Wisdom International Devotionals

by Seth Davey

  Sabbath Psalm (Adapted from Robert Lowrey’s hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River?”)   Shall we gather at the river Where angels feet have trod? With its crystal tide forever Flowing by the throne of God?   On the margin of the river, Washing up its silver spray, May we walk and worship ever, All the happy golden day.   Ere we reach the shining river, Lay we all our burdens down; Grace our spirits will deliver, Clothe us in a robe and crown.   Soon we’ll reach the shining river, Soon our pilgrimage will cease; Soon our happy hearts will quiver With the melody of peace.   Yes, we’ll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river; Gather with the saints at the river That flows around the throne of God.

  A Eulogy, in Brief Joshua 13:1 Now Joshua was old and advanced in years, and the LORD said to him, “You are old and advanced in years, and there remains yet very much land to possess.”   What a contrast to the biography of Moses that encompassed five entire books of holy Scripture. Between the moment Moses was thrust as a newborn baby into a handwoven basket and placed in the Nile River to escape Pharaoh’s death edict in Exodus 1, it was clear to readers that he was a special soul, an anointed soul, a protected soul, which is why his story reads like one mountaintop experience after another. In fact, to read his story from cover to cover is to venture up Theophany’s Mountain alongside him, through all the twists and turns, through all the open vistas and narrow passes, and to come back down to earth as it were with faces aglow.     But why has Joshua’s biography been such a blur? He just finished blazing through the five-king coalition that formed against the ...

  Adding it All Up Joshua 12:1 & 7 a Now these are the kings of the land whom the people of Israel defeated and took possession of their land beyond the Jordan to the sunrise, from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon, with all the Arabah eastward. … And these are the kings of the land whom Joshua and the people of Israel defeated on the west side of the Jordan, from Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon to Mount Halak, that rises toward Seir …   A catch phrase I’ve come to love of late is the phrase, “Look at the scoreboard,” often used by political leaders when chiding critics, but best used by common, everyday saints who find themselves bombarded on all sides by Luciferian lies and idiotic ideologies and poisonous policies, not to mention those inner doubts, discouragements, and sorrows that wound us most. Maybe it would lift our countenance today to respond to our scoffing enemy with a little sanctified sarcasm of our own. The next time you hear him jeer in your ear som...

  Poetic Justice Joshua 11:21-22 And Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. … There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.   Back in Numbers 13, before Joshua became the fearless frontman of this pilgrim band, Moses commissioned him and eleven men to spy out the land of Canaan: “ See what the land is, and whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, and whether the land that they dwell in is good or bad, and whether the cities that they dwell in are camps or strongholds”  (v. 18-19). But, of the twelve, only Joshua and Caleb came back from that enterprise with hopeful words. The other ten spies were gutless cowards, having evidently learned nothing from pillars of cloud or Red Sea crossings or Sinai thunderi...

  Breaking Ground in God’s Country Joshua 11:16 So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland …   Mark down Joshua 11:16 in the flyleaf of your Bible because it’s a pivotal moment in that great advance of sinful, believing pilgrims to the Promised Land. This is the day Israel will first break ground on this range of hills at the center of the globe—a small piece of real estate in relation to the vast expanse of earth, yet a focal point for all the world’s enterprise. But what makes this high country holier than all others like it? What makes her pasturelands glisten more than those of West Virginia or Wales or Austria? Because God stamps His name upon them. Because God incarnates into our own flesh and blood here, and faces the onslaught of hell’s legions, and sows through His blood a Tree of Life that draws men of all tribes, tongues, and nations to Hims...

  Miracles in the Mundane Joshua 10:14 There has been no day like it before or since, when the LORD heeded the voice of a man, for the LORD fought for Israel.   The story of Joshua and the day the sun stood still is one of those legendary biblical accounts that everyone who grew up in Sunday school has heard. It’s up there with David killing Goliath and Moses parting the Red Sea and Samson getting conned by Delilah. But the fact is, even for someone like me who grew up hearing the Scriptures exposited week after week, and who graduated from a Bible college, and who finished graduate work in theology, and who even had the privilege of travelling to Israel and hearing a lecture from this very Gibeonite ridge, I couldn’t have specified till now what made this particular miracle so significant. If asked, I wouldn’t have been able to give the  context  for the miracle, that is. Oh, but thank the LORD for fresh journeys through the inexhaustible terrain of His Word! Thank ...

