fearnot
Living With Pain
Posts: 8,397 
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Post by fearnot on Jul 22, 2019 11:13:57 GMT -5
Hi Anna!!! Thank you for your contribution!
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Post by Cindy on Jul 22, 2019 11:54:03 GMT -5
That was soooo perfect in helping me understand!!!
That they choose to remain outside the promised land.....for material reasons. And the excuse about the alter being for questioning children, if they had cared sooo much about their children then they would have gone to the promised land.
oh I was so amazed at what you said about the Jordan amd mountains on each side ( I always thought of it running thru vast area of flat desert.....)
So I went and looked at photo images.....and Lo and Behold ( as if you were not LOL) You were right!!! :-)
How amazing, so different from my 'thinking'!!
Also:
“Peace at any price” isn’t God’s will for His people".
That was so helpful too....I was thinking:
yeah!!! war was averted....
but no....only delayed and made things in the end worse.
I guess, it was good they went to ask before shooting arrows....
Maybe, that holds true....
but
maybe not,
they knew the altar was against the Lord....they really really already knew that.
Thank you for telling me a bit about your own situation in the past. It is so easy for me to think at times that only I made such bad choices ( and I did do that.....bad choices full of sin).
so this sentence was also an eye opener!!!
"It was not his own badness but his father’s goodness that brought the prodigal son to repentance and then back home
Joshua 24
The Covenant Renewal at Shechem
Joshua reminds the people of the history of what God had done for the people.
How Abraham and Nahor worshiped idols, how he brought Abraham to land of Canaan,
blesses him with children and grandchildren etc. Israel's time in Egypt , God's miracles and bringing them out by Moses.
God gave them the land,
and these interesting but slightly mysterious words :
"And I sent the hornet before you"
Well hornets are sure scary and their sting is terrible.....
Then comes verse 13
"I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant."
I can see how some unbeliever might point to this verse ( missing the point entirely)
and say
see....the Jews are usurpers.....the land was not theirs!!
Ummmm well no land anywhere is anybody's.....the earth and universe, is God's. He is the owner and he can choose to give whatever portion he wants to whomever He wants, for as long as he wants.
One of the points point is....they did not have to labor....it was a gift.
I have a feeling you might even have a few deeper meanings as well?
Then we come to a 'famous' verse quoted in this section
Choose Whom You Will Serve
15 And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.
But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
The people say that they will serve the Lord
But Joshua replies:
“You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God.
He is a jealous God; he will not forgive your transgressions or your sins.
20 If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.”
And in fact, in our own strength we cannot really serve the Lord ( we tend to always serve ourselves.....unless we are born again, and even then we don't always serve the Lord but rather self.
But they insist
So Joshua tells them: “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you
Wait....what? They still had foreign gods among them? Is he saying they still have idols? or is he talking about the people around them and 'their' idols?
Anyway the sad thing is this zeal to serve God only lasted a generation or so, at best.
I guess the miracle is our country kind of 'served' the Lord as long as it did.
It's hard to see how fast it is slipping into terrible idolatry, witchcraft, etc etc.
I sometimes feel as my part in the slippage was bigger than I thought at the time ( and I thought absolutely zero about it).
But I must have affected people who affected people and so on, with my hippie dippy life style of drugs, 'free love', rebellion, anything ....but...Christianity and so on.
Then Joshua dies.
On verse 13, you're correct about what the Lord was doing. He was once again, for the millionth time, reminding them of all He'd done for them, and that they hadn't earned any of it. This is the lesson for us as well. In addition we should also "remember" what the Lord has done for us. God Himself, as well as through Moses and Joshua so far, and later through others, including Jesus and the apostles, is constantly reminding us to "remember" what He's done for us, and that we haven't earned any of it. That tells us too that we should often take time to literally remember the many things He's done for us, starting with our Salvation and going from there.
Yes, many of the people were still secretly worshiping other gods as well.
Yes, their faithfulness to God only lasted one generation, which doesn't sound like much, but in reality, even that is pretty rare. So many souls were added to the kingdom during that generation!
Yes, you're very right that each of our sins, big ones and even little ones, affect many more people then just ourselves. We'll never know on this earth just how many were influenced by our words or actions, but the Bible tells us that many are daily affected by us whether we realize it or not. That's why it's so important that people see us putting God first in all areas of our life. We don't need to be perfect, and we can't be; but we do need to confess to others when we've sinned and let them know we've repented. That way our sin won't affect them negatively but instead will affect them positively for the Lord. Like the time I swore at a membership meeting for our park. I felt awful afterward and publicly asked their forgiveness for swearing. I know for a fact that they all remember it to this day. But now instead of thinking, "Cindy swore so it must be ok", now they think, "Cindy never swears except for that one time and she actually asked for forgiveness not just said she was "sorry". It must be really wrong to swear!"
yes, Joshua died at 110 and was honored by being called "the servant of the Lord".This is from a Bible companion book that I have.
The purpose of Joshua is summarized in 21:43-45, where it tells how God kept his covenant promise to give the land to Israel.
The book recounts God's bringing Israel into the land (chs. 1-5), giving the Israelites victory over the inhabitants of the land (chs. 6-12), and distributing the land among the clans for settlement (chs. 13-22). This is how the land takes on a sacred identity, it's possession is seen as the covenant gift of God, though ultimately it still remains God's land.
The book concludes with a renewal of the covenant (chs. 23-24) as the people publicly and formally acknowledge that God has fulfilled his promises and that they are indebted to him, obliged by covenant to be faithful. The book highlights God's side of the covenant. It shows that God is serious about punishing those deserving of judgement. This is true whether the offenders are Cannanites or Israelites who violate God's commands (ch. 7) Hi Anna!!! Thank you for your contribution!  Barbara, I started a new thread for Haggai with your posts. From now on, if you start a new book, please start a new thread with it if I haven't done so already, ok? |
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Barbara, I started a new thread for Haggai with your posts. From now on, if you start a new book, please start a new thread with it if I haven't done so already, ok? 
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