February 28 - Make No Mistake - God Loves You!

 Read today’s texts first: Numbers 24-27; 1 Corinthians 13

MAXIMize YOUR DAY

We like to talk about God’s undying love,
but we cannot presume on that grace
or forget the great cost of that love.

It’s my nature and my job as an English teacher to find mistakes on paper.  It may even be a spiritual gift.  So I couldn’t help noticing that our readings today include 1 Corinthians 13 when we’re supposed to be in the middle of Mark. Coincidentally, we will read 1 Corinthians 13 again on March 28, and today is February 28 – it looks suspiciously like a mistake on the reading guide.  In case it was our mistake in the student handbook, I checked New Hope’s website and it is the same there.

Whether a mistake or not, I was glad to read about the unconditional love of God right after the slaughter of 24,000 Baal worshippers in Numbers 25.  I’m aware of how the justice of God was swiftly executed to protect His people from compromising with the sexual and idolatrous perversion of the Canaanite nations.  It’s appropriate that the setting for this flirtation with the daughters of Moab was called “Shittim.”  Israel was in deep!

It is sobering to read about the holiness of God and the dangers of “playing the harlot.”  We have our own battle lines of compromise within the church and among God’s people today.  Yes we are in a time of the new covenant where we like to talk about God’s undying love, but we cannot presume on that grace or forget the great cost of that love.  God’s wrath was poured out on His own sinless Son so that we could experience forgiveness instead of judgment.

“Lord, seeing Your justice and mercy together today was no mistake.  We want to live in that tension – aware of Your holiness, but grateful for the love that made it possible for that holiness to flow through us.”