Day 182: God Leads His Dear Children Along 2

Today's Connected Passages: 

• 1 Samuel 22:1-5 
• 1 Kings 17:1-6 [James 5:13-18]; 19:9-21  
• Job 29:1-6 
• Ezekiel 3:12-15 
• Acts 11:19-21; 16:6-10, 18:9-17; 18:18-23 
• 1 Corinthians 10:1-4 
• 2 Corinthians 2:12-14 
• 2 Thessalonians 3:1-5

Transcript

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Welcome to the Canon Connected, where we read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections of the Bible. Thank you for joining us for day number 182 of the Canon Connected, which means in a year with 365 days that when you finish half of this podcast and the readings for today, you are halfway done with the year. Congratulations. If I had a you know a party favor or you know, party hat or something, I would I would blow it and wear it. But I don't want these podcasts to be too silly, okay? But this is truly a monumental event. I think six months uh 182, 183 days tomorrow of a reading plan is very substantial, and I praise God, you know, for those people, you okay, who are giving me a job right now and giving me a ministry and making me feel fulfilled, you know, in my post-pastor pastorate world. And uh right now we are talking about uh two days, and this is our second day of talking about how God leads his dear children along. And it's so obvious throughout the Bible that God leads not only um clearly at times, and other times he leads in ways that just require wisdom and counsel and that sort of thing, and prayers, of course. Um, but that also um God absolutely leads um constantly. That's how he works. Uh, God is a God since he is a king and since he is God and since he uh he does know all, he does know best. It requires us to follow his leading. In fact, it's fascinating to me that the word disciple that Jesus used, I mean, truly at its heart, means like student or learner, but the way Jesus used it in context over and over and over again, it truly meant follower. You don't just learn academically in a classroom, you follow. It is learning and action. That's how Jesus made disciples, not by sitting in a classroom very often or even, you know, teaching very often in a in a typical sense, but going out and doing and letting his disciples watch and be a part of it. And so we're continuing with the Old Testament today, though, because the dude cut these reading in half, it really required using some some Old Testament passage today as well. And we start with David. Um, when it says in 1 Samuel 22, so when David left Gath left Gath and escaped to the cave of Vadullum, soon his brothers and all of the relatives joined him there. Then others began coming, men who were in trouble or in debt, or who were just discontented, until David was the captain of about 400 men. This is David, you know, rallying people who who were with him and opposed to Saul. But this is the interesting part where it ties in today. Later David went to Mizpah and Moab where he asked the king, please allow my father and mother to live here with you until I know what God is going to do for me. Okay. So David's parents stayed in Moab with the king during the entire time David was living in his stronghold. And this is how he knows what God wants him to do until, all right, he's the one day the prophet Gad told David, Leave the stronghold and return to the land of Judah. So this would be more like the Bible, okay, than it would be like a person. We do need people to help us to know how to how to follow God's leading. I mean, I could have put this and I just didn't, just not enough space. There's a lot of proverbs about an abundance of counselors being wise. That's a huge way in which Christians know how to do God's will. We sometimes know it from the Bible, sometimes from prayer and quiet and listening to God, and sometimes we need advice. But this isn't exactly that because it is a prophet. All right, I think it's more like reading God's word. Okay, that would be the application for us that David absolutely um knew what to do because the prophet spoke directly from God. Then Elijah, oh Elijah, wow, what a story. Um it's fascinating to me that in 1 Kings 17, God follows Elijah. We read the first six verses today. God taught him exactly what to do, and of course, it really didn't make sense. I mean, he's this he's this powerful prophet of God, and yet God tells him basically to hide, you know, for years, you know, and to and to not do anything and just rely on the animals and nature to take care of you. And that's again, I when you follow God, it's not going to always make sense. And there are going to be times where you think I need to be going out and be doing X, Y, Z, you know, and doing these amazing things. And sometimes it's just the boring, you know, tedious, trivial, menial, mundane things. I mean, every single day that I work on this podcast, I have to input things into a computer and schedule and edit, and it is so mind-numbing, and I make mistakes a lot. And yet it that is just as much God's will for my life as actually, you know, explaining the Bible, you know, and explaining the connections. And so one other thing about Elijah I want to throw in there too, it's really the next part of it, too, but I have probably alluded to this in previous podcasts. But God asked him to go to the widow of Zarephath. That was, again, God's leading. God led Elijah not just to go to this brook and to be still and to be quiet for a time, but his next step was to go to a widow that lived in a place where they