the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 1 of 5
Numbers 23:13-30
"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth?" (Romans 8:33-34). As though He is laughing at the accuser, the LORD charges him to proclaim from the top of the mountain that He "hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither . . . seen perverseness in Israel". In reading this v. 21, one cannot help wondering: How can God affirm what is so obviously contradicted by the facts? Has He forgotten the grumbles, the lusting, the idolatry, the rebellion? V. 23 gives us the answer: "according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought!" While the people were piling up faults in the wilderness, the LORD was accomplishing the work necessary to make them fit to enter the land. He had made provision for all the sins of His own in giving the sacrifices, the priesthood, the serpent of brass, all of them types of the work of Christ. So that, if God speaks in this way, it is not because He indulgently passes over evil, but in contemplating His people, He sees His work. He has constantly before His eyes the work of His Son, and would not be faithful and just towards this perfect Saviour if He still imputed the least fault to those whom He has washed in His blood (1 John 1:9).
