Category: Devotional

Death to the Infidel!

Right at the top of chapter 13 God tells us that false prophets and dreamers of dreams can be tested. We can know if they are the real deal or if they are trying to lead us astray. How? When they tell you to follow their new god… It’s kind of hilarious in its simplicity, isn’t it?

Prophet: Hey, come and follow me! I’ll introduce you to a newer, better-er god!
Me: Honey, I think this guy may not be on the level.
My wife: Agreed.

But the interesting part to me is rather the parts that follow; 1) God is doing this to test you, and 2) the prophet or dreamer must be executed for encouraging rebellion.

1) What does it mean that God is testing you? I’ll be honest, at first blush — to me, at least — this seems like a very convenient excuse. God gave this false prophet the power to foresee the future or speak a word of knowledge just to test us… but then we have to kill him/her? But of course this objection is short-sighted. Why? Because — unlike what so many people believe (Seriously. So. Many. People.) — our God is not one of blind, unquestioning faith. He is, and has always been, an evidential God. He doesn’t say ‘follow me because of what I say I can do’, but rather He says, ‘follow me because of what you have SEEN me do!’ God reminds the people continually of how He rescued them from Egypt. How he provided in the wilderness. How He protected them in battle. Then some new guy comes along, knows that your great aunt Ethyl was a Scorpio and you’re all “take my hand, we’re off to never-never land”? Madness. Why would anyone abandon a faithful God to follow a lie? Usually? Because it feels good.

2) The false prophet is to be executed. This is where the “death to the infidel” title came from. A touch extreme, no? Is there no avenue to redemption here? This was a life-or-death matter. Remember the “hearts of hearts” we talked about yesterday? Here we have a person (in the prophet/dreamer) who has seen what God can do, and has been imbued by God with a gift of prophecy, but attributes it to not God? The author of Hebrews warns us:

For it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who were once enlightened—those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come— and who then turn away from God. It is impossible to bring such people back to repentance; by rejecting the Son of God, they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame. (Hebrews 4:4-6, NLT)

This is a person who cannot be brought back to repentance, and so he (or she) must be made an example of to all would-be apostates. His death is judgement for unrighteousness. And moreover, his death is protection for others whose “heart of hearts” might be corrupted to their own damnation through the work of the apostate.

We no longer summarily execute apostates… at least not in the west. We are called to obey the laws of the land. Back in Moses’ day it was near anarchy. Small city-states were ruled with an iron fist and life was exceptionally hard. Again, no country in the western world operates as a Theocracy. But we can still apply these principles. How?

We need to keep those who are apostate at arm’s length. We cannot allow them to influence our “heart of hearts”. And, of course, we pray. We pray that even though we may not be able to win them back (as we read in Hebrews), there is nothing impossible for God. There are people I deeply care about who have turned their backs on God. And it is my sincere prayer that one day I will be standing side-by-side with them, arms raised in worship of our God again. Praise Jesus.

Deuteronomy 13:1-16:17 | 075/365

A Hostile Takeover of Your Heart

Deuteronomy 11:6 warns us not to let our hearts be deceived, be enticed to serve other gods. The heart always seems to be the vector of deception. Of course, when we think about the heart today we think of the emotional side of ourselves, but the original writers has a wider definition in mind. The word translated as “heart” literally means “inner man”. But we can safely understand it to mean “inner self” or “real you” or possibly even “heart of hearts”.

This is a place deep inside that is the core of us. The centre of who we are. Below all the surface niceties to the person that only God really knows. This is the ‘root’ of each of us. You allow something into this place, you are giving it power and authority. You are giving it a share of control. Anything that goes this deep has a seat at the table of you. Anything that is escorted into this place can make serious, sweeping, and significant changes.

When you ask Jesus into your heart? This is what is meant. Often as preachers we can make this an emotional decision because we don’t really dig into what the Bible means by “heart”. But the truth is that our invitation to Jesus is one that offers Him power, authority, and control over serious, sweeping, and significant changes. At least it is if we understand what we are offering.

