Canaan

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:

⁵⁵But 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. ⁵⁶And 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

John 17:14-16 ↩︎

Whose Will Be Done?

“I admit the deed! — tear up the planks! — here, here! — it is the beating of his hideous heart!” The satisfying release can almost be felt as we reading the thrilling conclusion of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’. It is the story of a man whose guilt consumes him, until he can do nothing other than admit the deed. His conscience haunted him. It is a similar condition in which we find Joseph’s brothers during today’s reading.

They are struck by the famine Joseph predicted, and so make the trek to Egypt where food has been stored for exactly this occasion. Joseph’s Brothers bring money to Egypt to purchase food as their own supplies have nearly run out. They do not recognize Joseph when they come before him to request to purchase food. Joseph questions the brothers extensively before telling them that unless they bring their youngest brother, they’ll not be allowed to purchase any additional food. So they pay for their portion and head back to Canaan.

Along the way, they find that they have not only the food they purchased, but also the money paid in their bags. A secret blessing from Joseph. But they cannot even receive the blessing, they were still, after all these years, consumed with guilt about what they had done to their brother. It is a curse! they thought, God was surely punishing them. They could never go back.

But eventually they were forced to return. Now we pull God’s careful positioning of Joseph back out of the pocket from yesterday. Because it was during this trip that Jacob revealed himself saying, “God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors” (Gen 45:7, NLT). Does this mean that God orchestrates evil events to bring about good? Some faithful Christians would say that He does. But I would say that God, in His omniscience, knows what each of us would do in any given circumstance and that He factored in the evil free-will choices of mankind when he providentially arranged the world.

Is it good that you did a bad thing because it achieved God’s Will? No. But God’s Will cannot be defeated by the works of mankind either. His Will be done. Amen.

Genesis 42:1-45:15 | 016/365

Abandoned by God?

A Wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to. This famous line by Gandalf the Grey introduces us to the character and sets a tone for how we see him, and how he sees himself. It is no secret that J.R.R. Tolkien was a Christian and close friend of C.S. Lewis. And we can see reflections of Christian thoughts about good and evil and temptation and the darkness inside of us strewn throughout Middle Earth.

This line in particular is one that always stuck me as true of God. In particular His providential plans. Nothing happens before it’s time. God told Abraham the land of Canaan would be his… in 400 years. Because the Canaanites had not yet become lost to their own wickedness. God tells David a King will come from His line whose Kingdom will last forever. Again, it would be about 400 years before Jesus would be born to fulfill that promise. We see such things over and over again throughout the Bible.

Today’s story is no different, even if the timeline is substantially shorter. Joseph uses his God-given gift of dream interpretation to help out fellow prisoners who were from Pharaoh’s house. Joseph asks the cup-bearer to plead his case to Pharaoh on his behalf, that Joseph might be released to go home to his family. The cup-bearer agreed, then promptly forgot.

But God had other plans for Joseph. Some time later Pharaoh had a dream that he wanted interpreted. NOW the cup-bearer remembers Joseph and tells Pharaoh. Upon correctly interpreting Pharaoh’s dream and warning him about an impending famine, Joseph is hastily foisted into command of all of Egypt under only Pharaoh himself. This position would benefit not only Jospeh, but also his family in a powerful way. But for now we’ll stick that in our pocket, ’cause we’ll come back to it later.

This point is this: I don’t know why you are going through what you are going through. I don’t know why it’s hard for you right now. But, just as Hagar said, the Lord is “El Roi”, the God who sees you. You have not been abandoned, there is something coming. Because the Lord is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.

Genesis 35:38-39, 40:1-41:57 | 015/365

Ashes to Ashes and Dust to Dust

Immediately after Jacob returns home and he and Esau bury their father, Isaac, Esau moves his household out of the land because, basically, this town ain’t big enough for the two of us. He settles outside Canaan in Edom. They appointed kings and traded with Egypt, and eventually warred with Israel. How does Esau go so far wrong?

He showed no respect for his birthright, giving it away from some stew. This flippant, careless attitude would have reflected very poorly on him, and likely affected how his family, friends, and possibly even the wider community saw him.

Then he is cheated out of his Father’s blessing by his brother and his mother. It is possible that Rebekah was worried that Esau would treat his father’s blessing with the same contempt as his birthright, and thus sought to put it on the son who appreciated it’s value.

Possibly Esau was scarred by his own regrets and the actions of his family against him, and as a final act of breaking from both his family and the God of his ancestors, Esau leaves the promised land.

And so Esau’s rejection of his family and of God is complete. He will be a ‘self-made man’. And he flourishes into a small, semi-nomadic kingdom that would trade with Egypt and flourish under the Persians…

But eventually the Prophets Jeremiah, Obadiah, and Malachi would all pronounce God’s judgement on Edom. They were wiped off the face of the earth, and until 2021 they were totally absent from the archaeological record.

You can go it on your own. And you might even be quite successful at it. But as God tells Adam in Genesis 3:19, “for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” When this life is over the self-made men and women will return to the ground from which they came and then stand before the judgement throne of God. All their hard work and determination will counted for nothing and their death will be eternal.

Let us appreciate the gifts that God has given. Recognize them for what they are. Cherish them and keep them close to our hearts. In that was we can build something of value that lasts forever.

Genesis 36; 1 Chronicles 1:35-54, 2:1-2 | 013/365

Don’t Do God’s Job

God made two promises to Abraham. The first, that his descendants would out number the stars in the sky. The second, that he would be given the land of the Canaanites to possess. Abraham and Sarah wanted a son so badly they could almost taste it. So when God promised them that they would get a son, they took things into their own hands to see how they could “help“ God achieve this goal. Their attempt to aid God led to problems in their marriage, problems in their household, and strife between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac. No such attempt was made to prematurely take the land of Canaan by Abraham and Sarah.

If we believe God is leading us into something that we already want, the temptation is significant to try and “make it happen”, but this is more likely to mess things up than bring them into fruition. If we want to see God work, we should let God work. We don’t step in and say “thanks God, I’ll take it from here”. In 1 Corinthians 4:7 Paul says, “What do you have that you did not receive?”, he recognizes that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father (James 1:7, paraphrased).

Don’t do God’s job. You’ll be bad at it.

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