Category: Devotional

The Prayer of Jabez Revisited

If you like genealogies you will LOVE today’s reading. But there is some more interesting tidbits sprinkled in here as well. Like the conclusion to the story of Ruth & Boaz as well as Elkanah’s just… really terrible attempt at consoling his wife. But what struck me most today was the prayer of Jabez. He disappeared from the Biblical account as quickly as he entered it, but his prayer was included by the author for a reason. What can we learn from this prayer.

Jabez called out to the God of Israel, “If only you would greatly bless me and expand my territory. May your hand be with me! Keep me from harm so I might not endure pain.” God answered his prayer.

Jabez prays four things. 1) That God would greatly bless him. 2) That God would expand his territory 3) That God would be with him 4) The God would keep him from harm. Let’s take a quick look at each of these.

That God would greatly bless him — We get nervous about asking for God’s blessing because of name-it-and-claim-it preachers and theology, but there’s nothing wrong with asking for God’s blessing! We see a great many Biblical figures do so. We just need to remember not to put a fence around what God’s blessing “should” be. We should consider ourselves blessed when we can use whatever we may have been given to bless others.
That God would expand his territory — We are told that if we are faithful with little, we will be trusted with more. If you have been using what you have been blessed with for the glory of God, you should not be surprised that God is “expanding your territory” and trusting you with more.
That God would be with him — As the Lord has been teaching me this year: I am very capable of doing a great number of things on my own. But this means that I often tell God to “sit this one out” because I don’t NEED Him. This is — and has been — an error on my part. We should have a standing invitation to God. We should ask Him to be a part of everything we are doing.
That God would keep him from harm — I think this would be our desire, but one we ought to hold loosely. We should remember that it is a privilege to suffer for the sake of the Gospel. Jesus did. Paul did. Peter did. I would not mind being mentioned alongside these fellow.

Let’s try to employ these principles as we pray, seek the Lord, and try to live lives worthy of the One who saved us.

Ruth 4:13-22, 1 Chronicles 2:9-55; 4:1-23, 1 Samuel 1:1-8 | 098/365

It Doesn’t Matter What Your Name Is!

Ruth is such a wonderful book. Especially coming off the disaster piece that is the end of Judges. This is a beautiful story and a much-needed palette-cleanser. Choosing what to focus on was challenging because I love so much of this story (ask me about the feet thing sometime).

What I’ve settled on is the other would-be redeemer’s name from the beginning of chapter 4. I guess what I really mean is the total LACK of a name for the other would-be redeemer from the beginning of chapter 4. The NET Bible literally translates his name as “John Doe”.

Now, the explanation is actually quite long, and involved, requiring a lot of historical digging and genealogies with a good understaffing of Greek grammar.

nah, jk. As The Rock would say, “It doesn’t matter what your name is!” Because it doesn’t matter! His name doesn’t matter! Boaz certainly knew it. The author of the book certainly knew it. Why was it left out of the story? No one knows for sure, maybe because they didn’t want to make him look bad in the story, maybe because he decided not to carry on the name of Mahlon, so the author decided not to carry on his name, but leave it lost to the dustbin of history. It’s difficult to say for sure, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t matter what his name is.

Here’s the thing: YOU CAN’T THWART GOD’S PLAN! If you decide not to do the right thing, if you decide that you don’t want to be the one to step into the call of God, then God will raise up someone else. And you’ll miss it! Don’t miss it! Don’t allow yourself to be old what’s-his-name because you were scared or had doubts or it was messy or it didn’t fit your pre-existing plan.

You want to see God show up big? YOU show up big! Meet Him there and watch what happens!

Ruth 1:1-4:12 | 097/365

How Has This Terrible Thing Happened?

The account of the Levite and his concubine is possibly the most horrible account in all of scripture. And it is confined entirely within the nation of Israel. No outside party has a role in the story. It is a story that shocks and conscience and boggles the mind. I remember years ago watching the Ashton Kutcher film “Butterfly Effect” and being so angry and frustrated with the character for constantly making the worst possible decisions one after the other. This is how I feel watching the events of Judges 19-21 unfolding.

