Wisdom International Devotionals

by Seth Davey

  The Wolves We Don’t See Deuteronomy 7:22 “The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.”   We may draw distinctions in our everyday lives between the theological and the practical, between the deeply rooted moral laws that govern the universe and those seemingly trivial rules of thumb, between crimson letters as sacred as “I am the Resurrection and the Life” and grayer words like “lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you,” but no such distinction actually exists in the perfect will of Almighty God.    Given what we know from the whole range of biblical doctrine, and rising especially from our understanding that Christ was slain before the foundation of the world and that redemption for a fallen humanity was always the telos of creation, we’d expect to find hints of that wider vision here in Deuteronomy, wouldn’t we? We’d expect verse 22 to r...

  Unsung Heroes Deuteronomy 7:7 “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples …”   We all love a good underdog story, don’t we? The motif of a surprising, unexpected hero underwrites many of our greatest chronicles and epic tales. You need only look to Arthur Pendragon or Lucy Pevensie or Peter Pan or Huckleberry Finn for proof that, even for adults, there’s something wonderful about the thought of an unsung hero leading the way. As Isaiah so poignantly envisioned it in Isaiah 11:6, “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat … and a little child shall lead them.” For God chooses what is weak in the world to shame the strong (1 Corinthian 1:27).   Like Frodo and Sam Baggins, the ultimate heroes of Tolkien’s Middle Earth drama, who started out as two unadventurous hobbits living in the back hills of their world, very muc...

  Good in Both Senses Deuteronomy 6:24-25 “And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he commanded us.”   There are two corresponding aspects to genuine faith that work in tandem: trusting that God is totally and perfectly good—i.e. believing that doing God’s will is synonymous with doing  good will — and trusting that God’s good always ends in  our  good.    Do you see the cause and effect at work in Deuteronomy 6:24, friend? Do you see how faith works out? How it thinks? How it understands? It seems so simple on paper, but why is it so difficult for us in practice? Think about it: if we truly believed that God not only does what’s good in essence and also what’s good in application, then why would we ever, even for a second, even in ti...

  For the Love of God! Deuteronomy 6:7 “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”   If you haven’t been paying close attention recently to the tidal wave of policies and curriculums and social media movements and television programming aimed at conditioning impressionable children into seeing the world through a secular humanist-progressivist-deconstructionist lens, then you’ve missed a fact as clear as day and as dark as night: the devil is vigilant for our kids.    I remember serving as a counselor for our church’s middle-school summer camp almost twenty years ago—I was 18 at the time—and walking along with an older mentor, sharing with him my fears of raising children in such a dark, godless age where access to pornography is always at our fingertips and prayer in schools is being shunned and the foundation for human dignity is replac...

  Cardiac Check Deuteronomy 6:5-6 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.”   As uncomfortable as it may be, Deuteronomy 6:5 demands that we do a cardiac catheterization of our hearts today, a thorough examination of the sinews and synapses of our ambitions, testing the inner workings of our desires, inspecting the arteries of our motives, to see whether that spiritual arrythmia we feel from time to time is rooted in our human weakness or rooted in a deeper, more critical problem.   Why do you follow God’s commands today, friend? What drives and fuels your actions? Is it because you’re terrified that if you don’t obey God, He’ll throw you into hell for all eternity? Is your love for Him more a fear of getting on His bad side? Or, if it isn’t that, do you find yourself doing good “Christian” things and persisting with weekly churchy routines because...

  Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Anne Ross Cousin’s hymn, ‘The Sands of Time are Sinking’)   The sands of time are sinking, the dawn of heaven breaks; The summer morn I’ve sighed for—the far, sweet morn awakes! Deep dark has been the midnight, but Dayspring is at hand, Eternal glory dwelling in the Promised Land.   O Christ, You are the Fountain—the deep, sweet Well of love! The streams of earth I’ve tasted, more deep I’ll drink above. There to an ocean fullness Your mercy does expand, Eternal glory dwelling in the Promised Land.   The Bride eyes not her garments, but her dear Bridegroom’s face; I do not yearn for riches, but for my King’s embrace! No greater crown I herald than those two nail-pierced hands, The Lamb is all the glory of the Promised Land.

  Today’s Chronicle: Constancy Deuteronomy 5:28b-29 “And the LORD said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. … Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!’”   I can’t think of a better word to describe our human condition than the word inconstancy. Even as regenerated believers in Christ, even after throwing away old addictions and worldly ambitions, we still woke up this morning in another round of that spiritual tug-of-war. Paul expresses his frustration at this condition in Romans 7, which writing, “The things I want to do, I don’t do, and the things I don’t want to do, I do; oh wretched man that I am!” Isaiah echoed that sentiment when crying out, “Woe is me! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips!” Even Job, the poster boy for fidelity even to onlooking demons, changed his prayers of thanks...

