A tricky bunch these were.
Not much for fighting but plenty good at furtiveness. Not skilled in soldiering but talented in
shiftiness. They were poor in combat but
strong in craftiness. “We can’t whip this bunch”, they said, “So we
will have to outsmart them”.
They put on old cloths, old shoes, took molded bread and
worn out wine skins. To the casual
observer they looked as if they had traveled for many miles and for a very long
time. They came to Joshua and The
Children of Israel and requested a treaty.
You will recall that treaties were not a part of God’s plan
for the Promised Land. God said wipe them all out. Take out the sinfulness of
the land. Don’t accept them into your
society. Don’t allow them to be a part
of your lives. So, this should have been
an open and shut case….but it didn’t exactly turn out that way.
Joshua and his people actually thought something might be
up. They questioned these dusty, crusty,
pilgrims. They presented a lot of “what
if’s”. But left out one tiny little
detail in their interrogation, they forgot to talk to God about it.
A simple prayer, going to the Father and asking directions
would have been all it would have taken to get to the bottom of this
dilemma. You remember that God had a specific,
detailed plan for this group of would-be warriors. Without a doubt, it was God’s way or the
highway. One would think that going to
Him would have been the first thing that would have crossed their minds. But it wasn’t.
So they made a treaty with the Gibeonites. And later, when they did learn the truth, it
was too late to change.
Wow, aren’t we cut from the same cloth? It is just as easy for us to go to God with
our problems and concerns and questions as it was for Joshua. I heard a song not long ago by the
Collingsworth Family, entitled “If it
matters to you, it matters to the Master”.
It reminds us that the things that are important in our lives are of
concern to God and He will help us figure it out.
He has a plan for us.
He has a marked out map. He has a planned proposal. If we follow His plan, He will bless us and
lead us. But if we deviate from that design,
He is gentleman enough; He loves us enough, to let us make our own choices.
I am reminded of the wise council of a little old lady who
ran a filling station near our home in North Chilton. My Dad stopped in there one day to buy gas
for his truck. He apparently seemed down
and the little lady picked up on his state of mind. She asked what was making him so glum and he
told her of the bad day that he was having.
“Sometimes”, she
said, “God just lets us go our own way
and make our own choices so we can see what a mess our lives would be without
Him.”
If Joshua would have talked to this little lady, he may have
been a lot quicker about asking for instructions. Because by allowing this group of people into
their ranks they allowed ideas, and ways of life and strange gods that were
foreign and adverse to the way God was trying to fashion them. They polluted the waters of God’s holiness.
I really don’t have to ask, but I will. Do you have questions that arise in your
life? Of course you do. Will you learn a lesson from Joshua about
talking to God first?
When I had an office
and a desk, I had a little saying put on a sign that sat on my desk. It simply said “HAVE YOU PRAYED ABOUT
IT?” I bet Joshua wished a thousand
times that he had a sign like that to remind him.
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