God's Warnings--Ex. 11

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My Precious One, how easy it is to ignore My warnings, when the one I am warning is you.  How equally easy it is to know of My warnings to another and judge their lack of response.  This morning as you read the passage concerning Pharaoh's final warning, it was easy for you to read it with the mind set that it was foolish for Pharaoh to ignore My 7 warnings and My 9 plagues.  Yet, that is exactly what you do when you know the behavior I desire from you, and you choose instead to ignore what you know that I have clearly asked of you.

Pharaoh could easily ignore My warnings and plagues because, with each time that he followed his own heart, his heart became hardened a bit more.  As he scoffed at the warning, not believing Me at all, it got easier to repeat the wrong response.  By the time I reached the tenth and final plague, his heart was so hard and unbelieving that he thought nothing of what Moses had said to him by prophecy.  He did not count the cost at all for his willful, stubborn disobedience.  His hard heart had already cost him much, but he was willing to overlook it, believing that, in the end, he would prevail over Me.  When Moses told him of the death that would be coming to all the firstborn of the Egypt, Pharaoh never considered that if Moses was speaking the truth (as he had 9 previous times), that he himself would lose his own firstborn.  Because his unbelief prevailed, all of Egypt went into deep sorrow and mourning when they witnessed the devastation that the Angel of Death delivered.

My Precious One, how many warnings from Me will you continue to ignore, believing that no real harm will come to you. Ignoring My warnings, those things that I have clearly laid out for you in My Word, leads to sinful disobedience.   And do you not know that your lack of concern for your disobedience reveals your true heart?  Your disobedience, at its core, is unbelief in Me, the One you say is your Lord.

Disobedience is its own form of unbelief.  When you disobey Me you are telling Me that you believe in your own, sinful heart's desires more than you believe in My ability to provide a way of escape for you.  Did you notice that every one of  My 7 warnings to Pharaoh included a way a repentance for him, a way for him to turn around and heed My warning?  You see, I desire to bring you to repentance, too.  Pharaoh never took Me up on it.  Will you?

Wrong Way! Go Back!

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David should have been at war.  It was springtime, and his military troops had returned to battle to complete what they started before the long, rainy, cold winter set in.  Instead, David remained in Jerusalem.  Pacing the floor of his balcony, likely thinking of the his men and worried just a little that he hadn't accompanied them, David glanced over and saw Bathsheba.  At that very moment every thought of his nation's battle and his lack of entreaty to the Lord stopped plaguing him, and his mind, as well as his eye, lingered on Bathsheba.  Thus began a snowball of sin coming down the mountain of his life.  Or so I used to think.

As long as I have been reading my bible I was sure that this one moment in David's life, of falling to a fleshly temptation, had ushered in a bushel of horrible choices.  But the truth of the matter is this:  David's sin began long before that fateful night on the balcony.  It began the moment David took his second wife. 

God had clearly given the command that the men of Israel were to be monogamous.  God put the parameters of "one wife" around them to protect them.  Yet David "overlooked" this particular commandment and justified himself as he took wife after wife, and concubine after concubine.  For several years his disobedience appeared to also be "overlooked" by God.  But it wasn't.  With God, appearance is irrelevant.  God hated sin, so He gave commandments to show His people what He expected out of their behavior.  God hated David's sin,  and not just in the moment when he fell to the temptation of not looking away from Bathsheba.  God hated David's sin the moment he fell to his selfish lack of control that opened the door to a second marriage while still married to his first wife.  God hated the lust in David's heart the presented itself long before his sleepless night of pacing.

Caught in his sin, David would now suffer the consequences of leaving his lust unchecked.  Countless times David could have confessed to God regarding his sinful heart, but he never did.  Not until he had been caught by the prophet Nathan in a wicked scheme to keep his infidelity a secret, a scheme that involved lies, betrayal, and a murderous plot.  Nathan called David's honor and integrity into account, and David, truly heart-broken over his sin, confessed to God the truth He already knew.

