{"id":195,"date":"2015-07-25T15:05:50","date_gmt":"2015-07-25T15:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/?p=195"},"modified":"2015-07-25T15:05:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-25T15:05:50","slug":"principles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"Principles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Numbers is again surprising me with life principles. Let me give you a quick recap here but first a little self-commentary. As Christians we know that the Old Testament ceremonial law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ and yet in Matthew 5:18 he tells us that not the smallest letter or least stroke of the pen with disappear from the Law until its purpose is achieved. Key among the purposes of the Law is\u00a0to reveal the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man, convincing us of our need for relationship with and dependance on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. We also know that many rules provided in the Old Testament also provided for the health and safety of the people, long before we understood sanitation, microbes, the effects of eating fat on our health and so on. Knowing these things, we ought never discount the Old Testament in its ability to give us life principles.<\/p>\n<p>So, here is a recap of principles from Numbers 15.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Foreigners are to be treated the same as you [Numbers 15:1-16]<\/em>. God reemphasizes something he said in Leviticus 19 here. Where you are from or who is in your bloodline is not important to God. He says that we don&#8217;t mistreat others for these reasons or give them any different rules to follow. So, if you are filled with my-side-of-town pride or my-state pride, or my-country pride or my-race or my-ancestor or whatever&#8211;see that your pride does not lead you to devalue others. God calls us to unity.<\/li>\n<li><em>Give to God first [Numbers 15:17-21]<\/em>. This is a matter of focus. The Biblical picture here involves time and resources. The people were told to present (at the Tabernacle &#8211; you have to go somewhere) an offering of the first of their ground meal. This is right-focused living. The ability to get the food comes from God. The increase in the land comes from God. God doesn&#8217;t need the food. He doesn&#8217;t even need your recognition. You&#8211;and me&#8211;need to recognize and remember our dependence on God and honor Him.<\/li>\n<li><em>We can fail as a people [Numbers 15:22-26]<\/em>. Ever hear of mob mentality? Ever see many people get together to disrupt and reek destruction? Do we look back on those events and say it was good? Americans might say, &#8220;But our founding fathers&#8230;&#8221; and if you do I encourage you to look back and consider that some key people got together using reason and determination provide for a government that can neither be directed solely by one man nor is vulnerable to the will of the &#8220;rabble&#8221; (mob mentality). This government was made to have checks and balances that require extensive deliberation and where one group can correct the errors of the other. But back the principle. The principle is that people can, en mass, unintentionally fall into sin. God tells us to look out for that, to repent as a people, and provides a way to be forgiven.<\/li>\n<li><em>Individuals can unintentionally\u00a0sin<\/em>\u00a0<em>[Numbers 15:27-29].\u00a0<\/em>We, as individuals, also can sin unintentionally. God understands our imperfection and provides for repentance and forgiveness. Unintentional sin is always to be repented and forgiven, regardless of who commits it.<\/li>\n<li><em>Defiant sin is different [Numbers 15:30-31]<\/em>. Purposeful sin&#8211;knowingly, defiantly going against what we know is right and continuing in it, unrepentant, leaves us out of relationship with God. He tells us that we are despising His word (His very self) and our guilt remains on us. He tells us these people are cut off. We should not pretend all is well.<\/li>\n<li><em>Cool justice<\/em> <em>[Numbers 15:32-36]<\/em>. When wrong occurs, we can jump into lynch-mob mentality&#8211;demonize people. Our great communication abilities these days make this even easier, in a way. In the example we see, while there was a crime punishable by death, the people brought the offender to trial, obtained sound judgement, and executed the sentence in an orderly way.<\/li>\n<li><em>Tassels? [Numbers 15:37-41]<\/em>. What is the deal with tassels? God made it very clear. They are a reminder to refocus on God, like&#8230;a cross necklace or a fish outline or &#8230; Remember the LORD. Remember who He is. Remember how much He has done for you.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Spend some time in Numbers (and the rest of the Old Testament).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Numbers is again surprising me with life principles. Let me give you a quick recap here but first a little self-commentary. As Christians we know that the Old Testament ceremonial law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ and yet in Matthew 5:18 he tells us that not the smallest letter or least stroke of the pen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marklandbenson.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}