May 13, 2025
Please use the comment section on this page to share insights from today’s reading OR your own personal Bible reading.
Reading along with us in Judges and Titus? Here’s today’s reading:
Judges 1 (NIV)
Israel Fights the Remaining Canaanites
1 After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who of us is to go up first to fight against the Canaanites?”
2 The Lord answered, “Judah shall go up; I have given the land into their hands.”
3 The men of Judah then said to the Simeonites their fellow Israelites,……Continue Reading
Judges 1
The reality of our Christian life is that, like it or not, we are in spiritual battle at all times. The good news is that we have the victory in those battles when we fight with God, however, we can not become complacent and lazy and settle for partial victories. We can not allow for accomodations with the devil. We can not afford to leave things in our lives that can lead to our destruction just because they do not seem like a problem right now. The Israelites are showing us the importance of full obedience and surrender to the will of God as they fail to fully engage and drive out all the Canaanites and we see how as one tribe gave up, how easy it was for others to do the same. Leaving sin unchecked in our lives is a slippery slope that eventually permeates into other areas.
Judges 1
I was struck by some of the tribes driving out the Canaanites and putting them to the sword as God enabled and willed and how some tribes just put them to forced labor. I wonder how justified these tribes thought, well at least we are subjecting them to forced labor? It represents the tendency we all have to fight a little, but leave room for sin and evil to stick around. We can point to the success we have had, but is it ultimate success the way God would want it to be? I couldn’t help but think that all these tribes who faltered had been promised to have God with them and as they followed and trusted in Him, He would provide the victory. So there must have been something lacking in their faith, courage or will to keep them from doing what God wanted them to do. It sounds familiar,but may we do better.
Judges 1
Judges 1
Judges 1
Need a movie at this point to help me understand All of what’s going on. Certainly seems Israel is in desperate need of a leader as Moses and Joshua were. As the land has been divided up by the 12 tribes and each king is doing as he sees fit. Been a part of 2 churches in the past 40 years that collapsed because of lack of leadership. An extremely heart broken time to go through. The canaanites were to be destroyed. At least driven from the promised land. But their lifestyle was appealing to some. So let’s humiliate them instead of destroying them. Same thing we do with sin and temptation.
Perhaps the tribes justified putting their enemies into forced labor so they could use them for their own purposes, so they didn’t have to do all the work. It makes sense that they would do this given the fact that they had something lacking, perhaps a bit of laziness, that kept them from doing God’s will. Let us not follow this example. Sometimes doing the will of God requires much work and effort. The payoff is a stronger relationship with him, a sense of accomplishment and a blessing to top it off.
Judges 1
Judges 1