Sorry, I know of no way to re-order these posts.
Today's theme appears to be Sinfulness, Backsliding, Repentance and Redemption.
God is a loving Lord and willing to pardon those who turn from their evil ways and beg for forgiveness.
While Moses is on the mountain talking with God the Israelites slough off the thin veneer of monotheism and return to the practices of idolatry and human sacrifice to which they have become accustomed after generations of living in Egypt. God threatens to rain down lava and exterminate the guilty much as he had at Sodom and Gomorrah but Moses begs for mercy. We are spared the aftermath in which thousands died but it must be remembered that the central purpose of the 'forty years' of wandering in the wilderness was the death of the entire generation who had been tainted by the 'fleshpots' of Egypt so that a new righteous generation could enter the 'Promised Land'.
The Psalm takes the form of a prayer for forgiveness for confessed transgressions and stops unaccountably with the first verse of a hymn with which we should all be well acquainted.
Paul acknowledges that God forgave his former life as a persecutor of Christians and made him a messenger of God's Grace in Jesus Christ.
In looking at the Gospel we must remember that just as sin is its own punishment the kingdom of god is the reward of life in Christ, we need no further reinforcement. Therefore our mission as was Christ's own is to bring sinners to repentance. It is not needful that we preach to the converted, we need to seek out the lost. It is however comforting to acknowledge that just as there is rejoicing when the lost has been found there will be forgiveness and restoration of wholeness of life when we invariable confess our own sins and repent of them. However we must never take that assurance as license to sin in the first place.
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