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Showing posts from June 8, 2014

A Heart that Is Courageous in the Ways of the Lord

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A Heart that Is Courageous in the Ways of the LORD 1 Samuel 13.1-14.23 One pitfall in reading the Old Testament is to read it like Aesop’s Fables, always looking for a moral to the story. This can (and has at times) some uncomfortable problems. One important key to grasping the Old Testament is to see that what is descriptive is not necessarily prescriptive . You have to look at a scene or episode through God’s clear directions in other places. And you look for the divine diagnosis in the story. Nevertheless, the Old Testament stories are meant to be guides, examples to us – as Paul repeatedly says in 1 Corinthians 10 and Romans 15.4; and you see how their example is used in Hebrews 11. --- Two men. A father and a son. They share a family trait: (a) impatience with dwindling, disheartening circumstance; (b) willingness to take initiative. But in the end, there are different outcomes. One receives God’s displeasure; the other becomes the means of the LORD’s salvation and