Trying to understand God's forgiveness

Numbers 14
As I read this I am seeing something that I don't understand.

The twelve spies have come back and ten of them have discouraged the people. Quite the rebellion ensues; a mutiny, falling short of an action plan. And then there is talk of stoning the leadership. No less than murder.

Verse 11 has God responding by saying, “how long will they treat me with contempt?”

Moses intercedes on their behalf (not that they deserved it.)

Look at verse 20. In response to Moses' request God says, “I have forgiven them, as you have asked. Nevertheless – not one of these who saw my glory will enter the promised land.”

Now look at 2Samuel 12:13
David has committed adultery with Bathsheba, had her husband murdered, and now there is a child resulting from his sin. David chooses not to look at what he has done and therefore God sends Nathan the prophet. David responds to Nathan with, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan's response, “the Lord has taken away your sin..., but because you have.... the son born to you will die.”

Questions:
1. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
1a.)In either case, Israel's or David's, where did this take place? We do not see it.
The shedding of blood has to go back all the way to Adam. There is a logical path in that, and it becomes visible when you choose to follow the path through Abel and his brother Cain. The teaching did not die that day and I believe that Israel was aware of it.
You can see God brought this back to Israel through Moses, and that Moses made it clear that the shedding of blood had to take place for the forgiveness of sins.
This of course, is our life, for Christ's blood was shed for us.
Assumptions:
A. That Moses' intervention and God's response were all immediate.
B. David must have offered a sacrifice for the sins he had committed.

Considerations:
a.) No cell phones, so for the mutiny to escalate through over a million people time has to pass. God's punishment was upon the entire congregation. Why would he punish those not guilty? That would imply that they all conspired, not just a handful. There is nothing to make us believe that anyone repented of theirs sins through sacrifice.
b.) Although David may have sacrificed what destroys that theory is that Nathan had to be sent by God. And, until confronted, David had kept this all a big secret, therefore, no admission of guilt. Confronted and caught, David makes his declaration, “I have sinned against the Lord.”

In either case, with my physical eye, I see people coming against people; God sees it differently. David made a truthful statement and yet odd, in that he had sinned against several people in order to get what he wanted, and he made no mention of that. Perhaps what was important was what the biblical writers, led by the Holy Spirit, placed upon the page for us to see, that David had sinned against God. In Numbers, while the mutiny against Moses is unfolding, God tells Moses that the people have sinned against God.
If you consider that scripture tells us that we are in Christ, then sins committed against us, are committed against Christ, and ultimately against the Father as well. Israel nor David had the relationship with the Father that we have, and yet God took any actions performed against those He considers his, to be actions against him.

We have a relationship that we do not fully comprehend, with a God that we can only understand through the Spirit. Having his life in us by accepting our adoption through Christ, puts that Spirit within. As loving as we want to perceive God to be, he is the last person that you want against you, as we go on the rampage against those who belong to him. And here is the worst part. It is difficult to tell who it is that belongs to him, because not all of us have managed to stay out of the mud puddles that life has put in our path, and some do not have the money to buy the right clothes that make us appear holy.
I have been taken back as people that I never expected to have a relationship or understanding of God, have made some rather bold, unexpected statements. They have in those moments demonstrated a boldness that I desire, as my fleeting self-righteousness gets blown out the window.

How do you know that it was God? - My answer to Joyce

"How do you know that is was God that answered your prayer?"

It may be natural to feel challenged when someone asks "how do you know?"

I do the same thing, challenging people all the time because people make statements but do not demonstrate a pattern consistent with the statement, or what they say seems so brash that you want to know why they made it.

I am not asking a question like that because I am lacking a relationship with the Lord, but I certainly do want to know what theirs is.

I recently asked a young man, "how do you know God is real?" I ask myself that question frequently. Why? Because there are times when I get too focused on the world going on around me, and there is very little that the world shows me that gives me hope. In fact, if I focus on the world for very long I do find myself wondering if this life that scripture teaches about is real, and is he coming as He promised.

