God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Psalm 138:8

The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures forever—do not abandon the works of your hands.

“God will perfect everything that concerns you.” (Psalm 138:8, NKJV) I have heard my wife use King David’s phrase many times in her public prayers. I like that thought, don’t you? Nothing will stop God from fulfilling his purpose for my life—nothing!

That was the essence of David’s thinking in this psalm. Nothing could get in the way of what God had in mind, that is, God’s perfect will for David’s life—not even his own fleshly desires. That’s the caveat to this truth: the perfecting is of that which is according to God’s will, which of course is what ought to concern us more than anything else in this life.

The New Testament writer Jude captures the essence of this truth in his benedictory prayer when he wrote, “To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.” (Jude 1:24-25)

Likewise, the Apostle Paul wrote similar words in Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

How comforting and empowering to know that if we are passionately pursuing God’s purposes, God has passionately committed himself to fulfilling his purposes in us. No matter what things may look like—horrible circumstances and hateful people notwithstanding (Psalm 138:7)—God will never abandon the work he has lovingly and painstakingly invested in us, and he will ultimately bring that work to perfect completion.

What David had discovered was that when we are for God, and when God is for us, we cannot lose! 2 Chronicles 16:9 reminds us of this profound truth,

“For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

Wow! God so desires to fulfill his purposes in this world that he is actually scouring the earth looking for fully devoted people in order to release his enabling power in their lives. Is your heart fully committed to him? If it is, then God will find you, and sooner or later you will come into the greatest joy that anyone can ever experience in this life: God fulfilling his purposes for you and through you.

Yes, God will perfect that which concerns you! In other words, There’s no stopping God!

God Speaks—I Obey // Romans 10:9-10

If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

Your good works cannot save you. Period!

No matter how hard you try, your “good” is not good enough for the perfectly holy and completely righteous God. Nor can you be saved through an alternative, less stringent means, for only through God is eternal salvation possible.

Moreover, you cannot be saved by your moral perfection—no matter how moral you are or how close to moral you get. As the Old Testament prophet Isaiah pointed out, your righteousness is about as good as a “snot rag”. (Isaiah 64:6). I have actually cleaned that up a bit, because the Hebrew words for filthy rags, ukabeged ehdim, literally mean, “like as rags of menstruation.”

Sorry if that disgusts you. It’s Scripture—so blame Isaiah. The point is that both our acts of righteousness and the quality of righteousness we hope they produce are disgusting to God. So, if you are disgusted by Isaiah’s language, think of how God is repulsed by your efforts to get him to save you.

Then what hope is there for our salvation? Well, no hope resides within us. None whatsoever. Ephesians 2:1 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.” All a dead person can do is lie there and be dead, let alone try to be righteous before God.

No, our righteousness—and let’s be clear, we do have to be righteous to be acceptable to God—comes from Christ alone. You see, God sent his Son to die on the cross—he literally became our sin—in order to pay the just punishment for sin that we deserved. That is our only hope: that Jesus became sin—our sin—and in so doing, he likewise became our righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says it well,

How dishonoring to God’s grace and Christ’s atonement when we therefore try to save ourselves by our acts of righteousness and our efforts at moral perfection! The sooner we realize that, the sooner we will discover salvation by grace alone through faith, as Paul spoke about in Philippians 3:8-9,

“I consider everything a loss compared with the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them [our best efforts] rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him—not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”

It is only through the power of Christ’s resurrection and our death to self (Philippians 3:10-11) that our heart—the core of who we are; that which represents every fiber of our existence—will get transformed. And it is only out of a God-enabled transformed heart that our tongue can truly confess Jesus is Lord.

Then, and only then, are we saved.

So relax about trying to be righteous and morally perfect! Jesus did it for you. God accepts Christ’s efforts on your behalf as good enough, so you don’t have to be good enough. All you have to do is accept it, believe it, and conform your life to it!

Choose You This Day: This week, meditate on Romans 10:1-21. Rehearse Romans 10:9-10 each day this week: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.”

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Psalm 139:16

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be

How many days do I have left? I don’t know—although I know my number of days decreases with each passing year. But the fact is, neither you nor I know how many more days we have before our exit from life on Planet Earth. No one does, except God. He knows the exact number of years, days, hours, and seconds that I will occupy my address on Planet Earth; the exact moment that my death will occur.

Now that may not seem like a cheery thought to you, and in fact, most people would find that sobering, at best, and frightening, at worst. Not me. I find great comfort and security in knowing that God has my life so ordered that I will neither die a day sooner nor live a day longer than what has already been recorded in his book. You see, life and death are far above my pay grade, so I will happily let Father God take care of that department, thank you very much.

So, if I truly and correctly understand this profound truth, then I am freed from the fear of death to fully live the life that God has planned for me in this present life. I can enjoy an intimate walk with the One

• Who was intimately involved in each minor detail of my day: “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. (Psalm 139:1-4)

• Who never lets me out of his sight: “You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” (Psalm 139:5-8)

• Who guides my every move with his Fatherly hand: “If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast “ (Psalm 139:9-10)

• Who is not limited by my circumstances: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.“ (Psalm 139:11-12).

• In fact, God is so involved in my life that he was even there at the moment my mother and father conceived me in love, and he superintended even the most infinitesimal details of my physiological and temperamental formation: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful; I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13-16)

• God knows me! He knows everything about me. He planned me, built me, watches over me, and can steer me back on track when I wander from his purpose: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

All that to say, I can completely trust God with all the details of me in this life and completely trust him to keep me safe until the Divinely allotted number of days ordained for me are up. Then, at that point, I can completely trust him to take me to the next life that he has prepared for me.

The psalmist says, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand” (Psalm 139:6, NLT), but while it is way beyond my comprehension, that won’t keep me from enjoying this day and praising the One who is in charge of it!

Why? Because I trust him!

Choose You This Day: Throughout the day, declare, “God is in charge of me!” Then live like it’s true—because it is!

These are the final words of General Joshua to the people of Israel. He is passing the baton after four decades of extraordinary leadership and victory after victory—a conquest for the ages. And he is recounting the activity of God for the people, reminding them of the sovereign hand of God in the entire history of Israel. God is over history.

It was God who selected their idol-worshipping ancestors out of a pagan culture and made them his own. It was God who sent Abraham, then Jacob, into Egypt. It was God who brought the nation back out of Egyptian slavery with great signs and wonders. It was God who fought for Israel during their wilderness journey, destroying each enemy nation that stood in their way. He provided food and water for them in the desert; he formed them from a collection of slaves into a mighty nation. It was God who drove out the inhabitants of Canaan and brought them into the Promised Land — “a land flowing with milk and honey.” God did it for them.

God is over history.

So let us, thousands of years later, never forget what Joshua was so clear about: God is over history. That was true for the Israelites — proven over the several hundred years between Abraham’s call and Israel’s conquest of Canaan; that has been true over the two thousand years between Christ’s ascension and this present moment. And that will be true between now and the Second Coming of Christ.

God is over history.

We may not see the hand of God in the everyday details of our world, or of our lives, but history proves that God is over history. That is why Joshua’s charge to the Israelites is a charge that is valid for God’s people today — including you and me:

Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt and serve the Lord.”