were surrounded by foreign gods. And it seems obvious for me from that story, she was not a follower of the Christian God first, and she became a Christian God through witnessing resurrection, which is how we reach people with the gospel today. And yet it would be like, again, as I've said, probably have said before, I know I've said this to my previous church. If I started a church here in southern Illinois and they said, Well, we have these, you know, ten widows you need to go visit, and I said, Well, I'm not going to them. I'm going to go to this widow who was from Iran and who was a Muslim and I'm going to visit her. And can you imagine? That's exactly what, not exactly, but that's very similar to what God asked Elijah to do. And that's what Jesus used in Luke 4. I know we've talked about this, to offend the Jews in Nazareth by telling them that God is impartial. He does not favor Jews over Gentiles. Okay. He wants all people to be saved. And so God led, you know, Elijah, you know, through um, through some crazy twists and turns in 1 Kings 17 and doesn't stop there. I included James because James is 5, 13 to 18 is 13 through 18 is a commentary on Elijah's life, especially in chapter 17. And then 1 Kings 19. I have not really spoken to this yet, but it's possible, although this is not the crucial part of the readings today. I think it's worth mentioning that in verse 9 it says the word of the Lord came to Elijah. And before that, it talked about how a messenger had come to Elijah, often translated angel. But I'll just say this. I do believe that it's possible. I would even say likely, though I'm not going to go to the wall for this and I'm not going to argue about it either. It's just not worth it. But the fact that the word of the Lord, okay, which is the name of Jesus in the New Testament a few times, especially as John writes in John and Revelation, the word of God, the word of the Lord, and the fact that again the messenger speaks, you know, with without it having to be an angel, okay. And then God speaks in verse 11. The Lord told him, Go and stand up before me on the mountain, makes me think this could very well be Jesus that Elijah is interacting with. Because it doesn't have to be an angel. It often is, but it doesn't have to be. The word does not always mean angel. All right. But regardless of what the messenger here is and the word of the Lord, what that means in verse 9, um, we know that God is speaking clearly to Elijah, and He's telling him exactly what to do. And man, look at all the specific things he tells him to do in this in this passage, and Elijah does them all. We see all of this fulfilled, you know, in the coming chapters of 1 and 2 Kings. It's beautiful. Job 29. Yeah, I love the way Job says it. This is one thing we definitely can relate to as Christians in 2026. 4,000 years on the other side of the world in a completely different language and culture. This makes so much sense to me. Job continues speaking, I long for the years gone by when God took care of me, when he lit up the way before me, and I walk safely through the darkness. That's so much of how Christianity is supposed to be. You know, we have to be light in the darkness, and we need God to go with us. And he says, when I was in my prime, God's friendship was felt, and in my home, the Almighty was still with me. And of course, he's saying he doesn't feel that now, but he's wrong, of course. And yet, that's what we talked about yesterday too. God is with us. God leads us along because he's with us. That's part of God being with us, is him leading us along and lighting up our path before us, especially when we walk through the darkness. And we should. If you're a Christian and you never, you know, are subject to darkness, then you're you're not really, you know, being what God called you to be. You know, light doesn't make sense unless there's darkness. I'm sure I've said it before. First time my son Liam got a flashlight. He turned it on in a lighted room and it didn't matter at all. When he turned the light off, then the flashlight worked, right? You know, let your light shine before men. You can't do that if you're around light all the time. So Job is talking about this in his life, and I don't even know exactly what he means, but I do know that he is this talking about how God led him. God lit up the path before him. That is such a, you know, that could be a connection again to Psalm 119, and I didn't even see it until today. Ezekiel, very similar, you know, the way that God's Spirit lifted him up, told him what to do, and he and he and he moved, he left. And then the Acts passages, which is a wide range of things. You know, we see, you know, the Holy Spirit speaking, you know, and the Holy Spirit telling them what to do. Um, sometimes they even just use common sense, like whenever they're scattered during persecution, it's not always the Spirit told us to leave. It's like we're being persecuted here, we need to go there. A lot of times God's leading, it's just the common sense next step thing to do. But we do see times in Acts 16, God says no, all right. The Holy Spirit prevented them from preaching the word in the province of Asia at that time. It is completely correct theologically to say that God can tell us no when he leads us, you know, when he leads us along, that he closes doors. All right. Acts 18, you know, God leading, uh leading in Paul's life. Again, very similar. Um, first Corinthians 10. This goes back to the past, some