Wednesday: An Intercessor
What opportunity is God offering Moses in the face of this rebellion? Read Numbers 14.11-12.
God is offering to destroy the Israelites and make a whole new nation with Moses as the father of them all.
How does Moses respond to this outright rebellion, not simply against him but against God? (Numbers 14:13-19).
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This is the moment that we can see the true man of God. Moses’ answer, frozen into time, anticipates the Intercessor who, more than 1,400 years later, would pray for His disciples in their afflictions (John 17). Indeed, in what Moses did here, many theologians and Bible students have seen an example of what Christ does for us. Their guilt, our guilt, is not even questioned. And yet, Moses pleads, saying, “according to the greatness of Your mercy” (Numbers 14:19), please forgive these people. And just as the Lord did then because of Moses’ intercession, thus He does for us because of Jesus, because of His death and resurrection and intercession for us.
Thus, Moses pleads: “Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray, according to the greatness of Your mercy, just as You have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now” (Numbers 14:19). Grace combats rebellion and restlessness at its core. Forgiveness offers new beginnings.
Yet there are costs. Grace can never be cheap. Though forgiven, the people will face the consequences of their rebellions, and that generation will not enter into the promised land (Numbers 14:20-23).
Yes, God will sustain them for another 38 years in the wilderness. He will feed them. He will speak to them from the sanctuary. He will be at their side in the wilderness. But then they will die, and a new generation will have to pick up the baton and find rest in the Promised Land.
It sounds like judgment; yet, it really is grace. How would this generation be able to conquer Canaan’s powerful city-states if they had not yet learned to trust Him? How would they be a light to the nations when they themselves were stumbling in the darkness?
| What hard lessons have you learned about the consequences of forgiven sin? |
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How often do we hear/use the phrase, "When I get to heaven ..." and we go on to recount the wonderful things that we will do and see when we reach heaven. It sometimes starts to sound like a "to-do" list of someone who thinks they have a chance of winning the lottery. We need to take a lesson from Moses.
The events told in todays lesson was not a one-off action on the part of Moses. If we go back to the golden calf episode we find that Moses is again pleading for the people.
Moses had the quality of unselfish leadership. If he had been on a sinking ship he would have worked very hard to ensure that everyone was saved regardless of his own fate. And in today's lesson, once again we see that his greatest concern was for the people he was leading.
Does this sound like someone who is looking for a reward?
Here is a little Australian story to illustrate:
It is time to rethink what salvation really means.
I'm imagining Jesus interceding for me with his father saying my blood, my blood, don't let the blood I shed for Myron to have been in vain. Too often we forget how we have been led in the past and commence complaining to God and about God. Too often we look at the bible as nice stories. We should be applying the principles contained within these stories and making personal application.
Num 14:10-35
This narrative raises the question does the LORD change His mind? I thought He says I am the LORD and I change not Mal 3:6, Heb 13:8.
I did some digging and found there are other passages where it is declared the LORD does not change - 1 Sam 15:29, Num 23:19 and then there are those like Ex 32:12-14, Jonah 3:10 and several others where he does change His mind.
In the latter interactions whose mind is actually being changed?
Do we need an intercessor like Moses or Jesus to change God the Father's mind?
What does not change? It is God's character that does not change, He declared His Character to Moses - I abound in loving kindness, I show mercy but do not excuse the guilty. Ex 34:6-7
There in that last sentence we find the paradox - sometimes He forgives and sometimes He doesn't - how does that work? The LORD explained it to Jeremiah using the object lesson of the potter and the clay. Jer 18:5-10 and in great detail through Moses in Lev 26:1-46.
I invite you to study the Word of the LORD using the above clues to discover the answers to the questions for yourselves.
Isaiah 46:10 says God declares the end from the beginning. So do the verses you reference mean that God actually changed his mind? If so, that to me would imply that God made a mistake or misspoke. I understand God's character not changing, which to me is different then changing God's mind. Shirley, I'm not saying you are wrong, just trying to reconcile the two.