  A More Consuming Fire Deuteronomy 5:25-27 “‘Now therefore why should we die? For this great fire will consume us. If we hear the voice of our LORD our God any more, we shall die. For who is there of all flesh, that has heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of fire as we have, and has still lived? Go near and hear all that the LORD our God will say, and speak to us all that the LORD our God will speak to you, and we will hear and do it.’”   In the dialogue between God and Moses that immediately follows from here, the LORD fascinatingly commends every word of the people’s request, rejoicing to Moses of the way these pilgrims are finally seeing His glory and responding with reverential fear. But just think how miserable our sanctification would be if, day by day, God needed to draw us back to Sinai and thunder words through fire and darkness to keep us from going astray? Thankfully, while visions like these are pivotal to our life of faith, they aren’t pre...

  About a Burning Fire Deuteronomy 5:22 “These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain out of the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice, and he added no more.”   A couple years ago, on a warm, breezy Saturday afternoon, I packed my kids in the car for a day trip to Raven Rock State Park, but as soon as we pulled out of our driveway and turned onto the main road, my son leapt up from the backseat, thrust his finger past my face toward the windshield, and screamed, “Fire!” Sure enough, one of our neighbor’s houses was up in flames. A pillar of smoke barreled across the road and caught the adjacent pine trees on fire as well, so we pulled off the road as quickly as we could to the sound of firetruck sirens whirling past. Thank God no one was hurt in the ordeal, but by the end it, all that remained of that little farmhouse was the charred bricks of the crawlspace. It strikes me that fire is a cozy, relaxing thing, when contained ...

  Against the Winds Deuteronomy 4:32-33, 35 “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of fire, as you have heard, and still live? … To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.”   This caravan of wilderness wanderers is making its way to the edge of the Jordan, readying to cross over into battles and adventures and dangers the likes of which many of the young among them have never encountered, and we can be sure that the devil is sending headwinds of furious words against them as they march. Words like, “Who do you think  you are?! What makes you worthy to barge into these cities full of impressive fortifications and thriving economies and unparalleled artistries and t...

  Hide-And-Seek-Chase Deuteronomy 4:29 “But from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart.”   We gathered at my parents’ house for dinner last night to celebrate the gender reveal of our precious baby due in July, and my nephew, Tucker, asked me to play hide-and-seek chase with him as he always does. He’s such a sweet-tempered kid, just as his mother was when she was her age, and full of energy, and I love chasing him around the house as he growls like a t-rex dinosaur (his favorite animal). Except that his version of hide-and-seek consists of standing out in the open about twenty yards from where I’ve just counted and calling out “Uncle Seth, here I am!”, or just roaring and running around in circles giddily till I tag him. Then, when it’s my turn to hide, I’ll hear him from my hiding spot finish counting, look around for about twenty seconds or less, and then start calling out in exacerbation, “Uncle Seth, where...

  Sabbath Psalm   (Adapted from Carrie Breck’s hymn ‘Face to Face’)   Face to face with Christ, my Savior,  Face to face—when will it be? When with rapture I behold Him, Jesus Christ Who died for me!   Only faintly now I see Him, With the shaded veil between; But a blessed day is nearing,  When I’ll see as I am seen.   What rejoicing in His presence, Banished there my grief and pain! There, all crooked ways are straightened, There, all myst’ries are made plain.   Face to face—O happy moment! Face to face—to see and know! Face to face with my Redeemer, Jesus Christ Who loves me so!

  Dummies Deuteronomy 4:27-28 “And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands, that neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.”   Do you remember in 1 Corinthians 3 when Paul expressed his frustration to Corinthian believers for their infantile appetite for God’s Word, bemoaning the fact that they’re still sipping on milk rather than eating meat? While Paul explicitly used that analogy in reference to the Corinthian’s sinfulness, I think it also expresses a deeper principle about the range of meaning in the Bible. There’s an infinite God behind these letters, if His infallible will is the object of these pictures, then the Scriptures are an unending buffet, with rows and rows and rows of nourishing meaning, and a spread too vast for our brief lifetime to span.    To me, the milk of Deuteronomy 4:28 is the ego-c...

