THE ONE YEAR BIBLE CLUB

  I'm not sure which 1/2 of the tribe of Manasseh this is that "did not drive out the people of Beth Shan.....for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land". God's response, "You have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you". Who was it that thought we will just stay here, and not cross the other side of the Jordan? 1 The Reubenites and Gadites, who had very large herds and flocks, saw that the lands of Jazer and Gilead were suitable for livestock. 2 So they came to Moses and Eleazar the priest and to the leaders of the community, and said, 3 “Ataroth, Dibon, Jazer, Nimrah, Heshbon, Elealeh, Sebam, Nebo and Beon— 4 the land the LORD subdued before the people of Israel—are suitable for livestock, and your servants have livestock. 5 If we have found favor in your eyes,” they said, “let this land be given to your se

   It's hard to imagine Abraham ever serving any other God but Jehovah, but he did and so did all his family. “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods." Often people look at our families and can't imagine us being anything other than Christian. Some of us grew up Christian as our heritage, the rest of us served the gods on the other side of the river, so to speak. We have seen what it is like so serve a false god or give ourselves to impotent religion. In our text we are not sure why these people are holding on to relics of their past gods and religion; while trying to serve the true God. And when challenged by Joshua to throw down their idols and relics there is no argument from them. "throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD. 15 But if serving the LORD seems undesi

    THIS is way too close to Easter, to be talking about false religion of "no resurrection", as we read today, has been around for a long, long time.  However what makes this particularly interesting is the group that propagates false religion is propagating this false claim to "the Resurrection" Himself, ie; Jesus Christ. John 11:25 Jesus says, "I am the Resurrection". Arrogance has no boundaries. "A fool is wiser than 7 wise men" we read in Proverbs. These Sadducees are going to sit there and argue "stupidities" with The Resurrection Himself. Proverbs also tells us that the man who argues with a fool becomes a fool himself.  Jesus doesn't get into an argument with these boys, He simply makes them look like the fools they are and moves on. Not much has changed today, there are still cults/false religions that want to argue their false doctrine. Jehovah Witnesses still try to propagate that when we die we remain in the earth and th

    THE group of Pharisees hated Jesus, there was no love loss between the Pharisees and Jesus. There were other groups who loved Jesus and were open to what he had to say and with them he sat down and talked.....nicely! Jesus is no respecter of persons and neither should we, but you cannot deny that Jesus had various methods for reaching various groups of individuals. Jesus knew who is target audience was and that affected how he responded. It is written in scripture "do not cast your pearls to the swine", but yet we see Christians do this everyday. No doubt, we will be persecuted, that will come naturally but do we really have to subjugate ourselves to it?! We cannot discern whom God is leading to himself and who He isn't (although sometimes it is quite obvious) but we can discern the mocker vs. the serious seeker. We cannot discern who will be saved and will not, it could be the mocker who one day gets powerfully converted and the serious seeker goes on to seriously se

    "Always favoritism around here", we can't stand favoritism, at least when it doesn't include us, then we are staunch opponents of it. Well, if you are a staunch opponent of favoritism than you were probably upset by today's reading. "After all the land was divided among the tribes, the Israelites gave a special piece of land to Joshua".  There you have it, in black & white, they are not even trying to hide this favoritism, do they have no shame! Wait, is this the Israelites giving Joshua this favoritism or God? Read on...."For the Lord had said, he could have any town he wanted".  Favoritism from God? How am I going to resolve this? I thought God was perfect.  Well, God is perfect and sinless so we can only conclude that favoritism is not always such a bad thing. Is our God not a God of recompense, of God of rewards? If favoritism is coming to an individual because of hard work, than it is earned and is probably due and in cases of many

    Unlike the world, we do not just find ourselves physically tired, we also find ourselves spiritually tired. Not only are we having to deal with issues at work, home & school but we are also having to contend and deal with spiritual issues, issues we are struggling with and then trying to help others with spiritual issues they're struggling with and I'm tired, are you?  I have to say that while I was shocked to read that the tribe of Ephraim did not get rid of the Canaanites [ 10 They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor. ] I have to also say, that I'm not so surprised. What the Ephraimites don't realize, is that if you don't fight now, you will have to fight twice as hard later. The worse words Jesus ever spoke were "go the extra mile". Is there a principle in that admonishing that we have yet to understand? Why didn't they "dislodge