Myron, let us see if we can understand how they connect, how do you understand the following texts and their context.
Ex 32:14 So the Lord changed His mind about the harm which He said He would do to His people.
Also read: Jer 26:19, Amos 7:3,6, Jer 26:3,13, Jer 42:10, 2Sam 24:16
Jer 18:5-10
5Then the LORD gave me this message: 6“O Israel, can I not do to you as this potter has done to his clay? As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand. 7If I announce that a certain nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down, and destroyed, 8but then that nation renounces its evil ways, I will not destroy it as I had planned. 9And if I announce that I will plant and build up a certain nation or kingdom, 10but then that nation turns to evil and refuses to obey me, I will not bless it as I said I would.
Shirley thanks for this. What I'm hearing is that in some instances God's mercy supersedes his judgement. I guess this changing can be said to be conditional and bidirectional, as in blessings withheld for disobedience.
Hello Myron, you appear to raise the thorny theological issues of God's foreknowledge versus freedom of choice. None other than the great reformer John Calvin came to the conclusion that whatever God foreknew could not change. He equated foreknowledge with pre-ordaining - i.e. making it happen.
But there's another way to look at foreknowledge. God can *know/see* things ahead of time without making things happen. Most Bible students also recognize that God's promises and His threatenings are conditional on human reaction (which He foreknows). I believe some of the texts Shirley referenced illustrate that. When God threatens great disaster in response to great sin, God will withhold the disaster in response to repentance, as we can see in the story of Jonah and Nineveh. On the other hand, when God makes great promises based on obedience, He will withhold the blessings in response to faithlessness.
When God responds to our prayers, I don't believe we should refer to it as God "changing His mind." His mind towards us is always an attitude of self-sacrificing love. But when we pray for something, we demonstrate an attitude of receptiveness, freeing God to do the good things for us that He already wanted to do.
In my reply to Brigitte I explain how I see God's foreknowledge in relation to Moses' intercession.
Because of God's foreknowledge, He knew how Moses would respond, and He intended His response to be a type of the work that Christ would do for our salvation. He wanted Moses to intercede with Him to illustrate the character of Christ, and Moses did not disappoint.
So the question "Did God change His mind?" is a complicated one and not one for us to resolve because we cannot see as God sees. However, we can, by faith accept that He foreknows all that will happen and He has given each of us the freedom to choose to serve Him or to serve His enemy, Satan, who is also the enemy of humanity. We don't have to totally understand how it works, we just need to trust Him - just like we can trust the makers of a car and drive it, without fully understanding how it works. And do you fully understand how the internet and your phone or computer works? Yet you can use it.
Inge, thanks for your input very helpful indeed.
Thank you Inge for your comment, I agree. In fact I believe a question like "Does God change His mind" is a trap like some of the questions the scribes/lawyers asked Jesus and the ones the serpent asked Eve. They are used to create doubt in our minds about the character of the LORD and whether we can trust Him. The narratives in the Word are to reveal the LORD's Principles and these will provide the answers we seek. I believe one of the Principles in this narrative of the spies is that although they didn't deserve it when their representative repented on their behalf the LORD forgave them.
Shirley- Ezek 33:1-33. Tells us about who the Lord is in dealing with the wicked and the righteous people. Does the Lord change his mind towards these four groups of people. once righteous and towards the once wicked people. It is the Lord changing his mind or is it the consequences of sin has to take its effect? What does the scripture says?
I think its just a question of semantics at this point. Exodus 32:14 NLT says "So the Lord changed his mind about the terrible disaster he had threatened to bring on his people." You can say God changed His mind when he did not destroy Nineveh or you can say He was never going to destroy them if they repented. In Genesis 6 in the KJV it says God repented that He had made man. Repentance is another word for change. The expression God changed His mind in no way disturbs my confidence that God's character and law never change.
years ago in a Sabbath School class I was teaching a man made the point that God was not really going to destroy Israel He was just testing Moses. Well that was a point that I and all the others in the class already believed, but the man was presenting it as a new thought. Later When I refereed to God telling Moses He was going to destroy Israel the man sighed a heavy sigh and gave me a look of frustrations as if his profound point did not sink through to me. But the fact is God did say that He was going to destroy Israel and well knew it was a test, so by me saying the exact words in the Bible I still understood how this man interpreted them and what was meant by them. I got what he was saying and agreed with him even though I did not use the exact words he wanted me to use.
