The people are disobedient with respect to the devoted
things. They were to destroy all of
Jericho with the exception of those things specified for the use in worship and
one man kept some of those things for himself.
One man's sin caused the defeat at Ai, caused the Lord's anger to be
against the entire nation. We don't
often think of sin as having corporate implications but it has always done
so. In our worship we make confession
and we use the first person plural noun, "we", when we do so. We should have prepared as individuals for
worship prior to the beginning of the worship and in worship we are confessing
those sins that have been further illuminated in the reading and preaching of
the word and also confessing our sins as a body, we as a church have not loved
Him exclusively and we as a body have not loved our neighbors. When He spoke of Israel, the Lord said they
were to be a holy nation, a kingdom of priests.
We are our brother's keeper.
The disciples seem to not believe there is imminent danger
for Jesus. Surely, if they thought He
were actually going to be arrested, tried and crucified they would not have
been able to sleep. As He pours out
prayer in the Garden they cannot keep their eyes open. In His hour of need the
three He has trusted most and who have accompanied Him in many private moments,
including the Transfiguration, are unable to stay awake. Now, however, the time has come and Jesus
goes to meet his betrayer and His destiny.
The hour has come to awake from sleep and we are to live by
the Spirit and not by the flesh. Our
flesh is indeed weak, we see things that have value and we forget what has
real, eternal value and we have to possess things. Coveting is the root of all, we can covet
everything and anything. The other sins
of the flesh, murder, adultery, theft, etc., are all extensions of
covetousness. Our hearts are not
steadfast and we have to change the way we think and see things in order to get
our values right. Do we believe fully in
life eternal? If we understand the
difference between eternity and today, we will have proper values. Would we rather possess things forever or for
a lifetime? The cost of the temporal is
the eternal. It isn't just things we
need to think that way about, it is our very lives. Our willingness to lay down our lives for Him
is tied to this same question. Jesus
chose eternal glory over the kingdoms of earth.
Like the commander of the Lord's army, it wasn't so much that He was for
us as He was for God, we are given the opportunity to make that same choice all
day, every day.
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