March 7, 2022: Day 50 – Joshua 1-3 and Acts 1-3
March 7, 2022Moses dies and now it is up to Joshua to take the people into the promised land. The Lord pumps Joshua up and encourages him to be strong and courageous as he prepares to enter the land. He sends and expeditionary force out in front who happen to stay overnight at the home of a prostitute, not sure why this isn’t spoken about more. It would not be where I would encourage my men to stay when they are on a top secret mission. Rahab, the prostitute, is actually Jesus’ great great great so on grandmother.
Chapter 3 contains some of the most powerful didactic elements in the entire Old Testament. God commands the priests to go forward with the ark, about 3,000 feet forward and to stand in the Jordan in order to dry it up, ala the Red Sea. He tells the priests, you have to get your feet wet before the Jordan is going to dry up. Isn’t that often the case with us? We want to sea to part in front of us before we put our feet in the sea, if we have to risk it and actually put our feet in, well, then it may not be worth it. God calls us to get out of the boat if we want to walk on water, he calls us to get our feet wet in order to see God’s miracles. What a great lesson.
In Acts we have Jesus’ last words to his disciples where he sends them out into all the world. We then have the day of Pentecost, also known as the birth-day of the church when the Holy Spirit falls powerfully on the apostles and all those who were gathered. It is interesting that they were a group of 120 people and then once the Holy Spirit falls they swell into more than 3,000 people.
This question is back in Deuteronomy because we are behind in our schedule. Why is God only giving rain for the land he has given to the Israelites? Seems like discrimination. There are good people that are Egyptians and Israelites. God took good care of Israel supposedly, so why is CA suffering with wild fires.
Why was God so picky about animals you can and cannot eat in Deuteronomy?
The Lord wants perfect animals to be sacrificed for him and no animals with defects. Who eats the sacrificed meats?
To this three part question let’s address the phrase: people of God. God chose Abraham with whom to make his covenant and then again Jacob later on who is renamed Israel to carry out his covenant. All of the descendants of Jacob, the twelve tribes, become the people of Israel. The Old Testament, the old covenant, was focused on God choosing Israel to carry out his commandments. That is how God worked. Today in the new covenant, all people can come to God, male or female, Greek or Jew etc. So God chose the Israelites and the Egyptians were not a part of those chosen people.
The question of why do bad things happen to good people is another question altogether. The fires in CA is not a sign of God’s disfavor, it is a sign of the brokenness of the earth and the presence of sin in the world. God still takes care of us, and takes care of those suffering in the wild fires, it is just difficult to draw a straight line between the favor of God and the events that are happening in the world.
Many of the purity codes in Deuteronomy, especially dealing with food, was because those kinds of food if you do not cook them correctly, can kill you. Now, they are laid out a being clean and unclean and God chose those that were clean and unclean. It is God’s prerogative to be picky.
The priests would eat the sacrificed meats unless they were to be completely burned, which some were.