Episode Transcript
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
Numbers 14:17–19 (NIV)
“Now may the Lord’s strength be displayed, just as you have declared: ‘The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
CONSIDER
Moses really is something else. He appeals to God for God’s own name’s sake. Now he reminds God of God’s own identity and character.
“The LORD is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Moses now moves from lawyer to intercessor and priest.
“In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.”
Bottom line: Moses loves God and God’s people with a God-like love. He had every reason to be done with them. They have complained about him, grumbled at him, threatened to leave him, and acted like complete idiotic, imbecilic children over and over again. Still, Moses has gone back to bat for them over and over again. God even gave Moses a massive exit strategy, saying, “I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they” (Num. 14:12).
You know why Moses didn’t give up on these people? Because he remembered God never gave up on him. God is ever searching for people who will not give up on his people—men and women who have the stick-to-it tenacity to take the long, winding wilderness path of learning to love people like God loves people.
As we will soon see, this is going to cost Moses not only another forty years in the wilderness with this bunch but also his chance to ever set foot in the promised land.
This is earth-shaking, breathtaking love, friends—legendary love. Be encouraged, saints! God loves nothing more than to land this kind of love in the lives of ordinary people.
PRAY
Father, our capacity to love is so limited. Your capacity to love is never-ending. How do we learn to love like you love? We want to become the kind of person who does not give up on other people. We want to be like Jesus. Thank you for Jesus. Jesus, I belong to you. Come, Holy Spirit, and help us learn to behold Jesus in such a way that you can make us like him. In his name we pray, amen.
