Year 4, Day 290: 1 Samuel 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

In my theological commentary from three years ago, I talked about Eli’s successful spiritual perspective at the end of his life.  And I made an interesting assertion over the fact that Eli gets more upset over the loss of the Ark of the Covenant than over the loss of his sons.  I make the assertion that true love for others can only come when our love for God supersedes all other loves in our life.

I really do believe this to be true.  One of the hardest – yet most important – things that I ever heard my father tell me is that as much as he loves me, he loves God more.  What he was telling me was that in order to have enough love for me, he had to have his love replenished by a greater love for God.  Without his love for God in my father’s life, he couldn’t have loved me as he did.  I believe the same is true for Eli as this chapter ends.  Yes, Eli loved his sons – as unrighteous as they were.  But he could love them because of his love for God.

What we’re really talking about here is Up.  Eli has put God in his Up position by the end of his life.  Only when Eli is focused on God above all else is his life oriented in a healthy direction that allows for healthy reactions.

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Year 4, Day 289: 1 Samuel 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Calling

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

This is one of my favorite calling stories.  Clearly Samuel is called by God.  Of that there can be no doubt.  God speaks to Samuel three times in a single night.  Samuel listens and finds a relationship with God like he’d never known before.

But look at what brings about his calling.  Samuel is devoted.  He is devoted to Eli.  He is a dutiful servant to Eli.  Truth be told, Samuel is the son to Eli that he never had.  Eli’s own sons – as we saw yesterday – were more devoted to their own passions.  Samuel is devoted to Eli, much like he will be devoted to the Lord God.

There is really something great to be said about Samuel and his calling.  And then you consider his age.  Samuel was just a boy when he was called.  God doesn’t require us to be the wisest or more mature.  He just wants us to be inclined to His calling.  If we are willing to hear, He is willing to speak.

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Year 4, Day 288: 1 Samuel 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

Hannah continues to impress me with her choices.  Once she has a child, she could have easily focused on her life and turned away from God.  After all, is that trait not common among human beings?  Do we not often go to God and ask for something and then when we get it we wander away from God?

But not Hannah.  God is truly in her Up position.  God is truly Hannah’s focus.  Listen to her prayer here.  She cannot stop talking about the character and nature of God!  That’s what it feels like to have God in your Up position.

It makes me wonder about my life.  How many times in my life have I been a true witness to God’s glory?  How many times have I had an opportunity to give God all the credit and managed to actually do it?  That’s the goal.  I know I’ll never get it perfect every time.  But I desire to be more like Hannah.  When given the opportunity, may I not be able to stop talking about God’s glory!

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Year 4, Day 287: 1 Samuel 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Ambition

• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

Ambition is a great thing when properly focused.  But when it is improperly focused ambition becomes a devastating communal force.  Take most sporting events as an example.  Rather than being about the beauty of the game, victory-seeking fans often become rabid with their booing, hissing, and yelling of insults.  Or look at many commercials that have no difficulty slandering their competition instead of genuinely demonstrating their own product.  Ambition can lead to moving society forward, but it can also lead to the corruption of society movement as we seek to crush opposition instead of seek progress.

I think this is what I love about the witness of Hannah in this chapter.  She has Elkannah’s approval – although I would say that if Hannah has a fault it is that she doesn’t let that approval be as meaningful in her life as it should be.  Hannah knows that her needs are cared for.  She isn’t going to starve anytime soon.  And through all of this Hannah isn’t living with an ambition of needing to be on the top, either!

Penniniah comes to her and continues to put down Hannah for her barrenness.  From a human perspective, Hannah could easily fall into the sin of ambition and want children to prove to Penniniah that she can be better than Penniniah.  From a human perspective, it would be so easy for Hannah to want to compete with Penniniah for all the wrong reasons.

But that isn’t what we see in Hannah. Hannah doesn’t want to compete.  She just wants the experience.  She doesn’t need to have the best son or even the most sons.  She just wants a child that she can devote to the Lord.  Now that’s a healthy ambition!  She wants what God would want for her.  Hannah’s heart is turned to the Lord.  What a great example in faith!

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Year 4, Day 286: Ruth 4

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Provision

• Provision: God gives us what we truly need.  God knows our needs better than we can know them.  We learn to trust God to provide for us.

