Friday, January 29, 2016

In recent visits we’ve reflected on the events recorded in Judges 6-8 describing Gideon’s life. To help remember what we’ve learned let’s develop an outline. For a title I put: God’s Man for the Hour. Then I developed the following points: 1. God’s choice of the man. 2. God’s plan for the man. 3. God’s blessing through the man. 4. God’s release of the man. Under the first point I listed: He was industrious, he was humble, he was responsive, and he persevered. Under God’s plan for the man I included: God prepared the man to effectively serve, then He prepared the elite core of men to serve under him, finally He gave them an implicit strategy to implement the plan. Under God’s blessing I pointed out: God promised success, God re-enforced His strategy, and God enabled them to fully succeed. Finally, God released the man, Gideon, to do what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. It’s interesting to note how patient God was throughout the process. He was not in a hurry. God accomplished what He set out to do through Gideon. The yoke of Midian tyranny over Israel was broken. Israel enjoyed peace throughout the rest of Gideon’s lifetime. Gideon, however, for an unknown purpose, set up a gold ephod as a religious relic that led to a snare to Gideon and his family. The snare is not explicitly described, but it resulted in idolatry, having many sons through many wives and in spite of the many good things he had done, being dishonored and forgotten by the people he had helped. In subsequent visits we’ll develop some lessons to be applied based on what we discovered.>