"Dear God: If I may make a suggestion…" (part 1)

The Word for today:
Numbers 11, 12

Yesterday, we tried to show the importance of applying overall spiritual principles to the facts as they are presented in scripture.

We pointed to a seemingly uneventful passage in Numbers 10 where Moses asks his father-in-law, who’d lived in the wilderness area they were traversing, to be Israel’s “eyes.” It all sounded good. Moses was honoring, and trusting, his father-in-law’s experience and wisdom.

Yes he was. But as he did, he was dissing God. God had provided omniscient (all-knowing) guidance in the form of the pillar of cloud (by day) and fire (by night). For Moses to ask his father-in-law to serve as Israel’s eyes in the wilderness was a momentary lapse into unbelief. There is no other way to spin it.

Often, especially in the historical books of the Old Testament (Genesis through Esther) scripture doesn’t editorialize. It just lays out the facts and expects us to apply over-riding spiritual principles to them. If we don’t, we can completely misconstrue the passages we are reading.

Today’s reading provides another example of this. Moses, feeling overwhelmed, complains to the LORD that his duties are too much to bear. So God appoints 70 assistants to help him carry the load.

If this solution had been implemented by a human king or commander, it would be compassionate, sympathetic, and effective.

But God isn’t a human king or commander who sees the error of his ways and amends them. He is the Creator of the universe, who needs no suggestion box in order to optimally run the factory.

Unless we apply these biblical principles we can miss the point of this passage. Just because God agrees to appoint the 70 does not mean that Moses had a better idea. By saying yes to Moses suggestion, God is exercising what theologians call his “permissive will.”

He allows Moses’ request, but the reader can infer that when Moses’ spirit is divided among the 70 elders, there is no more power, just more machinery. What results is not a power profusion, but a power diffusion.

Moreover, the reader can hear the subtle note of ingratitude and unbelief in Moses’ request, implying that perhaps God wasn’t doing His best for Moses.

God’s “directive will” was that the power of Moses’ spirit be undivided. But why? Why hadn’t God come up with the great idea of the seventy elders in the first place?

We hope you’ll return tomorrow to find out what becomes of the Seventy…

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