the Third Week after Easter
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 1 of 5
Numbers 31:1-54
At the instigation of Balaam, the women of Moab and of Midian lured Israel to worship their idols. The hour of judgment has struck. Vengeance upon the Midianites is pitiless: the nation is almost completely annihilated – a type for us of the urgency with which we are called upon to "pluck out" and to "cast from us" all the things that cause to offend (read Matthew 5:27-30). If we feel, for example, that a particular association presents a danger to our soul, let us not hesitate to break it, whatever anyone may think about it.
Vv. 25-54 suggest the happy results we can obtain by "exterminating" whatever is a snare to our souls. Far from our becoming impoverished (there lacked not one man of them – v. 49), it yields a great spiritual booty, to the profit of the whole congregation (v. 27), and of which God has His part by way of gratitude and thanksgiving.
Balaam, too, is slain with the sword (v. 8). He has not known "the death of the righteous" (Numbers 23:10), and he has not long enjoyed the reward in exchange for which he had sold his soul. Such is the end of a perverse way, a way that leads to perdition. "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26).