  Visual Words Deuteronomy 4:11-12 “And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain, while the mountain burned with fire to the heart of heaven, wrapped in darkness, cloud, and gloom. Then the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice.”   Mesmeric. That’s the word that comes to mind when reading Moses’ poetic reminiscence of that enigmatic Exodus 20:21 theophany where the people all hurled themselves away from Sinai as he “walked into the deep darkness where God was.” Perhaps linguists and scholars who lack the flare for allegory would claim that Moses isn’t being Shakespearian at all with his description, but rather he’s just telling it how  it is —how he remembers it, that is—or that he’s merely relaying the facts in black and white terms, but that misses the point by a wide spectrum. Think of it, friend: while God literally spoke through a cloud of fire and sweltering darkness, fire and...

  A Double Standard Deuteronomy 4:7-8 “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the LORD our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”   Every judicial or provincial or legislative action, from the development of roadways in a municipality to the development of curriculums by teachers’ unions to the arbitrary rules we as parents make for our children from day to day find their merit in their proximity to a God Who  is  righteousness, truth and justice. Don’t for a moment try to divorce these two inextricably connected principles of life and governance, friend. You can’t have the second part without the first, and you can’t miss the second part if you have the first. Mark it down: the nearer you are to God, the more properly ordered your life will be. That principle doesn’t just apply to our individual pursuit of Christ, but also ...

  Actions Speak Deuteronomy 4:5-6 “See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely, this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’”   “Preach Christ always, and, if you must, use words,” St. Francis of Assisi is attributed with saying, and that quote has ruffled many feathers in protestant, evangelical circles. Pastors rightly point to Romans 10:14, where Paul writes, “How are they to believe in him of whom they’ve never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”, and also to our Lord’s great commission in Mark 16:15, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation,” in rebuttal to it. I mean, the very fact that we even have Scriptures at all is because God deemed wor...

  A Great Co-Mission Deuteronomy 3:27-38 “‘Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people.’”   My missionary grandfather who co-founded the Bible Broadcasting Network and Mission’s To Military and pastored Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach for many years, often said to his grandkids growing up, “You never retire from the LORD’s work.” And he never did. In fact, even in his 90s, a few months before God called him home, Pa was still sharing his testimony from the pulpit of The Shepherd’s Church on a Sunday morning, a message that touched many people. Truth be told, after the death of my grandmother, his mental state began to decline. He’d forget things—even people. He became more senile in ways he’d been jovial before. But in spite of his shortcomings...

  Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Edward Mote’s hymn, ‘The Solid Rock’)   My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.   When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace; In all the wild and stormy gales, my anchor holds within the veil.   His oath, His covenant, His blood support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.   When Jesus comes with trumpet sound, O may I then in Him be found! Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the Throne.   On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand! All other ground is sinking sand.

  Passing the Baton Deuteronomy 3:23-26 “And I pleaded with the LORD at that time, saying, ‘O Lord GOD, you have only begun to show your servant your greatness and your mighty hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as yours? Please let me go over and see the good land beyond the Jordan, that good hill country and Lebanon.’ But the LORD was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me.”   Moses shares the same strength and corresponding weakness that all great leaders possess: he simply wants to do it  all . That doesn’t mean he’s a control freak—far from it. In fact, we’ve witnessed him in the past receive wise counsel from his father-in-law by delegating responsibilities to other godly men in the assembly. He isn’t the sort of man who needs control, He’s the sort who bears responsibility—and that’s a big distinction. He feels the heavy weight of leadership bearing down on his shoulders, feels the anguish of his ...

  Divine Devotion Deuteronomy 3:3 & 6 “So the LORD our God gave into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people, and we struck him down until he had no survivor left. … And we devoted them to destruction … men, women, and children.”   Ask the average person on the street with a moderate understanding of the Bible what Noah’s flood and the destruction of Sodom and the Passover in Egypt and the scorched-earth conquest of Canaan all have in common, and the answer you’ll get, whether spewed out in profanities or shrugged off ambivalently, is genocide. That’s the categorical term that serves as a sort of murky film over Scriptures like these that makes it difficult for even the most optimistic saint among us to see the radiant light of God’s love shining through it. Personally, as a father of two precious children, a father of one precious child our LORD called home in the womb, and the father of another on the way, my heart aches when I read accounts of little ch...

  King of the Grasshoppers Deuteronomy 3:1 & 11 “Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan. And Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. … (For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. … Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.)”   What image comes to your mind as you read of this Canaanite hulk named Og storming through the hills with his army to thwart the advance of God’s Kingdom? Maybe you picture a rugged, handsome warrior, the Viking sort, with long, braided hair, a full beard, and rounded, muscular shoulders that lay beside his iron neck like boulders. Or maybe you picture an ordinary, unimpressive chieftain that only got where he got in life because he was a head taller than everyone else in his clan. But I don’t see a man at all when I read Deuteronomy 3:1 and 11. I see a sort of godless ogre racing out from th...