In the end, what makes Ruth a great story is how this Gentile Moabite woman finds her God by living among a people she did not know even though her mother-in-law tried at one point to convince her to leave her.  This is an incredible story of provision.  But it isn’t just material provision in things like land, food, and clothing.  It is truly deep spiritual provision.

Let’s start with Naomi.  Remember how Naomi was when she came back from Moab?  She was bitter.  She was angry.  See Ruth 1:20-21.  But look at her now as the story ends.  She has a grandson – and she doesn’t seem to care that technically the child isn’t biologically related to her!  She gets the opportunity to hold the grandfather of the greatest king of Israel in her arms.  She gets to hold one of the ancestors of God’s own Messiah.  Naomi is content.  God provided.

Now let’s look at Boaz.  Yes, Boaz gains the ability to acquire land and increase his materialistic wealth.  But more importantly he finds a spiritual equal.  He finds a woman whose spirit complements his own.  He becomes a part of the genealogy of kings.  He gets to fulfill the calling that God had invited him to accomplish.  He gets the opportunity to bear God’s love to two women that even the true kinsman redeemer had rejected.  God provides Boaz not just with material gain but even more importantly with spiritual opportunity.

And of course, let’s look at Ruth.  Ruth gains a new home.  She gains a new people.  She gains a son.  She becomes the great-grandmother to King David.  She gains a husband who is every way her spiritual equal and companion.  But perhaps most importantly, Ruth gains a relationship with God.  She once was a Moabite with foreign gods; now she is a worshipper of the true God.  God is faithful to Ruth and provides deeply for her in both material and spiritual ways.

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Year 4, Day 285: Ruth 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Challenge, Invitation

• Challenge: God does not merely wish us to be in relationship with Him as we are.  He challenges us to grow, stretch, and transform as we take on the mantle of being His representatives to this world.
• Invitation: God is always inviting us into relationship with Him. He desires that we know Him and that we know His desire for us.

A few days ago I was pretty harsh on Naomi.  That part of the story wasn’t her shining moment.  But here in chapter 3 Naomi gets it right and it is marvelous to behold.  Naomi correctly calibrates challenge and invitation with Ruth.

Let’s take a look at what Naomi does.  Naomi senses that it is time for Ruth to move along, find a new husband, and find God’s provision for her in her life.  This doesn’t mean Naomi is pushing Ruth out of her life; Naomi is just prodding her into God’s calling.  Naomi does this through challenge and invitation.

Look at the huge amount of challenge that Naomi puts in Ruth’s life.  Here’s what Naomi essentially says to Ruth.  First, go find that man you just met.  Then wait for him to fall asleep.  Then uncover his feet and lay there.  When he wakes up, put yourself at his mercy and listen to whatever he has to say.

Talk about challenge!  Imagine putting yourself in Ruth’s position.  Could you do that?  Do you have the obedience within you?  Do you have the trust within you?  Do you have the faithfulness within you?  How would you have responded to that challenge?

But Naomi also gives her invitation.  She comforts Ruth and tells her than Boaz is a kind man and a kinsman redeemer.  Naomi puts Ruth in a place for success, not a place for failure.  Naomi comforts Ruth after the fact saying that Boaz is a man of his word and he will take care of the situation on that very day.

Chapter three is a wonderful chapter where we see challenge and invitation being calibrated quite well.  In this chapter, Naomi is the star mentor.  Naomi does a great job at putting God’s character on display within these words.

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Year 4, Day 284: Ruth 2

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Financial Capital, Relational Capital

• Financial Capital: Financial capital is that which the world pursues with all of its heart.  However, from God’s perspective it is the lowest of the five capitals.  As with all capitals, it absolutely has value.  But it can be traded for capitals that have much greater value.
• Relational Capital: Relational capital is that which we have between one another.  This capital is secondary only to spiritual capital.  It is a capital that binds people together and allows us to help one another out.  It is our relational capital that drives community.

The story of Ruth and Boaz is a great love story filled with humble attraction.  Clearly Boaz and Ruth find a spiritual companion in each other.  But we can save that for the coming days.  Today, I want to focus on Boaz and his maturity.

Look at what Boaz literally does here in this chapter.  Boaz is a land-owner.  He has plenty of grain, but that grain is also his livelihood.  Surely Boaz can sell the excess grain and turn a profit.  But instead of being greedy, Boaz allows Ruth to take some of his financial capital for free.  Boaz recognizes that with respect to the capitals, financial capital is the lowest one on the totem pole.

