37 The Lord said to Moses, 38 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments,with a blue cord on each tassel. 39 You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the Lord, that you may obey them and not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes.
Numbers 15
The Israelites did not "live well" in the wilderness.
That's what we've been studying over the last few chapters in Numbers. In the wilderness, they rebelled.
Therefore, just after condemning this faithless generation to forty years in the wilderness, God begins to teach the people -- again -- what it will take to "live well" in the Promised Land ... when they do finally get there at least.
The instructions on how to "Live well" started with sacrifices -- "1 After you enter the land I am giving you ... present to the Lord food offerings ... as an aroma pleasing to the Lord."
The first to-do had to do with worship. With honoring God. With pleasing the Father.
It was an attitude of the heart.
As God's new list for living well continued to unfold, a new category emerged for staying close to God -- see our lesson for today.
Now, we could certainly get legalistic and ask why we aren't still wearing tassels today! If you go to Israel today, you'll find that many faithful Jews remain black clad with long beards, braided hair, and tasseled cloths. But rather than us being legalistic (which the New Testament largely released us from), it's still imperative that we ask what it means for us to "live well" in our land and in our days.
The reason that God gave this tasseling command to Israel was so that they so that they might …
1. "remember all the commands of the Lord"
2. "obey them" and
3. "not prostitute yourselves by chasing after the lusts of your own hearts and eyes."
What helps you "remember" and "obey" the commands of the Lord ... every day?
We live in a society that progressively "prostitute[s it]sel[f] by chasing after the lusts of [individual] hearts and eyes." What therefore are you doing to "remember" and "obey."
I remember hearing about the first thing done by one counselor for pornographic addiction. At his Christian counseling center, he asks patients, "Do you believe in God?" "Yes." "Do you believe he's powerful, omniscient?" "Yes." "No you don't," he says gently. "Not really."
Above their protests, he says, "When do you go online?" "When my wife is out. When my family has gone to bed." "Why then?" "So no one will see me. So no one will know."
"God sees. God knows." That's the message of the counselor. "We believe in our heads that God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, but what do we do daily to remind our hearts that God really is right beside us?
In Christ's Love,
a guy who still has an old pair
of shoes with tassels
(but it's not those shoes
that keep me focused on God)
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