Reading our Psalm for today, it is obvious that the subject of the Psalm is Jesus. The references to being the firstborn, the highest of kings, the covenant, and establishing his offspring forever. Oh yes, Jesus is all over the Old Testament. The Old Testament sets up the scene for the New Testament. And so yes, we see prophecies of Jesus all over the Old Testament.
Can you imagine 3 million people passing over the Jordan River? The Jordan begins about 45 feet wide and is about 100 feet wide in various places. This is a historic event for the Israelites to finally pass into the Promised Land so many years after God promised the land to Abraham. The Lord is going to make an impression on the people. He wants to assure them that He is with them. They had heard stories of the people as they passed through the Red Sea, but every person who saw that event was now dead. This was a totally new nation and God assures them by drying up the Jordan as they passed through. It must have taken the better part of the day for them to pass over. And that whole time the water to the north would have piled up and the river to the south would have dried up until everyone had passed through. This would make an impression on the people and fill them with faith for the battles that would lay ahead.
Now, this miracle of the passing through the Jordan River was amazing, but the miracle of the conversion of St. Paul is no less amazing. Normally, we see God bringing people to faith through other people. But here, Jesus Himself appears to Saul and convicts him of persecution. This a rare occasion. This is what Saul calls himself an apostle abnormally born. The big difference between an apostle and a disciple is that an apostle has seen with his own eyes the resurrected Jesus. That’s why we don’t have any new apostle’s today, because Jesus just doesn’t come and appear to people all the time like before. He could, but He usually doesn’t.
The conversion of St. Paul creates quite a stir among the people. They knew how agressively he persecuted the church and now for him to be proclaiming Jesus and Christ was indeed a miracle. It gets everyone talking.
I find it very interesting that Luke writes, “Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews (of which he used to be one) who lived in Damascus by PROVING that Jesus was the Christ.” Saul was a very well educated individual. He was smart. And so, he could effectively debate the religious leaders and as Luke writes, “prove” Jesus was the Son of God.
The Psalm begins, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Don’t we usually think of God blessing us? And yet, twice in our Psalm it says that we bless the Lord. This is not uncommon and this is not the only place we see this. We see this in Deut. 8:10, in Judges 5:2 and 5:9 and many, many times in the Psalms. Now, we see God’s blessings every day. My question is, “How do WE bless the Lord?” I have no answers. I’m just putting it out there.
Verses three and following give reasons why we bless the Lord. He forgives us. He redeems us. He satisfies us. He works righteousness. He is merciful and gracious. There are many, many reasons for us to bless God. The question remains, “How do WE bless God?” By our worship? Through our prayers? Bible study? Keeping the commandments? Telling others about Him?
So the people of Israel have passed over the Jordan on dry ground as the priests have been carrying the ark and standing in the middle of the Jordan while the people passed by. Can you see, four guys, standing in the middle of the dry river bed holding the Ark, while 2 or 3 million people pass by. Again, this took more than four or five minutes. I’m sure it took more than an hour. Did it take the whole day? Maybe.
Before the Ark is carried the rest of the way across the river, 12 men gather together 12 rocks to build a memorial to remind the people of the miracle God had done. We need reminders of God’s great power, or we forget and follow other paths. Our Lord is a very practical God. He knows us all too well. So He has the people build this memorial.
Did you catch the size of the Israelite army? There were about 40,000 ready for war. Not a large army if you ask me. And yet, that was just God’s point. He didn’t want the Israelites having confidence in the size of their army. He wanted them to have confidence in HIM.
Reading the text from Acts today, I never realized before that Saul had attempts on his life so early in his Christian career. Notice that he is lowered out of town in a basket over the wall just like Rahab let the Israelites out of the town of Jericho. Not much changes in a 1000 years.
Obviously, when Paul comes back to Jerusalem and tried to join up with the disciples, they are going to be cautious about that. Paul was connected with the stoning of Stephen, of course they would be concerned about him trying to arrest one of the 12. But notice who steps in? Barnabas. That’s what Barnabas does best. He heals wounds. He heals rifts. We will see more of him later in Acts.
As the church spreads out, the disciples perform miracles to support the Word they are preaching. We have the Bible and we know the Holy Spirit works through that Word. But they didn’t have the Bible as we know it. Just the Old Testament and it wasn’t like they carried a copy around with them. So, the Lord uses miracles to support the message they were proclaiming. Until the church matures, the Lord performs many miracles through the disciples. Here we see Aeneas healed after 8 years in bed and Dorcas is raised from the dead. And through these miracles, many come to believe and God is glorified. Maybe God is blessed.
