Wednesday 24 Apr 2013

Wednesday Reading: Numbers 14:17-21

Key Verse: Numbers 14:18
18  The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Devotion:
When God passed before Moses as described in the book of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt He reminded Moses that even though He was a merciful, gracious, forgiving God, He would still uphold the law because He is just. That means that God is not going to turn His back on sin that has not been brought forward openly and honestly. If we try to hide things from God then we are asking Him to be kind to us but we are not being kind to Him because we are lying in front of Him!

Yes God is longsuffering; He continues to watch over us as we sin before Him. Yes He is merciful because He continues to forgive us when we bring those sins before Him. But when we turn round and do more things wrong just when He has forgiven us, we are not learning from our sins but instead taking advantage of God’s mercy. That is wrong and we should not expect to be able to get away with that; after all we do not expect to get away with things like that in front of other people. But God has also promised us that His judgement is not going to stop on us but rather continue for generations.

This does not mean that we have to continue paying for our parents and grandparents mistakes. If we are willing to bring our sins before God and ask for forgiveness, then He can show us His mercy because He wants to forgive us. On the other hand if we ignore Him and His rules then we will bring judgment upon ourselves. We are then very unlikely to teach our children anything about God because we have turned our backs on Him. They, in turn, will do the same and before long we see a succession of unforgiven sins being built up within our family. That is what should concern us because it certainly concerned God!

God’s forgiveness extends just as far as His wrath. When we believe in God we then pass on the knowledge we have learned to our children and give then the same chance at forgiveness that we enjoyed directly from God. We break the chain of sin and deceit and enjoy the grace and mercy of our heavenly Father just as much as others have to put up with the wrath of God when they ignore God in unbelief. God’s grace exceeds the ingratitude of people – how else can we know forgiveness after so much unbelief in our history?

Points to Ponder:
What do you try to get away with?

Do you know God’s grace?