Fri 6.5 - Self Illustrated, part 2

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.5-9; Judges 1-2

Yesterday we went over Part 1 of this devotion, please make sure to reference it again before completing today’s in order to understand it properly…

LASTLY, FOR THE ILLUSTRATION ITSELF…

• Check out Judges 1.21-36. What is happening there is the Children of Israel do what seems to be the “Christian” thing to do. Rather than killing everyone, they show MERCY – God is a God of Mercy right??? So surely this was the RIGHT thing for them to do, it may have even felt RIGHT. However, What they were doing was MAKING A DEAL WITH THE ENEMY OF GOD. When they didn’t completely kill all of God’s enemies, they were disobeying! They were YIELDING to the very enemy of GOD (Romans 6.12-13)!!!
• Now, remember what it was that happens is NOT that they went out and joined up with the enemy of God. They didn’t change uniforms, join the other army, or strip the Israelite crest off of their battle gear…they simply allowed the inhabitants to beg for mercy, and made a deal with them – and that SIMPLE LITTLE MOVE cost them for GENERATIONS AND GENERATIONS TO THIS VERY DAY!
• It is interesting the reasoning behind their allowing them to live…that which represented the flesh (the inhabitants of the land) were allowed to remain in the land, and live, because the Israelites made two mistakes… (look at Judges 1.22)
  • THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE STRONG ENOUGH TO HANDLE IT. When we are having a spiritual growth spurt, we are likely to get big-headed about how much we can handle. When we used to run from the very presence of a dirty movie, now we think to ourselves, well, I can handle this…and we watch… allowing those inhabitants to remain….wow, how DECEITFUL ARE THOSE LUSTS!
  • THEY PUT THE INHABITANTS TO TRIBUTE. They took that which represented the FLESH and put it in tribute to THEIR FLESH. They were not letting these people remain alive because they wanted to be “good” folks, it was because they wanted to be wealthy folks. They wanted the TRIBUTE money – In scripture, that basically means they became the indentured servants of the children of Israel…they would work and the Israelites would get all of the income in exchange for not killing them.
• Please hear this – we do the same thing!!!! We will see some part of our flesh, and see the “good” that it can do, and we make a deal to allow it to remain so that we can put that part of us into TRIBUTE to please our flesh. We may know that cutting people down at the lunch table is wrong…but we see that it brings us popularity…comfort…social acceptance…so rather than kill it, we make a deal with it, we will let it remain, as long as it is benefiting us somehow…and we may even do it in some new SPIRITUALIZED way…like adding a phrase “bless his heart” or “I’m just kidding” after each SLANDEROUS AND HURTFUL REMARK. That’s how we are.
• This danger is not simply that we would use things of our flesh to our own benefit, but also that we would use them in the service of God. You better believe those Israelites excused their behavior because these servants were giving them the money, supplies, and resources they needed to build the temple of God. BUT, Never loose sight of the fact that God said He ABHORRED those things because of where they came from! – GOD NEVER HAS AND NEVER WILL WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH OUR FLESH! ESPECIALLY IF WE ARE TRYING TO USE IT IN SERVICE TO HIM!!!!

Oh God, please forgive me for all the times I have approached worshipping you through the flesh. I am so remorseful for every time that I have brought you offerings of my flesh and not of my own death so that your Spirit may live in me. Lord Jesus, I ask you today to strengthen me to mortify my flesh that You may life in me. I realize that I cannot make any deals with this flesh, I cannot allow it to keep any ground, or show it any mercy because it will draw me away from you every time. God, I yearn for you today, may you be alive in and through me today in a new way, fully, wholly, completely yours today! Amen.

Thu 6.4 – Self Illustrated

Today’s Readings: Colossians 3.5-9; Judges 1-2

I want to take up our Devotions today right where we left off last night. We were crunched for time, so I just want to take time to expound on what God was teaching us in the ILLUSTRATION about the Flesh from the story of the Children of Israel in Judges. (guys, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to check out the verse references to understand the strength of these passages of scripture as we spend time in the Word today.)

A COUPLE THINGS YOU NEED TO KEEP IN MIND FOR THIS…

• Don’t forget that the land of Cannan (the promised land) is a picture of the Abundant Christian Life. We see that by comparing Exo 3.8 & John 10.10 – God did not bring the children of Israel out of Egypt just to bring them out…it was to bring then INTO the promised land, where He was going to dwell with them! In the same way God didn’t bring us out of the bondage of Sin and the World (Egypt) just to save us, but to bring us INTO an ABUNDANT LIFE in the place where He wants to DWELL WITH US!
• Don’t forget that the ENEMY OF GOD in this situation is the inhabitants of the land, those who currently control the ground where God wants to dwell with His people. This is a picture of how our FLESH is currently on the throne of our lives (Eph 4.22) and is thus the enemy of God (Gal 5.17), and the earthly ways of the flesh are what we will have to battle as the Israelites had to battle those who were already dwelling in the land of God.

NOW FOR THE BACKGROUND OF THE ILLUSTRATION…

• We noticed last night in Exo 23.27-32 that God said NOT to allow anyone to remain alive when they come into the promised land. He said for the children of God to DESTROY everyone when they get in there.
  • The same principal is true as we conquer this ground (our bodies – 2 Cor 5.1 & Gen 2.7), we must COMPLETELY DESTROY all of it’s NATURAL inhabitants – that is LUSTS! (Eph 2.3)
• Then, we saw that in Deut 7.1-10, God specifically repeats the instruction RIGHT BEFORE THEY BEGIN TO TAKE OVER THE PROMISED LAND, and in this passage He specifically says to SHOW NO MERCY to the inhabitants. People would surely be begging for their lives, trying to make deals with the Israelites and bargaining with them for survival.
  • Again, the principal repeats itself with the life of the believer – as we begin to realize and live in the PUTTING OFF of our flesh, and we begin to KILL it (MORTIFY OUR MEMBERS)what is going to happen is that our members are going to BEG, PLEAD, BARGAIN, and try to make DEALS with our Spiritual self in order to SURVIVE! And THAT is NOT what God said to do with the inhabitants of the LAND! This is where we run the risk of becoming PARTIALLY OBEDIENT, and thus DISOBEDIENT.
• And Lastly we saw from Psalm 106.34-40 that God said He ABHORRED the people who disobeyed His command, and did not completely wipe out the inhabitants of the land (our flesh).
  • Now, the reason for such strong language is because when they allowed the inhabitants of the land to remain, those inhabitants kept their false Gods with them…then they eventually bled those false systems of worship into the TRUE WORSHIP of THE TRUE GOD and thus led God’s people AWAY from HIM – Those inhabitants used DIECETFUL LUSTS to draw God’s people away from HIM, the very One who SAVED them out of EGYPT (SIN) to BE WITH HIM!!! No wonder he ABHORRED it. (I encourage you to look that word up on dictionary.com if you are not familiar with it’s meaning…and remember this is GOD who feels this way!!! WOW – so humbling.)

Spend some time dwelling on that today…then tomorrow we will pick up right here and keep going. So, tomorrow you will need to reference back to today’s devotion so that some of the things will make sense…

Pray that God will open your eyes to see wondrous things today from His Word (Ps 119.18), that He will give you strength and power to completely mortify your flesh as you go throughout this day! And I’ll see you here, tomorrow.