And In Conclusion

If I teach you that 1 + 1 = 2, and then I hand you one Snickers bar and then I hand you another Snickers, how many Snickers bars would you conclude that you have?

If you said, "Two," you would be correct.

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

You took a set of facts, coupled them with things you have been taught and applied them logically to deduce the answer.

Arriving at the correct answer depends on several things:

1) You must have been taught correctly;
2) You must have learned what you were taught;
3) You must have an awareness of how to apply what you were taught and
4) You must be able to use logic to arrive at your answer.

In my last post I discussed numbers. Not just any numbers, the numbers in Numbers.

It is interesting to note how many people drew obtuse conclusions about the post after purportedly having read the post.

What was the post about?

Was it about the use of numbers in Scripture to represent various things? You know, like "7" is the number of perfection, "666" is the number of the beast, etc.

No, it was not about that.

Well, maybe it was about insomnia and its cure.

No, that's not right, either.

It was about how the tents of Israel were laid out on the plains of Moab and what Balaam did when he looked on them.

They were laid out like a cross and Balaam blessed them.

Now let's see what we can conclude from that.

Can we conclude that some mystical force gripped Balaam and he was therefore unable to pronounce the curse for which he had been paid?

No, we cannot.

Perhaps we can conclude that God was trying to tell Balaam something.

Nope. God does not try to tell anybody anything. He tells. If we study His Word and listen, we hear.

Can we conclude that Balaam saw the future, that God would provide a cross to save the people He loves?

There is nothing in the text, or subsequent texts, that would indicate that.

Balaam probably did not recoginze the cross shape of the tent layout (and it was probably a cross shape in the same sense that the stars of the Zodiac are laid out like animals...kind of rugged looking).

Why, then, did God go to the trouble of giving a tedious account of the way the tribes of Israel were lined up on that plain?

For me.

And you.

See, Balaam may not have known what he was looking at, but I do.

When Balaam saw it, he probably said to himself, "Oh, look! The Israelite camp."

When I read about it I think, "On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross..."

God has had me and my needs in mind from before the foundations of creation.

He has had you in mind, too.

Isn't that exciting, comforting, and worthy of our confidence and faith?

What a mighty God we serve!