February 2022 – Page 3 of 3 – Sonshine's Journal

February 7, 2022February 7, 2022

Which person are you?

Numbers 7 to 10 Self-reliance or God-reliant?

God clearly marked out his chosen leader, Moses, by a personal one-to-one communication with Him. Do we experience this on a daily basis? In chapter 7, verse 89 we read “Now when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim, so He spoke to him.” [Num. 7:89] When you sit down to read each day do you hear the voice of the Lord speaking above the mercy seat or are you too self-reliant to think you can just read and determine the truth on your own?

Jesus said: “I can do nothing on My own initiative.” [Jn 5:30] Is this true of us? There is a danger in our self-sufficiency or self-reliance.

February 5, 2022February 5, 2022

God has spoken…

Numbers 1-3 Are we listening?

God spoke in Genesis to create, and it was so. God spoke in Exodus to reveal His power and to gain release the children of Israel from bondage. God spoke in Leviticus to give the Ten Commandments and the Law. God spoke in Numbers giving instructions; first, as to the placement of the Tabernacle and the people. Then God spoke and told Moses to take a census. We see God speaking and using His servant Moses to lead the people in all of these examples. He spoke, and it was so. All of this was done so that we might know that He “is not a God of confusion but of peace…and so all things must be done properly and in an orderly manner.” [1 Cor. 14:33, 1 Cor. 14:40]

Today the Holy Spirit speaks to men and women, boys and girls through the inspired word to know the way of God that we might be a righteous and holy people. “Men were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak the words of God.” [2Pet. 1:21] These inspired words are “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” [2 Tim. 3:16]

Lastly, in Revelation, God spoke to the churches and ended each with these words: “he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says…” [Rev. 2] God has spoken; are we listening?

February 4, 2022February 4, 2022

“Obedience = Blessing”

Lev 26-27 God desires that His people be a light among the nations. He desires that we obey Him and receive blessings, but just like an errant child who knows what they are to do and not do, sometimes God will allow discipline to correct His children. This is as true today as it was then: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.” [Prov 22:15] Like the Israelites of old, today we too face fallow land and fallow hearts.

How often do we think that these many rules or orders were just for the Israelites and they don’t apply to us because we live in NT times and under grace? A principle is a principle, and God is God. He is “does not go back on his word or change his mind, for he is not a human being who changes his mind.” [1Sam. 15:29] God desires that we obey Him now and forever so that He may bless us. Blessings come with obedience and the contrast is also true.

Just as then, God’s Word is always and forever true: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” [1Jn 1:9] Healing comes when we obey God and His way.

February 3, 2022February 3, 2022

Commemorating and Remembering

Lev 23 God loved his people so much that he established memorial days that they might focus on who He is and His provision for their every need. The seven feasts all pointed to Christ, who was yet to come. When He came, he established communion or what we call the Lord’s Supper, to point to God’s eternal plan to be completed. As NT believers, we are not responsible for keeping the OT memorials but studying them as a way of enhancing our faith. Only in the NT are we commanded to keep the Lord’s Supper as a way of remembering Jesus Christ as our perfect sacrifice.

The Hebrew word for “feasts” is (moadim) and means “appointed times.” They reveal God’s story of the plan of redemption of the Son of God’s death and resurrection and the promise of his future coming. The one requirement for all is seeing them as a sacred observance. We are to honor the Lord as his called sanctified saints and it should be done in holiness and reverence.

February 2, 2022February 2, 2022

How to be Holy

Lev. 17-19 “The Sacred vs the Profane”

One thing we must remember as we study Leviticus is that these are the very words of God and His reminders of the “you must not and you must.” The leaders had failed in their instruction of the principles of holiness. Therefore, these are written that they and we might be instructed in not what we think is right but what God thinks is right. As Ken Boa said, “God only has to say “no” once for something to be wrong.” God’s purpose is that His people who are set apart for him are to be holy because he is holy.

In addition, they were written so that we remember that “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” [2Tim. 3:16]

God was preparing to send the Israelites into a polluted nation. He did not want them polluted with what he considered abominable and thus why he spent so much time explaining what seems repetitious of the “must not’s and the musts.” God loved His people and He loves us. “For everything that was written in former times was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope.”[Rom. 15:4]

Have you spent time with God today so that your thoughts are His thoughts, and your ways His ways? [Is 55:8]

February 1, 2022February 1, 2022

Jesus erases our Guilt

Lev 16 The Day of Atonement
The Israelites were to set aside one day of the year, and the high priest was to offer sacrifices for himself and his family BEFORE he offered sacrifices for the community. The Jews still honor that day even today, but we don’t. We don’t because Christ was our perfect sacrifice once and for all.

Secondly, in this, we see Aaron as the mediator between him and God for the people. Today, Christ is our mediator, and no man can fill that position. For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, [1Ti 2:5]. Then Aaron was to take a smoking censer to create a screen between him and the Shekinah glory. Now we can “confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace whenever we need help.” [Heb 4:16]

The Day of Atonement is a beautiful reminder of the price paid by our Lord. One day all will be fulfilled, and no longer will we need to do it over and over. Christ fulfilled it all.