The Three-Hundred-Eighteenth (What's it for?)
What happens in your mind when things are going well in your life? What about when things aren’t going so well? How about when things are going well, but then something bad happens?
How long do these periods of good or bad last? These seasons, if you will. Do they last a couple of days? A week or two? Maybe a few months? Take a moment to think about these seasons in your life, both good and bad, and consider how long they have lasted.
Did any of them last forty days? How about forty years? There’s a lot of seasons of forty in scripture, isn’t there?
Sometimes, these seasons of forty are presented in scripture as a period of time used for a specific purpose. For example, we read that the Israelites’ consequence for listening to the spies of the Promised Land vice Caleb and Joshua, and trusting YHWH, was to wander in the desert for forty years. One year was awarded for every day the land was spied out (Numbers 13:25-14:34).
Ultimately, this was a death sentence for a portion of the group since YHWH’s purpose was to prevent all of the older generation from entering the Promised Land. Hopefully, we don’t have to experience any seasons like that! However, we cannot ignore how the elder Israelites’ consequence for unfaithfulness is an example of what everyone will ultimately experience spiritually if they are unfaithful to YHWH.
As we said though, this is a period of time where the length and purpose was explicitly defined, and defined by YHWH Himself, no less. There are others in scripture like this as well. It rained forty days and forty nights during the flood, with the purpose of cleansing the earth of wickedness (Genesis 7:12). Yeshua went into the wilderness for forty days, with the purpose of being tested (Matthew 4, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).
Other time periods are specified, but the purpose has to be inferred by the reader. We see Moses live like an Egyptian until he turned forty, before having to run into the wilderness and live for another forty years (Acts 7:23, Exodus 2:11-15, 7:7). Goliath taunts Israel for forty days (1 Samuel 17:8-9, 16).
You have to ask yourself though, are the individuals experiencing these time periods aware of what’s going on in the moment? Did they recognize this length of time and its significance as they went about their day to day lives during it? Or was it just another day, month, year, etc., where they just lived their life as they had previously?
Let’s take Moses, for example. When the “grew up,” he went to see his people, the Israelites. He had grown up in the care and feeding of the king of Egypt’s daughter for forty years, and she called him her son (Exodus 2:10). Imagine the luxury!
Obviously, Moses learned at some point in his life that he was not Egyptian and was rather of the same people as that which the Egyptians were subjugating. He wanted to go see his “brothers” and encountered one of them being beaten. Thinking no one would see, and perhaps that the Israelite being beaten would keep quiet, he murdered the Egyptian doing the beating and buried his body (Exodus 2:11-12).
As it turns out, people talk, and word got around of Moses’ deed. He ended up fleeing Egypt to save his life. This was a good move since Pharaoh was looking to kill Moses once he figured out what happened (Exodus 2:14-15).
Now, put yourself in Moses’ shoes. He clearly desired to help his people given the situation they were in…although murder was probably not the best choice to do that! He put himself in a dire situation based on his impulsive act, and likely thought he wasn’t going to make it through alive.
In fact, he was probably looking over his shoulder for at least the first few years of his time away from Egypt, if not the whole forty years. He might have calculated every move he made, every statement he said, and every person he chose to interact with, in order to minimize the possibility of being found out and turned over to Pharaoh for execution. Do you think he said to himself, “wow, this is a great opportunity for the next season of my life? A fresh start?!”
I don’t believe that was his mindset, but I could be wrong! I certainly don’t believe he was thinking that YHWH intended this time as a way to prepare him for his future. After living it up as a member of Pharaoh’s family, Moses needed some “roughing it” time in the wilderness if he was to eventually lead his people through it. He needed to become a shepherd if he was to lead YHWH’s sheep to the Promised Land.
Have you ever had it happen to you where you find yourself in a situation in which you only could have done as well as you did because of a previous experience you had? I have, and I’ve had even smaller types of things happen where I hear or learn something and a few days or weeks later that’s a thing I needed to know in order to make a decision or answer a question from someone. Obviously, I recognized in those situations what happened and tied it back to what happened before, but sometimes we’re too distracted or the circumstances are such that we don’t realize that connection.
While we can’t know for sure, we can reasonably guess that Moses did not make this type of connection, at least by the time he met the messenger of YHWH in the form of a burning bush at Mount Horeb. Either that or he didn’t think eighty years was enough time for him to be prepared! When YHWH’s messenger told him what he was supposed to do, he fought tooth and nail to try and get out of it (Exodus 3:11, 13, 4:1, 10, 13).
In the case of the Israelites and Goliath’s taunting what do you think was going through the heads of the Israelite army? What was going through King Saul’s head? Do you think they were all saying to themselves, “YHWH is taking this season to test if we trust Him to help us be victorious?”
I think we can agree that wasn’t their first thought…or their last. Instead, they were in fear. One man instilled fear in an army of thousands and in their king himself (1 Samuel 17:11).
