Gary Gleans

It is easy for misunderstandings to happen in our day to day relationship.  Today’s passage has all the makings of a classic misunderstanding that could have provoked a civil war in Israel.  However, because of clear communication on both sides of the issue, everything was cleared up and both sides of the argument went away happy with the outcome.  The key to maintaining right relationships with one another is usually open communication with one another.  There are several “rounds” of communication in this passage and I think that there are several lessons to be learned through this process. THE TRIBES COMMUNICATE THEIR DESIRE: The tribes of Ruben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh desire to stay on the side of the Jordan River where they are instead of crossing over to the land of Canaan.  Their reason for this is that they have many cattle and the land they were on was good for raising livestock.  While this request seems logical enough, I wonder i...

Prior to the death of Moses, God told him to go and make war with the Midianites.  These people had tried to curse the children of Israel and then tried to pollute them through idolatry and immorality.  God had already dealt with Israel’s disobedience through the plague He sent, but now it was time for God to deal with the people of Midian.  It is always very important to remember that God is just.  There are times when it seems that sinners are not brought to justice and there are times when it seems to us that God’s judgment is severe.  We must recognize that God is always just in His dealings with men.  He may extend His grace for longer than we understand but He is still just.  We may not have all the information as to the depth of the sin in some nations, but we can rest assured that God’s judgment is always just. GOD’S PUNISHMENT OF MIDIAN: The kings of Midian recognized that Israel was blessed of God and they had great fear of the people....

God wants His people to be honest and faithful; it is of utmost importance to Him that our words be trustworthy and that we keep our promises.  When vows are made, they are to be kept as a testimony to the faithfulness of God.  When we call ourselves the children of God and do not keep our promises, we reflect poorly upon Him and He is greatly displeased with us.  It is far better for us to refrain from making a vow than it is for us to make it and then not keep it.  This passage makes God’s expectations very clear.  I fear for the many who have made vows of faithfulness to their wives and husbands, only to flippantly break those vows through divorce.  This is not God’s intention for His people. MEN ARE TO COMPLETE THE VOWS THAT THEY MAKE: We are to be people who are bound by our words.  When we say we will do something we must do what we promise to do.  It is a very sad thing when the words of a believer cannot be trusted.  The promise...

It is easy for us to forget, that is why repetition is such an important tool in teaching.  Just prior to Moses leaving the people for good, he goes through and repeats the people’s obligations for their offerings and their feasts.  These were vital to the welfare of the people and the survival of the new nation that the Lord was separating for His purposes.  Each of these feasts are significant in that they are types of Christ’s coming; both His first and second.  These have been discussed in earlier blogs so I will not repeat them here.  Instead I would like to focus on two basic principles that I see in these chapters that simply sum up two very important priorities in our lives. REMEMBER THE SACRIFICE OF CHIRST: As we read through these chapters, we cannot help but be impressed with the numbers of animals that were to be killed and sacrificed each month.  These sacrifices were a constant reminder of the seriousness of sin and that wage of sin bein...

The generation of people who refused to enter the Promised Land has now died and God has brought the nation back to the place where they are ready to enter the land once again.  Prior to invading the land there are a few things that still must be done in order to the will of God to be known and accomplished.  God is in control of the history of this world and His will is always going to prevail in the end.  It may be delayed by the sins of men, but God is not very concerned with the time factor.  He is very patient and never seems to be in a hurry; rather, He wants to be sure that His children are rightly related to Him and that His Word will be fulfilled. GOD’S WILL WAS TO BE DONE IN THE DIVISION OF THE LAND: God is concerned about each individual family within the nation of Israel.  He wants to make sure that each family has its rightful inheritance of the land.  One particular family was left without a son to inherit the land, so the daughters of t...

All of us go through times in life when we feel like our tires are spinning and we just can’t seem to get anywhere.  The children of Israel must have felt exactly like this for the forty years that they spent wandering around in the desert.  The only purpose of these forty years was for the people who had rebelled against God to die.  Those who had rebelled against God really only had one purpose for the rest of their life and that was to repopulate the children of Israel in order to make up for the increase in the death rate and the decreased life expectancy of the people that God inflicted on the people over the forty years of desert wanderings.  I think that the lesson here is simply that sin will get you stuck in a rut from which you may never find release apart from death.  When we decide to rebel against God we stop progressing and run the risk of simply being put on the shelf until we die which will likely be accelerated because of our sin.  This c...

Satan has several different tactics that He uses against the people of God.  These tactics have not changed very much throughout the centuries.  His ultimate goal is to destroy God’s people in any way he can.  Nations arise to kill God’s people, but God supernaturally protects them so this tactic has not been very successful.  Next he tries to deceive God’s people by causing us to doubt God’s goodness and he fosters dissatisfaction in our hearts.  This has been a very effective means of drawing the hearts of many of God’s people away from the Lord.  Finally, Satan strives to destroy God’s people by tempting them to sin so that the very wrath of God will bring them to destruction.  This too has been very effective and we can see this taking place in Israel as well as in our own cultures today.  Satan pretends that he is promising to bring the pleasure that he says we deserve; but his true purpose is to lead us into a path of pain and destruction ...