Deliverance

 

 

Friday, August 15, 2014

Devotions: Ps 102, 107:1-32; Jdg14:20-15:20; Acts 7:17-29; Jn 4:43-54

Lord, hear my prayer and reply in this day of distress; please answer promptly, for I am in trouble. I'm like a vulture or owl of the wilderness—despised, solitary, taunted, the object of divine and human indignation. I wither away like grass in the hot sun. But You, Lord, Are enthroned forever. All creation yields to You, all creatures owe our existence to Your holy love and grace. Let all understand that the Almighty Maker and Master is also compassionate to the small and weak and downtrodden. And though today is a struggle, I am secure in God's eternal provision. Let all God's redeemed affirm: YHWH Is good, and His steadfast love and faithfulness endure forever. He delivers us from desert wastelands, from trouble, from darkness and depression, from slavery, from illness and affliction, from storms at sea and on land alike. Let all God's people praise Him now!

Samson's espousal to a Philistine woman from Timnah ended in his killing 30 men from Ashkelon and his intended spouse married to Samson's best man instead. Later, Samson took a kid and went to visit the woman, but her father blocked his visit; the father offered Samson his wife's younger sister instead, but Samson again acted in anger against the Philistines, torching their grain fields and olive groves by setting free pairs of foxes with their tails set afire. When the Philistines discovered the reason for Samson's rage, they murdered both the Philistine woman and her father by fire. Samson wreaked further destruction in revenge for these murders, and then he retreated to refuge in the rock of Etam. Philistine forces raided Lehi, and the men there discovered that the raid was in retaliation for Samson's vengeance. Three thousand men of Judah came to where Samson was, and let him know that their mission was to bind him and turn him over to the Philistines. Samson consented, so long as the Judeans did him no direct damage. But when the Philistines came to take charge of him, the Spirit of YHWH fell mightily upon Samson; he snapped the new ropes in which he had been bound, and he took up the jawbone of a donkey, and with it, Samson killed a thousand Philistines. Then he tossed the jawbone aside. Samson was very thirsty and he cried out to YHWH, Who split open a rock and poured out water for Samson. He was revived, and the spring God made for him endured in Lehi for a long time. Samson judged Israel over against the Philistines for 20 years. 

Stephen's testimony before the Jewish authorities summarized the history of the Jewish people, from Abraham's initial calling in Mespotamia onward. He recounted the Egyptian bondage and exodus, and the period of Moses' preparation for leadership, up to his exile in Midian after he killed an Egyptian who was abusing a man of the Hebrews.

Jesus and His followers remained two days in Sychar, where He had spoken with the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob there. The Galileans welcomed Jesus because they knew about all He had done during the festival in Jerusalem. He came to Cana, where He had begun His public ministry, making excellent wine for a wedding party there. An official in Capernaum heard that Jesus was in Cana, and hurried to Cana to beg Jesus to return with him to Capernaum, because the man's son was dying. But when the man made his request, Jesus simply said, 'Go; your son will live.' The man believed Jesus and began his return to Capernaum; along the way, servants met him and told him that his son was alive. He inquired about the time when the boy's recovery began, and discovered it was the very hour at which Jesus had told him his son would live—the prior day at the seventh hour (about 1 PM). The man and his entire household put their faith in Jesus, after experiencing this, His second sign after coming from Judea to Galilee.