If God is over history, why would we not serve him in faithfulness? Why would we depend on any other source for provision and protection? Why would we worship the gods of our culture — fame and fortune, power and pleasure? Why would we not wholeheartedly follow the one and only God, the God over history? When you stop and think about it, any other choice but loving obedience to the Lord our God doesn’t make any sense.

God is over history!

So go with God. Get on the right side of history!

GOD SPEAKS — I OBEY // Joshua 23:2-5, 14

Joshua said to them, “I am now a very old man. You have seen everything the Lord your God has done for you during my lifetime. The Lord your God has fought for you against your enemies. I have allotted to you as your homeland all the land of the nations yet unconquered, as well as the land of those we have already conquered—from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. This land will be yours, for the Lord your God will himself drive out all the people living there now. You will take possession of their land, just as the Lord your God promised you….Soon I will die, going the way of everything on earth. Deep in your hearts, you know that every promise of the Lord your God has come true. Not a single one has failed!”

The book of Joshua is bookended by promises: Chapter 1 is about promises made, and Chapter 23 is about promises kept. Which, by the way, is the story of God: He is a promise-making and promise-keeping God. Of course, his promises are conditioned upon our obedience. For every promise made, God gives a corresponding warning, which is the case here as well:

But just as all the good things the Lord your God has promised you have come to you, so he will bring on you all the evil things he has threatened, until the Lord your God has destroyed you from this good land he has given you. If you violate the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you. (Joshua 23:15-16)

While some may see these warnings in scripture as dark and threatening, I see them as God’s unrelenting desire to bless his people. He so longs to fulfil his promises to Israel, and to us—“Every promise has been fulfilled; not one has failed.” (Joshua 23:14)—that he is continually clear about what will hinder his abundant goodness in our lives.

In Joshua 1, God generously makes Israel’s new leader, General Joshua, promise after promise: military victory, success as a leader, divine abundance—if he will carefully follow the law of God and step out with bold, courageous leadership. And if that weren’t enough, God adds a few more promises: his protection, power, provision and presence. The first chapter in this journal of Israel’s conquest is full of the promises of God. God is a promise maker.

And God is a promise keeper. Joshua 23 is this old leader’s testimony that God has been faithful to his covenant. Over the thirty-five years since the Lord commissioned Joshua, he has been true to his word at every turn. He has driven out all of Israel’s enemies, given them victory at every turn, and brought them into a land where the fields have already been plowed, the orchards have already been planted, the roads have already been laid, and the houses have already been built. Even when the challenges were great and the enemies were overwhelming, God has been with them. And now, God has indeed given them their Promised Land. He has fulfilled every one of his promises. The Lord is a covenantly faithful, promise-keeping, very good God

Personally, Joshua had known God’s protection, power, provision, and presence. While Joshua had accepted that by faith in chapter 1, over three decades later, he could now stand before Israel and, in reality, say to them, “not a single promise has failed.

What was true for Joshua and the Israelites is true for you as well. When you are fully devoted to the Lord your God, you will not be able to contain the favor that God pours out upon your life. And along the journey, at each step you take, you, too, will enjoy God’s protection, power, provision, and presence. You will have to accept that by faith now, but over time, that will be the testimony of your life as well.

As I think about these two bookend chapters, I realize that I have been in ministry about the same length of time that Joshua led Israel. There had been times where the challenges were so great, I felt overwhelmed, out-gunned, and on the brink. There were moments when I didn’t know if I could stand up under the pressure. But guess what? I’m still standing. Why, because I’m so great? Not at all! It is all because God made some promises—and then kept each one of them.

With God, a promise made is a promise kept.

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Someone has counted all the divine promises in the Bible and apparently came up with around 6,000. Read a couple of them today. Those are for you. So just rejoice ahead of time that God will fulfill every single promise on your behalf.

GOD SPEAKS — I OBEY // Judges 21:4-5, 25

Early the next morning, the people built an altar and presented their burnt offerings and peace offerings on it. Then they said, “Who among the tribes of Israel did not join us at Mizpah when we held our assembly in the presence of the Lord?” At that time they had taken a solemn oath in the Lord’s presence, vowing that anyone who refused to come would be put to death….In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Note: It would be helpful to read the entirety of Judges 21 to make sense of this devotional.

Moral outrage that is not based on any kind of higher, propositional, and immutable moral truth might be real, but it can be and is usually wrong. It is selective, inconsistent, and hypocritical—and ultimately dangerous. That is why God calls us to live by his unchanging truth.

Let me get this straight: Israel has just basically wiped out one of their own tribes (Judges 20); they then vow that they will never allow their daughters to marry any of the remnant of that tribe, Benjamin (Judges 21:1); they feel really bad about it (Judges 21:2-3,6); they call a sacred assembly to offer sacrifices before the Lord (Judges 4); then they make another vow to kill anyone who doesn’t show up to their worship service (Judges 21:5). Now there’s a great way to increase church attendance!

What a mess! So, they discover that the people from Jabesh-Gilead had not attended church that day, so they ordered their execution: “The assembly sent 12,000 of their best warriors to Jabesh-Gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children.” (Judges 21:10) But wait, someone then comes up with the idea that if they spare the unmarried woman of that city, they can then force them to become the wives of the left-over Benjamite men, then that tribe can repopulate, they won’t lose one of their tribes after all, and technically, they will not have violated their vow not to let their daughters marry anyone from Benjamin.

The problem was, there were only 400 of these girls from Jabesh-Gilead, and there were gobs of guys from Benjamin who needed wives. Just then, someone comes up with an idea that sanctions kidnapping brides from Bethel for the rest of the men as the girls are leaving one of their annual festivals. (Judges 21:19-22)

So, the assembly sent 12,000 of their best warriors to Jabesh-Gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. (Judges 21:23)

Then everyone went home and lived happily ever after. Not! Why not? Because as the last verse of Judges observes, “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) They had no controlling moral authority to keep them between the lines of civility with their neighbor and righteousness before God, so they kept on coming up with social solutions, assuming that God was guiding them. At the end of the day, this only made their national mess bigger and far worse.

Now, as you read this chapter, and plenty of other chapters like it in the Old Testament, you, too, can assume that since it was recorded, and you find no condemnation of what is recorded, that God must approve of what they are doing. But notice in Israel’s crazy plan to get brides for Benjamin, there is no use of the phrase, “the Lord commanded.”

God didn’t tell the nation to annihilate their fellow tribe. God didn’t order them to make a rash vow. God didn’t instruct them to kill off the city of Jabesh-gilead for not showing up to church. God didn’t show them how to devise a dumb plan to kidnap child-brides for the Benjamites. God wasn’t talking in this chapter. They had pushed God to the margins, then blamed him for whatever they did next.

So, what does this have to do with how you read the Old Testament? Simply this, what the Bible describes does not mean it excuses. The writer is simply painting a sad picture for us of what happens when God is marginalized. Moreover, rather than justifying unrighteous behavior, these kinds of stories are to stand as warning signs to us when we put our needs, wants, and interests ahead of God’s purposes and plans.

Without God at the center and circumference of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, life will ultimately stink! With him at the core of everything we do, we have his eternal promise to bless us with success, prosperity, and his smile. (Joshua 1:8)

Never forget that when you obey, God blesses! When you don’t, well, just re-read Judges!