But the more insidious participant in this type of scenario is a new member of Board of Governors of [your name here] who enters quietly without being explicitly invited. The guards and security measures around your heart just aren’t as sharp as they should be. Or maybe we are actually telling that guards not to bug this particular would-be participant.

And slowly this fellow, un-checked and un-guarded, takes up space at the table. He starts to make big changes. And before long, Jesus has been evicted from the board and you’re chasing after a new god. The god of self, or money, or prestige, or lust, or whatever. But that’s how it happens. Slowly, slowly, slowly. And like the frog boiling in the pot, we don’t realized what’s happening.

Until we’re cooked.

Guard your heart, friends. Guard your heart.

Deuteronomy 10-12 | 074/365

The Word of the Lord

Just a quick demo for today. The Lord tells us where His commands, His instructions, His words should be. This list is succinct and significant.

  1. In your heart — the heart is prone to deceit (Jer 17:9) and so God’s word must be used to guard the heart.
  2. Taught to the children — Raise up a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it (Pro 22:6). This is both an encouragement AND a grave warning. If God’s word is important, it must be given to the next generation so they are protected as we are.
  3. Be employed at home — We should centre our lives around God’s good word.
  4. Be employed away from home — A break from our houses doesn’t mean a break from the founding, grounding word of the Lord in our lives. We should not change from here to there, but be consistent in everything.
  5. Be considered at bedtime — We should end our days in God’s word and presence. Committing even our dreams to Him.
  6. Be considered upon waking — We should begin each new day with Him. It is a gift. A day He has made. Let’s rejoice and be glad in it!
  7. Be on our forearms — our hands are used to do whatever we work at, and our actions should be guided by God’s word.
  8. Be on our foreheads — each thought should be subject to God’s word. What is driving and motivating us?
  9. Be on our doorposts and gates — a callback to the passover. God’s word should be serving to protect our homes and families from God’s judgement.

If any of these areas are lacking, it is certainly worth shoring it up.

Deuteronomy 6-9 | 073/365

Old Testament Evangelism

The God of the Old Testament — Yahweh — is an angry, unloving tyrant of a deity. Full of wrath and judgement. But the God of the New Testament — Jesus — is a peaceful, hopeful, loving deity.

Balderdash! This sentiment is so rife among people who are only passingly familiar with the Bible (yes, this does indeed refer to some of my fellow Christians as well) that it is basically a cultural maxim at this point. But aside from the many stories of Jesus speaking harsh truths — and speaking the truth harshly1 — today’s passage highlights how the God of the Old Testament (who is the same God in the New Testament because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever) was also evangelistically minded. Even in the earliest incarnation of the Israelites, He wanted all the peoples of the world to see His goodness shining through His people. Just like he does today.

Deuteronomy 4:5-8 says:

5 Look! I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as the Lord my God told me to do, so that you might carry them out in the land you are about to enter and possess. 6 So be sure to do them, because this will testify of your wise understanding to the people who will learn of all these statutes and say, “Indeed, this great nation is a very wise people.” 7 In fact, what other great nation has a god so near to them like the Lord our God whenever we call on him? 8 And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this whole law that I am about to share with you today?

We know that since God began to give these laws He has consistently said that they are not only for the Israelites, but also for any foreigners living among them! Two prominent examples are both Rahab and Ruth; outsiders who joined themselves to the God of Abraham. And both of these outsiders just happened to join the lineage of Jesus Christ! God’s evangelistic heart on full display.

He wants us to obey His commands not merely because it will go well for us if we do, but ALSO because our obedience will set us apart. It will make us shine like Moses shone in a world of darkness. And the people who see us will recognize that we have wisdom and understanding2. And want what we have.

Let’s pray that God would help us to live lives that make other people want what we have.