The Reader’s Digest version is that a man’s wife (concubine) becomes angry¹ with him for undisclosed reasons and goes to her father’s house. The Levite comes to get her and on the way home he stop with an old man from Gilead in Benjamin. Men comes to sexually assault the Levite, so the throws his wife into the street where she suffers the fate he was trying to avoid, ultimately resulting in her death. The Levite then cuts her up sending her body to all the tribes. They lead an attack on the Benjaminites, both sides suffered heavy losses. Benjamin was almost wiped out (except for 600 men), so Israel felt bad for them and massacred a town of Israelites who didn’t participate in the battles so they could kidnap their daughters as wives for the tribe they just tried to destroy. But there weren’t enough women in the town they razed, so kidnapped some more women from a festival.

What? In? The? World?

There is so very, very much that could be discussed and disseminated in these three chapters that the prospect of choosing one seems almost overwhelming. But I think we can look at the thread that runs through Judges and come away with something more personal and cautionary than academic. And it comes down to the question that was twice asked in today’s passage.

How has this happened?
Judges 20:3; 21:3, Paraphrased

Literally tens of thousands of families were destroyed because of the actions of some Benjaminite degenerates and the response of a cold-hearted and selfish husband. We are told throughout Judges that “there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes”. We need to understand that in order for a king to rule, people need to follow him. There was no earthly king and the people seemed unable or unwilling to allow Yahweh to be king. And so they tried to follow their own moral compass. That is called subjectivity. And if we allow our moral compass to be subjective rather than grounded in some permanent truth we have no objective reason to condemn Pol Pot, Mao, Lenin/Stalin, Hitler, or Hamas — we merely do not AGREE with their moral ethic.

This, friends, is what sin does. It corrupts us. It destroys us. It does it slowly, insidiously. It warps our perceptions until we can no longer see clearly. The effects of sin are so incredibly powerful that we often cannot even tell it has us in its clutches. This is why we are so desperately in need of God’s grace to open our eyes and reveal our hearts.

This Levite (a PRIEST) fell so far from the God he was meant to serve that he threw his wife out into the street to be gang-raped then dismembered her body and mailed it around. Friends, please hear me on this: this seems horrific beyond words, and there but for the grace of God go I. Stay in close communion with God. Stay in His Word. Stay in prayer — don’t ever hang up that phone. The pull of sin is too strong to fight it alone.

At that time Israel had no king. Yes they did. And so do we. King Jesus. We just need to treat Him that way.

Judges 19-21 | 096/365

Your Bible might say she was unfaithful, this is possible, but I prefer the angry reading for multiple reasons ↩︎

Using Selfishness For Good

When I look at a guy like Samson, I’m blown away by how terrible this he was. Refused to listen to his parents. Killed 30 men to pay a debt. Visited a prostitute. Tore up the town gate. Married outside the faith. Threw away his vow to God because he had no patience, no discernment, and no self-control.

Samson was a disaster.

Even when he finally called out to God, he wanted to get revenge against his captors for gouging out his eyes, not for enslaving his people. And yet God granted his request and restored his strength so he could complete his kamikaze mission.

Why? Why did God restore his strength… or even give it to him to begin with?

Remember when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery? Some years later that decision led his prominent position in Egypt. And he famously said, “What you intended for evil, God intended for good.”

There are a great many people with incredible talents. These all come from God, he is the one who knit each of us together in our mother’s wombs. These gifts are part of common grace from God. And in this case, God knew what decisions Samson would make and how he would use (and abuse) the gifts He bestowed on Samson. And God raised up Samson at a time and in a place where his misuse of those gifts would accomplish God’s goals of judgement against the Philistines.

What Samson intended for selfish gain, God intended for good.

Judges 16-18 | 095/365

Did God Endorse Child Sacrifice

Can I just say from the outset that many of the Judges are found lacking in terms of character. Just today we’ve read about Ibzan & Abdon who clearly had multiple wives — and that’s the only thing they were known by or remembered for. Samson is a hot mess, but we’ll talk more about him tomorrow.

Today we have the story of Jepthath who was 1) a great warrior, 2) the son of a prostitute, and 3) jilted by his brothers. So he makes a vow to God that he will offer a burnt sacrifice of whatever comes out of his house to greet him. WHAT!? Now, it’s worth mentioning that the house being referred to here is not like our modern housing, there would have been space for both the family and animals inside. But while it’s not impossible for a sheep to wander out to meet him, it’s also entirely possible it could be his ONLY child or wife… I mean… bro. What are you thinking?? And who came out to meet him? His only daughter.

