Daily Radio Bible - March 20th, 22

LIVE BY FAITH

We are reading Joshua 9 – 11 and I Corinthians 6, today.  We are reading from the New Living Translation.

Now the Gibeonites were wise, but their wisdom was rooted in faith – the same kind of faith Rahab had.  Like Rahab, the Gibeonites were natives of Canaan. Both had confidence that God was going to give the land to Israel.  They both responded in fear before God’s people and both acted with wisdom and cunning in order that their people might be saved.  But the parallels don’t end there.  In the end, the Gibeonites would be saved by their faith, just as Rahab had been.  It’s their faith in the God of Israel that causes them to make peace with the God of Israel, by any means necessary.  All the other tribes in the region thought they could overcome the God of Israel, and put a stop to His plan.

The faith of the Gibeonites gives us a vivid picture of how Jesus would win life for all people, Jew and Gentile alike.  We see that in how the Gibeonites pretended to come from a distant land, having travelled a long distance to win peace for their people.  Jesus didn’t just pretend to come from a long distance, he came all the way from Heaven.  Just as the Gibeonites put on sackcloth and old clothes, Jesus humbled himself and put on flesh and bone, and became a human being. The Gibeonites had old bread and wine to prove who they were.  Jesus, too, has bread and wine.  But the bread and wine that Jesus has are not props, they are real.  The body that that bread represents, would really be broken for you and for me.  The wine offered was real proof that God had sent his son to be offered as a real sacrifice for my peace and yours, and all who trust in Him.  The Gibeonites are a picture that we are saved by faith.  It also pictures for us, God’s plan to bring about our peace.  In the Gibeonites, we see a whole lot of wisdom at work.  We see a picture of faith and we see God’s plan of redemption

You are loved!