March 21st, 25: The Gibeonites' Deception and Deliverance: A Journey of Faith

Welcome back, dear listeners, to another episode of the Daily Radio Bible. It's March 21st, 2025, and we're diving deep into powerful passages from the book of Joshua and 1 Corinthians. I'm Hunter, your brother, and your Bible reading coach, here to guide us on this journey through the Word. Today, we venture through Joshua chapters 9 to 11, witnessing the cunning of the Gibeonites and Joshua's epic battles, showcasing faith interwoven with shrewdness and cunning. We then turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, where we are prompted to consider how our faith shapes our interactions within the community. Echoing through these narratives is the call to a faith that is not just wise but rooted deeply in God. Let's allow these scriptures to challenge and encourage us as they point us to the living Word, Jesus. So grab your Bible, settle in, and let's explore these timeless truths together.

TODAY'S DEVOTION:

Now the Gibeonites were wise, and you might say that their wisdom was rooted in a kind of faith. The same kind of faith Rahab had. 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. In the end, the Gibeonites would be saved by their faith just as Rahab had been saved by her faith.

It's their faith in God, the God of Israel, that causes them to make peace with the God of Israel even when their shrewdness was deceitful. They didn't trust in their power, their might, their alliances. No. They sought to make peace with God. There is a shrewdness in these Gibeonites. Their deception leads to their deliverance. They, like Rahab, saw that the God of Israel was a God of deliverance; they recognized that this God delivered the Hebrew people out of Egypt and was giving them this land. And so they were shrewd. They were deceitful. And in their shrewd deceit, they found deliverance.

Sometimes faith looks a lot like shrewdness. Jesus tells a parable of the shrewd manager who makes friends with all of his master's debtors in order that he might be delivered from his own financial ruin. He gave away what was not his in order that he might have life. And in a similar way, the people of Gideon gave away something in order that they might have life. They were shrewd, And Jesus commends this kind of shrewdness, the willingness to let go, to give away, to not hold on and insist on my own way.

This is the way of faith, and sometimes it looks cunning and shrewd, and sometimes it finds its way into very practical situations in life, like the conflict between sisters and brothers in Christ. Sometimes there must be a shrewdness, a willingness to let go, to give something away in order for there to be peace. This is in part what Paul's trying to show us in our Corinthian reading today.

The Corinthians, the Gibeonites, you and I are called to live by faith. A faith that is shrewd, A faith that invests itself primarily in our relationships with God, his people, and this world. And often, we need to give something away to let go of our own way in order that we might have life. May God give us faith that is shrewd, that is cunning, wise, and obedient.

That's the prayer that I have for my own soul. That's the prayer that I have for my family, for my wife and my daughters and my son, and that's the prayer that I have for you. May it be so.