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Justification of thoughts, feelings and actions without consideration for God is a dangerous thing. Is there an area where you might be guilty of that? If so, repent—ASAP!

SUMMARY: A good pastoral benediction is a reminder, a command, a promise of blessing all wrapped into one. It reminds us of who God is—the One who is great and awesome and rightly deserving of our loyal worship; of what we are called to do—to walk humbly, dependently, and dutifully before him; and what he will do as a result—bless our socks off. It is powerful and meaningful, and it bears repeating week after week as we leave the gathering of saints to go back into our respective worlds.

GOD SPEAKS — I OBEY // Joshua 22:5-6

Be very careful to obey all the commands and the instructions that Moses gave to you. Love the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, obey his commands, hold firmly to him, and serve him with all your heart and all your soul.” So Joshua blessed them and sent them away, and they went home.

I’m not sure how you feel about your pastor’s benediction. Maybe you zone out when he or she gives the final blessing. Perhaps you treat it like the flight attendant giving you the safety speech before takeoff. Or maybe the blessing is code for “I better pick my lane now so I can beat the crowd out of the parking lot—don’t want to get stuck in the back of the buffet line!” It could be that your church tradition has no tradition of benediction—I have been in churches where the final word from the pastor is something akin to “well, see ya later!”

Or it could be that the blessing at the end of your worship experience is a very big deal to you. I hope it is! And if it isn’t, I hope from this point on you will stop, listen closely, and absorb those words as not just from your pastor, but as words of blessing from God himself. That is the intention of the biblical benediction. And if your church doesn’t have that experience, encourage your spiritual leader to offer the blessing you so crave from God through his or her formal blessing.

In a sense, Joshua was the proto-pastor. He was leading his people into battle, settling them into their new life in Canaan, establishing worship practices of the spiritual community, and getting them ready for a transition of leadership as he came to the end of his assignment. He had fulfilled his divine assignment, and he had done it well. There was victory on every side, and it was now time for Israel to settle into a season of peace. After he had finished dividing up the land, he now spoke to the two and a half tribes who had decided to take land on the east side of the Promised Land, that is, on the east side of the Jordan River. They had faithfully done their part in helping their brother tribes conquer the west side of the river. Now Joshua was ready to dismiss them, and he did with this benediction—and it pretty well covered all the bases:

Those words were a reminder, a command, a promise of blessing all wrapped into one. And that is always the case with a good benediction. It reminds us of who God is—the One who is great and awesome and rightly deserving of our loyal worship, of what we are called to do—to walk humbly, dependently, and dutifully before him, and what he will do as a result—he will bless our socks off.

That is the pastoral blessing. It is powerful and meaningful, and it bears repeating week after week as we leave the gathering of saints as we return to our respective worlds. Not just as empty liturgy, it is to invoke the blessings of Almighty God for this particular week. Just like saying grace before a meal is recognizing our constant dependence on God for daily bread, so in the benediction, the pastor says, “God, I commit this people to you again today. Bless them with safety and provision as they go their way, and bring them back as the community of faith the next time we gather. Amen.”

And as I close this devotional blog, as you go your way, let me offer this benediction over your life today:

May the Lord bless you and protect you.
May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.

By the way, when that benediction was originally delivered in Numbers 6, we are told that it was literally God himself who was pronouncing it upon the people through the spiritual leader who delivered it. That is still the case when you receive the pastoral blessing.

May God bless you!

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Take a moment to receive the blessing pronounced above as from God himself.

SUMMARY: Moral outrage that’s not based on propositional and immutable moral truth might be real, but it’s characteristically wrong. It is selective, inconsistent, and hypocritical — and ultimately dangerous. That is why God calls us to live by his unchanging truth, and from his truth, to “judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24)

GOD SPEAKS — I OBEY // Judges 20:5-7

If you have been following this story from Judges 19, you have to question the outrage of this Levite. It seems a bit manufactured. After all, he is the one who pushed his wife out the door and into the waiting arms of the sexual perverts of Gibeah, who brutalized her throughout the night until she died. He cowardly offered her up to save his own skin, showing no concern for her safety, much less her dignity as a precious human being. Then, the next morning when he walked out the door and saw her lying there, he callously told her to get up and get moving. If you dare, read the story in Judges 19:25-29 — but be warned, it will turn your stomach.

But wait, there’s more. The Levite then takes the dead body of his wife, a concubine, and cuts her into twelve pieces, sending a part to each of the twelve tribes of Israel in order to manufacture national outrage over what has been done to him. At this point, it’s no surprise to us that he had considered her nothing more than property — if that. To him, she was nothing more than trash.

Why the selective outrage? Isn’t this the height of hypocrisy? Of course it is. And it is the predictable result of people following a philosophy of moral relativism. When people have no controlling moral authority to keep them between the rails of decency and civility, they will do what seems right in their own eyes — which will habitually be so wrong. Ultimately, they will be anything but decent and civil. In one moment, they will do things and allow things that are beyond the pale without batting an eye. Then, in the next moment, they will blow a gasket in anger at what someone has done to them. Even though they feign tolerance of what somebody else thinks is right, they become insanely intolerant when that person’s thinking becomes action that personally affects them.

Their anger is selective; their wrath is manufactured. Make no mistake: it is real, but it is wrong. It is wrong in the sense that the moral outrage is not based on any kind of higher, propositional, and immutable moral truth. If truth is relative, then to be consistent, nothing can be consistently wrong. It might be wrong in this moment, but not in the next. At the end of the day, moral relativism is absurd. That is why this man’s outrage—and that of the nation—was hypocritically and fundamentally flawed. It was selective, inconsistent, and disengaged from God’s unchanging law. In a very real sense, it was worthless. And most likely, the guilt of the perverts of Gibeah that he was proclaiming was really the guilt he felt about his own immoral behavior.

“Whenever you’re upset at something, check yourself for personal consistency. Is your outrage selective? Is your disgust hypocritical? If you are to judge, then, as Jesus said, “judge with right judgment.” (John 7:24)

Dr. Ray Noah

That is what happens when a society thinks it can do better than God. Isn’t that what we see in our society today? We don’t mind aborting babies in the name of choice, but we will riot in the streets over genetically modified wheat. Crazy, huh. Not that GMOs are right, but taking life in the name of freedom to choose what happens to your own body, that is akin to what Jesus described as “straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel.” (Matthew 23:24)

Ok, enough of using our relativistic culture as a punching bag—although it deserves it. What about us? Do we do the same? Do we cluck our tongues in disgust at sex trafficking but consume porn in private? Do we gripe about the breakdown of society but tolerate divorce in the church? Do we decry world hunger yet ignore the needs of the poor in our own community?

I could go on and on, but the simple answer to all of the above examples is, “Yes, we do!” The point I want to make is this: whenever you begin to get upset at something, check yourself for personal consistency. Is your outrage selective? Is your disgust hypocritical?

Probably! That doesn’t make you an irredeemable human being. It just reveals that you are a sinner in desperate need of God’s grace. And it means that God is calling you by the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in a manner worthy of your calling as a redeemed child of God—consistently submitted to him.

The world is now famous for manufactured outrage. Don’t be of that tribe!

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Wherever you are feeling anger, take a look at what God is revealing in your own life. Perhads He is calling you to repent and to consistently surrender to Him.