So what does Boaz receive in return?  Boaz receives relational capital with Naomi.  Naomi blesses Boaz.  Naomi does not have much, but she gives Boaz what she can.  Boaz parts with financial capital and instead gains relational capital.  His standing in the community rises.

Boaz also receives relational capital with Ruth.  He turns her eye towards him.  He gains her favor and loyalty.  He finds someone who values relational capital as much as he does.  Boaz is an incredible model of true prioritization.  Boaz knows that in the great scheme of things, financial capital is of far less significance than relational capital.

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Year 4, Day 283: Ruth 1

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Competency

• Competency: Being able to accomplish what one is called to do.

Ruth is such an inspiring book.  It is a book about a Gentile woman who actually makes better spiritual decisions than the Hebrew people around her – at least until she meets up with Boaz, who is a great spiritual equal to her!  Ruth is a competent woman.  In truth, Ruth is one of the most competent people in the Old Testament.  How cool is it that one of the most competent people in the Old Testament is not only a woman, but a Gentile at that!

Let’s look at this dynamic for a moment so that we can truly be amazed at the spiritual faith of Ruth.  Elimelech takes his family away from the Promised Land.  They only planned to go away for a little while but they end up staying for long enough that his sons not only find wives but Elimelech and his sons each die!  Elimelech strikes me as a man who is wise in the world but not necessarily wise in the spirit.  He makes a solid family decision, but in doing so he spiritually brings his family away from the place God has called his people.

Then we get to look at Naomi.  Naomi clearly has a love for her daughter-in-laws.   That is to be commended.  But look at the advice that she gives to her Moabite daughter-in-laws.  She tells them to go back to their families and be supported by them.  Naomi is trying to convince them to return to a Moabite lifestyle!  From a spiritual perspective, this is horrible advice!  What is better, to live in the security of this world or to live in security of being with God?  Furthermore, look at her relationship with God at the end of this chapter.  All she can focus on is how tragic her life is in the moment.  Gone are the happy memories of her family.  Gone is any recognition that God has allowed a deep bond to exist between Naomi and Ruth.  I can understand why she feels this way.  But it is sad to see that she chooses to place the focus where she does.

Yet out of this we get Ruth.  Somewhere along the way something spiritually clicked in Ruth.  She found God.  She found truth.  She knew that so long as she stayed with God that God would provide for her.  She clung to Naomi because Naomi was her ticket back into the place of God’s calling.  Ruth could have easily turned back like Orpah did.  But she chose God and God’s calling over the security offered in the world through her biological family.

Here is a competent woman.  When God calls, Ruth follows.  Even when the path seems bleak and there are few answers to be found, Ruth follows.  What an inspiration!

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Year 4, Day 282: Judges 21

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Judges 21 ends the book on a real downer.  The people of Israel have no leader in their midst and boy is it showing.  We have civil war.  We have a nation rising up against their brothers.  We have a tribe almost being decimated in genocide.  We have another group of people being slaughtered so that the tribe won’t be decimated.  Then we have the approval of kidnapping and stealing to compensate.  This is really a chapter where character is in very short supply.

Look again at this list.  I am willing to bet all of us can look at this list and agree that all the concepts here in this list are indeed bad things.  None of us would ever say about something on this list, “I’d really approve of that!”  No, most of us wouldn’t be caught dead participating in events like genocide, kidnapping, and theft.

But before we’re too harsh on the Hebrew people, how many of us are perfect?  How many of us don’t know what it is like to be caught up in something bad because we made a serious of small bad decisions along the way?  How many of us can honestly say we’ve never done something that under other circumstances we’d never want to do? 

You see, that’s what character is all about.  Character realizes what is right and what is wrong.  Character helps us make those distinctions.  And when we do get caught up in something bad and we finally realize it, character helps us step back, admit our fault, and get on the right track rather than continuing to head down that bad path.

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Year 4, Day 281: Judges 20

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: D2,

• D₂ is the step in the discipleship process where God builds character as we begin to help in God's work.  Often it involves us taking a good long look at ourselves and seeing what needs to be cut away.  Affectionately, this process is referred to as “the pit of despair” because when we see ourselves for who we really are it is easy to despair and feel like we’ll never get it right, we’ll never be right, and we’ll never be useful to God.  The disciple needs time, vision, and grace to come out of the pit of despair.