Worth noting is that we read in the last chapter that Israel worshipped the neighbouring gods. Baal, Milkom, and Chemosh. All of which practiced child/human sacrifice. And so it’s fully plausible that Jepthath was influenced by those other beliefs. Again, the judges were often deeply flawed people.

And so Jepthath follows through on this horrible vow at his daughter’s insistence, but note that at no time does God ever ask for, approve of, endorse, or even speak to this action. God had nothing to do with this. It was merely a flawed man making a stupid vow and following the zeitgeist of the culture that surrounded him. What a terrible tragedy.

We need to be careful not to imbibe the cultural practices around us that seek to corrupt us and prevent us from knowing what is good and bad, right and wrong, holy and horrid. Let us look to God and seek our morality, values, and worldview from Him.

Judges 11:29-15:20 | 094/365

That IS The Punishment, Dude

Today’s devotional is a quick one. The cycle of Judges is that Israel does evil, God punishes Israel, Israel cries out, God raises up a Judge, the Judge delivers Israel, Israel does evil. In this particular example we are looking at the Ammonites. But what I found frankly kind of hilarious is when they call out to God to save them from the oppression that are under, He replies, “Why don’t you ask your new BFF god to save you?”.

[fire emoji]

And they reply, “punish us tomorrow, but save us today!” Not realizing the amazing irony that what they were experiencing WAS the punishment God was visiting on them for their perpetual disobedience!

Here’s the thing: we look at bad circumstances as God abandoning us. But God will never abandon us. He will let us have the desire of our hearts so that we can see how it actually HURTS us rather than helping us. But that is done in order to bring repentance. Whatever circumstance you are in, make sure you are open to the Holy Spirit and allowing God to do His good work in you. Gold is refined in fire, not a warm blanket.

Judges 9:22-11:28 | 093/365

The Least & The Greatest

Another day chock-full of all manner of things to dig into, it’s hard to choose where to focus.

I think I want to take a minute and contrast our man Gideon with the previous judge, Deborah. Now, we don’t know either of these people of antiquity overly well, but what I find interesting is how far their stories diverge.

Gideon is not the leader we would expect, being a small man from a small tribe, and Deborah was an unlikely leader just because she was a woman. But God called both of them to lead.

Deborah did not want to go fight, but Barak pleaded with her to join him and so she did, and Israel was successful. Whereas Gideon needed all kinds of proof. Burn this up. And make this wet. And keep this dry. And show me a bizarrely specific interpretation of a WEIRD dream. Gideon needed so much hand-holding by God. But some of us need more prodding than other. This is no shade on Gideon, but then…

Deborah helps Barak to lead a successful campaign and co-writes a victory song with him that both starts AND ends with the Lord. Yahweh. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Gideon leads multiple successful campaigns, accepts fame, donations, takes a multitude of wives, makes a golden Ephod that the people of Israel WORSHIP, and which also becomes a trap for him. One of his sons ends up killing all the others… there were 70.

As a teen (I only accepted Christ at the age of 15, so I never did Sunday School) I heard about Gideon and Samson, but I never heard about Deborah. Gideon had many battles and accomplished great feats. Samson did the same… or did they? The fact is that these were two broken people used by God to accomplish HIS purposes. They actually contributed very little to their own success, but they were more than willing to bask in it.

Yet Deborah goes largely overlooked. Almost like an afterthought… did you know there was a FEMALE judge? Oooh! How unorthodox and wacky! Yet her quiet confidence and upward-facing attitude are what we claim to value most in both our leaders and ourselves.

I guess what I’m driving at is that we ought to remember that the people in the Bible were not special people that God chose. They BECAME special people because God chose them. So let’s not hoist up the ones God used to most brightly reveal His glory (if I am honest, I have very little interest in being like Gideon, or Samson… or Pharaoh). Instead let’s look for those, like Deborah, or Ruth, or Boaz, or Moses who tried to stay humble and honour the Lord with upright actions and a dedication to obedience.

Judges 7:1-9:21 | 092/365

Whose Will Be Done?

This is one of those passage where there is almost an overwhelming number of options for things to talk about. Why does Shemgar only get a single verse? Was he a contemporary with Deborah? A female judge? How does that square with the idea of leadership roles being reserved only for men? Jael broke… ALL the hospitality rules of the Ancient Near East. The angel of the Lord chose the smallest man from the weakest tribe to lead a military campaign? The altar of Ba’al worship was used as kindling for the offering on God’s altar. And the people of Israel were going to KILL Gideon for destroying the altar to the false god Ba’al! And that’s just the SURFACE stuff.