  Sabbath Psalm   (From Samuel Stennett’s hymn “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand”)   On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand And cast a wishful eye To Canaan’s fair and happy land Where my possessions lie   O’er all those wide extended plains Shines one eternal day; There God the Son forever reigns, And scatters night away.   No chilling winds or poisoned breath Can reach that peaceful shore; All sickness, sorrow, pain and death Are felt and feared no more.   I am bound for the promised land, I am bound for the promised land; Oh, who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land!

  A Lesson on Prayer Requests Joshua 10:12 At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, “Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the valley of Aijalon.”   Aren’t you grateful that God doesn’t fix all of our misconceptions before answering our prayers? There isn’t a confused courier system in heaven, with a box of ‘return to sender’ prayers that pile up because the address line was scribbled illegibly, or the postage wasn’t quite right, or a word was misspelled. God knows precisely what we mean to say. He hears the clear cry of our need long before we attach words to it. And even when our praying doesn’t quite come out right, His answer does.   I point that out here because Joshua doesn’t know any better than to assume that the earth is the center of the universe. He’s a man of his time. It’ll be centuries before astronomers are able to better map out the inner workings of ...

  Grace That is Greater Joshua 10:6-8 a And the men of Gibeon sent to Joshua at the camp in Gilgal, saying, “Do not relax your hand from your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us and help us, for all the kings of the Amorites who dwell in the hill country are gathered against us.” So Joshua went up from Gilgal, he and all the people of war with him, and all the mighty men of valor. And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have given them into your hands.”   I haven’t read much scholarship on the Gibeonite controversy that plays a central role in Joshua 9-10, but a pastor recently informed me that some biblical commentators actually accuse Joshua of compromising by not devoting these men to destruction, a suggestion that I believe Joshua 10:6 matter-of-factly overrules.    For one, just because God condemned all the people of this land to destruction doesn’t imply that all of them must  necessarily  be destroyed. That is, God can always o...

  A Tale of Two Cities Joshua 10:1-2 As soon as Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem, heard how Joshua had captured Ai and had devoted it to destruction, … and how the inhabitants of Gibeon had made peace with Israel and were among them, he feared greatly, because Gibeon was a great city, like one of the royal cities, and because it was greater than Ai, and all its men were warriors.   I’ve heard of a certain Adonai, King of Jerusalem, Who ransomed sinners from every corner of the earth by His self-sacrificing, atoning blood, Who spoke into existence all that is good, true, and beautiful with three words, “Let there be,” and destroyed all that is bad, false, and ugly with three words, “It is finished”; Who raised up the weak and mundane and overlooked things of the earth to confound the devilish elites; Who vowed to a pagan nomad Abram to make of him a city on a hill upon which all nations would gaze, and to make his offspring outnumber the stars in the heavens—not merely by force o...

  Holy Water, Boys Joshua 9:22, 24-27 a Joshua summoned them, and he said to them, “Why did you deceive us, saying, ‘We are very far from you,’ when you dwell among us?”… They answered Joshua, “Because … the LORD your God had commanded his servant Moses to give you all the land and to destroy all the inhabitants of the land from before you. … And now, behold, we are in your hand. Whatever seems good and right in your sight to do to us, do it.” So he … delivered them out of the hand of the people of Israel, and they did not kill them. But Joshua made them that day cutters of wood and drawers of water for the congregation.”   Take this from the Gibeonites: it’s better to be a waterboy in God’s family than a king in the devil’s.   We shouldn’t commend the Gibeonites for their deception, even though their deception was based on a desire to live in submission to God rather than die in opposition to Him. And I do believe that had they done the far braver thing, had they just co...

  Try Not to Laugh Joshua 9:3-6 But when the inhabitants of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and to Ai, they on their part acted with cunning and went and made ready provisions and took worn-out sacks for their donkeys, and wineskins, worn-out and torn and mended, with worn-out, patched sandals on their feet, and worn-out clothes. And all their provisions were dry and crumbly. And they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and to the men of Israel, “We have come from a distant country, so now make a covenant with us.”   At this juncture, we don’t yet know the motives of these Gibeonites, whether, that is, they’re putting on this elaborate rouse in hopes to quietly integrate with the LORD’s people and survive the coming deluge, or whether this is a sort of Trojan Horse-type scheme where they intend to hijack the assembly from within (spoiler alert: it’s the former); but one thing is immediately apparent from their Oscar-worthy performance here. That t...

