Your right hand verse

'The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished.' Numbers 14.18

At Hope we're learning a verse a week.

Or are we? Only with intention comes success, when it's down to Bible verse learning. It is so easy to learn a verse a week. This week all you need to do is to memorise 22 words, and get them in the right order! There's is a sure-fire way to fail, though. And that is, don't plan to learn the verse. Don't plan - and failure is guaranteed!

So how can we spur one another one to get the Word remembered? And how might we do that with this week's verse?

One way of learning Numbers 14.18 is with the help of your right hand. You could do it now. Raise your left thumb - that's 'the Lord'. Now, we've got four statements about Him. Raise your first finger - 'slow to anger'; middle finger, 'abounding in love.' Now do that in sequence, raising thumb and each finger in turn. Do that ten times out loud. Twenty times, and you'll be remembering it next week.

Next, it's the third finger, 'forgiving sin and rebellion.' And little finger, 'yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished.' Again, ten times out loud for those two.

Now you've done it, stand up, walk round the room, and recite it ten times. Go on....

...I've just done that. It took me 60 seconds exactly, finger-raising, and all. After the fourth time the brain remembers the rhythm of the words, and there's very little mental effort involved. It's beginning to lodge in the brain.

For some, though, this is where the doubt creeps in. Rote-learning Scripture, are you sure? Putting words into the brain? Or, more like, remembering to sound out some syllables by frequent repetition? Sounds suspicious, to some people. It sounds like it's an exercise in bypassing the brain. And maybe bypassing the heart, too.

I disagree. Of course our learning the Scriptures can bypass both brain and heart. But it's an exercise which is more than worth undertaking, even with that risk acknowledged. We commit the Scriptures to memory, because we need to get the truths into us. That begins by reciting and learning the verse. It is carried on by reflecting on it. We don't just say the verse out loud, we soak in it. We turn it over in our minds, and feel its weightiness. The weight of truth is the weight of glory as we reflect on the Word.

Take this week's verse. 'The Lord...does not leave the guilty unpunished'. In the truest, biblical sense, the Lord rages against sin. His holy fury will be unleashed against sin and sinners. That is what the Cross shows us. It is the revelation of God's anger at sin, and much as it is of His loving determination to rescue lost sinners. God condemns sin.

And yet, He saves sinners. Hell-deserving sinners come broken to the cross, and discover a Saviour who was broken for them. He pays the debt, that debtors may be forgiven. He takes Hell, that sinners may be welcomed into Heaven. Amazing love! Then work back through the verse: He forgives sin and rebellion, that is the work and the message of the Cross. He is the One who is just, and who justifies the ungodly. At the cross we discover for ourselves the God who abounds in love. We marvel how slow He is to anger with our selfish, spiteful selves. Love adores, belief is fulled. This is the Lord! We look at our calling to honour the Lord in a fresh light. We abhor our sin with new intensity, and we press on to acknowledge the Lord in all our ways.

So, if you want to know and follow Him like this - raise your right hand. May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly.