Does God overlook small sins? Why did God intend to kill Moses before he’d even begun his rescue mission of the Israelites? 🤔

Acts 17:30-31; Exodus 4:24-26; Genesis 17:9-14

Once upon a long time ago, God winked at the ignorance of men; but now, He calls all to repent because judgement is at hand and His word is with us (Acts 17:30-31). There is no more room for excuse. Moses experience with God shows how serious God is about sin, big and small. 

After all the training/purification Moses had received for 40 years in the wilderness, preparing Him for God’s ultimate plan for His life, He risked it all with disobedience in one seemingly small area.

In Gen 17:9-14, God had ordered the circumcision of male children as evidence of the everlasting covenant with Abraham. Moses knew this but hadn’t circumcised His son, perhaps having been persuaded by his wife, Zipporah, who was a Midianite and not used to this practice. Whatever the case, it had to be done speedily else Moses would have died, aborting God’s mission for him.

Three lessons from this seemingly short innocuous story:

1. Moses was going to lead a multitude of Israelites. He couldn’t claim to be a messenger of God yet be disobeying God’s explicit instructions in his personal life. He had to live and lead by pristine example. These people had lived amidst all the impurities of the corrupting Egyptian life for some c.400 yrs, so Moses needed to be fully upright in his ways as they would be looking up to him. We also live in a corrupt world and nothing less is expected of us.☀️

2. God truly does refine His children through the “wilderness”. Therein Moses had learnt humility, leadership, trust in God etc. and shed desires of his former Egyptian prince life, anger, pride, deceit etc. But his obedience needed to be complete for God to use him for this grand mission. To truly receive the plan/purpose of God for our lives and to allow God guide us in executing it, we must be living in complete obedience to God and shed our impurities in thought, desires and actions. It’s a continuous daily striving process. God has given us the Bible as clear expression of His will and when we live in conscious disobedience of it, we sin and expose ourselves to its fatal consequences, like Moses did. 🙏🏾

3. It’ll be a sorry fatal mistake to think that God will condone even tiny sins. Yes God is merciful and long suffering but if the Bible says without holiness it is impossible to see God (Heb 12:14), then it will be impossible. The Bible does tell us that we cannot attain purity on our own but only through the power of the Holy Spirit and the word of God (Ps 119:9; Rom 12:2). Our human desire to live a pure life will work hand in hand with the power and ways of God to prepare us for translation to heaven. 🙌🏾😁