Numbers 16:4-5 - When Moses heard this, he fell facedown. Then he said to Korah and all his
followers: “In the morning the Lord will show who belongs to
him and who is holy, and he will have that person come near him. The man he chooses he will cause to come
near him.
Three Levite men decided to rise up against Moses. We are not
told what their exact problem was with Moses…but they managed to get 250 other
men to follow in their thinking. Moses reaction was to fall face downward… letting
God decide how to handle it with the censers they used to burn holy incense before
God.
The short story is that these men all perished…God letting
them know quickly that Moses was his chosen and that they had let pride
interfere with the simple jobs he had given them to do. God allowed a plague to
start among the people…meant to wipe out even more of these prideful Israelites
that came and grumbled about the men who had died….but Moses had Aaron offer
atonement for them so quickly that only 14,700 died from the incident.
It is a great reminder to me of the weakness pride can create
in one’s faith. Isaiah 2:17 says… “The arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled;
the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” When pride is given
control…it blossoms into full blown arrogance and never glorifies God. It twists our feelings of accomplishment into
crazy thoughts that we are better than we really are...worthy of ore than we
have.
We have to be
very careful that the pride we feel is the same as written in 2 Corinthians
7:1-4… "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves
from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear
of God. Open your hearts to us; we have wronged no one, we have corrupted no
one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I
said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together. I
have great confidence in you; I have great pride in you." This is a
genuine feeling of accomplishment…a feeling that glorifies God because of our
obedience to his calling on our life.
Father…thank you
for the reminder that pride is a dangerous emotion…needing constant humility to
keep it in a form that glorifies you. Forgive me for the many times that I have
let pride become a stumbling block to the path you have needed me to be on. Help
me to recognize very quickly any time pride is trying to weaken my faith…so I
can call on you to remove it before it causes any harm. Amen.
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