As we talked about this the kids colored this map I found of the 12 tribes land. They had two colors, blue for success, red for failure.
Now, you ask why do I care if they took their land all of those years ago?
I’m glad you asked.
1. God told them to drive out all of the people in the land because they were being punished for what they were doing. The people in the land were offering their children as sacrifices, they were living in sin. Israel was to be God’s judgement.
2. God knew if the people stayed there it would be a temptation to do what they were doing. This leads to number 3.
3. Because the people were still there the Israelites started to worship their Gods. This affected the entire Old Testament. The rest of the book of Judges is about their failure. 1 and 2 Samuel is affected by their failure, the people in iron chariots Judah failed to defeat, those are the Philistines that David fights. They pop up in every book for the rest of the Old Testament.
How does this affect us personally, though? Sure, it makes sense historically.
Have you ever realized there was a sin in your life you needed to get rid of? Did you get rid of it completely? Or did you leave that one small thing? And did you slowly notice that one small thing becoming bigger and bigger again until it was a problem?
Why are these two so important? Who cares that Achsah married Othniel?
Have you ever thought about who your kids will marry? Caleb did. He wanted his daughter to marry someone who would fight for what God wanted, so he made sure that happened.
Do your kids ever ask you for something? Achsah asked Caleb for some springs, not only did he give her what she asked for, he gave her more than she asked for. God is like that. We ask for so little, but He gives us so much more than we ask for. Read Matthew 7:10 to back this up.
When you read these stories don’t just look for a fun adventure, look to see how does this affect me?
No comments:
Post a Comment