SUMMARY: Total victory might take a while to achieve, and it will involve hard work, sacrifice along the way, and require a no-surrender spirit, but when you are on God’s side, and God is on yours, there will come a day when the Lord will give all your enemies into your hands and every single one of his good promises will be fulfilled to us. Game. Set. Match. And God will smile! That is the best victory: Making God smile.

GOD SPEAKS — I OBEY // Joshua 21:43-45

Total victory! It might take a while to get there, and it will involve hard work, sacrifice along the way, and with a no-surrender spirit, but when we are on God’s side and God is on ours, like Joshua and the Israelites, there will come a day when the Lord will give all our enemies into our hands and every single one of his good promises will be fulfilled to us. Game. Set. Match. And God will smile! That, my friend, is the best victory of all: Making God smile.

For Israel, that took a very long time. Some of that extended time was the result of their stubbornness and rebellion—they had to repeated first grade several times; some of it was simply the nature of conquest—remember, this wasn’t a field trip, this was warfare, and warfare requires grit and determination; some of it gets chalked up to the sovereign ways of God—he lives outside of human time, so he is not a clock-watcher like we are as he develops his people into champions for life.

Not only did Israel take a long time, but it was full of hardship, battle, and testing. Again, chalk that up to the sovereign ways of God—he was preparing his people for possessing his promises, and they needed to first be tempered. Yes, it took a long period of walking, then waiting, then working, followed by a long period of working, then waiting, then walking some more, but none of the time was wasted.

Finally, the day came when Joshua declared, at least for this stage of Israel’s journey with God, “mission accomplished!” Game. Set. Match. God had given all of Israel’s enemies into their hands and fulfilled all of his good promises to them.

That is a true picture of the believer’s journey with God—periods of walking, waiting, and working, but never any wasted time. God is leading, guiding, strengthening, purifying, and tempering us into a holy people fit to possess his promises. And at stages in the journey, he brings us to places of victory and rest. We should anticipate those places, pray for them, and cooperate with God to get there as quickly as we can—knowing that our stubbornness, rebellion, and lack of trust will slow the journey down. But when we get there, we should continually remember that it was the good Lord who gave us the victory.

Game! Set! Match! That is the story the good Lord has pre-written about your life and mine. And while there will be other conquests until you reach heaven, when you reach victory in the present moment of challenge, remember who gave it to you. When you overcome a sin, receive an answer, and achieve a success, remember that it was the good Lord giving you a win over your enemies and fulfilling his good promises to you.

Likewise, remember that since God has a history of giving victory and fulfilling promises in your life, he will definitely be there for the next conquest, too. He is true to his character and faithful to his covenant with you—always. And he will never fail you—never!

So, enjoy the victory of this moment and be encouraged with whatever tomorrow holds. And between now and heaven, get ready to hear this a lot:

Game. Set. Match.

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Are you in a season of victory—even just a small one? Rejoice—give God the glory!

The more I study scripture, the more impressed I am with God. I mean, I already love him, serve him, and worship him wholeheartedly, but as I get to know him more and more over the years, the more amazed I am at who he is—his character, his benevolence, his love for his people. And here in Joshua 20, as we learn of the cities of refuge he commanded Joshua to establish, I am struck by how accommodating toward his people he is.

We develop some very interesting ideas about God along the way; some of them entirely wrong and inaccurate, some of them flat-out heretical, some of them misguided, and some of them incomplete. Mostly our tainted views of God come from second-hand information—learning about him from extra-biblical sources, like parents, Sunday School teachers, Christian club leaders, etc. Now, there is nothing wrong with learning from the people who disciple us; that is actually the way of God. And we depend upon others to help form our understanding of God when we are children or new believers. So, I am in favor of human teachers and deeply appreciative of what they do for us. After all, I am one!

Yet we can end up with a view of God that has not been informed directly by the Word of God. That is why we can develop a theology that sees him as detached from our daily lives and common concerns, or that sees him as angry and spoiling to judge us, or as a grandfatherly-type cosmic deity who winks at our sin; one who is at our beck and call to give us our every wish. If you hold any of those views of the Almighty, it didn’t come from scripture; it came from people.

At some point, we desperately need to know God from scripture. When we do, we quickly learn that he is not perpetually angry, or disconnected, or wishy-washy about sin. In fact, we see from Joshua 20, which details his prescription for dealing with accidental deaths in the community, that he is very much concerned about both justice (the righteous punishment for sin) and the accommodation of our human frailty (his anticipation that there will be accidental deaths among the human race).

Furthermore, we see in the founding of these cities of refuge that God didn’t merely give rigid, inflexible rules to govern the social and legal needs of his people, but he took into consideration that there would be some gray areas of the law, as well as highly reactive human emotions to accidents and grievances. It also shows us that God went to great lengths to provide practical guidance for even the mundane matters of human life. Actually, it shows us that nothing about our lives is too small for his involvement.

God is a loving, caring, involved Father to his people. That was true back in the days of the conquest as he held the Israelites’ hands and settled them into a land of their own for the first time. And what was true of God back then is just as true of God today: he keeps an eye on his children, watching over the smallest of details of their lives, making accommodation for their weaknesses while guiding them into the righteous living necessary for his gracious blessings in their lives.

So be encouraged. God cares about your life—every last detail of it.

Of course, God cares about the small things. He has to, or he won’t care about anything. You see, everything is small next to the bigness of God! ~

Dr. Ray Noah

SUMMARY: Are you willing to ask big things of God? God loves it when his children trust him so much that they are willing to step way out in faith to possess promises that are way beyond what is humanly possible. God is honored when we pray bigly. But if you ask big things of God, get ready to be big enough for the britches God gives you. God wants to give in abundance, but he will never waste kingdom resources on the unprepared. When he gives you something, he expects you to fill it out; to steward it in a way that brings glory to him. So be willing to ask big and live large.

God Speaks—I Obey // Joshua 19:1 & 9

Are you willing to ask big things of God? I hope so! God loves it when his children trust him so much that they dare to step out in faith beyond the ordinary to possess promises that are way beyond what is humanly possible to attain. Here’s the deal:

God is honored when we pray bigly.

So are you ready to live large! If you ask big things of God, get ready to be big enough for the britches that God’s generosity will require of you. You see, God is a God of abundance, and he gives in abundance. Now, not to worry, I am not promoting some sort of prosperity gospel heresy. Simply yet biblically put, divine abundance means that God gives us more than enough. But while he gives abundantly, he never wastes kingdom resources on those unprepared to steward his generosity so that it brings maximum glory to himself. When he gives you something, he expects you to fill it out. In other words, he wants you to leverage every ounce of his provision to the fullest so that he can give you more. If you waste it, settle for less than maximum use, or misuse what he provides, he will not release more to you. In fact, there is an indication in scripture (see Matthew 25:24-30) that if we don’t steward his gifts wisely and industriously, he will even take away what he has given and give it to someone who will develop it in faith.