How do you refocus, especially when the voices of doubt and despair are coming at you from all sides?

David had the same problem. (Read 1Samuel 30) Having been given the town of Ziklag by the Philistines, David and his men settled there with their families.

Who were David's men? The down and out, divorced, wanted, bankrupt, and bar fighters. They went out to battle and returned to find the town in ruins and every trace of their families gone.

What did the men who were with David do, they turned on David, expressing their desire to now kill him.

That was one of those days, the kind in which everything seems to go against you. 

In midst of tremendous pressure scripture tells us that David encouraged himself in the Lord. I have no idea how he did that, or what he said, but instead of crawling under a rock he turned to God. His response to the worms that wanted him dead was let's go take care of the ones that did this, and off they went.

My perception of what David did and what I do, is to remind myself of what the known factors are.

I have visual images in my head associated with God in action throughout the bible. No, I do not memorize scriptures, that borders on the impossible for me. As I read things in scripture I can visualize them, and that is what I remember. I know that Christ's coming was prophesied long before he came, and I know that he did come. I have a strong concept of social life during the time of his birth, and that Mary took a tremendous amount heat for continuing to profess that Jesus, this baby within her, was the son of God, not Joseph's or some other man. If you don't believe that, then why, when they came back to their home town, Bethlehem, for the census, did none of their kin folk take them in?

So, in an effort to refocus, I walk the path that God walked through this earth, demonstrating to folks who struggled to believe, that He was God, and that his word was true and believable, by doing exactly what he said he would do.

Consider Jonah the prophet, he had to refocus. He was sent to declare God's vengeance and justice upon a people that Jonah hated. Jonah also feared them and fought God's calling for him to go deliver the message, hence forth the fish swallowed him up. After delivering the message, much to Jonah's dismay, the people repented and God turns his anger away, withholding the destruction that Jonah had promised would come. Jonah thinks this makes him look bad and it appears that God does not do what he said. But there is always more to the story.

Jonah has probably long since died and Nineveh has returned to it's evil ways, and yet history records that God did exactly what he said he would do and wiped that city off the face of the map.

When you use the phrase "be thankful for unanswered prayers". I suspect you just never know how or when the answer came.

As for myself, some of us live in a quiet seclusion, and because of experience, do not perceive the world as a place that encourages us to share all the details of our testimony. And yet, I have seen God's handiwork in ways that were contrary to what man wanted and seemed to be in direct response to my prayers. (Prayers are oft times wrapped up in our anguished cries for help.)

I had a friend who opted for the wild side of life when he was younger, and found himself before a judge, facing a maximum prison sentence. His daddy prayed, and the oddest thing happened, he was sent home a free man. He turned back to the Lord, grateful for what had happened and turned his life around. He does not brag about that to very many people. The action and reaction, answered prayer, was so immediate that it was easy to associate the request with the answer as being from God.

So then, what do we base our perception of whether God is involved in the answer to our prayer upon?

We seem to base everything upon our perceptions and responses, which is the outcome of what our senses tell us. We choose to use our five physical senses to evaluate whether God moved or not; how ridiculous is that. Although God gave man those physical senses, they cannot possibly demonstrate how God can be perceived or who he is, for God tends to work outside of that realm as well work within it. We know from scripture that God is a spirit. That in itself tends to reach beyond our comprehension, but even there we tie our understanding to what we think is the world of ghosts. Have no doubt the spirit world is very real, therefore God is very real, for how could the inventor of something have less of a reality.

If I have faith in Him, is not my faith the result of what my senses have registered?

I hear someone speak of what He has done and I take hope. In doing so I have used my sense of hearing. I read his word, applying it to my own life, and I have employed the sense of sight. Should God's intervention be one that I can feel, (if only we could ask Lot about that) then once again my senses have come into play. We have what we call instincts. Those instincts, interacting with our senses can move us toward someone or quickly away from those we sense danger from. We might call that an inward voice, scripture refers to that as the voice of the spirit speaking to the soul of man.

