we think, "oh, he's a good guy". Balaam is saying good things, but he is still bad. Later on Balaam mentions to King Balak that although he cannot curse Israel himself, Balaam suggests to King Balak that he can have the Israelites curse themselves by enticing them into sexual immorality. This turns out to be quite an effective course and thousands of Israelites die in a plague that strikes the Israelite community because of their sexual immorality between the moabite women and the men of Israel..What we can learn from this is "saying good things does not make you good", doing good things makes you good, even if you don't say a thing. We are confused about Balaam, but there really is nothing to be confused about...