In Judges 20 we have an unusual story where Israel comes in civil war against Benjamin.  Within this story we hear the people of Israel seek the will of the Lord, obey the will of the Lord, and find themselves stumbling into failure the first few days of battle.  In my theological commentary from three years ago, I give some really cool thoughts as to why this should happen.  You can read more about that in the post to which I link above.

To continue further with what I say there, I think what we see happening is that God isn’t afraid to use failure to build character.  When we are building character, we know that we need time, vision, and grace in order to build that character.  Sometimes we experience failure because God needs us to develop the necessary components before truly being drawn into a successful obedience to God’s calling.

That’s actually what we see here.  The Hebrew people are routed the first few days of battle.  God is teaching the Hebrew people patience and humbleness while drawing out the arrogance and over-confidence of the Benjaminites.  When the Hebrew people are properly humbled and patient and obedient, then God springs his trap on Benjamin.  The Hebrew people bring mass destruction upon Benjamin and the town of Gibeah only after God has developed character within the Hebrew people.  The Hebrew people may lose a few battles, but because God is with them developing their character, the victory of the war was assured.

I think we can really pay attention to this dynamic.  How often do we give up when we experience failure when in truth we should dig in and be patient with God?  How often do we quit when God is just getting started with where He wants us to go?  How often do we see the pit of despair in D2 discipleship and we retreat away rather than taking the time to learn the lesson at hand?

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Year 4, Day 280: Judges 19

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Authority

• Authority: Our calling.  This comes from God as king.  Because He calls us as His representatives, He gives us authority to go and do His will.

I have always been disgusted with this Levite in this chapter.  He should know God’s ways – although it isn’t fair for me to expect him to live up to them perfectly.  But he should at least know God’s ways.  He should know about God’s love and God’s ability to keep His promise to be with us.  He more than anyone else in the story should be able to reflect God’s ways and understand what a godly response should look like.  He should be able to live out of the authority that God our King gives to us.

But he doesn’t live out God’s love in any dimension in his life.  Take a look at this woman around whom the story sets up.  Here is a man who has a concubine.  He should know what godly marriage looks like.  He should know how much importance God places upon marriage.  But he doesn’t have a wife, he has a concubine.  Although note that he does have a father-in-law.  So we can understand that this is a political and social marriage, not a union of love.  This is never clearer in the story than when he pushes his concubine out of the house at Gibeah in order for her to be raped and abused by the men of the town.  He has God-given authority to demonstrate love into the life of the woman who should be his wife.  Instead he chooses to treat her like an unimportant concubine.

This expands into a larger issue with the Levite.  As a religious leader within Israel, he should have been an example of godly living.  He should be a part of the group that sets the bar for what morality and ethic look like among the Hebrew people.  But what does he do?  He expects the people of Gibeah to act morally without considering his own morality!  He judges the people of Gibeah and makes sure to declare the amorality of the people of Gibeah throughout the nation.  Don’t get me wrong.  What the people of Gibeah did was wrong.  But it is not in the authority of the Levite to judge them.  There is always a danger when we act out of God’s authority in judging others without first taking a hard long look into our own life to judge ourselves, too.

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Year 4, Day 279: Judges 18

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

What is in our Up position?  That is one of the fundamental questions of life.  That question leads to our identity and our authority.  Each of those things leads us to our obedience and our power.  Let’s look at two players in this chapter and see what is in their Up position.

The Levite is asked a difficult question as the 600 Danites rob Micah’s house.  They ask him whether he would rather be a priest and a father to one person or a priest and a father to a whole tribe.  We know what answer the Levite gives to us.  We know the Levite goes with the Danites.  What is in his Up position?  The Levite is looking for renown.  He is looking for his own reputation.  The Levite fails to recognize that it is better to do the will of the Lord than to seek our own glory.

Let’s also look at Micah.  When Micah realizes that his manmade gods, the ephod, and his priest have been stolen out from underneath him, he confronts the people of Dan.  Look at Micah’s words.  “If you take all my stuff, what will I have left?”  This expression hurts because it reveals Micah’s character.  What is in Micah’s Up position?  Certainly not God!  Micah is worried about his stuff, his manmade gods, the ephod that made him famous, and his own personal priest.  Micah worries about the stuff that can be taken away from him rather than entrusting his life into God’s hands. 