  Sabbath Psalm (“Paradise and a Paradox,” from Seth Davey’s album  Kingdom Rising )   There’s a stirring in the world we can’t ignore Like treasures in the deep that wash ashore Signs of what the suffering is for Is Heaven in our vision? Does God compose His greatest melodies Through instruments that get so out of key Do grace and nature sing in harmony If we’d just stop and listen?   Between the lines of suffering faith reads another story That all the sorrows, great and small, after all Will be transposed to glory   I feel it in the kiss that ends the conflict In the calm at the end of the storm In the sigh when a nightmare’s finally over In the peace at the end of the war In the smile of a dying martyr In the light in a blind saint’s eyes In the feast of a King with beggars In the songs that come by surprise Paradise and a paradox   There’s a longing in the soul too deep for words A vision like a dream that reoccurs The promise of new life that faith co...

  Chaff in the Wind Joshua 9:1-2 As soon as all the kings who were beyond the Jordan in the hill country and in the lowland all along the coast of the Great Sea toward Lebanon, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, heard of this, they gathered together as one to fight against Joshua and Israel.   The significant distinction between the unity found in Christ Jesus and the unity found in the world system is that one is driven by love and the other by hatred.    Christ said in John 13:36,  “For the world will know that you are my disciples by the love you have for one another.”  And He prayed to the Father on our behalf in John 17,  “I, in them, and You in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. … I made known to them your name … that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them”  (v. 21 & 2...

  The Holy in the Common Joshua 8:30-31 a , 32 At that time Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, …“an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.” … And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.   There’s a mountain somewhere near the Jordan River, or a knobby hill, or perhaps a spot in the bed of a creek that winds its way through the valley, where the erosive hands of time have buried precious stones that once heralded the very words of God. Perhaps generations of rushing rains and torrents have long washed away the ink. Perhaps earthquakes have swallowed the stones into the hidden vault of earth. Perhaps the forces of changing seasons have chipped away the sediment, erasing their sacred script, eradicating their holy and exalted signatures. Perhaps these ancient rocks are just sands now, scattered all throughout the Canaanite hills, trampled ...

  And the Walls Came Tumbling Down Joshua 8:28-29 So Joshua burned Ai and made it forever a heap of ruins, as it is to this day. And he hanged the king of Ai on a tree until evening. And at sunset Joshua commanded, and they took his body down from the tree and threw it at the entrance of the gate of the city and raised over it a great heap of stones, which stands there to this day.   Just a moment ago, Israel’s bravest warriors were fleeing for their lives from enemy garrisons. Just a moment ago, thirty-six seasoned veterans got cut down like pine saplings in a hurricane. Just a moment ago, the most valiant leader in all the earth, the man who’d seen God thunder at Sinai and pave a road through the Red Sea and crumble ancient fortress walls with invisible musical notes, was flat on his face, covered in dirt, completely bereft of confidence. Just a moment ago, the shrill, thundering echoes of that fateful curse-word, ‘retreat,’ a word that angels of God and the people of God sh...

  A Twist in the Tale Joshua 8:4 a , 5-6 a  & 7 a And he commanded them, “Behold, you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind it. … And I and all the people who are with me will approach the city. And when they come out against us just as before, we shall flee before them. And they will come out after us, until we have drawn them away from the city. … Then you shall rise up from the ambush and seize the city …”   Truly, this battleplan is a stroke of divine comedy at its finest, transfiguring the scowling hue of Joshua 7 into a side-splitting laugh that shakes all of heaven and earth. To borrow the slang of younger generations, God is “trolling” the devil here.   Think of the fact that the devil’s trademark move is to throw our failures back in our face, right? But, here, God gets him at his own game. Just look at the battle plan. God tells Joshua and the soldiers to effectively retrace those fatal steps that still haunt them, the very ones that marked their...

  A Fighter Like His Father Joshua 8:1 & 3 And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear and do not be dismayed. Take all the fighting men with you, and arise, go up to Ai. See, I have given into your hand the king of Ai, and his people, his city, and his land.” … So Joshua and all the fighting men arose to go up to Ai. And Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them out by night.   The best way to drown out the lingering taste of a crushing defeat isn’t with a bottle of whiskey as country singers propose, but with the rejuvenating plunge of an even greater triumph. Think of it: when a professional boxer gets beat in a title bout, he doesn’t want to hide somewhere for months while the press obliterates him. No, if he’s a genuine competitor, he’ll want to fight again as soon as possible. He’ll hit the gym even harder than before, hoping that the next time he’ll be able to change the narrative and give angry fans something to cheer. Even deeper, when a woman suffers a ...

