Month: July 2019

June 26, 2019: Day 60 – Judges 2

This is a test, this is only a test.  If you look at vs.22-23 you see that the Lord was testing the loyalty of the Israelites by not driving out all of those nations that were in the land, you know, all those nations that we mentioned last chapter that the Israelites had not driven out of the land.  The reason why he did not drive them out was because he wanted to see if the Israelites would turn back and worship false gods, which seemed to be their default.  So this was a test.

Interestingly enough under Joshua and all of his generation the Lord did marvelous things and they remembered all that He did and worshiped the Lord, and the Lord only did they worship.  But then we see in vs.10 that the generation that came after them: “Did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.”  Then comes the most common phrase that we find in Judges: “Then the Israelites did what was evil in the  sight of the Lord.”  We find this repeated over and over again.  

If you look at vs.16 then you can see what God did as a result of them doing evil in the sight of the Lord.  The  Lord raised up judges.  The responsibility of these judges was to make sure they were delivered from those who plundered them.  By the way, the ones who plundered them were the ones that they had not driven out of the land when they had a chance, as Joshua had commanded them through the Lord.  I told you it wasn’t a good idea to keep them around.  But look at vs. 18-19 and you see  that God was raised to pity because of the state of the Israelites and then he would appoint a judge.  But, once a judge came around, things got back to order, but then once the judge died, what was that phrase again?  “Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  

As a result God says that the Israelites are going to have a hard time, a really hard time keeping the land that they now occupy.  Yeah, that’s a bit of an understatement.  

June 25, 2019: Day 59 – Judges 1

We find ourselves in a new book of the Bible.  Judges was written as the bridge between the time of the conquests of the people of Israel and the time of the kings for the people of Israel.  What we find in the first chapter is the continuation of the conquests that we had from Joshua with a few interesting stories thrown in there.  

You find the story of the king who was conquered and so had his thumbs and his big toes cut off. I’ll never forget when I was a kid my dad used to pretend to be the big toe biter, but I never knew that there was actual Scriptural backing to that monster.  Who knew?  Then you have  the people of Israel led by Caleb who puts up a bounty if someone attacks a certain city first.  That bounty happened to be his daughter, who was pretty shrewd.  She realized that if she is going to be given away then she might as well get something out of it.  She asked her dad for land, he gave it to her.  

The stories continue and we find that there is a very large number of lands where the Canaanites were not driven out, but allowed to live and reside among the people of Israel as conquered people.  They basically served as slaves.  We will see as time progresses that this decision was probably not the best.  The Lord did tell them to slaughter all the inhabitants.  I know, probably not the most humane approach, but we will see how the Canaanites do become a thorn in the side of the Israelites as time inexorably moves  on.

June 24, 2019: Day 58 – Joshua 24

You can’t read this chapter without highlighting vs.15, and especially the last  part of that verse: “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”  These are the words of Joshua as he sets up a juxtaposition between what God had done and the requirement that God has which is that the people will serve Him and only Him, as opposed to the other gods which are present in the lands that they overtook.  Joshua tells them, you  have a choice, you can serve the God that I serve, or serve the gods that the people in the land serve.  I’m going to serve the Lord God, and so is my family.

So Joshua goes over all the historical background from the time of Abraham to the current day which took them into and out of Egypt and then into the promised land.  Remember that throughout this time the underlying theme  is that God is one, God is jealous, you are to have no other gods before me, if you do have other gods before me then I am not going to be on your side, and by the way, you want me on your side, trust me.

Joshua dies and so ends our chapter and our book of the Bible of Joshua.  This ends the whole series of promises that God made to the people of Israel that they would inherit the promised land.  They have inherited it, now they just have to rule it.  That comes next.

June 23, 2019: Day 57 – Joshua 23

So it is pretty important that we only serve one Lord and God and that God be the God of Israel.  Joshua is in the sunset of his life and he wants to be sure that he leaves behind the nation in a healthy state and he can think of no other way to leave the nation in a healthy state than if they understand that they have to set up parameters to ensure that their progeny will only serve the Lord God.  

This has been,  and will continue to be, the one theme throughout all of Scripture, including when Jesus walks upon the earth.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  In an age of relativism where we often hear that it doesn’t matter what we worship or who we worship, as long as we are good people, this message of Scripture comes to us very directly and says: Well, no, actually it does matter.  It matters quite a bit.  But this message that Joshua gives: do not marry people who do not believe fundamentally the way that you believe, just might be seen as being narrow minded and not something we ought to pursue. 

I am going to embrace this command in a way that might be somewhat contradictory.  I would participate in a service where people of different religions are getting married.  And by different religions I don’t mean a Baptist and a Presbyterian.  We are the same religion, we are Christians.  But I mean a Jew and a Christian, or a Muslim and a Christian, I would take part in this service.  But, I would take part only if I could proclaim the good news of the Gospel in that service.  

June 22, 2019: Day 56 – Joshua 22

The tribes are getting settled and being sent out to their lands by Joshua when an “event” happens.  Isn’t it interesting when events  happen in families?  Over the generations those events become much larger than they ever were.  We have two and a half of the tribes who were accused of building an altar, with the assumption that this altar was in order to worship and sacrifice to false gods.  The other tribes sent representatives because the last “event” which took place at Peor was a really bad memory for everyone involved.   If you want to remember that event yourself you can go to Numbers 25:3-5.   Yeah, not good memories.  People being impaled and the Lord not really happy.

Sooo…, in order to avoid all that impaling and the rest of the Israelites being punished for these few wayward tribes it would be best if we send representatives and try to convince them to turn from their ways.  They do, they send their representatives.  The response they get is fascinating.  So, the concern was that these few tribes were already beginning to worship false gods.  But their response, however, is that they built this altar as a witness or a reminder that they were people of the Lord.  If in the generations to come the other Israelite families might accuse them of not being true believers they could point to this altar and say, no, that is not correct.  Our ancestors built this altar as a memory of our faith in the one true God.

So basically this was built in order to stave off any future naysayers on the other side of the Jordan.  Nothing like starting off with just a touch of conspiracy theory.  All ends well.  

June 21, 2019: Day 55 – Joshua 21

So in this chapter we find the families of the priestly class who were kind of assigned to towns within the land that the Lord had given to the other families.  They were not given land, which we saw underlined a number of times that the family of Levi, the priestly class, would not receive land, but rather towns in which they were supposed to dwell.  The assumption is that in these towns that they were given they were to establish the temples, the places of worship, a place where God would be glorified.  Remember, we do not have the temple just yet, that is going to come later, so regionally they had to worship God in some place.  Those places would have been the towns where the priests resided, at least logically it makes sense.

Notice also that all of the towns of refuge, where people were allowed to go in order to be protected by the law, were given to the Levitical, the priestly families as described in this chapter.  So it means that wherever people had to flee there would definitely be a pastor, or a rabbi, in that town that they would be able to visit and see.  This is very, very significant and forward thinking.  It wasn’t like these sanctuary cities were set up randomly.  They were set up with the thinking that the people who are going to be using the sanctuary cities would need spiritual and emotional support.  

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