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Year 4, Day 278: Judges 17

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Approval, Appetite, Ambition

• Approval: We all need to feel as though we are accepted.  When we seek the approval of God, our Up is in the right place.  But when we seek the approval of other people besides God, we open the door to pursuing false gods and risk putting someone or something other than God in our Up position.
• Appetite: We all have needs that need to be filled.  When we allow ourselves to be filled with the people and things that God brings into our life, we will be satisfied because our In will be in proper focus.  But when we try to fill ourselves with our own desires we end up frustrated by an insatiable hunger.
• Ambition: We all need a goal to which we can strive.  When our ambition comes from God, we find fulfillment in our obedience into that for which we have been equipped because our Out is in proper focus.  But when our ambition comes from ourselves, we find ourselves chasing after our own dreams and trying to find fulfillment in accomplishments of our own making.

What a neat story of humanity going wrong.  We meet Micah and his mother while they are practicing typical human behavior.  Micah steals.  His mom pronounces a curse upon whoever stole her money, not realizing that it was his own son.  The son repents.  The mother doesn’t know what to do about the curse, so she offers up a blessing instead.  To try and make things right in the world, they even decide to make an idol and an ephod to God.  They make one of Micah’s sons a priest.  They even find a Levite and pay him to come and live with them.  They are grasping at straws with respect to being spiritual and getting all of it wrong.  They may even have slightly good intentions.  But it’s all gone badly wrong.

It begins with appetite.  Micah wants the money.  And this is no small sum, mind you.  He steals 1,100 pieces of silver.  To put that in perspective, the Levite is willing to come and live with Micah for 10 silver pieces a year.  Micah essentially steals 110 years worth of income from his mother.  That’s appetite for you!  Micah’s appetite gets the best of him.  Rather than being filled by God and His ways, Micah seeks the satiation of his love of money and the ability to buy happiness.

Here’s the problem, though.  The fulfillment of the appetite leads to an issue with approval.  Suddenly Micah is no longer in the approval of his mother.  Actually, he finds himself cursed by his mother!  In an attempt to rediscover her approval, he returns the money and repents.  That’s a good thing!  But then in an attempt to find approval with God Micah starts to build idols and ordains people who have no right to be ordained.  Micah’s sense for approval doesn’t resolve itself well, either.

This leads us to ambition.  Micah wants to be successful.  He wants to prove that his mother’s curse won’t come true and he’ll be blessed instead.  So he makes an idol, sets up his son as a priest, and finds himself a Levite that he can bring into the family payroll.  He is trying to demonstrate his success.  He even says as much when he says that surely God will bless him because of all that he’s done.  Micah’s misguided ambition leads him down a bad path, too.

In order to have our needs for appetite, approval, and ambition to be properly resolved, we need to humble ourselves before the Lord and listen to what he truly desires.  When we chase after our own desires we end up grasping at straws as we see Micah doing here.  What would have been better would be for Micah to stop trying to prove himself in every way and to humbly go before the spiritual people around him and seek their counsel and the counsel of the Lord.

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Year 4, Day 277: Judges 16

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

It only makes sense that we study identity today.  Yesterday we continued looking at Samson through the lens of Obedience.  The day before that we started to look at Samson through the lens of the Father.  Today we get to connect those thoughts through the lens of identity.  Identity should come from the Father.  Identity should show us how we should be obedient.

So let’s look at Samson.  We know that he is connected to God the Father through the Nazirite vow.  But we also know that Samson is not exactly faithful to God, either.  Samson is obedient to His own passions and desires.  He pursues Philistine women as his heart desires.  He seeks vengeance when he believes it is warranted and under his terms.

Where is Samson’s identity?  Take a look at this passage and we see two great examples of where Samson’s identity really rests.  First look at his experience with Delilah.  Delilah asks him, “Where does your great strength lie?”  What a perfect opportunity to say, “My strength comes from my God and Father!”  That’s the answer that someone whose identity is coming from the Lord would give.  But what does Samson say?  “A razor has never come upon my head.  If a razor touches my head, my strength will leave me.”  Look closely at those words.  Whose strength does Samson say will leave him?  Does he indicate that his strength is from God or from his own hair growing out of his head?  Samson’s identity is not found in God – even though he is a Nazirite and been given an incredible demonstration of God’s power.

Furthermore, look at the passage about Samson’s death.  He’s blind and being used to his own ridicule in entertainment for the Philistines.  What does he seek at the end of his life?  He wants to have vengeance upon the Philistines.  He doesn’t ask God, “What would you have me do?”  He doesn’t come humbly before God and say, “How can I serve you and not my selfish passion?”  No, Samson says, “Let me be avenged for my own eyes.”  Even in this moment Samson’s identity is wrapped up in himself.  He cares more about his eyes than about the will of God.

