Fri.’s Devo - Divorce

Read: Joshua 7:16-9:2; Luke 16:1-18; Psalm 82:1-8; Proverbs 13:2-3
God had told them not to take any plunder from the conquest of Jericho, but Achan saw a beautiful robe from Babylon, some silver and gold and couldn’t leave it behind. The love of things came at the cost of the lives of thirty-six Israelites and the whole battle against Ai. It also cost Achan the loss of his life and his families. Such a sad ending but God was making the point that his Word is uncompromisable.
After the Israelites took care of the sin in their own camp, they were able to take Ai with an ambush. They were allowed to keep all the plunder and the king was hung from a tree.
What a lesson to us. The way we win against the devil is to be clean ourselves. Jesus said it so well, “we can’t serve two masters.” We can’t love the world and the things of the world and love him with all our hearts. If we had a glimpse of heaven and what awaits us there, we would have patience. No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who love him.
In Luke, Jesus used the illustration about the shrewd manager to expose their management over the law. They had taken the law and twisted it to benefit their pocket books and defraud the people.
Jesus was trying to make the point that every single word of the law would stand. They were divorcing their wives without following Moses’ law in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is says that a man can divorce a woman by writing a writ of divorcement. A writ of divorcement was a legal document written by a scribe that required consent of both parties and the signature of two witnesses. It laid out support payments and custody arrangements. They call this document a Get. Without the Get, the couple was still married.
They were divorcing without this document or the consent of their wives causing them to commit adultery with their next wife since they weren’t legally divorced from their first.
We are now the “managers” of God’s Word. It is an awesome responsibility to rightly divide it and watch over it. The Word of God is the absolute truth.
Lord, thank you for your Word. Help us to rightly divide it and understand what you want to say to us.