In the case of the land allotment to the tribes of Judah and Simeon, the visionary folks of Judah had an industrious spirit about them. So, God gave them much more land than they needed at the time. Yet because they had not taken full advantage of it, God took a portion of it and assigned it to the Simeonites. Judah, however, was not content to shrink into their land. They got fired up and later asked the warriors of Simeon to join forces with them to take the land that was not yet under their occupation:

The men of Judah said to their relatives from the tribe of Simeon, “Join with us to fight against the Canaanites living in the territory allotted to us. Then we will help you conquer your territory.” So, the men of Simeon went with Judah…. Then Judah joined with Simeon to fight against the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they completely destroyed the town. So, the town was named Hormah. In addition, Judah captured the towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, along with their surrounding territories. (Judges 1:3,17)

I like that about these two tribes. God’s blessing was more than they could handle, but they were unwilling to shrink into what they could handle. That is not the case with many believers today: they get overwhelmed by abundance, as unbelievable as that sounds, and for a variety of reasons, fritter away their opportunity to fully occupy their blessings. They are like the intimidated steward in Matthew 25, fearful that he might lose what he was given. But in the case of Judah and Simeon, they got smart: they joined forces and helped each other take the land. By strong faith and hard work, they expanded into their blessings.

That is the kind of believer I want to be. I want to not be afraid to ask bigly of my Father. And I want to be unafraid to leverage the large opportunity he gives in response to my asking, but maximize what he has placed in my hands. I want to do that to show him how much I trust him. I want to do that so that he can trust me with more. I want to do that so that others will be provoked to godly discontent in settling for anything less than God’s generous abundance.

Among the many things I want people who know me to say in reflection of my life, I hope they will say, “He asked big, but he lived large for God.” I want to leave nothing on the table when my life is over. I want none of heaven’s treasures appointed for me while I am on earth to remain in heaven. I want it all for the glory of God alone.

How about you? Make a commitment from this day forward to be a person who asks big and lives large.

Choose You This Day:

Ask your Heavenly Father for some big, hairy, audacious provisions today. Choose to ask big, then live large.

God Speaks—I Obey // Joshua 19:1 & 9

Are you willing to ask big things of God? I hope so! God loves it when his children trust him so much that they are willing to step way out in faith to possess promises that are way beyond what is humanly possible to attain. God is honored when we pray bigly.

So are you ready to live large! If you ask big things of God, get ready to be big enough for the britches God’s generosity will require of you. You see, God is a God of abundance, and he gives in abundance, that is, he gives us more than enough, but while he gives abundantly, he never wastes kingdom resources on those unprepared to steward his generosity so that it brings maximum glory to himself. When he gives you something, he expects you to fill it out. In other words, he wants you to leverage every ounce of his provision to the fullest so that he can give you more. If you waste it, settle for less than maximum use, or misuse what he provides, he will not release more to you. In fact, there is an indication in scripture (see Matthew 25:24-30) that if we don’t steward his gifts wisely and industriously, he will even take away what he has given and give it to someone who will develop it in faith.

In the case of the land allotment to the tribes of Judah and Simeon, the visionary folks of Judah had an industrious spirit about them. So, God gave them much more land than they needed at the time. Yet because they had not taken full advantage of it, God took a portion of it and assigned it to the Simeonites. Judah, however, was not content to shrink into their land. They got fired up and later asked the warriors of Simeon to join forces with them to take the land that was not yet under their occupation:

The men of Judah said to their relatives from the tribe of Simeon, “Join with us to fight against the Canaanites living in the territory allotted to us. Then we will help you conquer your territory.” So, the men of Simeon went with Judah…. Then Judah joined with Simeon to fight against the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they completely destroyed the town. So, the town was named Hormah. In addition, Judah captured the towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, and Ekron, along with their surrounding territories. (Judges 1:3,17)

I like that about these two tribes. God’s blessing was more than they could handle, but they were unwilling to shrink into what they could handle. That is not the case with many believers today: they get overwhelmed by abundance, as unbelievable as that sounds, and for a variety of reasons, fritter away their opportunity to fully occupy their blessings. They are like the intimidated steward in Matthew 25, fearful that he might lose what he was given. But in the case of Judah and Simeon, they got smart: they joined forces and helped each other take the land. By strong faith and hard work, they expanded into their blessings.

That is the kind of believer I want to be. I don’t want to be afraid to ask bigly of my Father. And I want to be unafraid of leveraging the large opportunity he gives in response to my asking. I want to live as an example of maximizing what he places in my hands. I want to do that to show him how much I trust him. I want to do that so that he can trust me with more. I want to do that so that others will be provoked to godly discontent in settling for anything less than God’s generous abundance.

Among the many things I want people who know me to say in reflection of my life, the one thing I hope they will say is, “He asked for big things of God, and he lived large for his glory.” I want to leave nothing on the table when my life is over. I want none of heaven’s treasures appointed for me while I am on earth to remain in heaven. I want it all for the glory of God alone.

How about you? Let’s commit from this day forward to be people of ask big and live large.

SUMMARY: As moral relativism increasingly influences our present world, people will do what seems right in their own eyes, but it will always be so wrong. Perhaps we can be agents of change by simply and fiercely committing to and winsomely declaring a source of truth that is unchanging, the Word of God, and unapologetically calling our culture to God’s standard, even as our culture by and large has forgotten God. The prophetic drift of this fallen world is inexorably toward forgetting the Almighty Creator and Ruler of us all. Let’s not let our fellow human beings forget God without a fight.

I know, this is the exact sentence that begins Judges 18. It is not a mistake. It is the third time in three chapters that the writer uses the same sentence to describe the moral condition of Israel during this time. And each time, the sentence is followed by a story that disturbs our sensibilities. In this case, what follows is arguably the most revolting story in the Bible. I won’t even retell it—you can read it for yourself—but it is brutal and disgusting. But pity poor me, trying to come up with an edifying devotional from it.

To unpack that phrase in more detail—in those days Israel had no king—I would refer you back to the devotional I presented for the previous chapter. Just to summarize, we are being given a picture of what life was like in Israel when they had abandoned any controlling moral authority that kept them between the lines of social civility and moral uprightness. Not unexpectedly, things got increasingly ugly.

It seems to me that the writer of Judges has prophetically summed up our twenty-first-century world in this hat-trick statement: “In those days, Israel had no king.” Then, in the very last line of his book, he adds to it: “There was no controlling moral authority to govern people’s lives, so everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25)

“What was right in their own eyes” reflected a philosophy of moral relativism, which is simply put, public and private life without the presence of a “controlling moral authority.” Unfortunately, both in the day of the Judges as well as in our day, without fail, moral relativism produces personal, cultural, economic, and global chaos. It is when truth is no longer propositional, but what you or I want it to be, e.g. “My truth.” The brilliant author and famous Soviet dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, presciently described this unfortunate state in his now-famous Templeton Address, “Men Have Forgotten God.” He lamented, “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

While he was describing the atrocities that took place in Eastern Europe, he might as well have been describing Judges. And sadly, he is describing what will happen in an American culture that, like the aforementioned cultures, embraced relativism as its philosophy of life. When we have no controlling moral authority—a God who decides what truth is, who determines how human beings should live, and who holds them accountable for it—each of us will begin to do what seems right in our own eyes.

We will do what we think is right, but it will be so wrong!

All that to offer this reminder: you and I can perhaps be agents of change by simply and fiercely committing to a source of truth that is unchanging, the Word of God, and unapologetically calling our culture to God’s standard, even as it has forgotten God.