The Father gave Samson an incredible gift.  Yet, Samson’s identity came from anywhere but the Father.  Samson was obedient to his own identity, not the identity that the Father desired for Samson.  Here we have a tragic character in the Bible.  Samson is not one to be celebrated as we usually treat him.  Samson is to be studied and lifted up so that we can learn to not make the same errors in judgment that he made.  Of course, we are not to feel superior to Samson, for we make our own share of mistakes, too.

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Year 4, Day 276: Judges 15

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Obedience

• Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity.  Our true identity comes only from our Father.

Yesterday we talked about how great Samson is to study because his flaws are so easy to see.  With such examples – whether great examples or poor examples – it is usually very easy to speak about relationships and the covenant triangle.  Because these examples are so clear, we can really mine some truth about what a good or bad relationship with the Father looks like.  Yesterday we spoke about the Father.  Today we’ll look at the idea of obedience.

Clearly Samson is obedient to his own agenda.  He goes back to a woman that he’s abandoned and gets mad because his father-in-law has tried to pick up the pieces from Samson’s influence in her life and move forward.  What’s sad is that this man and his daughter – Samson’s supposed wife – become the victims.  Then the story of payback escalates from there.  But all of this happens because Samson is not willing to be obedient to God’s leading or God’s direction.  Samson isn’t even interested in taking the time and asking God for direction!  Samson merely sees something in his life and he gives up an emotional response to it.  Samson is not obedient to the Father; Samson is obedient to his whims.

What is cool is that we can also see an easy way to identify a misplaced obedience in this story.  Do you hear how ungrateful Samson is?  Do you hear how assuming Samson is?  3,000 people come to bind him and he just assumes God’s power will come upon him and all will be well.  When God’s power does come upon him, he doesn’t even take the time to thank God!  No, Samson whines about being thirsty instead.  Rather than thanking God for allowing him to escape the captivity of his own people and the Philistines, Samson focuses on a single area where his needs are not fully satisfied.  You can always tell a person who is struggling with being obedient to the Father because they assume God’s presence and simultaneously show no gratitude for it.  Obedience should bring about humbleness to God.  We just don’t see any of that in Samson.

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Year 4, Day 275: Judges 14

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Father

• Father: This is the pinnacle of the Covenant Triangle.  God is the Father.  He is the creator.  He is love.  Our relationship with the Father is rooted in His love for us.  We get our identity through Him.  When the Father is in our life, obedience becomes clear.

Samson is a great character to study the Covenant Triangle.  The Father leads to Identity.  Identity leads to Obedience.  This is a healthy relationship with our creator.

This is absolutely not what we get with Samson.  Samson’s first words of this story are “Get me this woman that I want.  She’s right in my own eyes.”  Even when his mother and father try and persuade him to follow God’s ways, Samson rebels.

What makes Samson such a great story to study is because it is so easy to see what Samson does wrong.  He’s so focused on his own desires that he’s not at all submitted to the Father.  He wants the Philistine woman so he gets her.

Then the issue with the lion and the riddle comes along.  Samson becomes impressed with his ability to come up with a riddle.  He is focused on both his own strength and wit.  He continues to display how focused he is on himself.  Samson is just not getting his identity from God.  He’s submitting to something, for sure.  He’s just not submitting in obedience to the Father and the identity that the Father gives to him.  He’d rather be obedient to his own thinking and his own passions.

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Year 4, Day 274: Judges 13

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Calling

• Calling asks whether or not God has called the person to the particular work at this point in their life.

What a great chapter in which we can look at calling.  Today we get to see Manoah and his wife at work.  They are called to raise up a judge for the Hebrew people.  Here is a barren woman who is given a single child and asked to bring that child up in a godly manner.

When stated that way, it sounds like a pretty typical request from God to parents, isn’t it?  Raise up the child in the ways of God!

But what I love is what Manoah and his wife do with that calling.  They stop and take the time to ask what God means.  They stop and ask God for help.  They admit that they don’t have all the answers and they come humbly before God.  They receive coaching and clarification so that they can be successful.

Here is a model for godly calling.  When God calls, stop and ask what God is asking of you.  Stop and ask God to help you get better at it.  Godly calling embraces humbleness as it turns back to God to find completeness.

