Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 475 - Pride Is A Deadly Sin Causing God's Anger (Please click here for English podcast)

Saturday, May 7, 2016

OT DAY 475 - Pride Is A Deadly Sin Causing God's Anger (Please click here for English podcast)

Silence

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

2. Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. 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

For it is you who light my lamp;
the Lord my God lightens my darkness.

For by you I can run against a troop,

and by my God I can leap over a wall.

Psalm 18:28-29

Confession and Repentance (Subjective Shifting Devotion Method http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html)

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 gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (2 Samuel 24:1-16a)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=撒+母+耳+記+下+23&version=ESV

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, number Israel and Judah.” 2 So the king said to Joab, the commander of the army, who was with him, “Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people.” 3 But Joab said to the king,“May the Lord your God add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it, but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?” 4 But the king's word prevailed against Joab and the commanders of the army. So Joab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. 5 They crossed the Jordan and began from Aroer, and from the city that is in the middle of the valley, toward Gad and on to Jazer. 6 Then they came to Gilead, and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites; and they came to Dan, and from Dan they went around to Sidon,7 and came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites; and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beersheba. 8 So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. 9 And Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were 800,000 valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were 500,000.
But David's heart struck him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord,“I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, please take away the iniquity of your servant, for I have done very foolishly.” 11 And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David's seer, saying, 12 “Go and say to David, ‘Thus says the Lord, Three things I offer you. Choose one of them, that I may do it to you.’” 13 So Gad came to David and told him, and said to him, “Shall three years of famine come to you in your land? Or will you flee three months before your foes while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' pestilence in your land? Now consider, and decide what answer I shall return to him who sent me.” 14 Then David said to Gad, “I am in great distress. Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but let me not fall into the hand of man.”

15 So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from the morning until the appointed time. And there died of the people from Dan to Beersheba 70,000 men. 16 And when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented from the calamity and said to the angel who was working destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.”

2 Samuel 24:1-16a

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage 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

Wow! The topic I received from Jesus today is "Pride Is A Deadly Sin Causing God's Anger ". Is Pride really so serious, a sentence of death? David was doing a census, what kind of sin is that?

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

People who oppose the census do so on the basis of its being an invasion of privacy and a suspicious poking of the government into our lives.
David's census and God's disapproval of it have a different background. In itself, there was nothing wrong with a census. God commissioned one after the Israelites left Egypt, and another when they were about to enter the promised land (see Numbers 1 and 26)...
David's census has a different concern. When he bids Joab undertake the census, some translations have him counting the people as a whole. But there have been many stories in 1 and 2 Samuel where the Hebrew word for "people" has denoted the army. Here the census is undertaken by the military, and the account of its results refers to the number of men drawing the sword in Ephraim and Judah. David is indeed checking on the size of his military…stories such as Gideon's in Judges 7 reminded Israel that when God is involved, the size of the army isn't the crucial factor - or even a significant factor - in the working out of God's purpose. David has forgotten a consideration of key importance to a leader of the people of God.

John Goldingay. 1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.167, 179-180.

So, have you made the same mistake forgetting that you are a leader of the people of God? It is not what you have got to win a battle but is your relationship with God. Why PRIDE is the top No. 1 sin of the Seven Deadly Sins? May be pride leads us to trust ourselves only and not God anymore.

Don't let your PRIDE to kill you or for God to send an angel to kill you like what God did to David and the whole city of Jerusalem!

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us to be humble and follow your lead as our Lord and King. Don't let us be destroyed by our own pride. In Jesus Name I pray. Amen.