Deuteronomy 3:21-5:33 | 072/365
  1. Jesus called people snakes, flipped tables, cursed a fig tree, literally called the Apostle Peter “Satan”. Hardly the granola-crunching hippie we paint Him to be. Jesus was a strong leader who was unafraid of upsetting people who should have known better! ↩︎
  2. 128k.ca/2024/01/26/the-physical-and-the-metaphysical/ ↩︎

We Left No Survivors

Deuteronomy 2:34 reads, “At that time we seized all his cities and put every one of them under divine judgment, including even the women and children; we left no survivors.”

It seems so shocking by today’s standards. God said to do what?! And why?! The questions seek no answer. They are rhetorical. And more than that, they are an open condemnation. A back-handed rebuke of God. A eyebrow-pumping, denunciation of His character.

We understand “God is Love” to mean that God is only love. Firstly, this is not true. But more than that, we misunderstand what love even means. Love is not unquestioning permission. Love is not a life without reproof or admonishment. When I was a child I got into some trouble with a friend of mine. My mother caught us. She tore a strip off of me, but didn’t say a single word about it to my friend. She escorted him home and I was serving my “sentence” for several days to come. I asked why she yelled at me but not at him.

I will never forget her response: “Because I don’t love him”

Love meant a justified anger and associated punishment for wrongdoing. It meant correction. Like Hamlet trying to dissuade his mother from consecrating a marriage to the evil Claudius by telling her hard truths. He summed up his position this way, “I must be cruel only to be kind.”

We assume that this earthly life is the best possible outcome. And that is understandable because it’s what we know. It makes sense to us. But that is precisely why — as I wrote a couple days ago — we must defer to God and ask Him to shift our perspective so we can see things like He does.

Pray for that perspective, friends.

Deuteronomy 1:1-3:11 | 071/365

Murder, Manslaughter, and Witnesses

It is interesting to me that God explicitly says that if someone murders another person. The definition of murder in the Bible is essentially the same one we use today. This is because the Bible is the basis for the Western justice system1. In this particular passage — Numbers 35 — we deal with the death of one person at the hands of another and how that is to be handled.

Someone could only be convicted of murder if there were at least two witnesses. No one dies on a he-said-she-said. And then, if someone was convicted of murder, the victim’s nearest relative would be responsible for carrying out the execution. And God was very clear, no murder can be allowed to live2.

But in the case of an accidental death, God gave the guilty (yes, they are still guilty, just not of murder) party the Cities of Refuge in which to flee. This is interesting to me. The Israelites do not have prisons per se, but God has created these sort-of minimum security towns where the guilty can serve out their “sentence”. Away from their tribe, their family, and their friends. They will live among the priests for a time. But with a very serious caveat. If they LEAVE the City of Refuge, they are now guilty of murder and are subject under the law to death.

God was deeply concerned with His people taking death seriously. We are made in the image of the almighty. We cannot allow ourselves to be flippant about this fact. Image-bearers of God should be respected and treated with all due care. What image-bearers do we not care about as a society? As individuals?

Numbers 34-36 | 070/365
  1. https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2541&context=lawreview ↩︎
  2. This would be vociferously attacked by some today. God is perfect and holy. Not capricious and random. We cannot out-justice, out-mercy, or out-love God. ↩︎

Splinters & Thorns

Today’s devotional is a quick one. While the desire of Reuben and Gad to settle OUTSIDE of the Promised Land is a curious one, what stood out to me the most from today’s reading is the final two verses. Numbers 33:55-56:

55 But if you fail to drive out the people who live in the land, those who remain will be like splinters in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will harass you in the land where you live. 56 And I will do to you what I had planned to do to them.”

God is warning the Israelites that if they do not do what they are told, to totally set themselves apart the influences of the surrounding culture will contaminate them. The Canaanites will be like splinters and thorns. Irritants that will prevent you from ever feeling comfortable and settled. They will cause peace to elude you.

I wonder if maybe we need to hear this today. Jesus called us to be in the world, but not of the world1. How much influence do we allow the world to have on us? We are called into the mission field of our nations, our cities, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces/schools, maybe even our homes. But in which direction is the influence flowing?