  Sabbath Psalm (“Fingerprints,” from Seth Davey’s album  Kingdom Rising )   Grace is bursting through the cracks Through the fictions and the facts alike In the tales that poets weave In the lessons mothers leave through life Mercy fills the elements Spans the water, earth, the wind and fire Sparrows sing the morning hymn Rivers rush to join them in the choir   You are the end and the means You are the meaning of everything That I find at my fingertips So when I don’t understand Can’t feel the touch of Your nail-pierced hands Thank you, Heaven, for Your fingerprints   Beauty fills the artist’s lines Undergirds the psalmist’s rhymes and tones Carries me to Heaven’s door To gardens never walked before but always known Reflecting in a smile In the laughter of a child at play The commonplace is holy ground Seek Your face and You’ll be found along the way

  This Spells Trouble Joshua 7:26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. … Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor.   The final word of Joshua 7, ‘Achor,’ means trouble, and I’m tempted to just write that word at the top of this page all by itself, surrounded by the blankness and emptiness and unfulfilled potential that symbolizes sin’s inevitable consequence, because perhaps the moment of awkward silence and somber reflection that would ensue might resonate far better than my words can. Like seeing a heap of stones on a beautiful landscape and being reminded of what could’ve been, of lives lost in battle that could’ve come back home triumphant, of a dark, demoralizing D-day on a calendar that should’ve been a July 4 th -type celebration, of wives deprived of husbands and children deprived of fathers and of lush, fertile valleys now barren.    Take Joshua 7 as a reminder that while we as forgiven,...

  A Deathbed Confession Joshua 7:20-21 a  & 25 a And Achan answered Joshua, “Truly I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and this is what I did: when I saw among the spoil a beautiful cloak from Shinar, and 200 shekels of silver, and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels, then I coveted them and took them. …” And Joshua said, “Why did you bring trouble on us? The LORD brings trouble on you today.” And all Israel stoned him with stones.   Before we start casting stones at Achan here, who among us has never stolen from God in like manner? Who among us has never coveted our neighbor’s things? Who among us has never withheld money from the offering plate to buy a piece of furniture or a TV subscription or a pair of shoes? As our Lord said to that horde of Pharisees in their mad rush to stone a prostitute, “ Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,”  so I hear Him whispering that same word to me through the discomforting pile of rocks that covers the lands...

  Up, and At ‘Em!  Joshua 7:10-12 a The LORD said to Joshua, “Get up! Why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned; they have transgressed my covenant that I commanded them; they have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings. Therefore the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies.”   In one sense, Joshua is doing the right thing here. Perplexed and dismayed by Israel’s shocking defeat at Ai, and grieving the loss of thirty-six good soldiers, he falls at the feet of Almighty God, removing his sandals and covering his face with dust, awaiting some glimpse into the meaning of this unspeakable tragedy, begging Heaven by the contrite motion of his limbs to answer in a whirlwind or in a whisper or in  any  manner. I get the sense here that Joshua isn’t getting back up again until the same hand that parted those Jordan River waters reaches down again in miraculous fashion to lift him up. And, i...

  See Saint Run Joshua 7:4-6 a So about three thousand men went up there from the people. And they fled before the men of Ai, and the men of Ai killed about thirty-six of their men and chased them before the gate as far as Shebarim and struck them at the descent. And the hearts of the people melted and became as water. Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the LORD until the evening, he and the elders of Israel.   The first sign that a saint is under the discipline of the LORD is that he flees in terror from opposition forces. This has been the case with many biblical heroes during their prodigal moments and rebellious seasons. Think of Abraham, when he lied about his wife being his sister for fear of Pharaoh, and Jacob, when he stole his brother’s birthright and then effectively hid out in a foreign land for seven years, and Adam, when he ran around from tree to tree after eating forbidden fruit to hide from the consuming fire of God...

  A Little Leaven Joshua 7:1 b And the anger of the LORD burned against the people of Israel.   In continuance of Friday’s devotional, let’s reflect further today on what Joshua 7:1 b  does and does not imply about God’s perfect justice. To misapply the meaning of His punishment of Achan will take us down a dark and dangerous road theologically: a road that will leave us as individuals with no moral impetus to choose between right and wrong and make us complicit in the apostacy and prodigality of unfaithful brothers. Oh no—as the Scripture reads,  “He will render to each one according to his works”  (Romans 2:6), because that’s what justice does. God did not condemn Lot for Sodom’s gross debaucheries, nor did He condemn Moses for Aaron’s fashioning of the golden calf, nor did He condemn Caleb for the faithlessness of his ten comrade spies. The consequences of one man’s sin might drape over the entire commonwealth like a black shroud, but the sin itself is only o...