Scripture tells us that during the days of Samuel the seer, that Israel came under attack by the Philistines. This happened many times, but this time Samuel prayed and God responded, with lightning (look up the destructive power of lightning sometime), and with earthquakes (the ground did not merely just shake, it opened up like a bad movie, and swallowed many). Men were burned, seared, deafened, had their clothing blasted off of them, and killed by the amperage. Israel understood that this was the hand of God, and yet there are always those that would say how do you know that God answered this prayer.

In any situation there would have to be a correlation between the request and the answer. I have prayed a simple prayer of "God reattach this tendon to its proper place", and watched as the balled up tendon moved back down the arm to where it was supposed to be. Did that hurt, I imagine so, but the response to the prayer was immediate. I have also cried out to God for help, and watched in a shattered state of hope, as God worked out my prayer over the course of several months. Sure, I prayed for my marriage to be restored and my family returned to me, but that did not happen. What God is doing in the background I do not know. I would not change what I have now for anything. I do not think that anything happens by chance, but that it is all part of God's intricate plan. A plan that has a future, even if it is with him in paradise.

I suppose that if there is a bottom line in this, it is that our knowing that God was involved in the answer stems from faith. Faith is built upon trust and relationship, and without faith it is impossible to please God, and faith in him pushes us to believe that He was the one who moved in our behalf.

Related articles

• Motivated To Glorify Him, Evans Olang
• Jesus Versus Jonah
• Seeing God with Your Own Eyes
• My Name Is Jonah
• The Jonah Detour

How do you not know?

1 Corinthians 10:3,4 (NIV) They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

Here I am, all these years later, with history as my insight, and I am saying "how could they not know?"
Answering my own question, how could they have known? Would I have known and understood?

When Jesus walked along the road to Emmaus, beginning in the law and ending in the prophets, he verbalized to those disciples about who he was, and what would become of him. Beginning in the law and ending in the prophets. That would have covered Genesis through Malachi. Trust me, it was not a dry story. Let me give you an example: In 1 Samuel 30 David and his men have returned to their hometown of Ziklag, after a long battle. They expect their families, a good meal, and some rest. What they find is the city in ruins and their families gone. At this point the men turn on David. How David encouraged himself in the face of this rebellion I do not know, but he did, and they all go in pursuit of the raiders.

Let's for a moment put flesh and blood on these men. When they came back to Ziklag, home in sight, there is no sense saving any of the lousy rations you have been eating, because there will be a steak on the table, waiting for you when you get there, and these men are coming back hungry. Because of this, they have little food, if any and they are all exhausted; not just tired, but battle fatigued.

All head out to rescue their families, but 200 cannot go on and David allows them to rest by the brook Besor while the rest continue on in pursuit and an eventual battle that they win. On their return they gather those that waited by the stream, incapable of participating with the vigor of others. In their heads they may have only hoped to get their families back alive, and that would have been more than enough, but David, going against the popular opinion of those who did not believe they should get much of anything in terms of reward, splits the booty, equally between everyone.

Consider this abbreviated saga in light of our redemption. There are many of us that are not on the so called front lines of battle. There are some that are incapable of doing what others do (for a variety of reasons), and yet scripture tells us that as over-comers in this life there is a reward.

(Do not get discouraged here, for there are plenty of us that feel like we have not overcome anything. The men left by the brook had to have felt the same way. Certainly those that fought in the battle that freed their families did not feel that the "brook sitters" deserved anything, but David, who is repeatedly referred to as an analogy for Christ, did.)

Those that sat by the brook did not merely lie down, whining I don't want to do this, they were out of energy, and incapable. This scene has our redemption written all over it. We are all incapable of saving ourselves and therefore our David is Christ. We have done nothing to deserve reward and yet he has given it to us. We have lost our families and yet family will be restored in the kingdom. And most relevant of all is the fact that the men that gathered themselves to David were the losers in the worlds eyes. These were the guys that were in trouble, lost their jobs, lost their families, lost their homes and land, and you can pretty much guarantee they had lost their pride along the way.

