David Bahn – Reflections

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These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are Joshua 21-23, Psalm 96.

Joshua 23:1-9

A long time afterward, when the Lord had given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies, and Joshua was old and well advanced in years, ² Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers, and said to them, “I am now old and well advanced in years. ³ And you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to all these nations for your sake, for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you. ⁴ Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west. ⁵ The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. ⁶ Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, ⁷ that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, ⁸ but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day. ⁹ For the Lord has driven out before you great and strong nations. And as for you, no man has been able to stand before you to this day. 

There are actually two dangers regarding staying true to God’s word. One is to abandon the truth or water it down so that the truth is no longer true. This is the grave warning Joshua is giving to the people as he nears the end of his life. Don’t turn to the right or the left. Keep on the straight and narrow. Don’t water down this religion you have been given. Don’t let the influences of the foreign nations turn you from the path that you have been given. It is a path centered in the grace of God and his deliverance from oppression and slavery. It is a path away from slavery. It is a path of victory and promise. It is a path of the God who has revealed himself to them as YAHW, LORD, The One Who is.

The distraction from this path would be to forget God’s deliverance. It would be to turn to strange gods who demand payment and appeasement in order to gain their favor. It is to trade the sovereign God for an idol who has no true power. It would be to turn aside from a path of blessing to a path of futility and folly.

Why would they do this? Sometimes we are tempted away from God’s ways because we are led to doubt his goodness and forget his grace. Sometimes God’s works seem so far in the past that we forget his past blessings. Sometimes the ways of the other gods can entice – though theirs is a fools gold.

Our faith is centered in God’s mighty deliverance from sin, death, and the devil by One even greater than Moses and Joshua. Jesus, God’s own Son has redeemed us, conquered death, and promises forgiveness, life and salvation. We just celebrated that deliverance yesterday on Resurrection Sunday. “Jesus Christ is risen,” we proclaimed. “He is risen indeed! Alleluia!” Through faith in him we have eternal life.

Sadly, however, there is another danger regarding purity that for some may sound even more compelling than simple faith in Jesus. The Pharisees had that down pat. They were devoted to religious rules that had the appearance of purity, but squeezed the grace out of God’s truth. There are also recognizable departures from the Christian faith, and we must be on guard against them. We must avoid any teaching that diminishes Jesus as God’s only Son, God in the flesh. So too, we turn away from false religions and ideologies—paganism, materialism, atheism, and Islam—which draw hearts away from the living God.

The danger is not only abandoning the truth, but replacing it with something that looks religious yet empties Christ of his grace. Stay on the path—fix your eyes on Jesus, who alone is our righteousness, our life, and our salvation.