So I think we all agree that God's law and character never change regardless if we use the expression "God changed His mind" or use some other expression.
Lyn, If we compare Scripture with Scripture we discover that the LORD right from the start has explained His Principles by which He operates.
Just a few examples:
He said to Adam & Eve - you can eat of the Tree of Life and have eternal life but if you eat of the Tree of Knowledge/experience of good and evil you will no longer have eternal life.
When the LORD declared His character to Moses He made it clear that He is merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that He will by no means clear the guilty; Ex 34:5-7
Through Moses in Lev 26:1-46 He declares, if you are loyal to me, I will bless you, however if you reject me I will remove my protection and you will suffer from famine, plague, wild beast, sword; however if you repent I will forgive you, I will not forget my covenant with you.
So He set up the parameters, the promises, the conditions, the consequences of their Covenant relationship. Everybody was aware of them and through out the rest of their history we see them relying on the LORD's loving kindness to forgive them when they experienced the consequence of their rebellion of famine, plague and sword.
So when we encounter the passages where we find the Israelites in trouble as a consequence of their choices and in repentance crying out to the LORD for help we find the LORD in love applying His promise of forgiveness even though they don't deserve it. It is not God who changes it is the people who are changing, the authors might say that it is God who changes His mind or that He relents but what they are acknowledging is that it is His loving choice based on His Character and His Principles and His prior stated conditions.
I just can't believe Moses is "nicer" than God as the lesson seems to suggest. I believe God was giving Moses the opportunity to reveal he shared the heart of God.
Lest someone get the idea that we cannot be sure that God will answer our prayer for forgiveness, I want to comment on "There in that last sentence we find the paradox - sometimes He forgives and sometimes He doesn't."
I believe that the Bible makes clear that God *always* answers a prayer for forgiveness arising from a sincere heart. He is not unpredictable.
On the other hand, He does not forgive sins people are unwilling to give up. The only reason people will be finally lost is that they were unwilling to be separated from their sins.
An Intercessor
'What hard lessons have you learned about the consequences of forgiven sin?'
Jesus is our intercessor at this time in heaven. Moses was the people intercessor at that time. Moses was a human just like me. Do we have earthly intercessors at present? All of us are called to be earthly intercessors. We are called to intercede for our spouses, children, parents, families, friends, communities and also the government. Paul encourages us to pray and intercede for the government. Do we only intercede for the government if we are affiliated with the leaders political party, or do we intercede for all regardless how radical and liberal the government appears? Those ten men appears to be radicals yet Moses plead for their lives. The Lord stated later on to Moses that 10 times those people have tested him. Are we as SDA testing Jesus the same way.
Last year the covid19 ravished the world. It is still cont presently but have we joined with the secular world and challenged the Lord by our actions? It appears to me like we are moving from one extreme to another now we are on zoom. Now, only a few are going out of their comfort zone. Many are so comfortable at home on zoom we are happy for the covid19 to cont cause we can be a family to ourselves on zoom. Every one is trying to preserve their lives at present. No one wants to die, so why not stay away in our homes although we go to work during the week. Are we as a church is throwing away a great opportunity of telling the world about the saving grace of Jesus and his power to protect? Are we planning wisely and protecting ourselves or are we listening to another voice that is not the Holy Spirit? With careful planning and protection, the church can move on to victory. A working church is a moving church.
Have Mercy Lord on us your people while humans are dying everyday waiting for someone to speak to them face to face.
