Passage Read: Joshua 2-5
Meditation Verses: 4:23-24
Thought
If you lack rain and you pray to your god for rain and it comes, is that coincidence or the hand of your god? The Lord God of course can control the rain, whether it comes in season or out of season, or is withheld altogether. But He does even greater things than that, things which cannot be confused with happenstance. And He does them so that we will know whom to fear and whom to worship. He isn't a god who maybe does some unusual things, He is a mighty God who does things unheard of, which no other gods can do. He parted the Red Sea so that Israel could cross on dry ground. He stopped the Jordan River, in a heap at Adam, so all the people could cross on dry ground. These things can't be chalked up to happenstance, because these things never happen outside of God's doings. People who weren't there can deny they really happened, call them myth, but that doesn't make them so. God's people have reason to believe they're true, and that should be enough to ensure faithful fear, honor and obedience through the ages.
Application
If I believe in God, then I am obligated to believe that these things are absolutely true. And if these things are absolutely true, then I am obligated not just to believe the Lord but recognize His mighty power and bow in full humility before Him, in fear and honor and obedience. If I claim to believe in the Lord but disregard or deny these things, then what really do I believe? Not the God of the Hebrews as recorded in the Bible, but a made-up god that fits into the box I design. That god I am right not to fear, because that god doesn't exist. But this God, the God of the Bible, is an almighty God, and my only right response is fear, and awe that He would invite me into His Kingdom and make me qualified to dwell in it. He did these things so I would recognize how much greater and more powerful He is than me, so that I would give Him the honor and fear He deserves, so as to listen to and obey His word, for my own good and to add to His glory.