Gideon - Part 1 Series

Gideon - Judges 6-8

Quiz - where does Gideon fall in history?

(Put an insert in the bulletin with the following people/events out of order. With a whiteboard have the congregation help with putting them in order.)

First we’ll put these in chronological order:

Adam

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

Moses and the Exodus

Joshua

The time of the Judges

The Kings of Israel

The divided kingdom - Israel and Judah

Israel and Judah taken into captivity

John the Baptist

The ministry of Jesus

The Holy Spirit is given

The Last Days and End Times

The Return of Jesus

Where does Gideon fall in this sequence?

Who read Judges 6, 7 and 8 in preparation for this Sunday?

Judges 6:1-12

(1) The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites. (2) Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds.

(3) Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. (4) They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys.

(5) They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it. (6) Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

(7) When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, (8) He sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

(9) “I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land.

(10) “I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”

(11) The angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites.

(12) When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.”

Judges 6:1-12

(1) The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites.

The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord …

The Charge of Obedience from Moses in Deuteronomy 4:1-40 - this is an example of how the Israelites knew what God expected of them and that is just one example!

They knew it! They had the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant. How could they sink to that level?

Exodus 20:12

(20) “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”

Why is this commandment sandwiched between the four commandments of how we are to relate to God and the five commandments about how we are to treat each other?

Children who honor their father and their mother listen to and obey what they are taught. The parents in their youth had been instructed by their parents with regard to the law of God and were expected to teach it to their children.

“The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

Somewhere along the line this chain had been broken because now adults were bowing down to idols and their children were learning from them.

Do you see any parallels between what happened in Israel in the time of Gideon and what is happening right now in America?

You could blame the schools, you could blame mass media, you could blame society, you could even blame the church but the spirit of the fifth commandment is still in effect; our parents can and should be teaching their children in word and in deed. Walking the walk and talking the talk.

Imagine if parents asked their children on a regular basis what they were being taught in school and read over their assignment and text books. Such parents would take the children to the Bible and show them the difference between the truth in God’s Holy Word and what they may be encountering in school.

Imagine if parents would prayerfully ask God to help them select and oversee what their children see on TV or what they read or their access to social media and taught them to love obedience to God and the peace of His presence in their lives.