Gideon by Priscilla Shirer has been one fabulous study! I have thanked the Lord for allowing me to study the Bible with my friends this summer. I wasn’t exactly planning to lead a Bible Study at all this summer. Then, when I did decide to lead, I was intent on using the church. When that fell through, we were all already excited about studying GIDEON that I opened up my home each Thursday. Besides keeping me accountable to have a clean house at least once a week, I’ve been held accountable to make this a summer of growth in God’s Word. I’m thankful. It’s never wasted time when you are in The Word of God. He is so good.
On top of it being a summer of growing in my knowledge of the Word and the Lord Himself, I get to use hashtags. You know, the # symbol. I don’t tweet, but I was familiar with the hashtags. I secretly wanted to tweet because those little comments after the # are usually so fun and creative. Yet, limited with only a facebook account, I could only hold my hashtag remarks in my head (except I think I see people using them on Facebook. Is that legal?).
Until this summer.
Priscilla had a great idea of having the student summarize their #LessonsFromGideon with hashtag remarks. You could just keep them at the end of your lesson or you could actually share them with the world via social media. I’ve learned I am long-winded and my cute little # remarks would usually end up a bit too long, in my opinion. It’s a gift to be succinct. #itry
Here are just a few random ones I wrote in my book under the #LessonsFromGideon section:
#disobediencerobs
# comfortorcommitment?
#todayaffectstomorrow
#Godisseriousaboutobedience
#anythingIneedtoannihilate?
And this is when I totally went over the hashtag limit—
#God, please multiply my simple efforts to achieve maximum results.
Then, I reined it back in a little—
#Humanism=man-centered religion
#I’malwaystheOlderandtheYounger….LearnandTeach
#Godappearsinordinaryways
#Inyourblessingsdon’tmisstheBlesser
#surrendertothedemandsofthisseason
#firstthingsfirst
#rememberingfostershumility
#prepareyourgifts
And then I sort of realized that maybe I was supposed to write out in a regular sentence what I learned and then just put #LessonsfromGideon behind it….but since I’m not on twitter I just came to the conclusion that I could do it however I wanted. It is my workbook. Dear goodness. Why did that have to be so complicated? I just wanted to be able to remember some of the main things I have learned. 🙂
So, I wanted to share a little bit of what I’ve learned here on the old blog.
Week ONE:
A judge in this time period is not at all like our culture thinks of judges. They were called by God and empowered by God to unite the people of God to stand against the enemies of God.
Gideon is only in a couple of chapters in the whole book of Judges.
The people of God were in the Promised Land, yet they didn’t remember the might power of God. They were being attacked by Midianites. The Midianites should have been utterly destroyed in the past, but because of disobedience by the people of God (Numbers 31:1-5), they were not. The Midianites were distant relatives of the Hebrews. I didn’t realize Abraham had a child with his concubine, Keturah (Genesis 25:1) and that child was named Midian. Jethro was a Midianite. She shares a lot of history that shows how the people of God were in this situation.
Priscilla taught about three cycles of redemption seen in the Scriptures:
#1- From Adam to Noah, #2-Post flood to the time of Daniel and Ezra, and #3-Rebuilding the temple under the leadership of Ezra to the conception of the church.
She writes, “The great heroes of the Bible didn’t appear at the zenith of their cultures, but at the low points as part of God’s effort to rescue and redirect His people back to the covering of His covenant…..After the fall of Adam, Yahweh used Abraham to create a nation who would always be holy unto Himself. When the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, He raised up Moses to deliver them to a land flowing with God’s protection and provision. When they were oppressed by their enemies in this promised land, Yahweh raised up judges to be His representatives and lead the people out from under enemy subjugation.”
The judges were to bring unity among the tribes. Not an easy job. Four attributes necessary to maintain harmony were looked at on Day Four: humility, gentleness, patience and persistence.
Day Five we looked at the reason Israel was faltering….Judges 2:10 says that they didn’t know the Lord and did not know the work He had done for Israel. The people of Gideon’s time had either not taught the younger generation or the younger generation didn’t have a heart to hear what they may have been saying…maybe a mixture of both. I was reminded that I have a very real responsibility to teach my children the ways of God. We do this through studying His Word together, taking them to church, but also fleshing out the gospel in our everyday lives and talking about the goodness of God and His guidance in our lives over the years. There are things they do not know about God or how He worked specifically for our family, so we must tell them. In Gideon’s time the people were worshiping Baal and his female consort, Asherah. They “represented fertility and prosperity to the ancients and did not have a law book like Yahweh,” Priscilla writes. Our culture is running rampant with humanism…they “embrace their own reasoning as the basis of their decision making. They may want God, but only on their terms and only if He doesn’t clash with their personal sense of rightness and happiness. They want the benefits of a relationship with none of the responsibilities.” I want my kids to know that God is good and does require holiness, which is why apart from Jesus, we are all in a major mess. I can help turn the tide in our culture by teaching my kids and living out the gospel everyday. One of her main points in this section was, “Don’t get comfortable with the blessings and forget to tell about the Blesser!”
#andthatwasjustweekone
#LessonsFromGideontobecontinued….
