Judges

Listen to today’s reading:

Judges 3:7

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

Psalm 77:11

I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.

John 14:26

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

Today’s Reading:

As a hitter, you might be conflicted when you’re asked to play a round of golf. The big question is, “will it ruin my swing?” That’s a valid question. The two swings are on two completely different planes, hitting two different balls, using two different ‘clubs,’ and in general, have two different approaches. For athletes, the problem probably isn’t with golf though. There’s a ton of guys that play both sports with no visible influence on their playing ability in baseball. There is another problem here for the baseball player most likely. It should be obvious that if you continue to play golf, then there is a chance that you could be spending less time on baseball practice – which is time dedicated to creating new muscle memory – time improving and maintaining your baseball skill. The good thing is, with athletic ability, if you quit playing baseball and play golf, with a little time and effort, it’s like riding a bike – you’re back in the game. You’d be a lot less likely to play golf if you knew there was no turning back to baseball. What if you could completely lose the ability to play your first love? For the Israelites, as they reached the promise land under Joshua, until Joshua was one hundred and ten years old and died, the Bible says “the people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua.” As far as we know, they were doing great and better than ever. It wasn’t too long though until the Israelites “served the Baals and the Asherahs (foreign gods)” and “forgot the Lord their God.” Spiritual things are not like a muscle memory. We see in the entirety of the Book of Judges that the Lord would totally take his Spirit away from the Israelites when they started to dabble and devote themselves to other things. The book of Judges proves our total inability without God. Time and time again through the book of Judges, the Israelites forgot God, and God raised up a judge (or deliverer). They came back to him through the work of this deliverer and prospered in the land for a while before falling away again and again. In the Old Testament, God is constantly telling the Israelites to remember what he’s done for them, and they constantly forget and “do what’s right in their own eyes.” Thank God we’re not in an endless up and down relationship with him any longer. There is another work of the Spirit that we don’t often think or talk about as Christians. Jesus says in John 14:26 that the Spirit helps us remember all that he says. That is huge. This surely is a promise to individuals, yes, but it is also a promise collectively to his people even more so. In the world where our faith-community seems to constantly be at war with the world on stuff like validity of scripture (even though personally and as a ministry we believe in the complete inerrancy of God’s word, affirmed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17) it is assuring that Jesus’s words will never pass away, even if someone could take away every Bible and delete every Bible app in the whole world (Matthew 24:35). Before Jesus, our forgetfulness was an enemy that seemed to rival all evil. It seems like forgetfulness was a main proponent in Israel’s cyclical demise. Conversely, through years and years of our forgetfulness of him, the Lord remembered his covenant with man and sent his Son. We can trust that his Spirit will continue to be with his people and remind us exactly what we need to know through the ages to come. What a relief and promise by Jesus!

Today’s Prayer Guide:

Praise – Praise God for never forgetting his promises to us and the mystery of creating a people that will remember his words. 

Confession – Confess your willfulness to forget God.

Ask – Ask God to help you remember the words of Jesus – which is everything that Paul tells us to recall in Philippians 4:8. Ask him to help you remember and meditate on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable.”