The Relational Mission

" Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you, as I promised to Moses" —Joshua 1:3 About 500 years before God spoke these words to Joshua, God promised Abraham that his descendants would possess and inhabit the land of Canaan (see Genesis 17). However, Abraham never saw the fulfillment of this promise, as his family grew from tribal nomads to a slave nation in Egypt. Moses was given the charge of leading the people from slavery into the Promised Land, but they rebelled out of fear, not having enough faith that God would give it to them (see Numbers 13). For 40 years, the Israelites wandered through the wilderness until they were prepared to enter the land. Moses was not able to see the filfillment of the promise, but now Joshua would. As a descendant of Abraham during the years of monadic travel and Egyptian slavery, it would have been easy to give up on the promise of the land. It would be easy to see such promises as wish dreams. It would ...

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” —Proverbs 16:25 What way “appears to be right?” If we are going to understand what this means and how to avoid it then we had better avoid the temptation to jump to conclusions about this. On the surface, the meaning seems obvious. The patterns of sin lead to death. But the Proverbs were not written to pagans who were steeped in sin. The Israelites knew about sin and how sin leads to death. God spoke through the laws and the prophets to make sure that his people understood this. They knew the difference between right and wrong. Breaking the law does not appear to be right. So what might this mean? Let me suggest that it means something like this: Doing what is right because it is right leads to death. It’s a masked death, one that looks good on the outside, but it eats us up from the inside out. God is seeking covenant partners who will enter into loving relationship with him, not roboti...