The prophetic drift of this fallen world is inexorably toward forgetting the Almighty Creator and Ruler of us all. Let’s not let the world forget God without a fight.

CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY: Tell someone about your belief in God’s truth today. Even if they don’t believe, they need to know that you do.

“It’s for your own good that God gives spiritual leaders to watch over your soul. It’s so important that God will hold them accountable for how well they do their job. So, make it easy for them!”

SUMMARY: Like he wanted from Israel, God wants to be our sole Lord and King. Yet he knows we need a controlling moral authority in our lives with skin on. So, he has ordained leaders to watch over us. No longer are they kings, but they are shepherds, pastors, spiritual leaders, mentors, spiritual directors, and accountability partners. And the charge that God has given them is to watch over our souls as those who must give account to God someday for the way we live our lives. So joyfully, willingly, gratefully come under their authority—that is God’s path for you to thrive.

God Speaks—I Obey // Judges 18:1

I have selected only a portion of a verse for today’s devotional. The rest of this chapter is the same song, the twenty-ninth verse of what we have seen over and over again in Judges. We have been treated to the depressing fare of what happens to a people when they have no controlling moral authority: They do what seems right in their own eyes. And that is never, ever pretty.

So, rather than going into the particular details of the sad account of Judges 18, let’s just say the spiritual anarchy that we saw in Judges 17 had continued into this chapter. In fact, chapter 18 literally continues what began in chapter 17. It is a strange mixture of idol worship openly disguised as worship of Yahweh. It is stunning how easily Israel has come to believe that their surrender to idols made by man’s hand is simply a legitimate representation of their worship of the Lord God.

Back to the opening line: We are told that Israel had no king. While they would get one soon enough, Judges bridges the time gap between Moses and Joshua to the start of the inauguration of the Israelite monarchy, beginning with King Saul and carrying forth under the Davidic dynasty until the nation is sent into Babylonian exile. And while a king to control the nasty impulses of this nation seems to be the spiritual antidote to what ails them, an earthly king will be God’s concession to a stubborn and calloused nation. God himself wanted to be their sole king; that is his ideal. Yet they were hopelessly flawed by sin. So, God would graciously send them a man who would hopefully be that controlling moral authority they so desperately needed. But God warned them: While some kings would be good and godly, others would not. And when they were not, Israel would rue the day they had begged God for a king.

Now, how about us? Like Israel, God wants to be our sole Lord and King, but he knows we need a controlling moral authority in our lives with skin on. So, he has ordained leaders to watch over us. No longer are they kings, but they are shepherds, pastors, spiritual leaders, mentors, spiritual directors, and accountability partners. And the charge that God has given them is to watch over our souls as those who must give account to God someday for the way we live our lives. The writer of Hebrews made this appeal:

However, we live at a time where we have been conditioned to bristle at the thought of submission to anyone. We question authority. We do not like the idea of being accountable to anyone who might call us out for our behavior. The result is that far too many of us live unexamined lives. But if nothing else, Judges show us the ugly truth about having no king, that is, of living without any controlling moral authority in our lives. So, we do what is right in our own eyes. And like chapter after chapter in Judges, that never paints a pretty picture.

I would appeal to you that it is God’s will for you to voluntarily and joyfully submit to a spiritual leader. Slowly, carefully, prayerfully re-read Hebrews 13:7 & 17. It is for your own good that God has ordained people to watch over your soul. So important is it that God will even hold them accountable for how well they do their job with you. It is a blessing to you that you submit to them—submit not as a doormat, which is a misreading of the biblical word, but rather to willingly line up under their oversight. That is the true meaning of submission. And if you will, believe me, you will thrive under the humble, godly, servant-hearted guidance of an anointed leader.

Israel had no king, and it was disastrous. What about you? Who is the controlling human authority in your life representing God to you? If you can’t answer that, you may be in trouble. If you can, come under their loving leadership willingly, gratefully and joyfully.

God Speaks—I Obey // Joshua 18:1-3

Now that the land was under Israelite control, the entire community of Israel gathered at Shiloh and set up the Tabernacle. But there remained seven tribes who had not yet been allotted their grants of land. Then Joshua asked them, “How long are you going to wait before taking possession of the remaining land the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given to you?

Perhaps what you are waiting on from God is waiting for you to do what God is waiting for from you. Wait! What? Wait? I know, it sounds a bit convoluted, but simply put, sometimes we are waiting when we should be working. God has done his part, but we haven’t done ours, and so the answers to our prayers are delayed.

The Christian life is a balance between what God does and what we do. Of course, our work is in response to his work—we don’t work to get God to do anything; he has already done everything, and our effort is always what is right and fitting because of his gracious acting on our behalf. We have a covenantal partnership with God, and each plays a role in order to live out the covenant. Or as Paul puts it in Philippians 2:12-13,

Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

We must work out what God has worked in. But so often we wait for God to do what he has already done. We misunderstand our responsibility in the partnership, or we avoid it because of spiritual laziness, or we are irresponsible, or frankly, we are in rebellion against God and are simply not carrying our weight in the deal. Whatever the case may be, God will not do what we are to do. God will do what we can’t, but he will never do what we won’t.

Now, in Israel’s case, God had promised them the land of Canaan as their home. He had brought them through 400 years of slavery in Egypt and through forty years of wandering in the desert to the edge of their new homeland. He had gone before them and had driven out their enemies. He had guaranteed their victory. But he had also called them to cross the Jordan into the land. He expected them to fight their enemies, drive them out, and take possession of the cities and farmland the Canaanites left behind. He had been clear that they were to stay at it until the task was complete. Yet after more years than they needed, the work was incomplete. They had not done what they were supposed to do in response to what God had already done. So, Joshua called them out on it.

I suppose all of this makes sense to you, and that you agree with it in principle—that God plays a part and we play a part. But I also suspect this is a bit vague as it relates to your life specifically. So, the challenge I have for you in response to this chapter is to do some hard thinking about where you may be waiting on the God who is waiting on you to do your part. What does that look like for you? Where do you need to step up and get after it? What promises are unclaimed in your life that God desires to fulfill (the constraint is not God, it is you)?

These are tough questions, but let me encourage you to get after it. The effort will be well worth it, and besides, God has already done his part. The victory is already yours. So why wait any longer? Let me give you a verse from another section of scripture that applies to what I am asking you to do:

Be bold and get after it—God is waiting on you!

God Speaks—I Obey

There was a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. One day he said to his mother, “I heard you place a curse on the person who stole 1,100 pieces of silver from you. Well, I have the money. I was the one who took it.” His mother replied, “The Lord bless you for admitting it,” He returned the money to her, and she said, “I now dedicate these silver coins to the Lord. In honor of my son, I will have an image carved and an idol cast.” … In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Judges 17:1-3

If we were to hold a vote on the weirdest stories in the Bible, this one would be in my top ten—maybe even in my top five. You read this story and it leaves you scratching your head. A man named Micah has admitted to his mother that he stole money from her, she praises the Lord for his “honesty” in returning the loot, then turns around and celebrates by commissioning a family idol, declaring that it is in honor of her wonderful son and of the Lord.

