October 27, 1999

EXPLORE THE BIBLE:
Seeing eye-to-eye, working
shoulder-to-shoulder
___ Numbers 16:1-3, 28-32; 17:8-10
___By Mark Bumpus
___First Baptist Church, Mineral Wells
___John Traylor, our Sunday School quarterly writer, tells of a pastor who went to visit a church member with whom he had never seen eye-to-eye. When he came to her house, the movement of the curtains betrayed the fact she was at home, yet she would not answer the door. Though he should not have done it, he got down on his knees to peak through the keyhole ... and the woman was peaking back at him! He later reflected, "When we got down on our knees, we were able to see eye-to-eye."
___ Crystallized dissension (Numbers 16:1-3). Moses ran into a classic case of "too many chiefs and not enough Indians." Two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation (16:2), "men of renown," organized themselves in open opposition to him as God's appointed leader. So influential were these 250 that, in due time, they persuaded the majority of the 2 million traveling in the wilderness to take a side against Moses (16:19). The majority, though vocal, may not be right--especially if misguided in their agenda.
___ Divine ex-communication (Numbers 16:28-32). In what James Leo Garrett calls a "divinely ordained act of discipline within the community of Israel" in the form of "divine intervention through nature," "the earth opened its mouth and swallowed" the 250 men, their households and their possessions (16:32).
___Here is an example of what John Calvin calls God's "strange" work of judgment. Simply stated, God does not take lightly contemptuous behavior (16:30) and intentional sin. Just ask Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11). Though Moses was not perfect, God still protected him as God's divinely appointed servant and leader.
___ Divine reminder (Numbers 17:8-10). The Lord told Moses to preserve Aaron's rod that budded as a reminder for potential rebels not to grumble against God's appointed leaders (17:10). Godly cooperation is the goal.
___In the disciples, we see that Jesus molded a band of divergent personalities and backgrounds into a unified group. Prayer (Acts 1:12-14) and the unifying experience of Pentecost (Acts 2:43-47) enabled them to see eye-to-eye and focus on a mission much greater than their own personal agendas (Luke 22:24).
___Prayer, God's unifying Spirit and the large work of the kingdom ought to mold us into a cooperative group.
___Some African tribesmen went hunting for an elephant. A scrawny little tribesman threw the spear that finally killed the elephant. They were far from camp, so, together, they all began pushing and rolling the elephant back to camp. As they rolled the elephant toward camp, they chanted in unison, "This is our elephant. This is our elephant. This is our elephant." However, the scrawny little tribesman began chanting, "This is my elephant. This is my elephant. This is my elephant." The leader of the tribesmen stopped everyone and said, "OK, if this is your elephant, you roll him back to camp!" The scrawny tribesman realized the enormity of the task and quickly chimed back in, "This is our elephant. This is our elephant. This is our elephant."
___Our task is a mammoth one. It takes the cooperation of all!

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