I, too, have wondered the same thing…how do we bless God? So I put the question out to WELS Topical Q & A page. Following is the response I got: “You are correct to say that God is the Source of blessing for us all, all the time. He blesses us. But the Hebrew verb ‘bless’ that is used in Psalm 103 and many others, can also mean to praise or to declare someone (God) worthy of worship and praise. The context will tell the reader whether in a particular verse the normal idea of ‘bless’ is meant or whether the ‘praise’ idea is meant. In Psalm 103 it obviously means ‘praise’. Many English translations actually say ‘praise’ instead of ‘bless’ in these verses to avoid misunderstanding.
Actually, the same thing is true of the English word bless or ‘blessed’. When we refer, for example, to ‘the blessed Trinity’, we are declaring the Triune God to be praiseworthy and declare him the source of our blessings received. We praise him as we ‘bless’ him.”
I can’t believe it’s the last day of June already. And with the crazy month of July I have, it will be August before you know it and suddenly summer will be over. Not fun.
Our Psalm for today is filled with figures of speach. The first is allusion. The whole thing alludes to the reaction of the world to the Israelites being freed from Egypt. And we have personification. When you see a mountain skipping like a ram, then you have personification. The reason God hardened Pharoah’s heart and performed all those plagues was so that the nations would see what happened to Egypt and know that the Lord was God and that God was with the people of Isarel and thus, leave them alone and be afraid.
We see that fear in our Joshua lesson. “As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted.” They were afraid, very afraid.
Then we get this long explanation about why they had to be circumcised. Why didn’t they just circumcise the kids after they were born? That was the command God gave them … So now they have to do it now that they are in the Promised Land. Then they have to hang out and heal, ouch.
But take heart, after they are all better, they celebrate the Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. That must have been a wonderful day. That must have been a very special occasion that grandfathers would have told their grandchildren for years and years. But it also marks the end of the manna. The Lord had fed them for 40 years via manna. Can you imagine, most of these people had not really eatten much else except manna for their whole lives? I’m sure they had to be careful not to eat too much rich lamb on a day like this or else their stomach would rebel. But now, they have to start gathering food for the 2 or 3 million people. Since this was going to be their land, they start eating off the land. What they eat, their opponents can’t eat. It was part of God’s strategy.
So then we see this scene with Joshua and “the commander of the army of the Lord.” I think it should have been written, “the Commander of the army of the Lord.” Why? “Joshua feel on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him.” This Commander was God or else He would have told Joshua not to worship Him. We don’t worship angels or God’s representatives. We only worship God. So this Commander must have been God.
One professor at the Seminary is working on a book that maintains that every time God shows up in the Old Testament, here, in the burning bush, as the three visitors to Abraham and so forth, that it is the pre-incarnate Jesus or second person of the Trinity. The explaination is long and drawn out, but it makes sense. Just something to think about.
Anyway, God gives them instructions to take a walk every day and on the seventh day, take seven walks. And then the city will fall down. But we will see that in the next few days.
In order to keep the Nation of Israel pure (free from worship of false gods) so that the Messiah could be born from them to save the world, God had to keep the people of Israel seperate. If they intermarried and shared culture with other nations, they would have started sharing false gods. So, to keep them diffent He commands them to be circumcised and He prohibits them from eating unclean foods. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even allowed to eat at the same table with someone who was not Jewish. Much of the time, they weren’t allowed to enter the home of a non-Jewish person. They had to be kept totally seperate so that Jesus could come from them.
But now that Jesus had been born and redeemed the world through His death and resurrection, the focus become sharing the Gospel and sharing the news that we are redeemed. To do that, the barriers had to come down. God is a very personal God and He shares His message through people and relationships. So with this meeting between peter and Cornelius, God begins to tear down the differences between Jews and Gentiles. Obviously, since there are still Jews today, He wasn’t completely successful. But, we see the door opening here.
Oh well, I need a cup of tea. The only question is hot tea or iced tea. Have a great day.
