Damage

 Whether in a family, a town, a community, a church, or a nation, it doesn’t take an overwhelming force to wreak havoc. All it takes is a handful of determined people and a docile, passive, go along to get along majority. When people are situationally ethical, situationally moral, and situationally faithful, it’s easy to whisper sweet nothings in their ears until their hearts are turned away from the truth, and they begin to turn against those who would see them reach the promised land.

People are fickle. They have been since the beginning of time, and those who are not anchored in truth, those who are not firmly planted in the Word, are easily swayed given the right kind of pressure. It doesn’t take much pressure at that. Just a few well-placed, leading questions that have an inevitable, predetermined answer built in due to how the question was formulated.

It starts with one, then spreads like a cancer. Korah was one man who brought others to his cause, and by the time Moses confronted him, he’d set the entire people against him. What began subtly was now a full-blow attempt to overthrow Moses and Aaron, going from, “Hey, we just want to help because you look tired, to You’re not our king; how dare you?”

Be careful as to whom you allow into your inner circle, whether it’s your family’s inner circle, the church’s, or your ministry. Just because they say they want to help, it doesn’t make it so, and if they’re gossiping to you about someone else, be sure they are talking to others about you.

Korah was good at sowing doubt and division, and he set himself up to reap the rewards of infighting and disillusionment among the tribes of Israel.

As he begins to see the situation spiral out of control, Moses reaches out, hoping for reinforcements, and if not for the full knowledge that God was with him, the answer he got would have chilled his blood.

Numbers 16:12-14, “And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, but they said, “We will not come up! Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, that you should keep acting like a prince over us? Moreover you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey, not given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up!”

Whenever the devil attempts to beguile, he always frames the past in the best possible light, to the point that the bondage they endured was now seen as having been a land flowing with milk and honey. That’s the retort Moses got from the sons of Eliab when he asked that they come up and stand with him.

We were doing just fine before you came along, buddy. You took us out of a good place and brought us into the wilderness to kill us. Who made you king? Who are you to give orders? We were promised an inheritance of fields and vineyards; all we’re doing is walking through the desert. Maybe it’s time for new management. You know, a fresh voice, a fresh vision, something to attract new blood to an old cause.

If you have no calling or talent, you have to discredit and minimize the work and sacrifice of those who came before you to elevate yourself in the eyes of the people. If you can manage to also offer them an excuse for their rebellion and a way by which they can circumvent personal accountability, you’re golden.

Whose fault was it that they were still wandering through the desert? Was it Moses and Aaron that encouraged them to grumble, or was that something they came up with all on their own?

Yet here they were not only laying the blame for their situation squarely at Moses’s feet, but they’d also revised history to the point of making slavery and bondage in Egypt look like a good thing.

Even though all Moses was doing was relaying God’s instruction and encouraging them to serve God, their reaction was who died and made you king? Never once did they stop to consider why it was that they had not been brought into a land flowing with milk and honey. They just knew they hadn’t.

Thousands of years later, man is still the same. Whenever we’re not seeing the progress we thought we would, or God’s promises being made manifest in our lives at the frequency we envisioned, it’s always that God welched on the deal; it’s never that we didn’t keep up our end of the bargain.

One aspect of this event that is widely overlooked is that every single individual involved in this drama had been brought out of the land of Egypt by the mighty hand of God. They had all seen the sea part, they had beheld the miracles of God, and they were the people of God, yet one man with an agenda was able to stir up discontentment that led to rebellion, to the point that God had to intervene.

A lot can happen between your exodus from Egypt to your entering the promised land, and if you are not watchful and precise in your purpose and selective about the voices to which you give heed, you may end up siding with those who stand in stark opposition to the truth. The desert is not the promised land. Don’t pretend otherwise just because you have a few blisters on your feet. Press on!

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.