Sat.’s Devo - Fellow Respect and Kindness

Read: Deuteronomy 23:1-25:19; Luke 10:13-37; Psalm 75:1-10; Proverbs 12:12-14 To “enter into the congregation of the Lord” was to be admitted into the pubic honors and offices of the Church and the State of Israel. Foreigners could be accepted by marriage if they first converted to their faith. There were some that were excluded from citizenship and the first was the Eunuch. People of the east would mutilated their children to prepare them for the service of the elite. The second was the bastard which by their definition was a person born of a Jewish father and a foreign mother. This would have been the case of Boaz in the story of Ruth. His mother was Rahab, the Canaanite and his father was Salmon a Jew. He converted and became a respectable and wealthy member of society. The third was the Ammonites and the Moabites who were excluded because refused to let Israel pass through their land. They also tried to hire Balaam to curse Israel and when that didn’t succeed, they sent their women to seduced them to worship idols. The Israelites were never to promote their peace or prosperity. The Edomites were another story. They were their relatives and they were not to hate them or the Egyptian because they lived with them. Their children would be able to enter into their assembly. All God’s laws were to keep them well and free sickness. They went to the bathroom outside of the camp and covered it with dirt. They could not allow their people to be temple prostitutes. This would bring in spiritual sickness and spread sexual diseases. No offering given by a temple prostitute would be acceptable to the Lord. The Israelites were to live in a society where they blessed each other with whatever they needed. The other nations practiced commerce where they acquired wealth and charged interest. They could only require interest on a loan to the foreigners. All promises made should be kept. As you are passing through a person’s field, it is acceptable to eat as you pass through but you are not allowed to gather and take it out. Divorce was allowed if the man was not pleased with his wife, but he had to write her a bill of divorcement. This was a written document registered in a book. This would take time so they could reflect upon what they were doing. It also stated that they could remarry but never each other. So they had to make sure they really wanted this divorce because it was forever. A newly married person could not go to war for a year so they could bond as a couple keeping them faithful if war did part them later. God gave them many laws about how to deal kindly with the poor. They were to respect all people and deal with them sympathetically. Everyone was responsible for their own sins. Justice was to be upheld. When they gleaned their fields they were to leave the left overs for the foreigners, orphans and widows. Families were to take care of each other. If a man died leaving a childless widow, the brother of the deceased must marry her and their first son would carry the name of the first husband. If the brother refused to marry her, she was to disgrace him publicly. They were to be fair in all their dealings. They were not to forget what the Amalekites did to them when they were leaving Egypt. The Amalekites had no fear of God, so they were to be erased from the face of the earth. In Luke, Jesus spoke of the cities he had done so many miracles in and now they were turning on him. They would not fair well in eternity. He wanted his disciples to understand that when people accepted them, they were accepting Him and when they rejected them, they were rejecting the Lord. Jesus had seen Satan fall so he reminded them that the demons that obeyed them when they went out would still be afraid of them when he left. He gave them authority over all the power of the enemy. But he balanced it by saying not to rejoice because evil spirits obeyed them but to rejoice because of the reason evil spirits obeyed them. It was because their names were written in God’s book of life in heaven. Jesus was overwhelmed with joy as he thought about how God chose to give his treasures to these disciples who the world would not think as worthy, but heaven chose them. Jesus taught this same concept to the man who was an expert in the law. The man wanted to know what he should do to inherit eternal life. Jesus turned the question on him and he said that the law said to love the Lord and your neighbor as yourself. When the man asked who his neighbor was, Jesus told the story of the good Samaritan. He was making the connection that God’s neighbor was not the ones he would have chosen as his neighbor. If he wanted to please God, he needed to learn to love the unloveable. Lord, help us to see people as you see them and love them as you do.