Seize the Moment – Day 577
Being Consumed!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Friday, October 15.
What is consuming your emotions and your thoughts?
In Numbers 16 we find Israel stirred up like a hornet’s nest after they were denied entrance to the Promised Land! The people were restless, irritable, and discontent! Their living conditions were rustic, the menu was monotonous, and the leadership just promised them forty more years of the same.
A perfect storm was brewing!
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled and in response God consumed them and their households by opening the earth (1-34). Immediately, fire from heaven consumed the 250 men who had joined with the rebellion (35-40). The people were so stirred up that they even blamed Moses for these supernatural judgements and continued to grumble against him and Aaron (41-50). In response, God told Moses and Aaron to separate themselves from the congregation so that He could “consume them.”
How would Moses and Aaron respond to a rebellious people so consumed with their circumstances that they had lost all perspective?
Numbers 16:45-48 narrates their faithful response:
They fell on their faces. Moses said to Aaron, “Take your censer and put in it fire from the altar, and lay incense on it; then bring it quickly to the congregation and make atonement for them, for wrath has gone forth from the Lord, the plague has begun!” Then Aaron took it as Moses had spoken, and ran into the midst of the assembly, for behold, the plague had begun among the people. So he put on the incense and made atonement for the people. He took his stand between the dead and the living, so that the plague was checked.
Seize the moment and remain calm in the consuming storm! I call all of God’s people to prayer so that God “will hear from heaven, will forgive [our] sin and will heal [our] land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).