It may not seem like it, but this is a life-or-death question. Because if we do not set ourselves apart for God, but rather allow the influences of this world to rule us, change us, and conform us… then the judgement of God out of which we were asked to lead others will be visited upon us. When our hearts grow cold and far from God, He will have no choice but to turn us over to the fate we have chosen through our rejection of Him.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.

1 Corinthians 15:58
Numbers 32-33 | 069/365
  1. John 17:14-16 ↩︎

Submission to the Lord’s Judgement

God decides it is time to visit His judgement on the Midianites. The tribes of Israel each prepare 1000 fighting men. 12,000 in total. This is far less than the total fighting personnel available. And they easily defeat the Midianites. All 5 kings fall in the battle. A sobering reminder of what could have been in the promised land if the Israelites had trusted God as prompted by Caleb and Joshua.

But it gets interesting when the soldiers return with the women and children as prisoners, or servants, or whatever the law allowed. Moses and Eleazar were furious and told the soldiers to kill the boys and any non-virgin women. But why?

The women part is pretty simple: these were the women who tried to draw their hearts away from God. And He had already pronounced His judgement on them. They could not be spared. They played a crucial part in the idolatry of Israel.

But why the boys? Because the judgement was carried out on the Midianites. And in that culture the boys passed down the lineage. So as long as these boys lived, so too did the Midianites. They had to die for God’s judgement to be completed. On an apologetic note, it is worth mentioning that these boys could well have been very young. Under the age of accountability. If so, I think it is reasonable that God visited an earthly judgement upon them, but then received them to Himself. They might well be in Heaven and we might expect to be able to talk with them when we get there.

When event like this come up in the Bible we like to get outraged, furrow our brows and click our tongues and say (to ourselves or others)… God should have done [your idea here].

Remember that God has an eternal perspective and knows everything. In fact, He knows MORE than everything, He knows everything that would have been, had circumstances been different. He can account for any counterfactual you can imagine. The takeaway is this:

You can’t out-justice God. You can’t out-mercy God. You can’t out-love God. If you and He disagree, you are the one who is wrong.

Mar 10 | Num 30-31 | 068/365

Are Women Entitled to Anything?

Why do this trio of sisters have to go to nomadic Israel’s equivalent of the Supreme Court to get a ruling on whether or not they can have their father’s inheritance? When reading accounts like this it can be easy to wear our modern lenses and wonder what is wrong with these weird, backward, chauvinists! But the fact is that God is trying to communicate with these people in a language they understand. The idea of a “tradwife” has recently gained some favour in the popular culture. It is essentially an embracing of the “homemaker” role. This is a role that was the primary role of women for centuries. And it’s easy to see why1; women tend to be more interested in people, and men tend to be more interested in things2.

This really only started to shift as modern life was made easier through the use of appliances, amenities and inventions. The advent of the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher, the washing machine, indoor plumbing, and even the furnace have all made housekeeping some factor more streamlined than it was even 50 or 100 years ago, never mind 6000 years ago! The public school system only started in around 1600 and even then didn’t really gain mass tracking until some time in the 1800s.3 And even the advent of things like infant formula have given mothers the ability to be away from their children in a way that simply wasn’t feasible before. Add to that the invention of the birth control pill… and legal, on-demand abortion… and suddenly women had a level of control that they had never before known.

This is the world that we all know. And have know for the last 50+ years.

None of this was true back then. Couples had very little control over reproduction, children were taught and fed at home. Laundry would have been washed on rocks in running water. And keeping the home warm and the children safe meant someone had to be there to do those things. And this naturally fell to women who tend to be more disposed to childcare and so were home anyway. Men were out farming, and ranching, and killing things to eat. And as the workers, men were also expected to be the providers in a way that we tend not to expect in today’s dual-income families.

What does this have to do with today’s passage? Men were expected to provide. Be it father, husbands, or brothers. They were to take care of their families. So daughters would be taken care of by their husbands (and the inheritances of their husband’s fathers). Since men had an explicit duty to care for the women in their lives, the inheritances were given to them. But in this case there are unmarried, brother-less daughters and an inheritance to be given.

