The Feed Mill

Today’s Bible Reading: Numbers 1-2

Today’s Devotional: Numbers 1:1-19

Numbers 1:2-3 right off we see that God calls Moses to take a censes of the children of Israel which is where the book gets its name. The census that was taken was a military census, and the children of Levi were excluded from this because they were to be in service of and at the Tabernacle. The children of Israel were numbered by individual family, the Lord would show His strength and win the battles through the families.

Numbers 1:4-19 God tells Moses the individuals who will stand with him, or assist him, from the heads of each of the families. This would be the representatives from each of the families, they were men who were called by God and were head of their families. God is giving a clear picture of male leadership in the family and in areas of the Church where men are involved, as is consistent throughout all of scripture. Within the census we see Nahshon from the tribe of Judah, Numbers 1:7, is mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew 1:4. They recited the ancestry of their family, each one individually, this wasn’t just a mentioning of a final number but an individual mentioning of each name. Every individual name was important to God, this was a war census, and God did not see the children of Israel as sacrifices for His eternal plan, but were individually known by God and God’s desire for each one to know Him and walk in His victories that He would go before the children of Israel and show them.

So we see that it is important for God’s people to walk, the children of Israel would inevitably walk for 40 years aware that there were going to be battles, many of which only fought in only a few later in their wandering in the wilderness. But that the promised land would have battles and the individual, the individual families, and the children of Israel collectively were to walk even their time in the wilderness; their time of obscurity and preparation for the promised land walking aware that battles were going to come.

In Ephesians 6 Paul writes through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to walk aware of the spiritual battles and how to fight them within our families and within our daily walk, as well as what Spiritual tools are used to fight them. And in order to be fully equipped to use those Spiritual tools we see there in Ephesians 6 we see in Ephesians 4:7 that God has given Spiritual Gifts to all Christians, and certain individuals, Ephesians 4:11, have been given to every individual Fellowship, Family, Body of Christ aka Church for the purpose of equipping the Christians in that Body of Believers for the work of the ministry and for edifying or building up. Every Christian is responsible to find a physical body of believers who gather together in person regularly and are equipped to use those gifts and built up in their faith.

This is one of many reasons why the “positive confession” movement within the church is so damaging and completely unbiblical, because we will have battles in our walk with the Lord to get through, and they are meant to teach us to trust in Him and not in our abilities. The “positive confession” movement is only preparing individual Christians and fellowships to not trust in God’s strength but instead when battles come it only tells the individual that it is because you were not trusting God that’s why the battle came, but God’s Word says no, there are battles so that you will learn to trust Me. Not in any individual person or worldly business model or practice but Jesus Christ and His Word.