Prayer: Father, reveal to me through Your word and Spirit, how much You abhor a rebellious spirit. Help us all gain new understanding about the rebellion in our hearts. Amen.
Reading: Numbers 16 key: vs. 4-5
4 When Moses heard this, he fell on his face.
5 Then he said to Korah and all his following saying, “In the morning Adonai will reveal who is His and who is holy. The one whom He will let come near to Him will be the one He chooses to come near to Him.
Attention: Have you ever known someone who has a rebellious spirit? Most of have known someone in our lifetimes who has a rebellious spirit. Perhaps you have gone through a spell in your life when you were particularly rebellious. There is a parable in the gospel of Luke which tells of a man who had two sons. One was compliant and respectful of his father and the other by contrast, demanded his inheritance and left home and “squandered his inheritance on wild living.” He went out and spent it all on the wild life. When it was all gone, and he found himself in need of the basics of life and in his despair, “he came to his senses,” and returned to his father who received him back.
I came upon a scripture a few years ago which encapsulates the spirit of rebellion; “For rebellion is like the sin of divination and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry” (1 Samuel 15:23a). Adonai is speaking through the prophet Samuel. If we accept his definition of sin given from Adonai, we have a chance of understanding the severity of sin. Ultimately, sin is defiance of God. It is like the two-year-old who looks his parent square in the face and says, “No!”
Even King David eloquently laments his sin in Psalms 51:6a, “Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.” Simply put, all sin is against Adonai.
Against whom was the sin of Korah and his family? Adonai alone, and Adonai judged it with the lives of Korah’s family. He wasn’t only openly questioning Moses and Aaron. He was questioning everything which Adonai had done for the Hebrew nation through Moses in extracting them from slavery and forced labor. How soon they forgot their cries of suppression and oppression. Going so far as to say how good they had it in Egypt and they were brought out into the wilderness to die.
Rebellion is serious my friends and Adonai abhors attitudes which he equates with divination, stubbornness and idolatry, character traits which we rarely speak against in our culture.
Action: Lord, reveal to me and transform my rebellious ways today.
Yield: I give my attitude over for transformation today.
Engage: I choose to engage with the Holy Spirit in being transformed from my former rebellious ways.
Relationship: I choose to be in close, intimate relationship with Adonai.
Father, I pray for my friends who struggle with rebellion. Those who know that they are trying to run away from You because of their rebellion. May they run towards You and into your waiting arms. Amen.
Memory Verse: Psalm 51:6a Against You, You only, have I sinned and done what is evil in Your sight.
Music Video: Spiritual Warfare—Put On the Armor of God https://youtu.be/AtuTytgyqvo
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!”