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| Gideon, The Judge |
What sticks out to me major is the consistency of the children of Israel to FORGET THEIR GOD. What does this look like? The worship and gratitude and zeal for the God who consistently went before them was forgotten by the generations that came up. We hear the same story of how America has gotten away from her roots just a few generations ago in the founding of our nation. The results are always chastisement from God. God sends a conquering nation to overtake the Jews and the people then begin to groan and feel the need for God. It is often times only in our trouble that we begin to seek God. Not always though. Some turn to drugs, sex, deviance...and others turn to desperate measures like gambling and fall susceptible to desperate schemes from predators promising great returns on investments and the like. Yet God offers only one solution to be freed from the clutches of gluttonous idolatry and forgetting and forsaking God. Turning to Him with repentant tears. God ALWAYS raised up a deliverer in the case of the Jews....over and over and over again he raised up 11 judges; Deborah, Gideon, Sampson....and others to help a hardened people out of the messes they made.
One final note of observation in the text. Every time the Jews were judged by God and overtaken by a foreign land, the texts speaks that the people were captive, "for 8 years"; "for 7 years"; for "18 years." This spoke to me greatly. We often underestimate the power of our choices and the reciprocal effects of the "payback" of bad choices. We can sweep under the rug or dismiss sinful behaviors, but it could equate to a marriage of struggling for 8 years. Or losing a house through foreclosure after a 12 year struggle to "just maintain." Often the judgements of God are looked at like tough times or unfortunate happenings only because we don't understand what a jealous God He is and how he will send calamity on His people only to desire to bring them into greater places of prospering.
I challenge each of us today to TURN FULLY TO THE LORD. Forsake our "good strategies" and trade them in for divine surrender to Jesus!
Stuart
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