of the passages we read yesterday. The the rock is Christ, and he traveled with them and he led them. It wasn't just God leading them in the wilderness, it was Jesus Himself. Second Corinthians 2, that's another one that we that that was in the readings for today. And he even says it this way this is this is good. All right, even though it's a different language translated into English, this is familiar to us. The Lord opened an opera a door of opportunity for me. It's completely fine to say that, okay? All right, but God opens doors, he really does. This is how you know um the the New Testament church thought of it. Um and then I find the last one, 2 Thessalonians 3 um very interesting as well. He says, Pray too that we'll be a rescue from wicked people, for not everyone is a believer, but the Lord is faithful and he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one. We are confident in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we commanded you. Again, teachers. What Paul taught them is what they needed to be doing. We do need pastors and teachers to help us to follow God's will. And just counselors in general. It could be a you know, a sibling or a cousin or a next door neighbor, your best friend at church who's more like a more like a more like family or even or even stronger, as we talked about with David and Jonathan. But you need people to help you know God's will as well. And of course they had prophets and apostles in the Bible, but still, the way this reads, I don't think he's giving them absolute truths. I think he's telling them, you know, what what what is reasonable and wise to do in following God, at least in some cases. So I say this in closing, okay, for a direct application. We made some applications yesterday, but here's one too. I used to have you know arguments and disagreements way back whenever I was really young. My first experience with this was of my first roommate in Chicago named Josh about does God have specific will or general will for people? Because he felt strongly that when he graduated college, he could have gone to Chicago or anywhere else in you know in the world that would have been a wise intermediate step between where he was in Nashville graduating and going to the international mission field eventually, which he did for years in Japan and other places as well for short terms. But I was like, I've God called me to Chicago, and I know this is where I'm supposed to be, you know, so and anywhere else would have been disobedience. And we used to argue about this, and we came to the realization that God really can work through people differently. When you read Jonah, it's go to Nineveh. And there's no, there's no other way to interpret that. But when you read Nehemiah, Nehemiah just saw a need, okay? God didn't, at least according to the text, it never says God told Nehemiah to go back and build the wall. Nehemiah just saw a need and he did the next reasonable thing. And so both of those views can be okay in Christianity. And I never want people, I don't know if anybody listening to this has ever struggled with this. Younger people often have as I've counseled them. And I've used Josh's, you know, perspective heavily in my advice to young people when they're talking about God's will. What do I do next? You know, generally speaking, I think God just wants you to do the next wise thing, whatever it is. Do something. Do something to kingdom build. Whatever college you go to, okay, whatever, whatever your major, whatever your job, whether you go to college or not, whatever you do, okay, do something wise and reasonable biblically, okay, that's kingdom building. And that could be farming or it can be missionary work. Don't worry about whether God's going to give you, you know, the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night. I really believe God led me to Chicago that way, but I may be wrong. I just know there was no arguing at that point. When God made it clear to me this is what the next step for me was, I knew what to do, and I did it. And so other times God has worked differently with me, but He can work through, you know, telling you specifically what to do as far as big decisions in your life. But I would say don't assume that. Don't wait around for some God, you know, call of God in your life. There are a lot of needs that didn't meet need to be met in the world. They just need somebody to say, there's a need. I have a gifting, I have a passion, whatever. God put me there, you know, and don't wait for, you know, some some crazy, you know, like sign, you know. So there's a lot of other things about God's, you know, uh leading his dear children along that we could talk about, but I think that suffices as application for the last two days. And so now we're gonna talk about the next two days about vows and oaths and promises. This is very practical as well. It's a very more obscure topic, not one of those that's real dominant, like some things we've talked about, but there's a lot in the Bible. Two days worth of readings on this and uh some famous stories like Jephthah okay, and Judges. You probably know that one. If not, you're gonna know it. And we're gonna talk about how we can practically put into action, you know, what the Bible has to say about vows and oaths and promises to God. And so hope you'll come back and be with us tomorrow as we continue to read the connections, see the connections, and study the connections in the second half of the year. Thank you.