Wisdom International Devotionals

by Seth Davey

 Underlining Virtues Deuteronomy 27:26 “‘Cursed be anyone who does not confirm the words of this law by doing them.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’” My son just aged out of his 7-9-year-old soccer team that I’ve been coaching for the past four years, and due to the fact that many of his teammates are also nine years old, we’ve been steam-rolling other teams, winning most games by seven or eight goals. Typically, when the opposing players are much younger and smaller than ours, I try to show mercy by putting Micah on defense, so as not to run up the score line. In one such game, we were up 5-1 in the first half, Micah had already scored 3 goals, so I moved him to the back. However, the opposing team did carry one threat—a boy named Sam—and I watched Sam stealthfully sneak his way toward our goalie box in hopes of poaching a goal. I also noticed that Micah had started drifting up field again, following his striker instincts, hoping to poach another goal himself, while complete...

 Not So Fine Art Deuteronomy 27:14-15 “And the Levites shall declare to all the men of Israel in a loud voice: ‘Cursed be the man who makes a carved image or cast metal image, an abomination to the LORD, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’” We use the term ‘bad’ as a condemnatory term of moral significance—i.e. ‘Drunkenness is bad for you’ or ‘Nero was a bad man’—yet, we also use that term in an amoral sense, right? We call the dry hamburger a ‘bad meal’ or a poor performance on the ballfield a ‘bad day at the office.’ Yet, the word ‘evil’ isn’t like that. A bad teacher and an evil teacher are two different things entirely. That is, ‘evil’ is only a moral term. We’d never call even the driest hamburger or the worst ballgame or the week-long monsoon evil because that sort of curse word is reserved for darker things. Yet, ‘abomination’ goes even further, doesn’t it? To call something abominable—which Go...

 Tactical Stewardship Deuteronomy 26:13 “Then you shall say before the LORD your God, ‘I have removed the sacred portion out of my house, and moreover, I have given it to the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, according to all your commandment that you have commanded me.” I’m struck by the simplicity of the outline given here for this particular tithe of first fruits. Notice how itemized this giving sheet is: “To the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.” These are four distinct categories of persons in the commonwealth that serves as a helpful guide for our own financial tithing.  First come the Levites who’ve devoted their lives to the sacred work of temple ministry, and we could equivocate their ministry with the work of full-time pastors and missionaries and evangelists today. Are you faithfully and financially supporting church ministers, friend? Then come the category of sojourners, to which could belong neighbors who may have lost a jo...

 Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Barney E Warren’s hymn, ‘Beautiful’) Beautiful robes so white, Beautiful land of light, Beautiful home so bright, Where Morning will end the night. Shimmering crowns laid down, Poured at Your feet all around, “Hail Him!” the song that surrounds, When faith has at last become sight. Beautiful robes, Beautiful land, Beautiful feet, Beautiful hands, Beautiful hope— Fully fulfilled, Beautiful end to the story God willed.

 Repeat After Me Deuteronomy 26:5-7 “And you shall make response before the LORD your God, ‘A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the LORD, the God of our fathers, and the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.’” Perhaps you grew up in a high church environment where liturgy and congregational confessionals serve as an integral part of the worship service. But I didn’t. Of all the unique things my independent Baptist upbringing imprinted upon my faith, creedal recitations where everyone gets down on their knees to pray from the same hymn sheet wasn’t part of it. Besides, tending to be on the more artistic spectrum, preferring to follow the cadence of inner conviction rather than the cadence of an off-beat choir, I used to find form...

 A Double Take Deuteronomy 25:13-15 “You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have. … For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are an abomination to the LORD your God.” Doubtless any among us read Deuteronomy 25:13-15 just now with a sting of conviction and ran to that miscellaneous drawer in our kitchen to quickly throw away the unequal weights we’ve been hiding. The particularity of this law is of course a relic of a bygone era, a seeming triviality to many among us who would need a lecture on ancient modes of banking; but while the meaning of this law has faded with time, the principle undergirding it is as relevant as ever. In fact, you’ve probably addressed it already this week unwittingly, in an argument with a friend or while listening to your favorite podcast. Because this archaic law against double measures is equivalent...

 No Poor Men Here Deuteronomy 24:14-15 “You shall not oppress a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brothers or one of the sojourners who are in the land within your towns. You shall give him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets (for he is poor and counts on it), lest he cry against you to the LORD, and you be guilty of sin.” An unsettling paradox of human progress through history is that so many great achievements are also great oppressions, as if the terms ‘enterprise’ and ‘enslavement’ have always gone hand in hand. Think of the diamond industry over the past century or so. Journalists have written tragic accounts of the poor, invisible children in places like Sierra Leon who are forced to harvest diamonds for gun-toting thugs and diamond dealers. Think of the infamous ‘sweat shops’ in communist countries like China, where women and children work from sun-up to sun-down to manufacture name-brand clothing, toys, and textiles that have turned We...