What…wait…what? She somehow twists stealing into honoring God by carving an image and casting an idol! What in the name of sanity is going on here? Simple explanation: This is spiritual anarchy, plain and simple. Anarchy is defined as “a state of disorder due to absence or non-recognition of authority.” That is exactly what Judges 17: 6 describes:

Israel had no controlling moral authority—or at least they chose not to follow a controlling moral authority, since they did have the law of God that should have been their constant guide. But over time, they moved God to the margins and devolved into spiritual anarchy. As a result, a lot of really weird stuff happened in a nation that God had called to be his own holy people. Israel began to look like the pagan nations to whom they had called them to witness as a living testimony of a loving but holy God. They begin to do unacceptable things that were outright repulsive to God, then justify their sinful behavior as acceptable and pleasing to the Holy One of Israel.

Twisted, right? Yet is it all that different than what we see today among people who claim to follow God? When the rate of divorce is as high among so-called Christians as it is in secular society, you have spiritual anarchy. When you have so-called Christians celebrating lifestyles and philosophies that are clearly opposed to what they are called to in God’s Word, you have spiritual anarchy. When you have so-called Christians whose way of living is clearly rooted in this present world and not in the kingdom to come—“believers” who are addicted to money, pleasure, and power—there you find they have drifted into spiritual anarchy. Where you find spiritual communities who make their worship about what they prefer, who employ entertainment techniques to attract new members, who move the Holy Spirit to the edge of their services in order to employ more relevant styles, who focus more on a cool café in the lobby rather than the call to seek God at the altar, there you find an inexorable rush toward spiritual anarchy.

In our day, Christians have set aside any controlling moral authority, so they do whatever seems right in their own eyes.

So now that I have gotten that rant out of my system, answer me this: Is this not the state of Christianity among far too many believers and far too many churches in America today?

If you think so, then make sure you are not in that camp, and make sure you do what you can to encourage your church not to drift into spiritual anarchy.

Choose You This Day:

To be honest, have your prayers fallen into the category of “My will be done?” As you pray today, pay close attention to the way Jesus taught us to begin our prayer: “Our Father, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done!”

The Scriptures teach that the age will end in anarchy, apostasy, and apathy – anarchy in the world, apostasy in the professing church, and even apathy in the true church – because lawlessness shall abound, the love of most will wax cold. Men will turn from the truth to fables.
- Vance Hanver

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Joshua 17:1-10

Manasseh’s boundary ran along the northern side of the ravine and ended at the Mediterranean Sea. North of Manasseh was the territory of Asher, and to the east was the territory of Issachar. The following towns within the territory of Issachar and Asher, however, were given to Manasseh: Beth-shan, Ibleam, Dor (that is, Naphoth-dor), Endor, Taanach, and Megiddo, each with their surrounding settlements.

Ever get the holy shivers? Yeah, me neither. But I’ve seen people respond to God’s blessing in ways—physically and emotionally—that far exceeded their capacity to manage it. Especially in foreign, rural contexts, I have watched worshipers get so beside themselves with joy in the Lord that their expressions of love, praise, and gratitude broke human containment. They got down and boogied in response to the blessings of God.

Now, when you read Joshua 17, holy shivers are the last response you are likely to have. Frankly, only a real estate agent would be inspired by the details as land is parceled out to the tribes of Joseph. A cartographer might enjoy the chapter a little bit as well because of the prospects of mapping out the Holy Land. But other than those two, I doubt if too many readers are going to be excited with the details of the land distribution that make up chapter 17.

So, what is in this for us? Let me answer that by having you put yourself in the sandals of the people in this chapter. Imagine yourself as one of the members of a clan in the tribe of Ephraim. Pretend that you are one of the five daughters of Zelophehad (one of the young ladies was named Noah, by the way; she must have been an amazing woman!), who stood to gain real estate as an inheritance because their dad had no sons as heirs. Imagine that you, your parents, grandparents, and ancestors going back 400 years had been hearing about a Promised Land that would one day be yours, and all you had known for centuries was slavery and decades of wilderness wandering. You had nothing to your name, no place to call home, no sense of permanence, and no real geographical identity. And now, you have been given land—and the land has been described for you with geographical specificity. Do you think you might be a bit excited about the description of your real estate in that context? I think so!

What is described in this chapter (and several surrounding it) represented the promises of God finally fulfilled after what seemed like interminable waiting. This represented answers to prayer. This was a bit of heaven on earth. And the Israelites were rightly excited about real estate details that today we find boring and worthy of skipping past. But don’t refuse to get either bored or skip-happy. Write yourself into this and other stories like it.

Even though you don’t have a literal Promised Land for which you are waiting, you are waiting for God to fulfill his promises to you—and believe me, you care about the details of what that will look like! So, whenever you come to a section of scripture like this, rejoice in the details as an act of faith, because one day, sooner or later, God will answer your prayers and fulfill his promises with specificity and generosity.

Choose You This Day:

Turn to the back of your Bible today and look at the map of the Holy Land that offers a schematic of the allotment of land for Israel’s twelve tribes. Now take a moment to rejoice in advance of the Promised Land into which God is bringing you.

God Speaks—I Obey
// Focus: Judges 16:4-6

Some time later, Samson fell in love with a woman named Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek. The rulers of the Philistines went to her and said, “Entice Samson to tell you what makes him so strong and how he can be overpowered and tied up securely. Then each of us will give you 1,100 pieces of silver.” So Delilah said to Samson, “Please tell me what makes you so strong and what it would take to tie you up securely.”

What is it that drives you? What motivates you at the deepest core to do what you do? What are the driving convictions of your life? Figure that out, and you will have figured out you, that is, who you are, what you are, how you live, and where you are headed.

Unfortunately for Samson, one of Israel’s most famous but most flawed judges (the judges were more military deliverers than paragons of moral purity), it was passion that drove him more than principle. Especially his passion for women, which we also saw in Judges 14, and now again in this famous “love” story in Judges 16 as Samson takes up with a new wife, Delilah. As you read this account with the added benefit of historical hindsight, you wonder why in the world would Samson put up with Delilah’s traitorous antics even once, let alone four times. Why couldn’t he see what we so clearly see?

Easy answer: Samson was driven by passion more than principle. So are a lot of people—perhaps even you. Sometimes I am, too. Now, to be sure, God created us with the capacity to be passionate. Without it, we wouldn’t be human. Without it, we could never express righteous indignation. Without it, we could never experience compassion. Without it, we might be perfect, but let’s not forget that God rarely chose the perfect; he mostly chose the passionate to accomplish his purposes, imperfect people like King David and the Apostle Peter.

Yet while passion is a God-given capacity, it must be kept in its rightful place. Like any other capacity, it is never to be out of control; it is never to be the master of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Only the Holy Spirit is to control what we think, how we feel, and what we do.

“For a God-honoring life, we must make principle the driver of our car and assign passion to push it!” ~Dr. Ray Noah

So what is the right purpose of our passion? Ralph Waldo Emerson offered this insightful thought: “passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.” He was saying that our passion is never to govern our lives; our principles are supposed to do that. Our passion is to fuel our principles. Passion will be what elevates what we believe at the deepest core to the level of driving conviction over the long haul of our lives.

