To Encourage You

Numbers 10:29-32 “And Moses said to Hobab the son of Reuel the Midianite, Moses’ father-in-law, ‘We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, “I will give it to you.” Come with us, and we will do good to you, for the Lord has promised good to Israel . . . And if you do go with us, whatever good the Lord will do to us, the same will we do to you.’”

One of the shadows we find in the Old Testament is that of the nation of Israel as they traveled through the wilderness. Here were the people of God, living by faith in the Word of God, for what else did they have to trust in?  As they wandered through a land that was not their own on the way to the Promised Land, the hope that the Promised Land was even a place, and that it was a wonderful and blessed place, was based only on what God had said. And then, day by day, they relied on manna that came down from heaven and water from a rock in the midst of a land that otherwise had no food or water. They only were given what was needed for that day. They had to trust in the Lord that it would be there again for them the next day, and the next.  In all of this we see a type of the Church.  

The Bible tells us that we live as “strangers and exiles on earth” (Hebrews 11:13) trusting that, in the end, we will reach the land God has promised. We desire “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). It’s a place Jesus has promised that He has gone to prepare for us.  But while we are here, we walk by faith, not by sight, trusting that God will, indeed, meet our every need.   We look to Him Who is the true manna from heaven (John 6:31-35) and the water of life (John 4:13-14).  Then, as others come to know Christ, the Church is the body of believers that welcomes and cares for them as one of their own.  And so we look to the passage above as a shadow of that invitation. 

Here we have Moses encouraging his brother-in-law Hobab, who was a Midianite and not a Jew, to join with him in his travels through the wilderness.  But notice how he gives his appeal.  He says “Come with us, and we will do good to you, for the Lord has promised good to Israel . . . And if you do go with us, whatever good the Lord will do to us, the same will we do to you.”  That raises a question:  Is the Church something we do, or is it something we are? In other words, is the Church a place we go to “do” church.  Is it a building we go to each week where we sing songs, pray, and listen to a message from the Word of God, and then go back home to do it all over again the next Sunday? Or is the Church who we are, each and every day of the week? Is our time together on Sunday morning a time of celebration for what God is doing in and through our life day by day?  Can we say to others who might join us, “This is a place in which we will do good to you, because God has done so much for us”?  Is it a place where people can find forgiveness, because God has forgiven us?  Is it a place where “we love because (Jesus) first loved us” (1 John 4:19)?  Is it a place where we “comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:4)?  Is it a place where “if a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, (we aren’t like those who) say to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled’ (James 2:15-16)  but we are those who give them what they need as God has supplied us with all we need?  

You see, Moses’ appeal to Hobab was that the people of God were people who would do the same to him as God had done to them.  Moses knew what God had done for them in the past, and he knew what God had promised to continue to do for them in the future.  His heart was set on being a stream through which God could pour out His blessings on others, rather than a reservoir storing up all God had given him and letting it stop with him.  

So, does that describe your attitude?  Is that what the Church is to you?  It should be, for that’s the command God has given us, i.e., that we love our neighbor as our self and that we be a vessel through which God can demonstrate His love to the world.