 That’s an Order Deuteronomy 24:5 “When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.” Before there was a global empire, there was a nation. Before there was a nation, there was a state. Before there was a state, there was a city. Before there was a city, there was a town. Before there was a town, there was a tribe. Before there was a tribe, there was a clan. Before there was a clan, there was a family. Before there was a family, there was a holy matrimony. Before there was a holy matrimony, there was a man. And before there was a man, there was God.  That anthropological progression from marriage to family to tribe to nation is not merely a chronological order but an essential one. That is, when God instituted the covenant of marriage in Genesis 2, it was the very first sacred ordinance He brought forth in the world, even before Communion and Bapt...

 The Golden Rule Deuteronomy 23:15-16 “You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place that he shall choose within one of your towns, wherever it suits him. You shall not wrong him.” It’s odd to me that Moses provides no further criteria for evaluating whether a slave has escaped his master on the basis of physical abuse—i.e. “You shall not give up to his master a slave whose been mercilessly beaten or whose missing any eye or a limb due to gross malfeasance”—but almost assumes that any runaway slave should be taken at his word immediately. Yet, the more I reflect on the incredible agency God gives to indentured servants who are clearly under duress, the more luminous and effervescent this law becomes in my understanding. To think that of all the rules God could’ve inspired Moses to add to this parchment, He chose this one, to give elaborate protections for even the lowest members of society; w...

 Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘And Can it Be’) And can it be that I should gain An interest in the Savior’s blood? Died He for me, who caused His pain— For me, who Him to death pursued? Amazing love! How can it be? That you, my God, would die for me? He left His Father’s throne above So free, so infinite His grace; Emptied Himself of all but love, And bled for Adam’s helpless race! This Mercy great—immense and free, I found—oh how it found out me! Long my imprisoned spirit lay, Fast bound in sin and nature’s night; Your eye diffused a sudden ray: I woke, the dungeon flamed with light! My chains fell off—I walked anew; I rose, went forth, and followed You. Still that small inward voice I hear, That whispers all my sins are gone; Still that atoning hands draws near, And leads my soul in triumph’s song! I’ll live the Life His wounds impart; And feel the Savior hold my heart. I’ll speak the Truth His voice pronounced. And walk His Way—the world renounced.

 The Blessing is Greater than the Curse Deuteronomy 23:3-4 “No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way …” The severity of this Mosaic ex cathedra is lessened by the context of Deuteronomy 23, because in this chapter eunuchs who’ve been castrated (surely against their will) as well as Egyptians up to “the second generation” are also forbidden from the assembly. Yet, remember from our study of Leviticus that even lepers, who weren’t sick because of something they did, and even woman during their menstrual period, weren’t permitted to join the assembly either. So this banishment from church as it were does not necessarily imply banishment from heaven. Christ Himself said that “some have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom,” so while ceremonial ostracism from the assembly was certainly a bad thing in th...

Purity—the Purge Deuteronomy 22:22 “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel.” Try to fathom the uproar that would ensue in our society if congressional leaders and legislators, prosecutors and district attorneys, judges and jurors, suddenly reinstated laws like Deuteronomy 22:22 into public policy? I bet it would start riots everywhere. In the metropolises and the back woods. In the bluest districts of California and in the reddest districts of Texas. Everyone, from the wealthy to the poor, from the ivy leaguers to the high-school dropouts, would gather in unified protest over this attack against their freedom of expression. Just imagine it, friend. What if our church leaders and state leaders alike condemned extra-marital sexual relations as a crime worthy of the death penalty? What if marriage between a man and a woman under God was that sacred a covenant? ...

 Mercy Rule Deuteronomy 22:6-7 “If you come across a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young. You shall let the mother go …” On the face of it, what makes this mercy rule of Deuteronomy 22:6-7 so peculiar is just how particular it is, that in a chapter where God decries abominations like transvestitism and adultery and child sacrifice, He gives provisions for the sparrows too. But there’s a wonderful principle here that stretches beyond the realm of momma birds in their nests, which we could put this way: let mercy rule over your appetites.  We need to eat, right? Yes, And God has given us an array of meats and a botanical garden of garnishes for our nourishment according to Genesis 2, correct? Okay. But animals aren’t merely here for our appetites either. God didn’t create the multivalent species of birds, from cardinals with their fiery red hues to peaco...

