- Weekend: Deuteronomy 26 - 29
- Monday: Deuteronomy 30 - 32
- Tuesday: Deuteronomy 33 - 34
- Wednesday: Joshua 1 - 5
- Thursday: Joshua 6 - 8
- Friday: Joshua 9 - 12
Deuteronomy closes with a series of blessings and curses, which anticipate the unfolding history of God’s people – from the conquest of the land of Canaan…to the scattering of Israel among the nations in the wake of the people’s rebellion…to the restoration of God’s remnant people after Babylonian captivity. The first twelve chapters of Joshua record Israel’s “moving in.”
Throughout the week, you will encounter a number of stories that underscore the need to trust and obey. Enjoy!
Well, I knew this part of the Story was coming. In fact, Chuck even warned us about it in an earlier comment. The Holy Destruction. I trust God, I do, but was there really no one who could be left alive from all those people? No one who, in their heart, worshiped the true God and not the false gods of their city?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, this is a strong lesson on how intolerant God is of sin in my life. Thanks be to God that sin does not have to lead to death anymore, but that through Jesus I can be forgiven.
I tend to think the way CS Lewis does in the Narnia book "The Last Battle". In the end of that book, people are thrown through the stable door and judged. The true believers go with Aslan, the false believers are eaten by Tash and the unbelievers think they are in a stable. The true believers are surprised to find a devout worshiper of Tash with them. The idea is that somehow the worshiper of the false god, worshiped the true God without knowing it. Clearly, there are some problems with this thinking, but something about it resonates with me and the stories of the taking of the land. I always hope for mercy. I always hope people will choose rightly. I always hope that a good heart is rewarded. It just seems unbelievable that there were no good hearts in all the promised land that could be saved.
Thanks for your comment, Steve. I appreciate your heart for the lost! I agree that the whole story of entering the Promised land sounds pretty harsh, but over time I have come to see God's mercy all over it. Already in Genesis 15 verse 16 we see God telling Abraham: "Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete". In other words: God purposely waited with the Exodus of Israel until He could no longer stand the sin of the people of Canaan, which tell us there was not a whole lot of righteousness left in that land.
ReplyDeleteStill, God does remember the good hearts in the Promised Land. You say there were no good hearts in all the promised land, but actually, in the first conquest of the land, the city of Jericho, we find Rachab the harlot. God in His mercy spares her life, and that of her entire family, because she did have a good heart! Not just that, later we find that Rachab marries Salmon, and they get a son named Boaz, who becomes the great-grandfather of David, the ancestor of Jesus. How cool is that! A non-Israelite prostitute from the Promised Land ends up in the ancestry of Jesus. Talk about God's unimaginable mercy...