Forfeiture of Blessings – Foundations of a Worldview

Forfeiture of Blessings
Foundations of a Worldview

Then the LORD said: “I have pardoned, according to your word; but truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD—because all these the men who have seen My glory and the signs which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and have put Me to the test now these ten times, and have not obeyed My voice, they certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to give to their fathers….” Numbers 14:20-23

The generation that balked at the report of the spies may not have lost their salvation, but they did forfeit the blessings of God. Moses forfeited the blessings of God when he obstructed the people’s vision of the power of God’s Word by striking the rock instead of speaking to it. God is warning His people, here in His Law, that the many abundant blessings and precious and very great promises He has in store for us can be forfeited by unbelief and disobedience.

This is as true for the followers of Christ as it was for the ancient Israelites. If we will not believe the Lord and will not walk in His ways, how can we expect to know the full and abundant life He has for us in Jesus? We forfeit the blessings He continually holds out to us because of our little faith.

Discipline is one of the Lord’s ways to keep us in the way of His covenant, to keep us on track to know and enjoy Him and His promises. We need to understand His disciplines, and what they require of us in the way of provisional or temporary disciplines, so that we recognize and respond to them as we should. Thus we can know the benefit God intends through them and continue to grow in our covenant relationship with Him.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a crucial resource for understanding the Biblical worldview against the backdrop of our secular age. Follow T. M.’s studies in Ecclesiastes by downloading the free, weekly studies available in our Scriptorium Resources page at The Fellowship of Ailbe. Click here to see the weekly studies available thus far.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).