Toxins

Our pastor is preaching through the book of Joshua this year, I am learning so much as he leads us through this book each Sunday. Today, we were in Joshua 9, where the Gibeonites come to the nation of Israel and lie and present themselves as being from afar off so Israel will make a covenant with them. Pastor Rickey pointed out that both the nation of Israel and the Gibeonites knew the word of God, that the law allowed Israel to make a covenant with people who were not located in the Promised Land - but that the Israelites relied on what they saw and their own intuition to accept that the Gibeonites were as they presented themselves to be (from far away), and to go ahead and make the covenant... rather than asking God for guidance (v14: ...but did not ask counsel from the Lord.)

Pastor Rickey then shared that the point of this story might be hidden from initial perusal... we might immediately see truths such as "don't depend on your own intuition" or "once you make a covenant, you need to be committed to it", but, he pointed out how ultimately this story is about God's Sovereign Grace. For, these lying, deceiving Gibeonites were not only saved from being put to destruction, but they were put to work, not just for the Israelites, but in the temple of God (v27: ...But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation and for the altar of the Lord, to this day...). In other places in the Bible, we can see that Gibeon was the place that Solomon went to sacrifice to the Lord and where he requested wisdom as the gift he desired most from God (I Kings 3). The Gibeonites were part of the named people who participated in the rebuilding of the wall in Nehemiah 3 (v7). The inclusion of the Gibeonites in God's plan did not negate the fact that they were liars and deceivers, but rather demonstrated God's grace in the face of their failures.

Pastor Rickey shared with us the following applications:

1. Trust that God's Sovereign Grace can overcome the foolish decisions of my past.
2. Release into God's Sovereign Grace whatever remains in my heart from the sins of others.
3. Hope in God's Sovereign Grace to save sinners from every nation.

In our community group class, we discuss the sermon each week... today, each of us shared that #2 is the hardest for us to do - it goes against our nature that wants to "take care of it ourselves", "be active", "be involved", while God calls for us to "rest in Him", "abide", "release".

As we were discussing this, I thought about the things that happened at the end of Dwayne's life... what I think ultimately killed him was not exactly the cancer, or the chemotherapy, but rather the killing of the cancer cells by the chemotherapy. As those cancer cells died, they released toxins into Dwayne's body, that ultimately caused his systems to shut down and caused his death.

In a like way, when others sin against me, residue is left in my life, toxins that can be threatening to my spiritual life. Unless I release those circumstances and people to God for Him to deal with, I will keep toxins in my life that ultimately will do worse to me than to anyone else. 

I am so thankful for the grace of God in my life!