The people of Israel are excited, they are going to destroy their first city. It works out well that our Psalm is so filled with joy, even to the point of clapping hands. Lord knows that Lutherans don’t clap their hands. But, here in the Psalm, aboslutely, “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!” See, the reason I’m not big on clapping in church is that it is usually in response to some group or individual performing well. Someone sings a nice song and people clap. But church isn’t a performance venue, it’s a worship experience. In the Psalm, the Lord is the receiver of the clapping. If we are going to clap, it should be after hearing the Gospel lesson or after we receive the Lord’s supper or after someone has been baptized. Those are the great performances where God washs away the sins of an individual. Those are the great miracles that really deserve a round of applause.
So, in the Joshua text, we see the city of Jericho fall. Each day for six days, they get up early in the morning and 40,000 people walk around the city of Jericho in front of the ark of the covenant and in front of the seven priests and the seven trumpets. For the first six days, they are not to say a word. But on the seventh day, they march around seven times and on the seventh time they shout and the walls of the city come down. That enables them to go into the city and win the day. “They devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” A lot of people have a problem with this. How could a loving God destroy men, women and children? They are innocent victims. They were also pagans who would have lead the Israelites astray to following other gods. God has to keep the Israelites pure. So everyone had to be destroyed. And the city would never be rebuilt.
But as the Lord was trying to keep the nation of Israel pure by keeping them seperate, as we talked yesterday, He was giving Peter instructions that it was ok now to unite with Gentiles.
Notice that when Cornelius falls and worships Peter, Peter’s response is for him to get up because he was only a man? That’s why I think that commander from the other day was God, because He didn’t stop Joshua from worshiping Him.
Also, notice verse 28, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” It’s time to get the message out and you can’t get the message out when you can’t associate with people. God is a people person. He shares His message and does evangelism via people, not programs. So, God changes the rules and gets rid of the rules and opens the door to outright evangelism.
I could read Psalm 51 over and over and over again. Yes, it reminds me of my sin (but hey, I sin every day) but it also reminds me that God does forgive me every, single day. Through Jesus death on the cross and His resurrection, we have been washed whiter than snow. Our orignial sin has been washed away in Baptism. We are a new creation.
The Psalm reminds us that when we sin, we sin against God. Sure, I may have upset my wife yesterday, but untimately, I sinned against God. Fine, I may have been speeding, but I have really sinned against God. And while He may not be here to confront me with my sin, He is the one who will judge us on the last day.
So, stop and thank God for Jesus and His death and resurrection. Through Jesus we are forgiven.
God was absolutely serious when He told the Israelites NOT to take anything that belonged to the people of Jericho. Kill everyone, and take noting but the gold and silver and bronze and those will go into God’s treasury. Everything else is to be destroyed.
Well, Achan didn’t listen. He takes a cloak and some silver and some gold. No one will know, right? Well, God knows. God knows everything. And God got so upset that He let 36 people die in a fight that the Israelites should have won — 36 people died because Achan took some gold, silver and a cloak.
Why didn’t God just tell Joshua who took the stuff and where it was? Instead He has each of the 12 tribes stand before the Lord. Then each clan. Then each household. Then each man. And to his credit, Achan does admit his guilt. He even admits his sin. And yet, he is stoned anyway. Will he be in heaven? I think so. But God had to make an example of him for the rest of the people. The people had to know that God was serious. If they were going to be successful in battle, they had to listen to God. I thank God every day that I was born now and didn’t have to live during those difficult times. I’d have been dead early for sure.
So, we see the anger of God in the Psalm and in Joshua. In Acts, we see the grace of God. Peter shares the message of Jesus life and death with the Gentiles and they receive the Holy Spirit. They speak in tongues and extol God. They do the same things the disciples and the Jews did. So, they get to be baptized too.
Our Lord is an amazing God who loves us so much. Have a blessed day.
It is so true, our strength is in the Lord. When we rely on ourselves, we fail, most often. But when we trust in God and put our faith in God, that is when we triumph. Our Lord hears all our prayers, especially when we call to Him for help. That’s when He hears us best.
So, our Lord knows battle stragegy. It is a good plan that our Lord came up with. Joshua would have never thought of it. He never had military training. So our Lord tells them what to do. He also lets them have the plunder and livestock this time. As long as they follow His orders, they will be fine. If they ignore His orders, that’s when there will be trouble. Same with us. As long as we follow God, we will be ok. It’s when we go our own way that we bring trouble upon ourselves.
