1 – 1 Samuel 16:1 (ESV) The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.”

RAF: It is easy to sympathize with Samuel. How quick we are to pronounce the final word on things, when God is not done yet. Yes Saul was God’s anointed. Yes God had set His seal to all of this, even in the face of His People’s rebellion. But no, this was not the end of the story. It was right to mourn what had happened, but not so as to imagine God’s purpose and plan were thwarted. Our trust is in a God who transcends all of these things. Who will yet bring forth even that which is better than we had hoped at the beginning. Trust him.

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1 – 1 Samuel 2:17 (ESV) ¹⁷ Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord, for the men treated the offering of the Lord with contempt.

RAF: As Eli’s sons treated the offering of the Lord with contempt, so may we. The word contempt here means to hate by treating something as though it has no value, to scorn, spurn or reject it. We can do this when we treat Christ – lightly. Paying little attention to His Word. Neglecting the things He has put before us as holy and worthy of our attention. Treating His family as though we can do without them. Thinking that worship, praise, thanksgiving and prayer are light things which do not command our devotion. When we put our immediate desires before His honor. Oh Father, how often you are merely worked into our lives, rather than our lives being built around you and your purposes. Forgive us Father. And lead to honoring Christ in every action, word and attitude. Keep us back from treating Christ and the Cross lightly in any way whatsoever.

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RAF: The one-word theme of Judges is: Revealing. In this series of accounts of the Judges God raised up to deliver Israel time after time – is the revealing of their unstable and unconverted hearts. Left to themselves, without a man to lead them in right ways, they stubbornly refused to follow God individually. This sets the stage for God to given them an earthly King. We come more and more under the bonds of human government, the more we fail to serve God individually.

1 – Judges 16:21 (ESV) ²¹ And the Philistines seized him and gouged out his eyes and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with bronze shackles. And he ground at the mill in the prison.

RAF: Unrepentant sin will result in being seized by it – mastered by it. Blindness. It will find us away from where we ought to be – in foreign places. It will bind us in judgment. Our labors will increase the kingdom of darkness rather than Christ’s.

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1 – The one-word theme of Joshua is CONQUEST. The book is a history of God’s work in bringing Israel fully into its Promised Land, and typologically portrays the Believer’s conquest of the remnants of indwelling sin.

2 – Joshua 2:10 (ESV) ¹⁰ For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.

RAF: It is interesting to note that Rahab uses a uniquely Hebrew phrase in her accounting – “devoted to destruction.” This is a phrase used by the Jews to convey the idea that their victories were not mere successful military operations, but actions carried out in fulfilling God’s will and giving their spoils over to Him. She knew the difference between their conquest and those of others, and she knew how the Jews themselves understood them. Does the world know as clearly what the Church is about in our day? Or have we lost that identity?

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1 – Deuteronomy 25:2-3 (ESV) ² then if the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall cause him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with a number of stripes in proportion to his offense. ³ Forty stripes may be given him, but not more, lest, if one should go on to beat him with more stripes than these, your brother be degraded in your sight.

RAF: One cannot read these various laws without being caught by the profound value which is put on human life. In God’s eyes, having been made in His image, though so corrupt and fallen – nevertheless, even in judicial undertakings – no one is to be degraded. The dignity of the race and we as individual members of it, is to be upheld in all circumstances. I wonder if our attitude toward the lost matches our Lord’s?

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1 – Deuteronomy 10:10 (ESV) ¹⁰ “I myself stayed on the mountain, as at the first time, forty days and forty nights, and the Lord listened to me that time also. The Lord was unwilling to destroy you.

RAF: Why was Moses’ entreaty on their behalf heard? Because the Lord was not willing to destroy them. Justice demanded it. It would have been right to destroy them. They deserved it. His fury had been aroused – rightly so. But He allows Himself to be propitiated. Even in His announcement to Moses that He would destroy them – He still, was not utterly willing. How our God gives us insight into His own heart here. To hear how He is affected by our sin and rebellion, and how in mercy and grace we remain and are blessed. God is not disapssionate about us. But his passion is in full harmony with His other attributes, and He is not captive to His passions as we are. Sin has produced that wicked distortion in us which is not a part of His character. And because it is so – irrespective of His own just anger, He was not willing. What a God we serve!

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1 – Numbers 35:32-34 (ESV) ³² And you shall accept no ransom for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return to dwell in the land before the death of the high priest. ³³ You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. ³⁴ You shall not defile the land in which you live, in the midst of which I dwell, for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the people of Israel.”

RAF: Once a nation can suspend this most basic concept, other corruptions must inevitably follow. It is at this point that the value of human life is first devalued in society. To let a murderer live, and not maintain that human life is so precious that it cannot be rightly punished apart from the death of the murderer, is to make man less than the image bearer of God. First, it says the innocent victim’s life is worth less than the life of the one motivated by hate. Second, it says society has deemed man is not really that special at all. His death is now put on par with other material and petty crimes.

No one can argue that the way the death penalty in our own country is carried out (i.e. its inordinately long process and racially imbalanced application) is horrifically distorted. Yet the more we abandon it altogether, the more fundamentally flawed we are in the way we view humankind, and what that means to God Himself.

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1 – Numbers 28:1-8 (ESV) The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² “Command the people of Israel and say to them, ‘My offering, my food for my food offerings, my pleasing aroma, you shall be careful to offer to me at its appointed time.’ ³ And you shall say to them, This is the food offering that you shall offer to the Lord: two male lambs a year old without blemish, day by day, as a regular offering. ⁴ The one lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight; ⁵ also a tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a grain offering, mixed with a quarter of a hin of beaten oil. ⁶ It is a regular burnt offering, which was ordained at Mount Sinai for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. ⁷ Its drink offering shall be a quarter of a hin for each lamb. In the Holy Place you shall pour out a drink offering of strong drink to the Lord. ⁸ The other lamb you shall offer at twilight. Like the grain offering of the morning, and like its drink offering, you shall offer it as a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.

RAF: What is interesting here, is that the whole nation (“the people of Israel”) is charged with making sure the daily sacrificial duties which are to be carried out by the Levites – is done. It is everyone’s responsibility to make sure the Leadership does not abandon their main responsibilities. This then, even when by their own demands the Leadership is asked to pay attention to some other “needs” the Congregation might deem desirable. As congregants, we are to be vigilant that our ministers give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. See: Acts 6:4.

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1 – “ The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Command the people of Israel to bring you pure oil from beaten olives for the lamp, that a light may be kept burning regularly. Outside the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meeting, Aaron shall arrange it from evening to morning before the Lord regularly. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations. He shall arrange the lamps on the lampstand of pure gold before the Lord regularly.” (Leviticus 24:1-4, ESV)

RAF: It is the both the high privilege and the sacred duty of ministers to attend the house of the Lord, so that there is light. In other words, the ministry of the Word, opened and expounded that men’s souls may have the light of God’s Word illuminating them at all times. Whenever this is abandoned, the essentials are plunged into darkness:

a. The altar of incense; our prayers and petitions are to be illuminated by God’s Word that we might pray aright, and see its significance before God.

b. The table of the “shew-bread” – where the testimony that Christ is God’s Bread for us come down out of heaven, our soul’s sole sustenance.

c. The Ark of God’s Covenant. Then, behind a veil, but now, open to our full view. Here, God has made known His sworn faithfulness, and it is here where mercy covers our sins – where the blood of the Lamb is seen, and full and free forgiveness reigns while we fellowship with God.

Take away the light of God’s Word, and these three are obscured in total darkness. How powerful are Paul’s parting words to Timothy – “preach the word”.