I believe the main takeaway from Samson’s life is that we would be wise to think through and then codify what I would call our driving missional convictions. These would be our non-negotiable values, like living for the glory of God alone, ruthless trust in God’s sovereignty, obedience to God’s Word, submission to God’s will, wholehearted love for God—as well as our neighbor—and full-throttled commitment to the Missio Dei—the mission of God. I could go on and on, but for practical purposes, we would benefit most from settling on five to ten missional convictions, then allowing those convictions to drive everything in our lives at all times and in every way—our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

In fact, if you want to avoid the Delilah effect, that is, an approach to life that puts passion in the driver’s seat, then I would suggest that you spend some time thinking through your life convictions—like ASAP. Then discuss them with the people in your life whose help you will need to live them out. Finally, codify them and literally place them where you will see them early and often to remind you of what you want your life to be about.

Do that … then get passionate about them!

Choose You This Day:

Write out your missional convictions, the principles that you want to drive your life, share them with your closest relationships, post them in an unavoidably visible place, and then make a habit of verbally reviewing them every day.

God Speaks—I Obey
// Focus: Joshua 16:5-6,10

The boundary of their homeland began at Ataroth-addar in the east. From there it ran to Upper Beth-horon, then on to the Mediterranean Sea…. But the tribe of Ephraim did not drive the Canaanites out of Gezer, however, so the people of Gezer live as slaves among the people of Ephraim to this day.

The modern reader of Scripture cannot help but read the Old Testament through the eyes of twenty-first-century Western culture. For that reason, much of what we read seems harsh and unfair, if not brutal and primitive, and definitely at odds with our current values of acceptance and inclusiveness. Even in warfare, how we treat our enemy is much different from how it was in Old Testament days—and for that, I am sure our enemies are grateful (although I don’t think they would take the same approach with us).

Case in point: God told the Israelites to annihilate the Canaanites and purge them from the land as they went in to possess it. As the people of God moved in, by Divine command, the current residents had to go—every last one of them.

Now, while most Bible-believing Christians today accept that, we are certainly uncomfortable with both God’s command to displace the nations and his method for displacing them. When non-believing people question the harshness of the God of the Old Testament in light of such stories, we have no adequate answer, though there are reasonable explanations. We simply surrender territory on this issue of the sovereign God’s loving but just nature. My point here is not to defend God. For one thing, he can defend himself. And for another, if we truly understood the wickedness and brutality of the people who occupied Canaan in the days of the conquest—people who would make the worst terrorist group imaginable look like a Girl Scout pack—we would feel a little better about God’s commands.

Let’s set that aside for now. The point I want to make here is that when we fail to do what God commands, for whatever reason, we will suffer the logical consequences of that failure. Whether it is flat-out disobedience or benign neglect, our disobedience always allows sin to grow. And where sin grows, sin festers, and spiritual anemia, spiritual sickness, and spiritual death will result, sooner or later. God told the Israelites to drive out the Canaanites; they didn’t. They had their reasons: the Canaanites were harder to get rid of than we might imagine; most of them had been decimated anyway, so what would it hurt leaving the few that were left actually made good slaves for menial labor that no one else really wanted to do? So leaving them actually made better sense than driving them out. The Israelites had their reasons, and I suspect many of the reasons sounded good.

“When we justify anger, lust, pride, judgmental attitudes, and other sins that are easy to camouflage, we commit the sin of the Israelites. We have allowed Canaan to camp out in our hearts.” ~Dr. Ray Noah

But sin always has consequences, and the outcome of sin is never good! What was true for Israel is true for you and me today. We are not called to drive out a people from our neighborhood; that kind of literal biblical conquest is over. Yet there is another conquest God has assigned his people: to get rid of sin from their lives. The Apostle Peter spoke of being done with sin:

Therefore, since Christ suffered in his body, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in the body is done with sin. (1 Peter 4:1)

Theologically, we know that; we understand that sin must go. But like the Ephraimites, that is not always as easy as it sounds. For that, God gives the Holy Spirit to help us do away with sin in our lives, and he gives the grace of forgiveness when we fail. Moreover, he walks with us as we exert continuous effort to mortify our sinful nature. That is not the real problem here: it is when we make acceptable what God calls sin; it is when we allow the sin that will ultimately enslave us to hang around in our lives—that is the problem.

When we justify anger, lust, pride, judgmental attitudes, and other sins that are easy to camouflage, we commit the sin of the Israelites: We have allowed Canaan to camp out in our hearts.

“When we justify anger, lust, pride, judgmental attitudes, and other sins that are easy to camouflage, we commit the sin of the Israelites. We have allowed Canaan to camp out in our hearts.” ~Dr. Ray Noah

The Bible should serve as a cautionary tale in this regard, for there is story after story of how allowing Canaan to camp out paved the way for Canaan to rise up and bite Israel on the backside. The end result of inattention to sin is always far greater than the pain of sin when it is in full bloom in our lives—and it will always grow into bloom if we neglect our call to decimate it.

Got sin? Deal with it! Even the little, leftover stuff. Be killing sin or it will be killing you

The good news is, God stands ready to assist those who get with it in getting rid of sin.

Choose You This Day:

Is there leftover sin in your life—the little stuff that is easy to camouflage and justify? Quit! Stop! Deal with it! Today is a great day to start, and God will supply both the want to and the will to give it the boot from your life.

God Speaks—I Obey
// Focus: Judges 15:13-15

The Philistines bound Samson with two new ropes and led him up from the rock. As he approached Lehi, the Philistines came toward him shouting. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. The ropes on his arms became like charred flax, and the bindings dropped from his hands. Finding a fresh jawbone of a donkey, he grabbed it and struck down a thousand men.

The first senior pastor I worked with out of college used to say, “There is a lot more to God that we don’t understand than we do understand.” He was right. Not that we shouldn’t pursue the knowledge of God—we should. There is no greater or more worthwhile effort than knowing God. And God graciously grants us wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, according to Proverbs 2:3-6 and James 1:5.

“If you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding…. If you lack wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.”

But keep in mind in your honorable pursuit that there will be things about God and the record we have in scripture of his dealings with man that do not always make sense—at least in our minds. In those cases, we just need to chalk it up to the fact that God was at work in ways that are much higher than ours. There is a large part of God that will remain in the realm of mystery, and even though we are curious about it, we need a Deity whom we don’t fully understand, and therefore cannot control. Paul states in this way in his eloquent doxology from Romans 11:33-36,

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”
“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?”
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

I would put Judges 15 in that category. In several instances, God uses a deeply flawed judge—which by the way, the judges of Israel were not so much moral leaders as they were national deliverers—to bring judgment upon the godless Philistines and relief to the suffering Israelites. As you read this chapter, I would simply suggest you remember that the sovereign God can use anybody he chooses to bring out his larger purposes. God can use a deeply flawed prophet, preacher, or president for his glory—and he does early and often. In this case, he used a deeply flawed Samson to deliver his people.

Now, keep in mind as you read this passage, and others like it, that what is described in the Bible doesn’t excuse sinful and flawed behavior; it only explains it. It requires a little bit of wisdom to know the difference. So, once you understand that, then you will begin to see in matters great and small, God is in charge, and God is in control. Aren’t you thankful for that?

And if you understand that, then you will also understand that every action has consequences. Our behavior, significant and insignificant, is either bless-able or punishable. So, stay constantly alert to that!

Going Deeper With God:

Take a moment today to affirm in a prayer of praise and gratitude that God is sovereign over the affairs of this world—and of your life.