BY BRIAN MESSERLI

Florida College performed weekly “room checks” in the dorms.  If there was a mess, it was a 5 dollar fine; a fortune at Taco Bell!  I noticed every mess started with a single blade of grass on the floor.  The secret to a clean room was to never ignore that blade.  Tending to the small things kept the big things from ever becoming a problem.  

“It came about when the sons of Israel became strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely”(Joshua 17:13).  To the Israelites, the Canaanites were just a blade of grass and they ignored it.  Yet God warned them, “they will be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land…” (23:13).  God knows when we keep the “small” sins around, they create huge problems.  Instead, He urges us to “drive them out and destroy them quickly…” (Deut. 9:3).  All sin is a disaster waiting to happen, so let’s get rid of it now before it comes back to bite us for our eternal room check!  It could cost us our soul! 

BY BRIAN MESSERLI

Rahab’s faith is shocking!  Pagan “gods” were territorial, yet this pagan prostitute said, “I don’t have faith in the gods of my territory at all.  I trust the one true God of Israel!”  Unless you were moving, it was unheard of to switch to a god of someone else’s territory!  She had no way to be sure Yahweh was more powerful than her gods because they never went head to head.  Yet after hearing about the Red Sea and Sihon and Og (Josh. 2:10), she abandoned her false gods, switched to Yahweh, and was saved! (Josh. 6:17, 23)  

The Israelites’s lack of faith is even more shocking!  They saw Yahweh’s deliverance firsthand.  Their fathers were at the Red Sea, at the battles against Sihon and Og, and to see Canaan given into their hands.  Yet within one generation, “they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them…” (Judges 2:12).  The Israelites switched gods too.  A pagan prostitute switched to Yahweh and Yahweh’s own people switched to the “gods” of pagan prostitutes.  It’s a shocking truth, but all humans have the ability to switch gods.  On one hand, it’s comforting to know there are more Rahab’s out there willing to switch to Yahweh for salvation.  On the other, it’s a warning for us to be on guard lest we abandon Yahweh like the Israelites.  Both switches are shocking, but only one switch saves!