Love and Justice
Numbers 15:17–21
"The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land to which I am taking you and you eat the food of the land, present a portion as an offering to the LORD. Present a loaf from the first of your ground meal and present it as an offering from the threshing floor. Throughout the generations to come you are to give this offering to the LORD from the first of your ground meal."
As Moses said in preceding chapters, "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 fathers to the third and fourth generation (Num 14:8)", God shows mercy and great love despite being just, and indeed He is just and fair because He is loving, he takes care of the oppressed, there is no paradox there. In the return of Jesus we have the promise that every trace of injustice with the sorrow, pain, misery, grief, death and mourning that it brings will be destroyed (Rev 21:1-4). And in His love, God has forgiven –and when we repent, He forgets our sins (Heb 8:12), and He will fulfil His vision for each one of us (Jer 29:11), just as He did for Israel in these events, He talks about what Israel will do when, not if, they arrive and take possession of the promised land; We can trust like the song that says "when it feels like my dreams are so far, sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again", God wants to shower us in His grace. We can dream about the great things that delight us, about what Jesus has in store for us in our future here and in the eternal life to come. In both, dream about a life of honest worship, while it is wonderfully guaranteed in eternity, we strive for it in this lifetime's future. And God's heart is tender; He simply loves, and He invites us to do the same. Love that is trusting and faithful pleases God (I John 4:8, Heb 11:6), may this be a large part of our offering of worship everyday, lives that are of a Christ-like fragrance rising up to please God (II Cor 2:15).
"The LORD said to Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land to which I am taking you and you eat the food of the land, present a portion as an offering to the LORD. Present a loaf from the first of your ground meal and present it as an offering from the threshing floor. Throughout the generations to come you are to give this offering to the LORD from the first of your ground meal."
As Moses said in preceding chapters, "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 fathers to the third and fourth generation (Num 14:8)", God shows mercy and great love despite being just, and indeed He is just and fair because He is loving, he takes care of the oppressed, there is no paradox there. In the return of Jesus we have the promise that every trace of injustice with the sorrow, pain, misery, grief, death and mourning that it brings will be destroyed (Rev 21:1-4). And in His love, God has forgiven –and when we repent, He forgets our sins (Heb 8:12), and He will fulfil His vision for each one of us (Jer 29:11), just as He did for Israel in these events, He talks about what Israel will do when, not if, they arrive and take possession of the promised land; We can trust like the song that says "when it feels like my dreams are so far, sing to me of the plans that you have for me over again", God wants to shower us in His grace. We can dream about the great things that delight us, about what Jesus has in store for us in our future here and in the eternal life to come. In both, dream about a life of honest worship, while it is wonderfully guaranteed in eternity, we strive for it in this lifetime's future. And God's heart is tender; He simply loves, and He invites us to do the same. Love that is trusting and faithful pleases God (I John 4:8, Heb 11:6), may this be a large part of our offering of worship everyday, lives that are of a Christ-like fragrance rising up to please God (II Cor 2:15).
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