FBC Daily Devotional – July 27, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Tuesday morning to you. I hope your day is getting off to a good start, and I do pray that these thoughts from God's Word will help us to do just that.

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And today we're reading in Joshua chapter 9, and you know, I've read this passage many, many times, and I'm probably like you, you know, my default is to read the passage and to kind of shake my head a little bit, tsk -tsk at Joshua, saying, man, you should have known better.

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Here's the story. The Israelites have been victorious in battle.

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They've defeated Jericho. They've defeated Ai, and the word is getting around that the

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Israelites are a force to be reckoned with. And the Gibeonites, who dwell in the land, they are very shrewd.

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They figure out, you know, the key to our survival is getting these people, the

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Israelites, to make peace with us. So they devise this plan of pretending like they've made a great long journey.

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They send some emissaries, some delegates, and they pretend like they've gone on a long journey to get to where the

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Israelite encampment is, you know, out of the land of Canaan. And so that's what they do.

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They show up, these delegates show up, present themselves to Joshua and the elders, say, you know, we're from a far country.

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We want to make a peace treaty with you. And Joshua wisely says, well, where are you from?

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Where are you from? And the reason he asks that is, you know, God had commanded the Israelites, don't make any peace treaties with anybody in the land of Canaan.

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You're supposed to take over that land because the Canaanites have become so evil.

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You are the force of judgment in my hand, basically the Lord said. So don't make any peace treaties with anybody in the land of Canaan.

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Well, the Gibeonites, of course, were in the land of Canaan, and Joshua wanted to make sure they weren't. So he says, where are you from?

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We're from a far away land. Look at the food that we have, what provisions we have left.

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You know, our bread's old, moldy and crusty. It's no good, it's junk. It was fresh, right out of the oven when we left home.

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And look at our clothes, they're all ragged and everything. They were new and fresh and so forth when we left home.

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Man, they're a mess now. So we read in verse 15, you know, verse 14, men of Israel took some of their provisions.

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Verse 15, Joshua made peace with them and made a covenant with them to let them live.

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And the rulers of the congregation swore to them, they promised them, we won't harm you. But this was a bad decision.

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It was a failure on the part of Joshua and the leaders. And the indication of the failure is at the end of verse 14.

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Remember, first part of the verse says, the men of Israel took some of their provisions, but then the last part of the verse says, but they did not ask counsel of the

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Lord. There was the mistake. There was the mistake. Now, it's really easy to armchair quarterback, isn't it?

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It's really easy to read through these accounts of Bible characters and be pretty critical.

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You know, so why didn't they, why didn't they ask counsel of the Lord? Why didn't they go and pray to the

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Lord? Why did they rely upon their own instincts and reasoning and, you know, have kind of a look down upon them attitude?

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But let's be careful about that because after all, how many times have you and I done the very same thing?

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I know I have. There've been plenty of times, more times than I would care to admit in my life and experience where I saw an opportunity.

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It looked like a good one. It looked reasonable. It looked beneficial and it's okay.

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I'm going to go that route. Let me give you an example. The first new car I bought, what a stupid mistake that was.

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We had a car. It was, you know, good, well -functioning car, but a friend of mine had just bought a brand new

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Pontiac T1000. This is back in 1980, I believe it was.

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A Pontiac T1000. Now, if you don't know what a Pontiac T1000 is, it was the upscale version of a

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Chevy Chevette. If you don't know what a Chevette is, okay, you're young.

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But anyway, it's a small little car. Two bucket seats in the front, a couple of seats in the back.

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I mean, it was nothing fancy by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a new car. So my friend tells me, oh man,

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I got this great deal. You know, you got to get one of these things, blah, blah, blah. So I went down to the dealership and I looked over one of these.

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It was a pretty color, nice interior, and price was good.

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Had our car, had us trade. Said, well, we need to trade this in. Need to get this much money for it, blah, blah, blah.

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And the guy says, okay, see what we can do. Of course, you know how that goes.

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Comes back, yeah, we can do it. I said, but there's one little hitch here. This car doesn't have air conditioner, air conditioning.

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We were in South Carolina. It didn't have air conditioning and it was stick shift. My wife never drove stick shift in her life.

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She did not drive a stick shift. But anyway, overlooked that. I figured, hey, she can learn.

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There's the reasoning part again. And it didn't have air conditioning. So I said to the salesman, I said, well, we've got to have factory air in this vehicle.

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Got to have factory air. He says, okay, we'll put in the factory air for you and just be a few hundred bucks more.

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I said, okay. So looked at it, looked at it, looked at it, thought about it, thought about it, thought about it.

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Okay, let's do it. Signed on the paper, signed on the dotted line. Let's do it. Make the trade, have the car, schedule appointment the next day to get the factory air put in and take the car in to get it done.

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They give us a loan and we come back later to pick up the new car with the factory air installed.

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And they installed this dumb external AC unit under the dash of the car.

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And I said, what in the world is this? That's not what I wanted. I wanted, oh, well, we, you can't install air conditioning in a car after, after it's been built, like it's built in a factory.

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We have to install one of these kinds of things. And I said, you didn't tell me that.

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I wanted factory air. And you didn't tell me that. I, if I, you had told me this was what I was going to get, I would not have purchased this car.

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Well, too late, too late. It was my car. I have nothing to do it.

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I already signed on the dotted line and all the rest of that kind of stuff. At least I didn't think there was anything I could do. Maybe I could have, but here's the deal.

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I never once said, Lord, should I do this? Would this be a wise thing to do?

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I know you're pretty critical of me for that. I understand. And I'm critical of myself for it too, but you've done the same thing.

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We've all done the same thing. And you can look back over decisions that you've made where instinct said, go for it.

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The way things appeared, looked like a good thing to do. And you went ahead and did it. And later, maybe a couple of days, maybe a couple of months, maybe a few years, you regretted it because you didn't ask counsel of the

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Lord. So rather than bash Joshua, let's learn from his mistakes.

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Let's be a little more careful and cautious and consistent when we have decisions to make to ask counsel of the

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Lord. Father, I pray today, help us to be wise and wisdom will come in seeking your face and asking for your advice, asking for your counsel, and you will be faithful to provide.

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We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. Have a good rest of your Tuesday. God bless you.