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APRIL 13
Yesterday, after Israel took (was given) Jericho, Joshua
(6:26) cursed anyone who attempted to rebuild Jericho. You don't have to go
looking for it now, but as you read through the OT this year, you will
unexpectedly find the guy who ordered the rebuilding of Jericho and what
happened to the builder who did the work. This is why reading through the Bible
is fun. You find stuff, and the Spirit makes all sorts of connections for you.
It is always better when you find something on your own and get that
"kick" of excitement. That's the kind of joy and motivation that
stays with you and it energizes your teaching and your sharing. The truth
actually becomes a part of you.
Yesterday
we witnessed a national disaster for Israel. In Joshua 7:5 it says that all of
the people were disheartened by the defeat and loss of men at Ai. In contrast
to how Israel was before, you don't see everyone at their tent doors weeping
and ready to stone Joshua.
Joshua
prayed and cried out to God, but God sort of says to him, "What are you
doing? Get up off your face. Obviously the people sinned." The people and
Joshua were to learn an important lesson. If they were defeated, it was because
of sin. It meant there was something wrong with them, not God.
Joshua
7:16-9:2
Joshua
7:16-26
V.
16 When it says that Judah was taken, I'm guessing a tribal leader stood before
the priest, and the priest rolled the Urim and the Thummim. The result showed
if a man was to be selected or not.
You can imagine Achan standing there watching his nightmare come true
as the people were whittled down to his tribe, his clan, his family, his
household, and finally he's standing nose to nose with Joshua, who I think was
a rather imposing dude.
Vs. 24 and 25 are pretty fearful verses. The innocent were immediately
with God and enjoying it. The hard reality is, even today, that the sins of the
fathers (and mothers) harm the children, even in Christian homes.
V. 26 God's anger was satisfied. Now imagine that this is what happened
to Jesus. God just kept heaping it on until He was totally punished in our
place. When Jesus had paid every last penalty for us, you could quote part of
v. 26 in that, the Lord (God) turned away from His burning anger
toward all who are covered by the blood of the Lamb.
One more thought from yesterday. God told Joshua that as long as the devoted thing was among the people of
Israel, He couldn’t be among the people of Israel. It just makes me wonder how
many things I’ve let into my life that have distracted me from loving Jesus and
following Him in the harvest. He never leaves us, but as long as we have
something besides Him, it weakens His ability to speak to us and it keeps us
from fully abiding and loving Him. More about that in Luke.
Joshua 8
Vs. 1-2 God totally affirmed that He would give Joshua victory at Ai.
Joshua is one of the few guys in the Bible who has no mark against him. Moses
and David were both murderers. Not that I’m looking for something bad, but this
is the first time I’ve seen that although Joshua didn’t do anything bad, he
didn’t always ask God first before he did stuff. There was no mention of him
asking God before he sent the spies to Jericho.
That worked out fine. He never consulted God before the defeat at Ai.
That would have been a good idea. Apparently, like us, Joshua had things to
learn, even in his 80s.
Notice that God allowed them to take the plunder. Achan should have
waited.
Vs. 3-23 I find it interesting that God turned the entire situation
around so that it made Israel's defeat look like a clever ploy to get the city
to empty out, leaving it defenseless from the rear.
Vs. 24-29 This is Joshua and his leadership. Notice that like Moses
holding the staff back when Joshua fought, Joshua wouldn’t put down his
javelin. He was devoted to the Lord and to his men.
Notice in v. 29 that Joshua made an example of the king of Ai. He will
do this to other kings, but what he does here is interesting. In Deuteronomy
21:23 it says, for a hanged man is cursed
by God.
This curse of hanging a man before God is what the Father did to His
Son for us.
Vs. 30-35 Now that Israel had taken the two fortress cities that
guarded the road from the valley of the Jordan into the hill country, it was
time to fulfill what God had commanded them to do. They themselves had already
experienced the emotions of blessing and curse and knew the terrible effects of
the curse. I’ll bet their experience with Achan, when God left them for that
battle, made this event much more intense and real.
This is the ceremony that the Lord commanded Israel to carry out: the
blessings and the curses. The way this was organized with the ark in the middle
was really cool.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary-OT, p. 347, adds that Joshua had
to move the nation 30 miles to get to the place God said this ceremony was to
take place.
I've never seen before that Joshua wrote on the stones and that he
copied it from his own copy that he himself had written. Joshua was not a king,
but fulfilled one of the requirements of a king by making his own copy of the
law and reading it every day. The BKC mentions that they have found other
monuments where documents three times longer than Deuteronomy were inscribed.
This was a long event that could have gone days and weeks. Notice v.
35. Everyone was present to hear the law. Joshua's strength was in fulfilling
the law and all that was commanded him.
Joshua 9:1-2
While Israel was on its pilgrimage, devoting its heart to the spiritual
rather than the military, apparently all the kings of the land thought it was a
good time to mount an offensive against the worshiping nation. But not everyone
was spiritually irrational and wanted to fight, as we'll see tomorrow. Those
who seek, find.
