OT DAY 241 - Don't Make The Same Mistake (Please click here for English podcast)

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Silence

1.   Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2.   Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1.   Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2.   Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3.   Open your heart to praise the Lord

        
          I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;
                             with my mouth I will make known 

            your faithfulness to all generations.

                                  Psalm 89:1

Confession and Repentance

1.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

     “Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2.  Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

     "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gifts to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (Deuteronomy 1:1-46)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+1&version=ESV

5 Beyond the Jordan, in the land of Moab, Moses undertook to explain this law, saying, 6 “The Lord our God said to us in Horeb, ‘You have stayed long enough at this mountain. 7 Turn and take your journey, and go to the hill country of the Amorites and to all their neighbors in the Arabah, in the hill country and in the lowland and in the Negeb and by the seacoast, the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates. 8 See, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and to their offspring after them.’

26 “Yet you would not go up, but rebelled against the command of the Lord your God.27 And you murmured in your tents and said, ‘Because the Lord hated us he has brought us out of the land of Egypt, to give us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.28 Where are we going up? Our brothers have made our hearts melt, saying, “The people are greater and taller than we. The cities are great and fortified up to heaven. And besides, we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.”’ 29 Then I said to you, ‘Do not be in dread or afraid of them. 30 The Lord your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, 31 and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’ 32 Yet in spite of this word you did not believe the Lord your God, 

42 And the Lord said to me, ‘Say to them, Do not go up or fight, for I am not in your midst, lest you be defeated before your enemies.’ 43 So I spoke to you, and you would not listen; but you rebelled against the command of the Lord and presumptuously went up into the hill country.44 Then the Amorites who lived in that hill country came out against you and chased you as bees do and beat you down in Seir as far as Hormah. 45 And you returned and wept before the Lord, but the Lord did not listen to your voice or give ear to you. 46 So you remained at Kadesh many days, the days that you remained there.
                             Deuteronomy 1:1-46

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening
     Today we start a new book in the Old Testament, the last book of the first set of the five books in the Bible which is called the Pentateuch or Torah. The first chapter of this important book starts with something unexpected.

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us: 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

     In what the Torah presents as the last, greatest, and certainly longest speech of his life, Moses begins by urging Israel not to forget its past…

     By the time Deuteronomy was written, Israel was part of the Assyrian empire…

     Deuteronomy refers to the content of Moses' address as "this teaching," using the word "torah". Translations traditionally use the word "law", but beginning with an account of what has been happening in the past indicates that the Torah includes more than that. One might have expected it to start with the distant past, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or with the exodus, and it will refer to them. Starting with the moment the people left Horeb (another name for Sinai) has particular significance for the people on the edge of Canaan and for people in later centuries who hear Deuteronomy read. The Torah expects them to live in light of what God did at Horeb/Sinai, but they were not present there. They did not hear God speak. Here Moses makes the link between them and the Sinai generation. It is as if "God said to us at Horeb" that it was time to leave there and make our journey to the promised land.

     The generation on the edge of Canaan (and each subsequent generation) is thus challenged to accept responsibility for its trust in God. 

John Goldingay. Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.97-99.

       The message here in this chapter is so simple and important. God said, you guys did not trust and act accordingly. So, it says in the last verse of this chapter: "And so you stayed in Kadesh many days - all the time you spent there." Do you know how many days they spent because of not trusting God, made so many mistakes that crossed God's bottom line? The answer is, almost 39 years! That's how the Israelites were wandering in the desert for 40 years because they should be able to enter into the Promised Land in just a year's time and it caused them 39 more years and every men beyond 20 years of age dead! More than that, as Professor John Goldingay points out, the time when Deuteronomy was written, the Israelites lost their North Kingdom Israel to the Assyrian Empire, only Judah was still secure. To the people of Judah, that was their last chance to listen and obey. And we know well that they did not and they lost their Kingdom later to the Babylon Empire!

       Let me give you two examples of what I experienced just a month ago:
1. I wrote in my blog on May 28 "Go or No Go" http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/2015/05/ot-day-215-go-or-no-go-please-click.html

    I heard God commanded me to contact two friends in Hong Kong and I did accordingly. The result is our church received a donation of Cad$600,000 to complete the first milestone of our church building project. A vision that we received from God 1 1/2 years ago that God is going to provide us with 2.5 million dollars to buy a piece of land so that we can start to build our new church. It is done!

2. I wrote in my blog on "Consequence of Not Upholding God as Holy" on June 5 http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/2015/06/ot-day-223-consequence-of-not-upholding.html

   I received a command from God that I need to go to sleep from now on before 11 p.m. and I did not obey. It almost cause my left eye. You can see that I stopped my blog for three days with a picture of me as just one eye here:
http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/2015/06/need-your-prayers-cornea-problem-need.html

     I took that lesson and I start to go to sleep everyday before 11p.m. the past 20 days. Sleep early and wake up early 20 days ago and I feel that I am a new person! Only God knows if I keep on going to sleep after 2 to 3a.m. might cause my eye or may be my life. Only me can respond to God's hint, reminder, command and warning to act before it is too late.

     You may think that I am crazy and stop reading my blog. That is your choice! I am just a servant of God who are able to listen to God daily and learning to trust and respond to God by say "Yes Sir!"

     I have made too many mistakes by not obey God's command when I heard from him the past so many years. 

     Today God tells you, "Don't make the same mistake!" What is your respond?  

Dear Lord Jesus, 
Lead us to follow you each day, listening to you and obeying your call so that we will not make mistake or at least will not make the same mistake suffering the consequence of not obeying you.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Have you kept on making the same mistakes? What are you going to do about that now?

2. How can you be able to not making the same mistake from now on?

Praise and Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for God with us. Let us praise Him:

10,000 Reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

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