MESSAGE FOR PEOPLE TODAY FROM THE BOOK OF JUDGES |
Church: Ephesus 7 of 39 lessons Theme: Grace |
Background Information ü The church of Laodicea taught how faith works by love. |
Statement of Faith to Say Amen to for the Book of Judges: I can accept God’s grace with love by not mixing prosperity with God’s grace. |
Essential Question Can I accept God’s grace if I am working for prosperity? |
Book of Judges Have students read pages 12-15 in the book, The Pattern of Sound Teaching. After students read the information ask them, "What do you want to talk about?"
Remember the Issue: Does the world teach us to love God? How does the world get us to build our foundation of faith on sinking sand instead of The Rock of Faith?
The world is trying to separate God from His creation with a worldview that works for prosperity, and lives in fear of not having prosperity. We need to know the truth to combat the enemy’s lies.
Remember the Truth Jesus Brought: When the world teaches us to work for prosperity, we can look to the sacrifice that Jesus made to understand how we are to love God and not money or material things. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus addressed this issue saying, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Jesus’ teachings on wealth and prosperity can be misunderstood because Satan, the father of lies, likes to put prosperity in our path so we will work for prosperity and deny God’s grace. However, we can look at the life that Jesus lived to understand that we should live a life that does not store up treasures on Earth but instead store up treasures in heaven. The world will not teach us that we should look at eternal things. Just as the world taught a message to associate the sacrifice of animals' blood with prosperity, the world is teaching a message to associate the sacrifice Jesus made with prosperity.
The Old Testament has a message for people today. In the book of Judges, we learn how the Hebrews went out to live among the people who were not sacrificing to God, and they began to sacrifice to false gods. The sacrifice to false gods included people being able to work for prosperity and then to be protected by just performing a sacrifice afterward. The world was teaching this sacrifice. After sacrificing to false gods, the Israelites would be sold into slavery and abused by the group that was sacrificing to a false god, and then the Israelites would remember the miracles of God. The Israelites would remember that the false god was not protecting them the way God had protected them. They then remembered the promise of God. God said He would protect the people who were in a covenant with Him and punish the people serving false gods. Just as they remembered the promise of God to combat the enemies' lies, we also need to remember the promise of God to combat the enemies' lies.
Remember the Rock God Established: The next generation in the book of Judges did not remember what God had promised. It is important for each generation to remember the promises of God, so they can teach God’s promises to the next generation. The book of Judges includes twelve stories of how the next generation of Israelites forgot the miracles that the Lord performed. The miracles were important for them to remember because God had performed the miracles to teach the Hebrews that faith includes a sacrifice. The sacrifice had been taught to the people directly by God. The next generation had begun to sacrifice the way that the people serving false gods were sacrificing.
God taught specific details on how to perform the sacrifice, and the main idea was the relationship between the sacrifice and God’s commandments because God’s commandments recognized the justice of God’s holiness. The people who were serving false gods were seeking prosperity while making a sacrifice. God had told the Hebrews not to mix with the people who were serving false gods.
When the next generation mixed with the people serving false gods, they realized that God's law and the sacrifice were given to the Israelites to protect them from evil people. The Israelites would then remember the promise of God to protect them, and they would turn back and stop sacrificing to false gods. The Israelites had twelve messages of miracles with a judge where God protected the Israelites. However, the Gentiles had twelve messages of Gentile blood being shed. With each of the twelve judges, the Israelites were moving further from God’s grace and closer to prosperity. These twelve stories have some very odd ideas of how to sacrifice when the Israelites tried to include prosperity with the sacrifice. The sacrifices that the judges were performing were getting more and more bizarre because they were mixing prosperity with God’s grace. Each sacrifice got more bizarre than the last.
Students will read a story about Micah that illustrates how the Israelites forgot about the miracles the Lord performed for them, and what happened when the Israelites mixed God's grace with the corrupt nations that had faith in serving false gods that supported a prosperity message. Read the story of Micah in Judges 17 and 18 to hear how Micah tries to earn and work for God’s blessing.
Now we can look at the sacrifice that Jesus made and remember how Jesus beat death. The world is still teaching people today to work for salvation. Just as the world taught a sacrifice to false gods would cover chasing prosperity in the past, the world is trying to separate God from His creation by teaching God’s righteous servants to work for God’s grace. When we mix a prosperity message with God’s grace, we need to turn back to our first love, God. |
Activity: The activity directions are located in Appendix 1 – Step 2. Students will take on the role of a creator to understand the relationship between the creator and the creation. |
Conclusion: In the book of Judges, there were twelve messages of how the Israelites were including a prosperity message with the sacrifice to God, and how they turned back to their first love, God. |
Next Lesson: In the next lesson, the Hebrews were awakened in 1 Chronicles by the miracles of God to understand that God only accepts the sacrifice that bears good fruit. Now we are awakened to build an internal temple that bears witness to how to achieve eternal prosperity and not worldly prosperity. |
"Do not confuse toleration for forgiveness." ~ Melody
"The main thought is when you do not see eye to eye with someone else, make sure you are at peace with the way you judge them and do not become wretched." ~ Melody
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When you do not see eye to eye with another person, you should not fear doing what is right. When faced with a tough decision, God can take our burden. We can be still when we do not know how to react. For the blog look in the word of God and post one Bible verse about being still.
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