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Year 4, Day 273: Judges 12

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Chemistry

• Chemistry asks whether the person in question can work with the other people that God has called.

In Judges 12 we get another opportunity to look at Jephthah.  In my theological commentary from 3 years ago, I was reminded about the fact that the Ephraimites came up against Gideon as we heard in Judges 8.  I was reminded how Gideon diffused the situation by humbling himself whereas Jephthah reinforces the conflict and fighting breaks out.  42,000 Hebrew people die because the situation cannot be resolved peacefully.

This led me to think about the idea of chemistry.  Does a person have what it takes to work with other people?  Does a person have what it takes to build relationship with others?  I believe we all have this ability, but some of us are able to do it on a much larger scale.  After all, some people have hundreds of friends and everyone seems to like them.  Others of us seem to have only a handful of friends, but those friendships run very deep.  All of us have the ability to have chemistry with others; we just have it in differing degrees.

Clearly Gideon had lots of chemistry.  Gideon was able to finagle his way into becoming the king of the Hebrew people – attested by his son’s name!  Jephthah, however, doesn’t appear to have much luck with chemistry.  His own people drive him out as we saw in the last chapter.  They only take him back when they need him.  Now the Ephraimites come before Jephthah and Jephthah doesn’t have the chemistry to diffuse the situation.  It’s a tough lesson for Jephthah to learn about himself.

But here’s the neat thing.  In the end, God still works through Jephthah.  God doesn’t only use the high-chemistry people like Gideon.  In fact, one might argue that in the end of his life Gideon’s high chemistry actually got him and the Hebrew people under him into quite a bit of spiritual trouble!  This isn’t true about Jephthah.  He may make people mad and not have the chemistry to fix the situation, but neither does he lead the Hebrew people away from God, either.  In this respect, Jephthah is not too unlike Samson, who we’ll meet shortly.

One doesn’t need high chemistry to follow God.  One simply needs to use what you have and follow God’s leading.  Where God leads, He will equip you to do the work that needs to be done.

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Year 4, Day 272: Judges 11

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Jephthah is an interesting character, whose life is filled with interesting choices.  We get to see three perspectives on character today.  First of all, we get to see the character that is thrown upon him.  He is the son of an ungodly sexual union.  Gilead – Jephthah’s father – has sex with a prostitute and Jephthah is the product.  Jephthah’s life is cast by this decision.  He is expelled from his community.  All sorts of rabble gather around him.  After the first third of this story, it would be easy to judge from a human perspective that Jephthah would have a shady character of ill-repute.

But this is not what we see.  The elders come back to him when they are under oppression.  They ask Jephthah to lead them.  Here is where we get proof of his character.  Had Jephthah been spiteful, he could have refused them outright.  But he does not.  Had Jephthah been nefarious, he could have accepted for his own benefit, his own fame, and even for his own extortion of their money.  But he does not.  What does Jephthah do?  Jephthah turns, gives glory to God, reminds the elders about God, and then says that if God wills it, he will become their leader.  That’s character.  Jephthah had every opportunity to have bad character develop within him.  But he demonstrates good character instead.

Then we have the tragic story of Jephthah’s daughter.  It was a silly and foolish vow.  But I’m going to take a very unpopular decision from the world’s perspective.  He and his daughter both honored the vow.  The fact that his daughter so willingly embraced the honoring of the vow causes me to support her in spite of Jephthah’s foolish vow.  Not only did Jephthah demonstrate character in dealing with the elders but he has raised a daughter with character, too.  No doubt that Jephthah’s daughter is still embraced by God as a woman who loved her God more than her own life.  Now that’s character.

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Year 4, Day 271: Judges 10

Theological Commentary: Click Here 

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

What a neat chapter of Judges.  The reason I love this chapter is because it is here in this chapter that we see the stern face of God.  It is here in this chapter that we see God tell the Hebrew people, “no.”  So often we come to God with an, “Oh God, give me” mentality.  Sometimes we come to God with an attitude that He will forgive anything we do and we take Him for granted.  Here in this chapter we hear about a Hebrew people that create their own mess and God tells them to lie in the bed that they’ve made.

This is such an awesome chapter!  God knows when He really is in our Up position and when we’re just fooling Him.  God knows when we really want to submit to Him and when we just want Him to save us without really changing us.  God knows.  He cannot be fooled or mocked.  This is an awesome chapter to remind us why it is important to have God in our Up position.

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