Coming Home to Freedom - Repentance

Devotional Reading: Numbers 14:20-45

The right action at the wrong time doesn’t make it right.  Two wrongs don’t make a right. Delayed justice is injustice.   Sometimes it feels like you just can’t win.  You mess up and want to make it right, yet your attempt to make it right only makes it more wrong. We humans try to correct our own behaviors, but if we had just gotten it right the first time we wouldn’t be in such a mess.  This must have been how the Israelites felt after complaining in the desert and then realizing that they had offended God.  They wanted to make it right by pulling together an army and going into battle to win the promised land.  They wanted to show faith, but it was too late. Instead of showing faith they were just expressing regret because of the punishment they now faced.  Regret isn’t the same as faith. 

Sometimes the best way to respond to our own mistakes is to accept the consequences of them. We admit it, by saying, “I messed up.”  And then instead of coming up with our own ways to make it right, we ask, “What can I do to make this up to you?”  The solution offered by the offended is the solution we submit to, because we are the one in the wrong.  This can be hard to do.  The Israelites didn’t want to do this and so they went off to battle only to be defeated.  God wasn’t on their side.

Are we comfortable admitting that? Perhaps God isn’t on our side?  But wait, we are Christians!  Isn’t God always on our side?

God’s character doesn’t change.  God is good, loving, and merciful.  That is an interesting combination of character traits.  In Christ, our sins have been removed and we are forgiven.  But, that doesn’t mean we won’t face consequences for our actions.  A loving and good parent disciplines their child so that their child hopefully doesn’t make the same mistake twice. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like making mistakes, especially if someone else is harmed in the process.  Sometimes I think life would be much easier if we were all just perfect and no one made mistakes. But life continues after mistakes. And most of the time we learn from those mistakes. But, not always.

And I suspect this is the reason that God set such a strong boundary with the Israelites, God recognized that they weren’t learning from their mistakes.  Time after time they were ungrateful and complained.  And finally that complaining caught up to them. Unfortunately, this story isn’t the end of their complaining. It seems that this generation that was forbidden from entering the Promised Land never learned.

And so we take it as a warning to learn from our mistakes, to accept the natural consequences, and to repent or find a way to change.  But we also find in their despair some hope.  We live on the other side of the cross. We have seen the way of Christ and been redeemed by it. And as we seek to repent and change our ways, we have an incredible gift from God to help us – the transformative power of the Holy Spirit at work within us.  We don't have to do it on our own.  We were bought at a price and were set free from the power of sin and death.  And we have the deposit of the Holy Spirit as our guide.