Until one day, an unsuspecting young boy named David showed up to deliver food to his brothers and the rest of the army. He happened upon the situation right when Goliath was making his twice-daily taunt of the Israelites, challenging them to send their best fighter to fight him (1 Samuel 17:17-23). He observes the army cowering in fear and talking about how this has gone on, day after day, along with the king’s offer for the man who had the courage to go against Goliath.
Was David in fear? Hardly. But was his thought, “YHWH has given me such a great opportunity to show my faith in Him!?”
He certainly saw it as a matter of faith, however rather than being an opportunity to show his faith, it was just a situation in which he had faith. He had faith that YHWH would be with him so he would be victorious. He had faith that YHWH was a living God that was active in His people’s lives.
David clearly was able to make the connection between the situation he was in at the moment and the experiences he had previously in his life (1 Samuel 17:34-37). He knew that he had come against fierce beasts while tending sheep and was able to defeat them and protect the flock. Not only that, he knew that YHWH was the one helping him do that and delivering him from death in those situations.
Was David taking down lions and bears, thinking to himself, “YHWH must be getting me ready for something!” Actually, with David and how aware he was of the spiritual and YHWH’s involvement in his life, he might have considered that was happening. More likely though, when he had each of these encounters he wasn’t thinking there was going to be a future, “boss battle,” that he was going to fight. He was just trying to protect his sheep however he could.
When you think about it, our evaluation of our current situation is inherently limited by where we are at that moment in life. That might seem obvious, but the thing about it is that we don’t usually stop to consider that fact. It’s the old, “Hindsight is 20/20,” adage.
We look back at our lives, our experiences, and we can connect all those things. Sometimes, we can also identify a purpose for each one. However, in the moment all we know is what happened to us up to each, individual experience.
The first time David encountered a wild beast trying to attack his sheep, he didn’t have any prior beast-fighting experiences to draw on. Additionally, it was probably the most difficult and challenging thing he ever had to do up to that point. He likely never considered, either in that encounter or follow-on beast encounters, that there would be an even more challenging fight he would have to engage in.
He would end up fighting an actual man. In some ways, this fight would be easier, in some ways harder. While it seemed as though the army’s fear didn’t even phase him, according to scripture, I’ve definitely been in situations where the fear of others sowed a small seed of doubt in my own abilities that needed to be overcome. Either way, at this point YHWH had prepared him through his experiences and ultimately helped him defeat Goliath.
These are just two scriptural examples, but I think you probably also have personal examples where in the moment you wonder, “just what exactly am I going through this for?” And that’s exactly what you should wonder. In every situation.
Whether good or bad, either in the moment or shortly after it occurs, you need to consider what YHWH’s purpose was for the experience you went through. Sometimes, it’s part of a bigger plan, and in those situations, from my experience, you won’t know exactly what that plan is until it’s fulfilled. Sometimes, it’s just something that happened because “life.”
Whatever it is, you won’t even give yourself and opportunity to figure it out if you don’t stop and think about it. Even if it’s just “life,” I guarantee you can think of something you can learn from it if you just take a moment to do that. I’m sure I’ve missed countless opportunities from my early life because I never even thought to do this, and I know I’ve missed opportunities to figure out YHWH’s plan for my life.
In the submarine force, we call this a “hotwash,” where a group gets together after an event or an evolution and talks about how it went, what they all did well and what could have been done better. We should be doing the same thing as things happen in our lives, but rather than doing it afterward and thinking about how it went we should try to do it during and be thinking about why we are going through it. What is it for?
While the periods of forty throughout scripture did not all happen for the same purpose, I would offer that the majority of them occurred so that the people involved could have the opportunity to show faith in YHWH, to listen to His direction or call out to Him for help. Jonah warned Nineveh that they had forty days to repent, to turn to YHWH (Jonah 3:4). Solomon had a forty-year reign in which he had the opportunity to reject the pagan influences of all the women in his life (1 Kings 11:42).
In fact, in every situation we should always be thinking about how we can show faith in YHWH. Every time, I guarantee, it will involve following His commandments because they all cover how we should live in our own life and how we should be interacting with others. If we don’t stop and think about it though, we’ll never give ourselves the opportunity to figure out how to be faithful to Him!
We hope you have a great week! Shabbat shalom and YHWH bless you!
-Rob and Sara Gene
The Gospel
We are born sinful as a result of Adam and Eve's sin (Genesis 2:17, 3:6, 1 John 1:8)
The consequence of sin, which is unavoidable through our own works, is death (Romans 6:23)
Yeshua, the Son of YHWH, lived sinless and was put to death (Hebrews 4:15)
His death, therefore, cleanses us of sin that would have required our death
He rose on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:4)
Because of His resurrection, we are confident in our future resurrection and eternal life
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