Casting Pearls - Manna or Mammon?

                          If we look in the fifteenth chapter of Exodus we will find the Children of Israel contending with Moses over provision for food then water while they were in the desert after leaving the bondage they were in while in Egypt. They conveniently forgot all that God had done for them up to that point, the ten plagues, the dividing of the waters of the red sea, they seemed to think God had done all this just to turn around and forget them. God brought them out of Egypt to take them to the promised land and prosper them. Through their actions, and lack of belief, they turned an eleven day journey, as most people could have done it, into one that took them forty years.
                          Forty years was what was accepted at the time as what made up the normal generation. I believe in part God wanted the Children of Israel to take that long so the generation that entered the Promised Land would be raised to depend on God for their provision each day. Due to the Children of Israel's doubts and fears when they arrived at the Promised land, they were prevented from going in, and had to wander in the desert forty more years. Very few of the people were left who even remembered the exile in Egypt by that time. In fact Moses himself would die before entering the Promised Land, due to his getting angry and not waiting for God.
                         Back to chapter 15, we find the Children of Israel having just come from the miracle of God parting the Red sea for them to cross, and its closing back up to destroy the army of Pharaoh. The people rejoiced at what God had done for them in one breath, and then turned against Moses and God with the next. They were thankful for what God had provided, yet almost immediately they began to think only of themselves and want Moses and God to provide food and water for them in the desert. God heard the Children of Israel murmuring and told Moses that he would provide them meat to eat in the evening, and bread in the morning.
                          That evening quail covered the camp, and the people had quail for the evening meal, and the next morning, after the dew had dried up a 'round thing' was left covering the ground which looked reminiscent of coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. The people of Israel called the bread, Manna and as instructed by God and Moses, they were to gather up only what they needed for the day, and no more. This was a test from God, to see if their own greed and laziness would cause them to not follow His directions. The people who gathered more than they were supposed to and tried to save it up for the next day found it going bad and having worms in it.
                        This was to teach the Children of Israel that God would provide for them each day the needs they had for food, and any attempt they made to hoard up more, would only result in loss.  People are in much the same position today. We try to hoard up things for our future, and only watch whatever we have wasting away by the world we live in.
                        I recently learned that retirement accounts were being taken over by the governments of Poland and Greece, and the same thing was being discussed here in America. The Governments were saying that the money was only given to us to use for a time and all money ultimately belonged to them. We try to pass on things to the next generation, but things and money are nothing but creations of man and have no real value except what we put on them. Life and memories and knowledge are the only things we can really pass on to the next generation.
                       The Israelites continued to murmur against Moses and God in spite of God's provision and that is ultimately why an eleven day journey took eighty years total. We should do our best not to be as hard headed as the Children of Israel, and learn before we waste our entire lives trying to hoard and pass on the fleeting things of this world. God says to trust Him to provide your needs our faith in God's provision, will be counted for us as righteousness, as the Bible says about Abraham in Romans 4:3. The more we murmur against the Lord and fight His control and provision for our lives, the longer we will wander in the desert, or wilderness of our lives.

Casting Pearls - Repent or repented?

                    As Christians we are called to repent and turn away from sin. The problem comes when we repent after the sin and not before it. The original greek that the Bible was written in uses two words that can be translated as repent, but have a vastly different meaning. First we have the verse; Acts 17:30 where the Bible says for all men to repent, (Metnoeo) in the original Greek, which is a verb, meaning to turn away and keep from continuing in the sins you had previously been engaged. God was understanding that we had trouble turning away from the evil and "winked" at our sin. We are called to repent and change our direction, away from the evil, in the opposite direction. The day is coming, very soon, that the Lord will return to judge the world in righteousness by the one and only Jesus Christ who God has made our attorney (representative) and judge over us in spirit.
                    We have God's assurance, that Jesus will have the right to represent us and judge us as Jesus had conquered death and the grave to be our sacrifice and our Savior from the evil all around us.(verse 31) Though some may mock, and call us foolish for believing that Jesus was raised from the dead for our sakes, we will be victorious over the evil that surrounds us if we hold on to Jesus. The problem comes when we repent because of the sin, and not from the sin. In Corinthians 7:10 the Bible tells us that we must fully repent and not just have "Godly sorrow' which is the other meaning of repent, to mentally feel sorrow because "we were caught in our sin" by God and mentally feel sorrow and repentance.
                    The World wants us to feel sorry if we have done anything wrong, and try not to do it again. (verse 11) Attempting to be a Godly sort and not truly repenting and turning away from our sins to become a "new creature in Christ". the word for repent in verse 10 is, (Metemelome) which is a noun meaning to be "be sorry we got caught", what we need is TRUE repentance. the first repent implies that we have a different view of the evil now that we have arrived at the evil that the sin brought us too. the second repentance, which is what we are called to have, is the implication that we would have a different view of the evil if we were turned away from it.
                   Are we to stand and wallow in the sin, or move steadily away from it ? The choice is really our to make, it is a mental choice we must make. It is truly the difference between eternal death and salvation to eternal life. we must mentally make the choice to turn away and not just feel sorry for our sin. Change your ways, and change your life, by changing your heading.