How are we any different? Sure you can act arrogant, boasting about your earned Doctorate, and how you flaunt your money, but the truth is you are broken and irreparable without God.

God redeemed us, just as he redeemed these men.

This is a work in progress, as I suppose all these writings are.

Related articles

• Making The Best Of Trouble
• Decide Decisively
• Encourage Yourself
• List of Remarkable Bible Battles (with Powerpoint Study)
• Day 52 - Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; Luke 9:7-9
• Who Is Your Enemy
• Inquire of God

Ponder the word humble for a moment.

Scripture tells us that Moses was the most humble man on the earth.
Have you ever given that any consideration.

Many study and use him as  an example of a great leader. How does one equate greatness with humility?

He was raised in Egyptian royalty; Taught to the highest degree; Expected to be of noble character; And, probably arrogant.

Yes, we should all by now be aware that his Jewish family put him in basket, in a river, and watched him float away in an effort to save his life and in a round about way protect him. A scene which evokes humble beginnings, but that scene apparently produced no deep seeded feelings of rejection and seemed to have been the key to who Moses became.

As I write these things I am sure others will perceive my statements as ignorant or unfounded. I on the other hand am annoyed that church people will not read their Bibles, nor, if they do, apply any logical thought to what they read. I would not be logical for someone, having been raised by Queen Victoria, to be rude and ill mannered. I believe that woman would  have seen to it that you were educated, sophisticated, well spoken, introduced to heads of state, and given every advantage and opportunity associated with the royal title. The privileges associated with title would surely be backing anyone which had been raised in the castle, and given the rights to it.
How could Moses have been any different?

Moses had the potential to be full of himself, and he was.
When Moses understood that the slaves of the nation were his ancestral people, he decided to free them himself. I am not clear on how that inclination came to him, but when this process begins he is acting out of his "noble" training. I know, noble training and killing a man may not set well with our thinking, but get real, the Kennedy family has had more than it's fair share of dead people left by the wayside. What prompts them to step outside the boundaries of so called nobility? A broken human nature, Moses was no different.

"When Moses saw the Egyptian abusing the Jew." There is an oddity in that statement, for the Jews were slaves, forced to make bricks, and abused on a daily basis, an acceptable practice for Egyptian slave owners. A scene which Moses had seen many times, but suddenly this is a newly found, yet distant relative. Moses takes a quick look around, thinking that no one is looking, kills the Egyptian, then buries him in the sand. Where did that skill come from?

Moses must have felt that he could do it! What does that mean? Was it within his right?; it does not appear so for he is now running for his life. Was it his training, which you can be sure in a feudal society included hand to hand combat training. When Egypt goes in pursuit of Israel, now crossing the Red Sea, who is leading the charge? Pharaoh, a man trained in combat.

Think about this.
Don't you find it odd the value that we place upon certain people. A Jew, in this case is worth very little, and to abuse one, meaningless, but to kill an Egyptian, who may well have been a useless human being himself, is worthy of some huge penalty. We do this on a daily basis, that is give value to certain people and not others. It is called prejudice, and to be truthful I am no different, but I will tell you this, there are plenty of white people that are wasting good breathing air.

Moses flees for his life into the desert where he hooks up with the Midianites and spends the next forty years. Now what does any of that have to do with humility?

Consider: He runs away from the wrath of Egypt that raised him, and wanders (sort of) for forty years. The wandering does not necessarily mean he walked in big circles. It took him that long to get his head on straight. Wow, what a coincidence; Israel will soon wander for the same period of time. Wow, what a coincidence; Moses is taking these people on the same paths that he walked for forty years. You might think that he knew exactly what was out there, and maybe what it would do to your head.