The church never likes change. And so, when the circumcision party hears about what Peter does, they question him and criticize him. Thankfully, when they hear the whole story, the also glorify God. But there are always those who don’t like change and just complain to complain. Again, they aren’t listening to the Lord. They are doing what they want rather than what God wants. Let’s be open. Let’s talk like adults. Let’s look at the big picture and just get along.
People often ask questions like, “What about those people who haven’t heard about God? What’s going to happen to them?” Read through our Psalm today and we see a glimpse into an answer. In five out of the six verses we read today, God is calling out to the eather and the people in it. “The Mights One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth.” “God shines forth.” “Our God comes: He does not keep silence.” God is constantly calling people through creation. They know that God exists. They know something isn’t right with the world. They just don’t know what. Our Lord actively searches out people so that they can be saved.
War is a nasty thing. The world would be a much better place if we could all just get along. But no. Even here in the Bible when the Lord is making good on His promise to give them the Promised Land. The problem is that there were people living there and Israel had to fight to take the land from them. In our text for today, Israel is fighting against five kings, including the king of Jerusalem. Israel is winning the battle, but night is coming. So God holds the sun in place. The sun does not set that night, but stays for about a day. Because of that, Israel is able to completely win the battle and the five kings are defeated.
The church continues to grow. Barnaabas grabs Paul and takes him to Antioch and they stay there for a year. There is even a prophesy that there would be a famine and everyone joins together in supporting the church in Judea. Christians from all over join together to help other Christians. This a a great show of affection and brotherhood in the church. It seperates Christianity from other religions. And it is one of the reasons that church continued to grow.
SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2009
PSALM 89:24-29
JOSHUA 3:1-17
ACTS 9:1-22
Reading our Psalm for today, it is obvious that the subject of the Psalm is Jesus. The references to being the firstborn, the highest of kings, the covenant, and establishing his offspring forever. Oh yes, Jesus is all over the Old Testament. The Old Testament sets up the scene for the New Testament. And so yes, we see prophecies of Jesus all over the Old Testament.
Can you imagine 3 million people passing over the Jordan River? The Jordan begins about 45 feet wide and is about 100 feet wide in various places. This is a historic event for the Israelites to finally pass into the Promised Land so many years after God promised the land to Abraham. The Lord is going to make an impression on the people. He wants to assure them that He is with them. They had heard stories of the people as they passed through the Red Sea, but every person who saw that event was now dead. This was a totally new nation and God assures them by drying up the Jordan as they passed through. It must have taken the better part of the day for them to pass over. And that whole time the water to the north would have piled up and the river to the south would have dried up until everyone had passed through. This would make an impression on the people and fill them with faith for the battles that would lay ahead.
Now, this miracle of the passing through the Jordan River was amazing, but the miracle of the conversion of St. Paul is no less amazing. Normally, we see God bringing people to faith through other people. But here, Jesus Himself appears to Saul and convicts him of persecution. This a rare occasion. This is what Saul calls himself an apostle abnormally born. The big difference between an apostle and a disciple is that an apostle has seen with his own eyes the resurrected Jesus. That’s why we don’t have any new apostle’s today, because Jesus just doesn’t come and appear to people all the time like before. He could, but He usually doesn’t.
The conversion of St. Paul creates quite a stir among the people. They knew how agressively he persecuted the church and now for him to be proclaiming Jesus and Christ was indeed a miracle. It gets everyone talking.
I find it very interesting that Luke writes, “Saul increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews (of which he used to be one) who lived in Damascus by PROVING that Jesus was the Christ.” Saul was a very well educated individual. He was smart. And so, he could effectively debate the religious leaders and as Luke writes, “prove” Jesus was the Son of God.
MONDAY, JUNE 29, 2009
PSALM 103:1-12
JOSHUA 4:1-24
ACTS 9:23-43
The Psalm begins, “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” Don’t we usually think of God blessing us? And yet, twice in our Psalm it says that we bless the Lord. This is not uncommon and this is not the only place we see this. We see this in Deut. 8:10, in Judges 5:2 and 5:9 and many, many times in the Psalms. Now, we see God’s blessings every day. My question is, “How do WE bless the Lord?” I have no answers. I’m just putting it out there.
Verses three and following give reasons why we bless the Lord. He forgives us. He redeems us. He satisfies us. He works righteousness. He is merciful and gracious. There are many, many reasons for us to bless God. The question remains, “How do WE bless God?” By our worship? Through our prayers? Bible study? Keeping the commandments? Telling others about Him?
