Joshua is at least as skeptical as Moses was about the
future of the nation in their ability to serve and be faithful to the
Lord. They say all the right things,
ascribing to Him the credit for all they have accomplished in the conquest of
the Land but Joshua is less than convinced that their commitment is
wholehearted. He says plainly, you won't
follow through, you will fail and He won't forgive your transgressions and sins
because you will chase after other gods.
In fact, you have to make a beginning in convincing me by putting away
the gods you have among you right now.
Human nature is such that we want and therefore anything that promises
to give us what we want becomes a god to us.
The best way to identify a god in our lives is by devotion, what we
spend time pursuing. It can be politics
or money or nearly anything at all.
Where we invest our time, talent and treasure, not to mention our
hearts, is a god that is competing for our attention and allegiance. What is winning the battle in your life?
Would that it were as easy as washing one's hands to wash
away the guilty stain of sin. Pilate
tries an intellectual conceit to transfer the guilt of the crucifixion of an
innocent man yet his fear of the people starting a riot, breaking the Pax
Romana, and therefore facing another decision, to crack down on Israel or risk
the wrath of his Roman overlords, but in the end he made a decision that Jesus
would be crucified. He used the same algebra
that we hear from the council leaders in John 11, that one man's life can be
sacrificed rather than risk something more.
Utilitarian ethics certainly didn't begin in the 18th century
with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Pilate calculates the cost to himself as too high to do the right
thing. Afterwards, he had Jesus flogged
and the soldiers of the governor, Roman soldiers, treated Jesus with scorn and
contempt, it wasn't just the Jews who bear the responsibility for this heinous
crime.
For a man who hasn't been to Rome Paul certainly has a good
many friends there doesn't he? By my
count he notes at least 27 people by name here as he wraps up the epistle. His travels and his work in missions have
borne real fruit and those who have received him and who have received from him
are alike mentioned as brothers and sisters.
Paul surely had no fears of the movement dying when he could see such
fruit and know that even though Rome, for instance, was a place he had not
personally visited, his alumni, his children, were there on missions
themselves. Paul did more for the spread
of the Gospel than any apostle and yet even today in the church there are those
who reject his apostolicity and authority.
The early church chose to canonize much of Paul's work as truth, why is
he so questioned by those who come 2000 years later and who, in many ways, owe
their faith to Paul's work and that of those whom he gospeled? We are becoming like the nation after Joshua
and his generation of leaders, those we will find in the next Old Testament
book, "all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes."
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