When he leaves for the desert he is forty years old. Still a young man by our standards, but well aged by theirs. At forty you should be established, on the tail end of your career, capable, and married. Interesting that there is no mention of that.

How could I assume any of that?
A. What was their lifespan - about 120 years.
B. I can compare their lifestyle with known lifestyles, and this would be typical for the Jewish community around Jesus time period.
C. When Jesus started his road ministry, he was well established as a carpenter, and as a Rabbi.
D. It was tradition to be married, and by a certain age. True, marriage began at least a year before consummation, for the home had to be built and the young man had to have some form of income.
E. I understand that this is two differing cultures, but people are not that different.

Webster's dictionary has this as the definition for humble:
1: not proud or haughty : not arrogant or assertive
2: reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission humble apologyt;
3a : ranking low in a hierarchy or scale : insignificant, unpretentious


Prior to his life in the desert, none of these aspects could be used to describe who Moses was. He was anything but humble. We can only conjecture what his life was like between the basket in the river and the killing of the Egyptian.
What impact did it have to find that you were not an Egyptian, worthy of pushing Jewish slaves around, but a Jew yourself. Do you think for a second that he was going have someone push him around; I don't think so. I remember how the movie portrayed him as becoming one of them. Ask yourself, How difficult was it for any Jew to free themselves from the Nazi death camps once taken captive.

I suspect that he found out what his heritage truly was, and it was a shock to his system. Only God could have motivated him to do what he did beyond that. Scripture tells us that Moses choose to be like his people, total opposition to the lifestyle he had been used to.


Forty years in the wilderness and now he is eighty. A senior, with gray hair, and now considered wise.

Strange, how Moses whines at God about his inability to speak when God tells him he is go back and give Egypt the message. That makes no sense, unless forty years of talking to sheep has reduced your vocabulary.
When Moses finally takes God's case before Pharaoh, he was most certainly assertive.

We do not want to believe that he deferred to Pharaoh. It would only make sense that Moses deferred to the King's authority, for to do anything else could mean death. Try pushing your way into the White House and see where that gets you.


Taking the role of leadership over potentially a million people requires traits that would seem to work in oppostion to humility, therefore we have to make an assumption, humility then must have applied to the way Moses interacted with God.


Try to convince that many people that you are now their fearless leader. I am sure that the mighty acts of God helped that situation; especially when you tell someone that such and such is going to happen and then, with consistency, it does. I truly believe that people will move based more on fear than a deep respect for your leadership qualities. There is a saying "actions speak louder than words", well Moses certainly proved that. To the outsider there is no humility involved here, but there is, for every man answers to someone.


You cannot lead a bunch of whiners that want to turn around at every difficulty without having to step up and take a role of assertiveness. As we sat in the doctor's office waiting room with my girlfriend's 92 year old mother, she whined, "I just want to go home". She did not like being there, she did not like hearing all the noise in the room, there was plenty, and she did not remember why she was even there. She had recently had a ruptured appendix removed, a procedure which saved her life. This was Israel as well. All Israel seemed to do was say, "We want to go back, we like onions, at least we knew what our job was." Why am I here.


Here is my point. If I try to define what made Moses a humble man it was how quickly he turned to God.

The people complained, he turned to God; The people wanted him dead, he turned to God; the people spoke against his leadership, he turned to God; his brother and sister tried a mutiny, he turned to God; many among the people resorted to serving idols and other gods, he turned them over to God, and how do you feed so many people, by turning them over to God.

Many of those times he turned to God you see him on his face before God. He would talk with God like one talks with a friend that allows you to be open and honest.


Moses deferred his will to God, subjected himself to God's wisdom, applied new rules to his own life and the lives of the people - as God told him to do, and listened to God's counsel, doing what he told him to do, mostly. The few times that Moses choose to do things his own way, and we might call that letting his anger get the best of him, cost him the right to enter the land that was the hope of freedom that God had showed this leader. What leader would not want to partake of the same freedoms that his people would enjoy?