So the people of Israel have passed over the Jordan on dry ground as the priests have been carrying the ark and standing in the middle of the Jordan while the people passed by. Can you see, four guys, standing in the middle of the dry river bed holding the Ark, while 2 or 3 million people pass by. Again, this took more than four or five minutes. I’m sure it took more than an hour. Did it take the whole day? Maybe.
Before the Ark is carried the rest of the way across the river, 12 men gather together 12 rocks to build a memorial to remind the people of the miracle God had done. We need reminders of God’s great power, or we forget and follow other paths. Our Lord is a very practical God. He knows us all too well. So He has the people build this memorial.
Did you catch the size of the Israelite army? There were about 40,000 ready for war. Not a large army if you ask me. And yet, that was just God’s point. He didn’t want the Israelites having confidence in the size of their army. He wanted them to have confidence in HIM.
Reading the text from Acts today, I never realized before that Saul had attempts on his life so early in his Christian career. Notice that he is lowered out of town in a basket over the wall just like Rahab let the Israelites out of the town of Jericho. Not much changes in a 1000 years.
Obviously, when Paul comes back to Jerusalem and tried to join up with the disciples, they are going to be cautious about that. Paul was connected with the stoning of Stephen, of course they would be concerned about him trying to arrest one of the 12. But notice who steps in? Barnabas. That’s what Barnabas does best. He heals wounds. He heals rifts. We will see more of him later in Acts.
As the church spreads out, the disciples perform miracles to support the Word they are preaching. We have the Bible and we know the Holy Spirit works through that Word. But they didn’t have the Bible as we know it. Just the Old Testament and it wasn’t like they carried a copy around with them. So, the Lord uses miracles to support the message they were proclaiming. Until the church matures, the Lord performs many miracles through the disciples. Here we see Aeneas healed after 8 years in bed and Dorcas is raised from the dead. And through these miracles, many come to believe and God is glorified. Maybe God is blessed.
I, too, have wondered the same thing…how do we bless God? So I put the question out to WELS Topical Q & A page. Following is the response I got: “You are correct to say that God is the Source of blessing for us all, all the time. He blesses us. But the Hebrew verb ‘bless’ that is used in Psalm 103 and many others, can also mean to praise or to declare someone (God) worthy of worship and praise. The context will tell the reader whether in a particular verse the normal idea of ‘bless’ is meant or whether the ‘praise’ idea is meant. In Psalm 103 it obviously means ‘praise’. Many English translations actually say ‘praise’ instead of ‘bless’ in these verses to avoid misunderstanding.
Actually, the same thing is true of the English word bless or ‘blessed’. When we refer, for example, to ‘the blessed Trinity’, we are declaring the Triune God to be praiseworthy and declare him the source of our blessings received. We praise him as we ‘bless’ him.”
Just thought I would share this with you.
Happy Fourth!
TUESDAY, JUNE 30, 2009
PSALM 114
JOSHUA 5:1-6:5
ACTS 10:1-17
I can’t believe it’s the last day of June already. And with the crazy month of July I have, it will be August before you know it and suddenly summer will be over. Not fun.
Our Psalm for today is filled with figures of speach. The first is allusion. The whole thing alludes to the reaction of the world to the Israelites being freed from Egypt. And we have personification. When you see a mountain skipping like a ram, then you have personification. The reason God hardened Pharoah’s heart and performed all those plagues was so that the nations would see what happened to Egypt and know that the Lord was God and that God was with the people of Isarel and thus, leave them alone and be afraid.
We see that fear in our Joshua lesson. “As soon as all the kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan to the west, and all the kings of the Canaanites who were by the sea, heard that the Lord had dried up the waters of the Jordan for the people of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts melted.” They were afraid, very afraid.
Then we get this long explanation about why they had to be circumcised. Why didn’t they just circumcise the kids after they were born? That was the command God gave them … So now they have to do it now that they are in the Promised Land. Then they have to hang out and heal, ouch.
