Wed.’s Devo - Fighting Our Battles

Read: 2 Samuel 20:14-21:22; Acts 1!-26; Psalm 121:1-8; Proverbs 16:18
Sheba, the Bicri who was trying to usurp the kingdom from David, finally ended up in a town of his own clan. Joab surrounded the walls and his men began constructing battering rams to attack the city. A wise woman yelled out to Joab and asked him why he would attack his own people. Joab told her he didn’t want to attack the city, he just wanted Sheba. She told him to wait and she would have his head tossed over the wall. She told her people and they beheaded Sheba, threw his head over the wall, and Joab went home.
Israel went through a famine for three years and David asked God what they had done to bring this curse. God told him it was what Saul had done when he tried to kill all the Gibeonites. Joshua had made a covenant with the Gibeonites when they first came into Canaan and Saul unknowing of the covenant, tried to kill them all. Israel was now being judged for it.
David went to the source, the Gibeonites and asked them what he could do to atone for them. They asked for seven sons of Saul to execute before the Lord at Gibeon. But, it wasn’t until their bones and the bones of Saul and Jonathan were buried in their family tomb that God ended the famine.
There are issues that God will bring up from time to time that we will need to deal with and bury those bones before we can get free from the lack we are experiencing. We have to do what David did and get to the source then ask God what to do about it and obey.
David met with a giant he couldn’t kill and his commander, Abishai had to come to his rescue. That was when David’s officers realized that David needed to stay home and let them fight his battles. His warriors killed four of the giants of Gath; four of Goliath’s descendents.
We all have giants of our pasts but we have the army of God who is able to take them down.
In Acts, Luke wrote to Theopolis everything that Jesus taught them during the days after his death. Jesus taught then about the Kingdom of God. On one of these encounters, Jesus told them not to leave Jerusalem until they had received this gift he was sending. It was the gift of the Holy Spirit. It would be a baptism of power and boldness so that they could be witnesses to the world of the salvation Jesus had brought them. Jesus stayed with them for 40 days, then went back to heaven as they watched. They had 10 days till Pentecost where they stayed in an upstairs room in Jerusalem. There were 120 of them and Peter stood up and reminded them that what Judas had done had been prophesied by David. David had also told them to let someone else take his place. They chose two men who had followed Jesus from the beginning. They chose lots and chose Matthias. His name means “a gift of God”. That was the last time they did anything by lot. The Holy Spirit would now guide them in all of their decisions.
Lord, help us to have ears to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us. Help us to bury some bones we need to bury and prepare our hearts to receive what you have for us.