Luke 16:1-18
Vs. 1- 9 So, imagine there is a connection between this chapter and the
past chapter. What would it be?
I'll make a suggestion. Jesus was in conflict with the Pharisees over
the question of reaching out to sinners. When Jesus told the parables of the
lost sheep, coin and son, He was really teaching His disciples, because the
Pharisees weren't open anyway. All three of the parables involve things of
value, but spiritual value rather than earthly value. You see this particularly
in the father talking with the elder brother. The Pharisees were rich. It was
one of the ways you joined the club. And actually, the disciples were rich by
biblical standards, since they had food for several days and had several
changes of clothes. But they were also rich in something else, and that needed
to be shared.
Now if we put what Jesus is saying here, together with what He said
elsewhere about seeking the kingdom first and selling everything and having
treasure in heaven, you understand Jesus is telling them to use all of their
resources for the kingdom. What I find interesting here is that the steward got
everyone squared up with the master and decreased their debt so it was paid up.
So you have two elements to how the steward used his last days of influence:
People paid up their debts and they were in good standing with the master. I
guess, applying it to us, we should be using our resources so people can trust
Christ (who paid their debt) so they can be forgiven and in good standing with
God.
Jesus is not telling the disciples to be generous if they have a lot to
be generous with. He is telling them to use all of the resources God gives them
shrewdly to help people come to Him. As we’ll see later, the disciples were
poor and getting poorer, but they were beginning to understand what real
spiritual values and riches looked like. In this case, it meant paying a price
to be with tax collectors and sinners.
Vs. 10-13 Here is a clear application. It didn’t matter how much they
had or gave, it was their faithfulness with a very little that counted. Notice
the promises in vs. 11 and 12.
We’ve seen v. 13 before in the Sermon on the Mount. I think it was a
standard part of Jesus’ teaching to His disciples. I still don’t think I take
this as seriously as Jesus meant it.
Vs. 14-15 The Pharisees who objected to Jesus’ association with tax
collectors and sinners were still present. As Jesus was telling His disciples
that God does measure our faith by our faithfulness to Him in using the
resources we've been given, the Pharisees must have been scoffing audibly. When
He told the disciples they couldn’t possibly serve God and money, the Pharisees
were convinced that it was not only possible, but that they were doing it. The
Pharisees were justifying themselves; because, generally speaking, they were
generous in tithing, although they did it publicly for their own appearance and
recognition. Remember, the idea of riches is about what a person values.
Vs. 16-18 Jesus changed the direction of the discussion and got the
Pharisees on a point where they couldn't deny they were at fault. They felt
they were teachers of the people and the compliance officers of the law. They
"forced their way" into the kingdom, trying to make the law conform
to them, stretching truths to make themselves acceptable. But Jesus said that
not even the punctuation of the law could be perverted. It would always stay
the same regardless of how they reinterpreted it for themselves.
Then Jesus got the
Pharisees on adultery. They had engineered the law to allow divorce for burned
toast, pretty much like today. Divorce was so commonplace in those days that
later when Jesus told another group of Pharisees that God was against divorce,
even Jesus' disciples were “amazed and greatly astonished,” and said, If such is the case of a man with his wife,
it is better not to marry (Matt. 19:10). The implication here is that since
the Pharisees had money, they were manipulating the system to get the women
they wanted. If they wanted a new wife better suited for their needs, they
could divorce their own wife and entice a poorer woman to divorce her husband.
Who wouldn’t want an address on “easy street” for a while? In fact, they could
afford to make a poorer, dissatisfied man an offer he couldn’t refuse to get
his wife, and the system was “legal.”
In Jewish society
it was a man's world. If a wife was out of place, it was easy to divorce her.
This is how the Pharisees were using their wealth and position to give them
treasure on earth. Their riches and values had to do with manipulating the law
for their own gain. You’ll see this in the parable tomorrow of the rich man and
Lazarus. Again, this ties back to the issue of tax collectors and sinners,
Lazarus being that needy, but rejected, person. Anyway, the Pharisees probably
weren't making audible noises now.
Psalm 82
So, what's going on here? It looks like God could be referring to the
angelic hosts, but looking at the rest of the psalm shows you that God is
talking primarily to the leaders of Israel. Yet, even in the two references we
have to Satan and his fall (Isa. 14:12, Ezek. 28:12), his description is taken
from the description of the king of Babylon and king of Tyre, and given such
language that makes it obvious to us that God has now begun to talk about the
fallen angel, whose arrogance was similar to the human judges being described.
It could be that the references to sons
of the most high and prince could
be shadows, in a secondary sense, of angelic authorities, since sons of God (in Job 2:1) and prince of Persia (in Daniel 10:20) are
both titles that refer to angels. If, in fact, the angels had a guardianship to
serve and guide mankind, they perverted it and did not guide anyone to honor
God by giving justice and protection.
Vs. 1-5 The main meaning is to the leaders of Israel. The people needed
godly leadership, but the leaders then, like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day,
misled the people and served themselves.
