Numbers 11:4-35 - The Answer Of God

2 . The first word of God tends to bring Moses to a calmer mind. It sets before him something practical and not very difficult. Left to himself, he knows not how to begin dealing with this anarchy, especially with his own mind in such a distressed state. But it was a task quite within his reach, to pick out from a limited and probably well-known circle, seventy elders, official and experienced men. As he went through this work, he would be brought to feel, and not without a sense of shame, that he had been overtaken by panic. He has talked about sucking children; he now hears that there are at least seventy elders upon whose experience and influence he can lean. We soon find out, if we only listen to God, that temporal troubles are never so bad as they seem.

3 . The way in which this help was made as effectual as possible. As God had given a certain spirit to Moses, so he would give it also to these seventy assistant elders. This was a reminder that he had not afflicted his servant and frowned upon him, as he so recklessly said ( Numbers 11:11 ). We often murmur and complain against Providence for neglecting us, when the real neglect is with ourselves in making a bad use of gifts bestowed. God never tells his people to do things beyond natural strength, without first assuring a sufficiency of power for the thing commanded. "I can do all things, through Christ who inwardly strengthens me," said Paul There is further encouragement in God's promise here, as being an illustration of how the spirit is given without measure. There was not a certain limited manifestation to Moses, so that if others shared the spirit with him, he must have less. Neither his power nor his honour were one whir diminished. The question always is, What is the need of men in the sight of God? Then, according to that need, and never coming short of it, are the communications of his Holy Spirit. Moses, instead of being poorer, was really richer, for the spirit was working in a mind to which a precious experience had been added.

4 . In the sight of these directions we are reminded how Moses spoke out of a comparative inexperience of the burden. Moses said there was nothing left for him but to die. The history tells us that so far from dying, he had yet in him nearly forty years of honourable mediatorship between God and men. His proper word was, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord" ( Psalms 118:17 ). It is marvelous to think what some men have gone through in the way of difficulties, losses, and trials. Even the natural man has greater strength in the hour of trouble than at first he is conscious of—a great deal of trouble, when it is once fairly over, comes in the course of time to look a very small thing—and if we have God's strength, then we shall not merely endure tribulation, but glory in it. Front these words of Moses and the practical gentle reply of God, learn one great lesson—how easy it is to exaggerate our difficulties and underrate our resources.—Y.

Numbers 11:18-20 ; 31-35