An Intercessor (Wednesday)
Hindsight is 20/20 and I am sure that many of these freed slaves, now turned rebels, would be shocked at their own actions if they came to live again today and read what we are privileged to see in Scripture. They were standing up for their human rights and freedom, so they thought. The question for us today is, Are we perhaps in rebellion against God today and we are not aware? Do we have a prophet or prophets in our midst that we just can't stand and wish they stopped telling us what to do?
"The sheep spends its entire life fearing the wolf only to be eaten by the shepherd." This is a popular quote am sure you would have seen before.
Moses was truly his Brothers keeper, a true shepherd who would not eat his sheep!
He declared before the Lord that he had rather die than see Israel, by their perverseness, drawing down judgments upon themselves, while the enemies of God were rejoicing in their destruction. (Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4a, p. 16).
Moses had also previously interceded for the people soon after leaving Egypt;
"..Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin..., and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written. Exodus 32:31,32
Are we intercessors for our brothers/sisters, or are we 'sheppards eating the sheep?'
"Moses is a type of Christ. Jesus leads us from the bondage of the Egypts of this world, through the wilderness, and on to the Promised Land. He will never abandon us. He will not forsake us when we fail Him. This day He is interceding for you. You are in His mind. You are on His heart. If we let Him, our mighty Intercessor will take us home to live with Him forever." (Gerald & Chantal Klingbeil, Teachers SS Quarterly).
God's offer to Moses to resolve the issue by making ‘a whole new nation with Moses as the father of them all’, shows me that God was interested to establish His Plan no matter the human cost. His ‘radical’ reaction reminds me of ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’, so to speak. I am happy that Moses, the intercessor, cautioned His God, and God listened to His friend Moses’ reasoning! This is an awesome account of God being willing to reason with those he loves!
If any question comes up about God’s reasonable and compassionate dealings with mankind, this would be the passage to turn to for proof that God is willing to reconsider His actions.
Again, I see this struggle to be about replacing the people’s allegiance to their old gods and related customs of worship with the allegiance to Him, the 'new' God – Yahweh, the great ‘I AM’. One cannot fill a vessel that is already full, one has to empty it of its content first.
Once we give God the authority over our life, it is He who undertakes the process of emptying and filling our vessel for His Honor and Glory; our faith just determines how fast.
Moses asked God to “pardon the people's iniquity" and avoiding the just consequences for their actions; finding a different form to express His justice.
God knows man’s propensity for weakness, but He expects reasonable man to do right when he is told what is right; these people had not yet choosen Him to believe Him to be the only God.
Though already having greatly benefitted from His powerful help, their believes and habits were slow to change. They needed an experience that God meant business and it was time to understand that there was no excuse for their hesitancy to trust Him. The relationship with our God is based on 'all or nothing' - faith or unbelieve! Thank God for His Son, our Savior Christ Jesus' faith to accomplish that which we cannot do for ourselves.
Numbers 14:33-35KJV –
“And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bare your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach[revoking] of promise. I the LORD have said, I will surely do it unto all this evil congregation, that are gathered together against me: in this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there the shall die.
Brigitte, how about reading the Bible through the lens that Christ supplied - that God's character is always one of self-sacrificing love? And His love goes way beyond what any human has ever had. The love of the best human is but a reflection of His love.
With that lens in place, the statement that
sounds a bit jarring.
As many Bible students have concluded, God knew Moses' character and, just as He demonstrated Christ's substitutionary death through Abraham's faithfulness, He again demonstrated Christ's self-sacrifice and mediatorial ministry through Moses.
I believe that God never does anything "no matter the human cost." Quite the contrary, He determined to save humanity no matter what the divine cost. He sacrificed Himself to preserve human freedom and provide a path back to Eden restored.
I don't believe Moses was more compassionate than God, as your comment appears to suggest. Rather Moses, in his intercession demonstrated some of the character of the God with Whom he interceded. He demonstrated the self-sacrificing character of Christ.
And because God has foreknowledge, He knew it would be safe to test Moses' character in this manner, just as He tested Abraham's character, leaving us with wonderful examples of how humans can reflect the character of God.