But take heart, after they are all better, they celebrate the Passover for the first time in the Promised Land. That must have been a wonderful day. That must have been a very special occasion that grandfathers would have told their grandchildren for years and years. But it also marks the end of the manna. The Lord had fed them for 40 years via manna. Can you imagine, most of these people had not really eatten much else except manna for their whole lives? I’m sure they had to be careful not to eat too much rich lamb on a day like this or else their stomach would rebel. But now, they have to start gathering food for the 2 or 3 million people. Since this was going to be their land, they start eating off the land. What they eat, their opponents can’t eat. It was part of God’s strategy.
So then we see this scene with Joshua and “the commander of the army of the Lord.” I think it should have been written, “the Commander of the army of the Lord.” Why? “Joshua feel on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him.” This Commander was God or else He would have told Joshua not to worship Him. We don’t worship angels or God’s representatives. We only worship God. So this Commander must have been God.
One professor at the Seminary is working on a book that maintains that every time God shows up in the Old Testament, here, in the burning bush, as the three visitors to Abraham and so forth, that it is the pre-incarnate Jesus or second person of the Trinity. The explaination is long and drawn out, but it makes sense. Just something to think about.
Anyway, God gives them instructions to take a walk every day and on the seventh day, take seven walks. And then the city will fall down. But we will see that in the next few days.
In order to keep the Nation of Israel pure (free from worship of false gods) so that the Messiah could be born from them to save the world, God had to keep the people of Israel seperate. If they intermarried and shared culture with other nations, they would have started sharing false gods. So, to keep them diffent He commands them to be circumcised and He prohibits them from eating unclean foods. As a matter of fact, they weren’t even allowed to eat at the same table with someone who was not Jewish. Much of the time, they weren’t allowed to enter the home of a non-Jewish person. They had to be kept totally seperate so that Jesus could come from them.
But now that Jesus had been born and redeemed the world through His death and resurrection, the focus become sharing the Gospel and sharing the news that we are redeemed. To do that, the barriers had to come down. God is a very personal God and He shares His message through people and relationships. So with this meeting between peter and Cornelius, God begins to tear down the differences between Jews and Gentiles. Obviously, since there are still Jews today, He wasn’t completely successful. But, we see the door opening here.
Oh well, I need a cup of tea. The only question is hot tea or iced tea. Have a great day.
we
WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 2009
The people of Israel are excited, they are going to destroy their first city. It works out well that our Psalm is so filled with joy, even to the point of clapping hands. Lord knows that Lutherans don’t clap their hands. But, here in the Psalm, aboslutely, “Clap your hands, all peoples! Shout to God with loud songs of joy!” See, the reason I’m not big on clapping in church is that it is usually in response to some group or individual performing well. Someone sings a nice song and people clap. But church isn’t a performance venue, it’s a worship experience. In the Psalm, the Lord is the receiver of the clapping. If we are going to clap, it should be after hearing the Gospel lesson or after we receive the Lord’s supper or after someone has been baptized. Those are the great performances where God washs away the sins of an individual. Those are the great miracles that really deserve a round of applause.
So, in the Joshua text, we see the city of Jericho fall. Each day for six days, they get up early in the morning and 40,000 people walk around the city of Jericho in front of the ark of the covenant and in front of the seven priests and the seven trumpets. For the first six days, they are not to say a word. But on the seventh day, they march around seven times and on the seventh time they shout and the walls of the city come down. That enables them to go into the city and win the day. “They devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys, with the edge of the sword.” A lot of people have a problem with this. How could a loving God destroy men, women and children? They are innocent victims. They were also pagans who would have lead the Israelites astray to following other gods. God has to keep the Israelites pure. So everyone had to be destroyed. And the city would never be rebuilt.
But as the Lord was trying to keep the nation of Israel pure by keeping them seperate, as we talked yesterday, He was giving Peter instructions that it was ok now to unite with Gentiles.
Notice that when Cornelius falls and worships Peter, Peter’s response is for him to get up because he was only a man? That’s why I think that commander from the other day was God, because He didn’t stop Joshua from worshiping Him.
Also, notice verse 28, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” It’s time to get the message out and you can’t get the message out when you can’t associate with people. God is a people person. He shares His message and does evangelism via people, not programs. So, God changes the rules and gets rid of the rules and opens the door to outright evangelism.
Have a blessed day.
THURSDAY, JULY 2, 2009
PSALM 51:1-9
JOSHUA 7:1-26
ACTS 10:34-48
I could read Psalm 51 over and over and over again. Yes, it reminds me of my sin (but hey, I sin every day) but it also reminds me that God does forgive me every, single day. Through Jesus death on the cross and His resurrection, we have been washed whiter than snow. Our orignial sin has been washed away in Baptism. We are a new creation.
