His dad was the master engineer of the ancient world. He was the one who engineered and built the grand Cretan labyrinth!
Yet, his son was like almost every growing son moving towards adulthood: a bit overconfident. Daedalus engineered a set of wings to escape from their captivity due to their transgression against the king, and instructed his son, Icarus, to be careful how to fly: not to close to the sun or the sea. Fly the middle ground. Did Icarus listen to his dad? No. Icarus is a classic example of “hubris.”
We can enumerate many times in our lives that we too were much like “Icarus.” We allowed our confidence to become overconfidence, and then realized that there are consequences sometimes to our over confidence — our hubris.
When the Gibeonites came to Joshua, they gave a false representation of themselves. They were “crafty” in their presentation (Joshua 9:4) to the victorious Israelites, who had a series of successful military victories. The issue was not the Gibeonites, and their deception, but on the Israelites and how they would process the issue before them.
How does one act in an arena of being comfortable, or confident? In a sense, this is the issue for Joshua and the Israelites and for you and me today. Joshua coming off of military victory, and dealing with the Gibeonites, did not seek God’s wisdom in the issue of dealing with them. Soon they learned the error of their ways.
We must be careful to avoid the day-to-day belief that “I have this under control.” We need to take life’s decisions to God, and seek His will in all things. Do all by prayer…seeking God’s direction.
Pastor Tim
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