  Holy Dread Deuteronomy 2:25 “‘This day I will begin to put the dread and fear of you on the peoples who are under the whole heaven, who shall hear the report of you and shall tremble and be in anguish because of you.’”   “Perfect love casts out fear,” writes the apostle John in 1 John 4:18, and that creates a conundrum for us as expositors, especially when reading the constant positive usage of “fearing God” in the Old Testament. In other words, biblically, “fear” can represent either a trust in God or an aversion to Him, as the same word describes both the believer’s obedience—i.e. “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”—and the unbeliever’s disobedience. The distinction, then, isn’t the fact that there’s good fear and bad fear, for fear is neither good nor bad in itself, but rather the distinction comes from where our perception of fear leads us next. It’s what we do with fear that makes all the difference. Holy fear can thrust us to our knees in humble contritio...

  Blaze of Glory Deuteronomy 2:8-9 “So we went on, away from our brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir, away from the Arabah road from Elath and Ezion-geber. And we turned and went in the direction of the wilderness of Moab. And the LORD said to me, ‘Do no harass Moab or contend with them in battle, for I will not give you any of their land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the people of Lot for a possession.’”   When we last encountered Lot back in Genesis 19, it wasn’t a pretty picture. Due, no doubt, to the PTSD he experienced upon watching his wife morph into a pillar of salt and his city crumble into a pile of sulfuric rubble, he clearly became despondent in life. The last place we saw him was a place of woe, a place where the solace of the proverbial bottle was the only salve for his crushed spirit. Unlike that category of saints who leave the biblical stage in a blaze of glory, like Elijah and Enoch and even Abraham, Lot’s life burns out like the emb...

  Sabbath Psalm   (Adapted from Mary Kidder’s hymn ‘Is My Name Written There?’)   Lord, I don’t care for riches, neither silver nor gold, I yearn only for heaven—to be part of Your fold! In the book of Your Kingdom with its pages so fair, Tell me, Jesus, my Savior, is my name written there?   Lord, my sins are so many, like the sands of the sea, But Your blood, O dear Savior, is sufficient for me! For Your promise is written in bright letters that glow— “Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them like snow!”   O that beautiful Zion with its summit of light,  With its glorified peoples in pure garments so bright; Where no thief can gain entrance to destroy what is fair, Where the angels are watching—yes, my name’s written there.

  Outliers Deuteronomy 2:2, 4-5 “Then the LORD said to me, ‘… “You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers, the people of Esau, who live in Seir. … Do not contend with them, for I will not give you any of their land, no, not so much as the soul of the foot to tread on, because I have given Mount Seir to Esau as a possession.”’”   If you were with me during our study through Genesis a few years ago, you’ll recall reflecting on how grievous Jacob’s treachery toward Esau was. You’ll recall how Jacob, rightly called “the trickster,” first exploited Esau’s intense hunger to manipulate an unfair trade out of him. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink,” writes Paul in Romans 12:20, and he never added the phrase, “Oh, and make sure to bleed him dry in the process!”, which is what Jacob did.    But Jacob was just getting started. A little further down the road, as Esau set out on another hunting expedition to hunt, ...

  The Father’s Arms Deuteronomy 1:29-31 “Then I said to you, ‘Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.’”   Sometimes the inspired, biblical authors deliver a gift of words so illustrative and vibrant that you can’t help but run with them. Sometimes a metaphor is so deep and rich in meaning that it defies the constraints of literary and historical context, which is certainly the case in this analogy Moses chooses here for describing God’s faithful and abiding care for these pilgrims. This transcendent yet earthy analogy of God carrying His people “as a father carries his son” invites us into a context of reflection all its own. How  does  a loving father carry his son? In just one way, in one singula...

  The Prepositions of Providence Deuteronomy 1:1 & 3 These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan in the wilderness, in the Arabah opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dizahab. … In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the LORD had given him in commandment to them.   Alas, we’ve reached the final scroll of Moses’ Pentateuch, a scroll that begins with a thorough review of all the highlights and lowlights from their storied journey thus far, yet it also contains new insights as well, previously unheard lines of dialogue that offer deeper insight behind-the-scenes: little details missing from Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers that only the sanctified gaze of hindsight can produce.    But notice that this opening paragraph is a tidal wave of prepositional phrases. “ Beyond  the Jordan,” “ in  the wilderness,” “ in  the Araba opp...