The Psalm reminds us that when we sin, we sin against God. Sure, I may have upset my wife yesterday, but untimately, I sinned against God. Fine, I may have been speeding, but I have really sinned against God. And while He may not be here to confront me with my sin, He is the one who will judge us on the last day.
So, stop and thank God for Jesus and His death and resurrection. Through Jesus we are forgiven.
God was absolutely serious when He told the Israelites NOT to take anything that belonged to the people of Jericho. Kill everyone, and take noting but the gold and silver and bronze and those will go into God’s treasury. Everything else is to be destroyed.
Well, Achan didn’t listen. He takes a cloak and some silver and some gold. No one will know, right? Well, God knows. God knows everything. And God got so upset that He let 36 people die in a fight that the Israelites should have won — 36 people died because Achan took some gold, silver and a cloak.
Why didn’t God just tell Joshua who took the stuff and where it was? Instead He has each of the 12 tribes stand before the Lord. Then each clan. Then each household. Then each man. And to his credit, Achan does admit his guilt. He even admits his sin. And yet, he is stoned anyway. Will he be in heaven? I think so. But God had to make an example of him for the rest of the people. The people had to know that God was serious. If they were going to be successful in battle, they had to listen to God. I thank God every day that I was born now and didn’t have to live during those difficult times. I’d have been dead early for sure.
So, we see the anger of God in the Psalm and in Joshua. In Acts, we see the grace of God. Peter shares the message of Jesus life and death with the Gentiles and they receive the Holy Spirit. They speak in tongues and extol God. They do the same things the disciples and the Jews did. So, they get to be baptized too.
Our Lord is an amazing God who loves us so much. Have a blessed day.
FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2009
PSALM 84:5-8
JOSHUA 8:1-28
ACTS 11:1-18
It is so true, our strength is in the Lord. When we rely on ourselves, we fail, most often. But when we trust in God and put our faith in God, that is when we triumph. Our Lord hears all our prayers, especially when we call to Him for help. That’s when He hears us best.
So, our Lord knows battle stragegy. It is a good plan that our Lord came up with. Joshua would have never thought of it. He never had military training. So our Lord tells them what to do. He also lets them have the plunder and livestock this time. As long as they follow His orders, they will be fine. If they ignore His orders, that’s when there will be trouble. Same with us. As long as we follow God, we will be ok. It’s when we go our own way that we bring trouble upon ourselves.
The church never likes change. And so, when the circumcision party hears about what Peter does, they question him and criticize him. Thankfully, when they hear the whole story, the also glorify God. But there are always those who don’t like change and just complain to complain. Again, they aren’t listening to the Lord. They are doing what they want rather than what God wants. Let’s be open. Let’s talk like adults. Let’s look at the big picture and just get along.
Happy Fourth of July
SATURDAY, JULY 4, 2009
PSALM 50:1-6
JOSHUA 10:1-25
ACTS 11:19-30
Happy Fourth of July!!
People often ask questions like, “What about those people who haven’t heard about God? What’s going to happen to them?” Read through our Psalm today and we see a glimpse into an answer. In five out of the six verses we read today, God is calling out to the eather and the people in it. “The Mights One, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth.” “God shines forth.” “Our God comes: He does not keep silence.” God is constantly calling people through creation. They know that God exists. They know something isn’t right with the world. They just don’t know what. Our Lord actively searches out people so that they can be saved.
War is a nasty thing. The world would be a much better place if we could all just get along. But no. Even here in the Bible when the Lord is making good on His promise to give them the Promised Land. The problem is that there were people living there and Israel had to fight to take the land from them. In our text for today, Israel is fighting against five kings, including the king of Jerusalem. Israel is winning the battle, but night is coming. So God holds the sun in place. The sun does not set that night, but stays for about a day. Because of that, Israel is able to completely win the battle and the five kings are defeated.
The church continues to grow. Barnaabas grabs Paul and takes him to Antioch and they stay there for a year. There is even a prophesy that there would be a famine and everyone joins together in supporting the church in Judea. Christians from all over join together to help other Christians. This a a great show of affection and brotherhood in the church. It seperates Christianity from other religions. And it is one of the reasons that church continued to grow.
Be safe, but enjoy this holiday!