 Hate Speech Deuteronomy 22:5 “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.” Thirty-three years ago, well before the invention of iPhone cameras, my dad had one of those heavy-duty video camcorders that he’d rest on his shoulder like a bazooka to film home videos, and we’ve made it a tradition every Christmas to sit around my parent’s upstairs living room and watch some of the hilarious home videos we made during those good ole days. One of our favorites is a video of my brother and I, about five or six years old, jumping in the trampoline in our sister Candace’s swimsuits. My mom tells the story of the first moment she saw me dressed up like that and frantically called my dad to tell him the news. “Stephen!—your son is jumping on the trampoline in his sister’s swimsuit!! What do I do?!” My father’s reply was wise: “Hurry—get the video camera!”  How awful is it to consider ...

 Love Thy Neighbor  Deuteronomy 22:4 “You shall not see your brother’s donkey or his ox fallen down by the way and ignore them. You shall help him to lift them up again.” I bought my very first used truck last year, a 2015 Chevy Colorado, but because it’s the cheapest version Chevy makes—small engine, no four-wheel drive, two doors, etc.—I souped it up with all-terrain tires so that I could better navigate the rough, gravel roads I frequent on writing excursions. The tires got me up steep mountains, through pothole-filled roads, and performed like a bulldozer for seven months, till, one day, about three weeks ago, two of them just decided to quit. We piled into our minivan one Sunday morning to head to church and that’s when I noticed that my back truck tire was completely flat. When we arrived back home later that day, in the downtime between lunch and our nightly ministry, I sat on the couch praying and pondering what to do. I knew my neighbor Kenny had the gear to help, but...

 Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Fanny Crosby’s hymn ‘Able to Deliver’) O troubled heart Be not afraid, The hope you hold Will never fade! Christ knows your pain He’ll be your aid; Whatever your cross may be. O troubled heart When foes unite, Cling to your Rock— Your shining Light! The devils see And take to flight; Whatever the wars may be. O troubled heart When doubts assail Cling to the Truth That cannot fail! Lift high the cross— It will prevail! Whatever the doubts may be.

 A Curious Curse Deuteronomy 21:22-23 “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.” While our LORD’s redeeming death on a cross is undoubtedly the most crucial application of the peculiar Scripture above, the answer to the question, “Why is a man hanging from a tree a cursed thing?” can’t be, “Because Christ will one day hang on a tree to bear our sins,” since Deuteronomy 21:22-23 is law as much as prophecy. Christ’s Passion might be the ultimate picture we see when gazing back through years of revelatory hindsight, but even the Passion doesn’t explicate why a man hanging on a tree is a cursed endeavor in the first place, nor why leaving the dead man hanging overnight incites a sort of double curse. In other words, why is this sort of death so grievous to God at all, and why does a dead body need remo...

 Modern Protest—Missing Perspective Deuteronomy 21:11-13 “… and you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife, and you bring her home to your house, she shall shave her head and pare her nails. … And she shall remain in your house and lament her father and her mother a full month. After that you may go in to … be her husband, and she shall be your wife.” This subjugation rule that stings our modern, Western sensitivities and perhaps incites us to leap up from our armchairs in revolt for these women’s rights (and by the way, it’s Christianity that gave women those rights in the first place), that makes us decry these crude, ancient days when even godly men could snatch up a prisoner of war and exploit her loss as his gain, is also the novel exception in a world where conquered, husbandless women did not routinely receive compassion of any sort. The juxtaposition between this Mosaic Law and the law of lawless men needs to be understood, even...

 Scorched Earth Policies Deuteronomy 20:16-18 “But the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you for an inheritance, … you shall devote them to … destruction … that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God.” As a preface, understand that the argument I’m about to make in defense of Moses’ discomforting reiteration of God’s command here is seemingly the sort that political propogandists make. It sounds like the type of invective one nation makes against another in order to justify war. The sort that caused a Roman to see a Carthaginian not as a brother but as wickedness embodied, or a Spanish conquistador to treat indigenous Aztecs as savages. Because it’s easier to enslave and abuse and persecute a fellow human if we convince ourselves that he or she is something other than us, right? Something lesser. Something baser or beastly or even demonic. Morally sp...

 In His Hands Deuteronomy 20:5-6a “Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘Is there any man who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go back to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. And is there any man who has planted a vineyard and has not enjoyed its fruit? Let him go back to his house, …” The first principle I derive from Moses’ exemption to certain men from battle is that God doesn’t want distracted warriors on the battlefield; He wants men who are fully committed to the cause.  In verse 7, Moses adds to this list men who’ve just gotten married as well as fearful men, literally telling the newly wedded husbands to go spend time with their wives and the fearful-hearted men to stay home. But that begs a question: doesn’t this allowance leave room for men to make up excuses willy nilly? Doesn’t it sort of open the door for possible draft-dodging down the line? I can imagine men lining up before Moses with all sorts...