Vs. 6-8 They had a privilege to serve and guide the people. Think of
men like Moses and the elders he appointed under him who were given a portion
of his spirit (spiritual enabling) to serve before the people and give them
justice. The fact that these judges and leaders had the Word of God made them
like gods. They were given the truth and “power” to direct people in God’s way.
That is why God can refer to them figuratively as gods, mighty ones. Jesus refers to v. 6 in John 10:34. Even Jesus'
usage there has a twist to it, because in referring to this psalm, He is
standing before leaders of the people who have led the people astray. Jesus’
point was that if they who had been given the Word were called gods, how could they say He was
blaspheming when the Father had consecrated Him and sent Him into the world?
As reflected in this psalm, as Israel settled into the land, they
strayed from God and were led by many who did not honor God. The prophets
brought God's judgments upon the leaders who misled the people. As we go on
through the year, we'll find many portions of Scripture like this in the OT.
One that I'll use here is a good one that eventually promises the Messiah.
“Woe to the shepherds who
destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” declares the LORD. Therefore thus
says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my
people: “You have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have
not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds,
declares the LORD. Then I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the
countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold,
and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will set shepherds over them who
will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall
any be missing, declares the LORD.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares the
LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as
king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. And this is
the name by which he will be called: ‘The LORD is our righteousness’” (Jere. 23:1-6).
Proverbs 13:2-3
V. 2 A man’s mouth is seen in contrast to the person who is
treacherous. A treacherous person uses his mouth to trick or mislead people,
but in relating to people in that way his inner life is full of turmoil and
violence. The good man eats what is good because he uses his mouth to encourage
and enrich others honestly.
V. 3 This is the obvious corollary and a good reason to honor the Lord
with our mouths.
Please Read
the Following Disclaimer
I'm writing the Reading Notes to and
for those who are following a One Year Bible and are interested in growing
deeper as a disciple, following Jesus in the harvest. My hope is to see the growth
of a discipleship culture in the church, that is, groups of 3-4 disciples,
meeting weekly, encouraging each other to follow Christ and work to reach out
and make disciples, who make disciples. The Bible itself is the most universal
and important discipleship manual we have and it is the key to our growth and
service in Christ. Nothing keeps us more focused on why we are here, or what we
are to be doing, or whom we are to be following. My comments are only meant to
provide some explanation of the events or to show the flow of God's plan of
redemption. My comments are in no way exhaustive, but are designed to keep us,
as disciples, focused on Christ and our role in His harvest. My hope is that
the people in these groups will grow in Christ and be willing, after a year, to
find 3 others to meet with and encourage in their growth as disciples, making
disciples in the harvest.
If you would like a more descriptive
commentary that is still readable and concise, I'd recommend the Bible Knowledge Commentary (BKC).
I read the BKC in doing background for the Reading Notes and refer to it quite
often. I also make reference to maps or charts in the BKC, though I will only
note where those resources can be found. Often you can do a search for these
and find them in Google books. Buying both volumes of the Bible Knowledge
Commentary would be a good idea.
I am not endorsing any particular
One Year Bible translation; in fact, I read something you probably don't, Die
Revidierte Lutherbibel, 1984. Unless noted, all Scripture quotes are from the
ESV Bible.
Anyone reading along with us is
welcome to do so and is encouraged to take their own notes and make their own
observations. If the comments made do not agree with your particular tradition
or understanding, that's OK. Nothing I've written is meant to criticize any
point of view, but only to express the truth of what God has written to us, as
I understand it. Often there is a breadth of opinion on certain events, both
historical and prophetic. Many of my views come from my church background,
theological training and my personal study.
I'm
doing this with discipleship in mind, meaning, I'm writing out thoughts that
will keep discipleship and our growth as disciples applied to what we are
reading. Remember, the real focus of the Reading Notes is to be a
supplement, a disciple’s commentary, giving motivation and insight so that we
will keep following our Lord in the harvest, reaching the lost and making
disciples, who make disciples. Being in
the Word every day, sitting at Jesus’ feet, learning directly from Him, is the
essential essence of being and making disciples.
May the Lord bless you as you follow Him in the
harvest, reaching the lost and making disciples, who make disciples. Dan
If you would like documents
containing an entire month of the Reading Notes, go to https://sites.google.com/site/dlkachikis/reading-notes.
If you would like a full
presentation of discipleship read Simply
Disciples*Making Disciples.
Or if you are struggling with
insomnia and would like a long boring dissertation on disciple making, these
can both be found on https://sites.google.com/site/dlkachikis/reading-notes.
Reading Notes ©, Dan Kachikis
2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018
The One Year Bible © by
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton Illinois 60189
The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version® (ESV®) Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.
All charts/graphics/outlines
from the Bible Knowledge Commentary are used with the permission of David C.
Cook.
© 1983, 2001 John F Walvoord and Roy B Zuck.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary is published by David C Cook.
All rights reserved. Publisher permission
required to reproduce.
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