The ugliness and sin in David's heart began as a tiny seed of dissatisfaction with the wife of his youth, but it grew into a massive, strangling vine.  God let it grow until He had finally had enough.  What David thought God must have "winked at," he now realized had been a critical flaw in his character.  

What sin have you been committing for a very long time now?  Has it seemed that it is just "no big deal" to God since He really hasn't challenged you in regard to it?  Learn from the life of David.  What hasn't been dealt with will surely be!  God is not willing that evil reside in any of us.  If you have let it go unchecked, as David did, you can count on God pulling the rug out from under you sooner or later.  Take a good look into your heart.  What is your ugly, sinful vine?  Surrender now and confess it to God and walk away from it..  It's the wrong way!  Go back!  Get on the right path!  Better to handle it that way than to wait for the discipline of the Lord!

Lessons From a Donkey

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Balaam was a man who knew God, but he loved money even more.  After twice disobeying the will of God, God put his heart to the test and showed it clearly to Balaam.  Spiritually-blind Balaam quickly learned that a talking donkey could see what he himself could not--the angel of God who was standing in the way of the donkey to protect Balaam from a wrong course.  Are you going the wrong way?  How do you respond to someone trying to point out the error of your way.  Let's look at this example from Numbers 22.

Three times the donkey "sees" what is happening in the spiritual realm.  Three times the donkey tries to make a "course correction" on Balaam's behalf.  Three times Balaam strikes the donkey for his "willful disobedience."   Now, let's look at it even more closely.

The angel of God can be likened to the Holy Spirit.  He lives inside of us for many purposes, but one of them is to guide us onto the right paths when we get off course or lose our way.  He stands between us and the consequences that we will face when we disobediently choose to go the wrong way.

The donkey might very well be a spiritual friend with whom we are walking on this spiritual journey.  The Holy Spirit uses them to help us make right decisions, to hear the voice of the enemy when we speak to them about our choices  that are not in line with the Word of God, and to steer us in a more godly direction.  They  speak truth and life into our lives, directing us this way and that way, in order to help us get off of our wrong path.  But we are often too stubborn, and intent on going our own way, to listen to them.  Too many times we lash out at them, despising their wise counsel.  As we walk toward the sin, this friend will do whatever he has to to steer us away from evil.  Look at this progression in the story of Balaam's donkey and his ever increasing desire to help:

• Verse 23:  The donkey is on a road.  Seeing the angel, he turns off the way and goes into a nearby field, wanting to turn around and go back. 

• Verse 24-25:  The donkey is now on a narrow path with walls on either side of the path.  Seeing the angel, he has no where to go, so he presses into the wall.

• Verse 26-27:  The donkey is now in a narrow place with no possibility of turning around.  Seeing the angel, he has no way out, so he just lays down, because he is stuck there.

The donkey warned, but Balaam didn't listen.  The donkey tried to turn Balaam around, move him out of danger, and then just laid down.  All three times dear Balaam struck him!  When we make a wrong choice we, too, can become spiritually blinded to the warnings all around us and put our protection in jeopardy.  As we continue in our poor and sinful choices, the path of destruction NARROWS until we are STUCK in our sin.  

Another thing to consider is Balaam's response to the donkey's question as to why he had been struck.  Balaam tells the donkey, "Because you have made a mockery of me."  The donkey had been ridden by Balaam all of his life and had never let Balaam down by taking him the wrong way.  So why did Balaam lash out at him?  Because the donkey was impeding what Balaam wanted, with all of his heart, to do (to go with the men who where going to pay him lots of money for his divination!)

Translate these truths now to your own life.  How do you receive wise counsel?  Do you just want to go your own way with no intrusion from the real truth?  Have you verbally "struck" the very one who is trying to help you?  We all can learn a valuable lesson from Balaam, but even more from his "godly" donkey!