 Red Letters Deuteronomy 20:2-4 “And when you draw near to the battle, the priest shall come forward and speak to the people and shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel, today you are drawing near for battle against your enemies: let not your heart faint. Do not fear or panic or be in dread of them, for the LORD your God is he who goes with you to fight for you …’” In Book 3 of his historiographical masterwork called ‘Histories,’ Polybius recounts with aplomb the events of The Second Punic War between the fearsome Carthaginian leader, Hannibal, and Rome. I still remember reading the account while sitting near a Roman hill fort in South Wales, surrounded by sheep as far as the eye could see, and being riveted by Hannibal’s death-defying advance across the French Alps with soldiers, horses, and even elephants. The whole script read like a novel. Hannibal whipped through Roman garrisons like wildfire through a prairie, led his army through a frigid swamp, lost an eye and half his men to in...

 Sabbath Psalm (Revision of Grace Weiser Davis’ hymn ‘A Better Day Coming’) O, a better day is dawning A day that knows no night, When sorrows will be banished And every wrong made right. O, a brighter morn is dawning, Under topaz, cloudless sky; Day of wondrous revelation, Day of low things lifted high! O, the happy day is nearing, When my Jesus I’ll behold; There, we’ll walk the garden pathways As, in Eden, from of old.

 Painted Red Deuteronomy 19:18-21 “… If the witness is a false witness and has accused his brother falsely, then you shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother. … And the rest shall hear and fear. … Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Pop-atheist Sam Harris once spoke for many in the modern skeptical tradition when claiming in a debate how primitive and archaic this wild west sort of ‘eye for an eye’ Old Testament justice really is, especially in contrast to modern punitive advancements that are more rooted in empathy toward criminals rather than a brutal dismembering of them. But while I wholeheartedly agree that Jesus takes humanity far deeper in our practice of divine justice than Moses did, or that “Love your enemy and do well to those who persecute you” is a far more multi-dimensional picture of God’s mercy than the black-and-white mandate of Deuteronomy 19 to ‘show no pity,’ it isn’t becaus...

 Rocks of Offense Deuteronomy 19:14 “You shall not move your neighbor’s landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess.” The obvious face-value interpretation of this law is that latter-day Israelites shouldn’t move old boundary markers and steal land that rightfully belongs to their neighbors, those ancient boundary stones serving as constant, immovable reminders that land as precious as this was not arbitrarily doled out through local squatter laws but surveyed and platted and deeded by God Himself. Future Israelites should understand that to move one of these boulders was to be crushed by it, to thrust his entire inheritance against the Rock of Ages as it were and invite the weight of divine retribution onto his own neck as a millstone. Which reminds us as well that there are some stones in the world placed by forefathers of old, at the direction of Almighty God, that men shouldn’t push a...

 Alpha Deuteronomy 18:15-16 “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen—just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see the great fire any more, lest I die.’” Almighty God started off small with His outline for our Messiah in the opening chapter of the Bible. First, it was just a breath whispered to Eve after Adam’s fall, “And your seed will crush the serpent’s heel.” A hint that whatever sort of Messiah God would raise up on our behalf would be of man. Conceived in a mother’s womb, born in the blood and water of her anguish, through the very dust from which Adam was formed.  Then He added more detail, more color, to the initial outline. He called out to Abraham, commissioning him to leave father and mother, to found a special tribe among Adam’s race: a new people set apart by the LORD, inheritin...

 Broken Branches Deuteronomy 18:9-11 “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead.” To gain something right and good by an unholy means is to remain in the wrong. Without making an argument from silence here, consider that God doesn’t say in Deuteronomy 18:9-11 that diviners and astrologers and fortune tellers and necromancers are abominable because they always lie. Maybe they do. But these pagan practices aren’t expressly forbidden on that basis. In other words, God doesn’t call them abominable because they inevitably lead to untruth but because they lead in the wrong way, by the wrong means, whether they arrive at truth or not. It’s like th...

Sovereign Simplicity  Deuteronomy 17:16-17 “Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.” I think the insatiability of the human heart is most clearly expressed not by mafia bosses or moguls or corrupt politicians but by children.  My son Micah is currently obsessed with collecting Pokémon cards, and, recently, I’ve started watching the old television show with him. It’s harmless for the most part, and if you’re not familiar, the story is pretty much about a boy named Ash who wants to become the greatest Pokémon master of all, and each episode follows his whimsical journey of catching as many unique creatures as he can and battling them against other would-be masters. But the genius of the Pokémon ...