I happen to believe this "offer" from God was a demonstration brought about to silence the Accuser of Moses. The story of Job should help us see just how God often allows His faithful to demonstrate the falsity of Satan's accusations by revealing their true character. This is overcoming the adversary “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony”. Besides, the Messiah would come through Judah, not Levi. God knew what Moses' response would be.
At this “offer” from God, Moses' response is the "song" spoken of in Rev 15:3. This song symbolizes the life that demonstrates a meek and lowly heart toward others, and a willingness to intercede on behalf of sinners, with no thought of self-gain.
While God decides to spare Israel...again, perhaps there needs to be more study on the point of this people being pardoned. This would need to assume repentance wouldn't it? Did this people demonstrate genuine repentance from this point onward? Only God is able to know the heart.
Robert, I really appreciate this, because I had never thought of it quite this way:
Thank you!
Hello!brethren
Thanks for work of sharing word of God. Kindly help me with explanation on question raised bythe writer;
What hard lessons have you learned about the consequences of the forgiven sin.
thanks.
Even when one is truly repentant and sorry for their sin, its effect still goes on. King David's sin was forgiven upon his deep repentance, but evil still resulted.
Is this still forgiveness then? I thought forgiveness of an evil committed should erase its consequences!I really need to understand the physical meaning of forgiveness! Spiritually, i know forgiveness means saving us from eternal death.
Pascal, the consequences in this life are not erased. People generally reap what they have sown. However, if we sincerely repent of our sins and ask for forgiveness, we do not have to experience the eternal consequences of separation from God, that is loss of eternal life. Jesus experienced that separation, and He prepared the way for us to experience the eternal life that He deserves instead.
Pascal, if an individual repents of murdering someone, the one who was murdered will not just come back to life. King David repented, but Uriah remained dead. What forgiveness does is remove the penalty of eternal death, which Jesus suffered for every repentant sinner. We may be saved from sin/sinning, but that which was done in this life remains done until the resurrection and final judgment of the wicked, which the repentant sinner may escape through faith in Christ.
All who died under the efforts of Saul, will praise God for eternity with the converted Paul. Can you imagine the joy of those faithful martyrs when they see Saul/Paul praising God with the redeemed, along with the many more who were led to Life through his efforts and great sacrifice for the cause of God?
Martyrs who died at the murderous escapade of Paul rejoicing together with him in heaven...ah, this can only be spiritual
“For all the people have seen my glory and my signs that I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and yet have tempted me now these ten times, and have not obeyed me—they will by no means see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers, nor will any of them who despised me see it.” (Numbers 14:22-23, NET, emphasis supplied.)
These words of the Lord harken back to Genesis 15. Having just made a promise to Abram that his descendants would possess this land, the Lord faces a question from Abram, “O Sovereign Lord, by what can I know that I am to possess it?” (Genesis 15:8.). In answer, the Lord takes on himself, through the ritual of Akkadian sympathetic curse magic, death and dismemberment. (Genesis 15:17.) He bears this curse on account of his promise and in spite of knowing the feckless faith of Abraham’s descendents.
Our Lord Jesus, who made this promise, preached the gospel to Abram through the type of this ritual. The Seed through which all the nations would be blessed would die on the cross and have his eternal relationship with God sundered so that all might see the love of God displayed with clarity. In this type met antitype.
No wonder great terror overwhelmed Abram when he saw this in vision. (Genesis 15:12.) His descendents would offer with malicious intent what God accepted as righteous because it was the essence of the Everlasting Covenant. “God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering.” (Genesis 22:8; Romans 8:32)
This explains the Lord’s terrible anger when those he redeemed from bondage through the blood of the Passover Lamb refused to enter his promised rest. They were despising his Promise, his Sacrifice and his Covenant. Yet Love honours his Covenant. Nevertheless, the dead bodies of those who despised his grace littered the wilderness for 40 years.
All of this makes me pause for thought.