Bruce Collins, Evangelist

Meditation for the week of March 8, 2009

Numbers 12:1-3
Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman.  So they said, "Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?" And the LORD heard it. (Now the man Moses was very humble, more than all men who were on the face of the earth.)

Moses was a man of God (Deuteronomy 33:1).  He was humble or as the KJV says, he was meek.  He wasn’t one to lord it over the people of Israel and though he got righteously angry when Aaron and the children of Israel made the golden calf (Exodus 32:19), he wasn’t prone to anger.  He seemed to lack pride and a desire for position and he truly was a shepherd to the nation of Israel.  He interceded for them with God and saved them from destruction when they sinned.  But it only took a few minutes for his strong point to become his weak point.  When he smote the rock when was supposed to speak to it, he made the mistake that kept him out of the promised land (Numbers 20:6-12).

Solomon asked for the wisdom of God at the beginning of his reign when he was young.  When he was old, he worshiped heathen gods because of his unbelieving wives.   That doesn’t sound like Godly wisdom.  Peter was willing to use a sword to protect the Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, but he denied the Lord three times after the Lord was taken captive.  Later, he feared the Jews and was rebuked by Paul for his hypocrisy (Galatians 2:11).  He was bold and professed his love for the Lord by telling Him he would never forsake Him, but he did forsake him when put in the right circumstances.     

When someone points out how faithful we are, when we begin to think we have the flesh under control, when we begin to criticize others who have sinned in a way that we find repulsive, we need to be careful.  That will be just the time when Satan comes along and provides us with circumstances and temptations that will prove that we are weak in the very areas where we thought we were strong.  In Romans 7 Paul gives us the solution to our weaknesses, and the solution is Christ.  He is the one who saved us from the penalty of our sin and He is the only one who can preserve us from its power.

Paul says in Romans 7:24-25, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  I thank God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

Our minds may want to do right but our flesh which is the sin principle in each one of us may cause us to do that which we know we shouldn’t.  We cannot ever assume that we have “arrived” and will not be tempted to make a costly mistake that we will later regret.

My dad used to tell us when we were children that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and 10 minutes to spoil it.  Obviously, none of us are beyond failing the Lord in one way or another.  About the time we say, “I would never do that!”, Satan finds a way to tempt us to do exactly the thing we said we would never do.  Our strong point, may very well be the weak point that Satan uses to prove that we have feet of clay.  We need to remember that we are only sinners saved by grace.  We are not beyond temptation.

Bruce Collins