But the thing that struck me during today’s reading was actually this passage:

… Then the land had peace forty years. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord …
Judges 5:31b-6:1a

What do we not see here, nor anywhere in the transition from Deborah to Gideon? Repentance! Now, I know full well that the traditional interpretation is that the people turned back to the Lord, but I just do not see that in the text. I see regret, a desire for help. They know that the God of Moses delivered them before, and they call out to the one true God to rescue them again. But true repentance eludes them.

However, God knows His plans for Israel. In the same way that he uses flawed men like Noah, Abraham, Samson, and David, he uses the nation of Israel to accomplish His goals. Jesus is coming, but not until the fullness of time. Things needed to happen in world history to facilitate the wildfire-spread of the Gospel before Jesus could come. And in the meantime, God would step in from time to time to save the people from themselves. That’s right. Not their oppressors, but themselves!

God told them how to have peace and prosperity, but they decided to go their own way and now that are forced to deal with the consequences of walking out from under God’s umbrella of protection. But they don’t ever seem to realize that they did this to themselves. Gideon says as much! “If the Lord is with us then why has all this happened to us?”

Are we doing this today? Am I? Are you? Have we put ourselves into an unenviable situation and then asked why GOD abandoned US? If you are having a pity party about your circumstances, maybe it’s time to put on your grown-up pants, humble yourself before the Lord, and ask Him to bring the correction you need into your life.

He loves you and He wants what’s best for you. If you won’t say to Him, “Your will be done”, then He’ll step back and say it to you.

Judges 3:31-6:40 | 091/365

Did God Drag His Feet?

Yes.

Remember when we talked about Joshua saying God had fulfilled His promise, even though the totality of the land was not yet in possession of Israel? It was because God did His part, but the people had to do their part. That is confirmed here in Judges where God outright says as much.

Something is only worth what it costs you. I understand that this isn’t true in every possible circumstance, but the vast majority of time it is. That’s where the phrase ‘easy come, easy go’ comes from. If the totality of the land was given to Israel in one fell swoop they would have no opportunity (or need) to continue in trust of the Lord. Instead He gives some. And He sees how we handle it.

God gives us little bits. And if we do well with the little bits, He will give us medium bits. And If we do well with the medium bits, He will give us large bits. And so on.

However, if — like Israel — we let the little bits go to our head and give us a more inflated sense of ourselves than is justified (really, any inflation is bad) then we should not be surprised that God is going to pull back on the blessings and the trust.

Zechariah 4:10 encourages us to NOT overlook the day of small things. From small things, big things one day come.

Judges 1:1-3:30 | 090/365

You Are Your Own Witness

At the end of Joshua’s life, he recounts the story so far, spanning from God’s Covenant with Abraham to the arrival in Canaan. He outlines how God has been faithful and provided and delivered on His promises. And then he ends with an exhortation that I found deeply moving. In chapter 24 and verse 22 he says, “You are a witness to your own decision, you have chosen to serve the Lord”.

You are a witness to your own decision. Just think about that. Let it settle in your spirit.

God knows you inside and out, your coming and your going, He knows the deepest desires of your heart of hearts. But Joshua doesn’t point that out, instead he underscores that they know what they’ve said. And in the same way WE know what WE have said. This means that they are accountable for their choices. They understood what was at stake and we will be called to answer for how they have lived in light of that evidence.

The same is true for us. We know what we are committing to, and so if we choose to abandon that commitment we will have to reckon with the consequences for the oath we revoked. In a word that is trying everything it can — both subtly AND overtly — to cause distraction, doubt, disillusionment, and deconstruction… we MUST be on guard. We must stand witness to our decision. Joshua 24:31 paints an ominous picture:

Israel served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elderswho outlived him and who had experienced everything the Lord had done for Israel.

We aren’t told that Israel continued to serve the Lord, but rather that those “who had experienced” continued to serve. Friends, there is no reason we cannot experience the work of the Lord every day of our lives. If we draw near to Him we are told explicitly that He will draw near to us. Let’s near ever nearer so that our hearts do not grow cold, so that we do not fall away, so that we do not receive due judgement for abandoning our oath, but rather that we receive our reward in Christ Jesus for a life lived for His glory. Amen.

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