Thursday, May 7, 2009

The Book of Judges - Day 18 Bible Food

Good morning; we're reading the Word of God today again as day 18 of our quest to finish the Bible in 90 days.  As Sponge Bob show opener would say, "are ya ready kids..."

We begin in chapter 4 and we'll go up to chapter 15.  Again the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, when Ehud the Judge died and the Lord did them in again into slavery into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles.

And as usual; they would cry to the Lord for help and God sent a woman named Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time.  And she prophesied and helped Israel out of the hand of Canaan.
Chapter 5 begins with Deborah singing a song and land had rest 40 years that she ruled.  

In Judges chapter 6 it starts out like this: 1And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years.

It goes back and forth with them sinning against the Lord and the Lord punishing them at the hands of another nation; then the children of Israel would pray and God would send them a judge or prophet to deliver them; then that generation would be at ease until the judge would die and the new generation would go back to their vomit serving other gods.

The Lord sends a mighty man named Gideon.  11And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.
 12And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valour.
25And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it:

His father worshiped the false god Baal and Gideon cast down his altar to build one for the Lord.  And the men of Gideon's father's house wanted to kill him for this; so it ended up changing his name to Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal plead against him, because he hath thrown down his altar.  

Gideon gathered some men to go fight against Midian; and God told Gideon that he had too many men.  God wanted to show that it clearly wasn't the number of men; but the power of God.  So the Lord had Gideon send some of the men home.  They got it down to just 300 men.  And they took Midian as the Lord had given it to them.

Chapter 8 Gideon breaks Israel from Midian and this is what the children of Isarel said, 22Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian.
 23And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you.  Even today, we don't have to let just Barak Obama rule over us; the Lord will rule over us.

And when Gideon died he had a son named Abimelech.  When Gideon died the Israelites went back to pagan gods; and the people did not show any love or respect to Gideon's house after all he did for Israel.

Judges chapter 9; Gideon had 70 sons; but the Abimelech son was born by a woman off the street and not a wife.  So he was treated poorly by his brothers; and when he grew he convinced the people to let him be their ruler.  And Abimelech went and got some thugs and killed his brothers killing 68 of them so that one remained.  But the Lord always turns the table of men who do evil.

23Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech:
And they fought against each other 52And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire.
 53And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech's head, and all to brake his skull.
 54Then he called hastily unto the young man his armourbearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A women slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.

God paid Abimelech back for the evil he did in killing his father's sons.
In chapter 10 arose Jair, a Gileadite, and judged Israel twenty and two years.

They fell back into their pagan worship.  6And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim, and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the LORD, and served not him.
 7And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, and into the hands of the children of Ammon.
In chapter 11 the children of Israel are looking for a leader to help them fight off Ammon; after they repented to the Lord.  1Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valour, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah.  His family didn't want him to inherit his fathers house because he wasn't from Gilead's wife.

But they later brought him back to fight against Ammon because he was a warrior.  So he went to Ammon and Jephthah made a horrible vow to the Lord.
30And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands,
 31Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.
He took down Ammon and when he went home 34And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter.

She was taught well by her father because she didn't run off or tell her dad that that was his vow; but obeyed even unto death.  Do not make vows to the Lord because you must keep them.
In chapter 12 there was a civil war between Gilead and Ephraim and 42,000 men of Ephraim died.   Again in Judges chapter 13 the children of Israel begin to sin again in front of God and were thrown in the hands of the Philistines.

2And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not.
 3And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son.

God is preparing to send Israel a deliverer; you see the deliverer was not even born yet; that means they have to wait years to be delivered.  17And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honour?
 18And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?
 
Angels are servants like us; we aren't to do them honor as we do the Lord; but they are a bit higher than us in that they work directly for the Lord; so you shouldn't act any type of way before them and as we can see asking to many questions isn't all that wise neither.  Nevertheless, Manoah and his wife had a child named Samson.

24And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the LORD blessed him.

In chapter 14, Samson grew and wanted to marry a Philistine girl; the Lord was setting it up for him to take the Philistines.  Samson judged Israel 20 years.  He was sort of a wild man, killed, chased women, but he kept his vow (up to this point).  We are finished with our reading today.

Judges is a weird time for Israel; they could not get generations to successfully follow the Lord and God would put evil generation in captivity in their own land to surrounding nations.  We'll read Judges 16 to 1st Samuel 2 tomorrow.  Have a good day.


DD
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