Throughout the Bible, and in the world today, sin is very evident.  To understand just how much God opposes, dislikes, loathes, hates and punishes sin, the Bible has many stories of how God deals with sin.  In fact I heard an interesting bit of info the other day, there are only four chapters in the entire Bible that do not have any sin in them, the first two chapters in Genesis and the last two chapters in Revelation.  That’s four chapters out of 1,189!  All of the other 1,185 chapters have some mention or act of sin within. 

In many of the cases of sin from His people, God’s actions were just and final.  Even though He allowed the Jews to be taken into captivity, they were eventually forgiven after they turned back to God and prayed for forgiveness.  The only thing that can trump satan’s sin in our lives is God’s Grace and forgiveness. 

Let’s look at one of the Bible greats, one of God’s favorites, Moses.  After Moses had devoted his life to following God’s plan for him to lead his people out of captivity, he did not even get to go into the Promised Land because he had dishonored God.  During their long journey in the wilderness, at one point the people were without water and complained to Moses and Aaron.  When they went to God for help He said,    “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.”  9 So Moses and Aaron gathered the people together at the rock and said, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” 11 Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank.  But because Moses hit the rock with the staff instead of speaking to the rock like God had said, 12 But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.”  Now this transgression might have kept Moses out of the Promised Land, but did not keep him out of Heaven according to the book of Jude.

Now backing up a ways, why were they in the wilderness for 40 years anyway?  This goes back to when they first reached the ‘point of entry’ to the land they were promised.  They sent out 12 scouts, one from each tribe, to scout out what they were going into, to plan their strategies.  The scouts were gone for 40 days, and when they came back 10 of them gave false reports of the people stating that they would really have a battle on their hands.  This caused a big dissention among all the tribes and they complained.  This lead to God punishing them for not trusting His guidance to get them safely into their Promised Land.  Because of this dissention and complaining God made them wander in the desert for forty years, one year for everyday that they scouted the Promised Land.  All of those that were twenty years old and older would die in the desert over that 40 years of wandering, and the new generation would be led into the Land that they were promised.   

Moses out of frustration with a complaining mass of people angrily struck the rock instead of allowing those angry people to witness God’s Glory.  A tough lesson to learn?  What we need to absorb out of this is that God deserves the Honor and Glory for all that He allows us to do.  We certainly cannot do anything without Him.