And the men in charge don’t know what to do about this. They can’t give this inheritance to… women!? Can they? The horror!

Here we see so clearly how God is trying to bring people along with a slow, steady, progressive revelation. He’s not tearing the whole system down, just redirecting the people’s effort toward something useful. Trying to help them understand Him using a framework they understand. He really is trying to be gracious. But ultimately God rules as we would today in our modern convenience culture. Of course the women can have their father’s inheritance. It is theirs.

So when you feel like God is being unfair toward women, remember that He is trying to bring change about in a hard-hearted people who can’t even stay faithful to the God who freed them from slavery. In some cases they can’t even stay faithful for 24 hours4!

Numbers 27-29 | 067/365

  1. I am not advocating for this role or position. I do not believe it is a necessary part of conservatism, nor do I believe that conservatism is the ideal socio-political position for the Christian to assume. Conservatism is only a good as what is trying to be conserved, and progressivism is only as bad as what it is trying to move toward. ↩︎
  2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19883140/ ↩︎
  3. 1800s in the US. It would take even longer than that in other parts of the world. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Elementary_school ↩︎
  4. Numbers 16:41 ↩︎

The Ultimate STD

Balaam refuses to curse Israel because the Lord is with them. All good, right? Well, Balaam is worried about them dolla-dolla bills, and they are on the line because he was unable to give the King of Moab what he was after. So he concocts a plot to draw the Israelites away from their God and — thus ‚ His protection (cf. Rev 2:14). His plan? To use the potent male libido against the Israelites. The King of Moab sent down women to seduce the Hebrew men and draw their hearts away from God.

Things get a little confusing here as the author doesn’t provide as many details as I would like to see attached to this story (unlike the census information in the following chapter, very robust and complete). So stick with me as I try to tease this out…

Some of the Israelites are engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with Moabites, Midianites, and other worshippers of Baal. This was… not great. So God tells Moses to round up the leaders who were sending their people astray. While there is some contention about what this word “leaders” means (some suggest “ringleaders”, others suggest that these are the leaders Moses appointed in Exodus 18:5 to watch over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens) but I favour the ringleader reading, only because it makes a clear differentiation between these leaders and the judges. So, Moses tells his judges (I think these are the men from Exodus 18:5) to gather up the ringleaders of this rebellion within their cohort of responsibility, kill them, and display their bodies before the people.

While that is happening, God has sent a plague to kill those who are engaging in ritual sexual intercourse and worship of the fertility god Baal. Hence the title of today’s devotional. One particularly egregious example of which is this fellow who take a Midianite girl right into his tent WHILE Moses and the leaders and discussing what needs to be done to address this situation. So Phinehas charges in and spears the guy — not like Goldberg, more like a javelin — and also the girl underneath him. They must have gotten right down to business. And with this decisive act, God was satisfied that the issue would be handled with due seriousness and decisiveness, so that he stopped the plague.

Of course, I also suspect that this was divine timing, because God’s plague had already done its work.

So what do we take from this?

I think we can see how rebellion tests leadership. How we (you, me, whoever) deal with open rebellion against the authority and responsibility God has given us will show what kind of leaders we are.

So grab your spears, people! Let’s go heresy-hunting! <- NO. DO NOT DO THAT.

But while I think the time for capital punishment has passed, we should still give rebellion its due weight. Do we stand by and allow things to occur right under our noses, or do we boldly step out and address it? Do we turn a blind eye to sin in the name of some misguided altruism, or are we willing to sacrifice a human relationship to preserve a divine one?

Satan wants to draw us away from God. It probably won’t be clear and obvious that he is doing so. Satan certainly will not be TELLING us that is his plan, but instead he is okay to play the long game and draw us away slowly. Don’t allow that to happen. Stand watch. Be on guard. Be prepared to fight. Keep your sword1 at the ready!

Numbers 25-26 | 066/365
  1. Sword of the Spirit, that is. ↩︎