OT DAY 249 - Destroy And Breakdown Those Lifestyles against God (Please click here for English podcast)

Please click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion with one to two people as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they can become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Please click these links to the app. Andy Ng wrote if you have an Android cel.:

Discipler123: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

Break.Build: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.bb.app

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

       
           Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
                                 let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
2          Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
                                 let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!

                                  Psalm 95:1-2

        
 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 7:1-6)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy 7&version=ESV

“When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3 You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire."

6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 

                   Deuteronomy 7:1-6

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
        This is a difficult passage to understand if you think that God ordered the Israelites to kill. No, God does not mean that.

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

    

     This notion of God ordering the Israelites to strike people down troubles many modern Jews and Christians for two reason. One is that we prefer the idea of God's being loving and merciful to the idea of God's being tough with people. Yet Jesus doesn't regard having love as a defining characteristic as incompatible with sending trillions of people to hell.
     The other is a fear that nations today may make it the excuse for making war, claiming they are only doing what the Torah told the Israelites to do…

     The Torah goes on to speak of the Israelites "devoting" these peoples. Translations often use words such as "annihilate" or "destroyed,' and that may be the implication, but it does not convey Moses' distinctive point. Devoting them means giving them over to God. This need not mean killing them. You could devote land, or an animal such as a donkey, and in effect Hannah will devote Samuel; the donkey or the human being then belongs to God and is committed to God's service. The Israelites did in effect devote many Canaanites to God's service in this way; they became people who chopped wood and drew water for the altar, its offerings, and the rites of the sanctuary. The Israelites have already devoted various peoples to God by killing them, though God never told them to do so. Here God does tell them to do this…

     After commanding Israel to devote the Canaanites, Moses goes on to a series of other commands. They are not to seal covenants with the Canaanites, show grace to them, or intermarry with them (because then they will end up serving their gods, as happened in connection with the Midianites), and they are to destroy their aids to worship and their places of worship…

     People such as judges and police often have to resist the temptation to show grace to wrongdoers. There are moments when it is necessary to be tough. This is such a moment. 

John Goldingay. Numbers & Deuteronomy for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.119-120.

     Oh, I see! God bless us to be judges and police so that we can protect the Promised Land He gives us and to bless the people He gives to our care. 

     The point is, many of us have been influenced by all kinds of lifestyles God wants us to quit like addition of drugs, gambling, pornography,alcohol, smoking etc. and checking horoscope, going to see fortune tellers etc. These are the lifestyles God really wants us to quit and what God wants to talk about in today's passage.

      Got that? Ready to become holy as God is holy?  

Dear Lord Jesus, 
Help us to know what are those lifestyles against your will and give us the willingness to destroy and breakdown those things.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Reflect on these questions:
1. Do you have a new understanding of so called God's killing in the Old Testament today? 

2. Are you able to destroy one or two lifestyles that God wants you to destroy and breakdown starting today? 

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

You may choose to follow my other daily blog:

Daily Devotion on Fire: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/