Remember that the Canaanites were those who were cursed as
sons of Ham who uncovered his father Noah's nakedness after the flood. Abraham didn't want his son to marry one of the
Canaanite women but a woman from his own, blessed, line from Noah. He made his servant swear that he would not
allow Isaac to marry a Canaanite woman and that he would also not allow Isaac
to return to his ancestral home with his wife.
He knew that there was a chance that Isaac would not return to the land
of promise after going back to Ur. (When
Jacob returns it takes a long time to come back.) Abraham's servant goes back to the start of
the journey, a place where he may never have been, and when he arrives the Lord
leads to him the right woman, a good woman and indeed a kinsman of
Abraham. You would almost think God had
a plan that He intended to have come to pass all along wouldn't you?
Jesus' brothers don't believe in Him. They don't believe He is Messiah. They haven't seen enough and they have
rejected their mother's story about Him it would seem. They are like Joseph's brothers, the great
grandchildren of Abraham in their attitudes towards him. They encourage Jesus to go to the festival in
Judea even though they surely know it isn't completely safe for Jesus to be
there. He initially demurs to go because
His time has not yet fully come but then goes up for a little reconnaissance work,
listening to what was being said about Him at the festival. There was certainly a dispute about Him, some
said He was a good man, a higher complement than we might mean by saying such a
thing, and others that He was a deceiver of the people, a serious accusation,
satan is considered a deceiver remember, that was the exact accusation Eve laid
against him in the beginning. Jesus knows
that there is a plan and the fulfillment of God's plan awaits the right timing.
We have a short term horizon in most of our thinking. We hate discipline any time. We reject suffering and believe it must be
sent from the devil to harass us. That attitude
presumes two things, that we don't need to change and that we know what is best
for us. We believe we are pretty much
okay as we are or that with a little discipline in our lives we can become the
people we should be but the reality is that we are miserable sinners who have
no idea what God is trying to accomplish in and through our lives. We don't know His plans and even if we did we
don't know what is necessary to either get there or to be the people we need to
be once we arrive. Only He knows those
things and we can either trust in His sovereignty or we can fight Him all the
way. We need discipline, we need the
Lord's discipline. The writer says,
"(our parents) disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but
he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness." There is a difference in disciplining for
what "seems best to us" and "for our good" because He not
only knows what is for our good and so that we may share His holiness. Do you want that? Are you willing to submit to whatever He
deems necessary to achieve that?
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