Tag: Judges

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Judging Our Community

Scripture Focus: Judges 3.9-10, 15
9 But when they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, who saved them. 10 The Spirit of the Lord came on him, so that he became Israel’s judge and went to war. The Lord gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel, who overpowered him.

15 Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord, and he gave them a deliverer—Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera the Benjamite.

Student Writers Month:
This month, The Park Forum welcomes college and seminary student writers pursuing ministry careers. For more info about our yearly Student Writer program, see our website.

Reflection: Judging Our Community
By Allison Tinsley

Have you ever been part of a group or team? Were you successful and popular? Or were you in a group of outcasts who stuck together as each other’s only source of support? Did you feel proud and at home in your group?

The story of Israel is consistently communal. The Israelites were God’s chosen people. This identity held them to different, higher standards than the rest of the world. They were to live faithfully and obediently to God in relationship with Him. If they failed to do so, they had to fear His wrath and punishment. In Judges, we routinely see the communal, systemic failure of the Israelites. Verse 7 of chapter 3 tells us that they did “evil” in God’s sight. They married ungodly people and worshipped false gods, allowing themselves to be negatively influenced by the world. They “forgot” the One true God (verse 8), seeking temporary pleasures.

Israel’s sin came back to haunt them when they were taken into captivity by other groups. This was where the judges came in. God raised up faithful individuals to work against the sinful actions of the Israelites and those who oppress them. These judges were charged with protecting Israel and leading them back to a relationship with God. Othniel fought against their oppressors (verses 10-11). After the Israelites once again found themselves in captivity, Ehud slew an oppressive king (in a humorously gruesome way) to deliver them to freedom. Deborah prophesied and settled disputes within her community. Gideon tore down false idols in the community. Thus, when the community failed, God raised up individuals as protectors, preservers, and leaders who worked to restore the Israelites back to God.

How is your community? Have you seen pain in your community? Have you detected a wrong direction?

God’s calling, both communally and individually, is the same. We are to live in obedience and faithfulness to God, like the judges God raised up, striving to lead others in this pursuit as well. We are to be faithful to one another as God’s people, but we must also swim against the tide when the community fails. We must hold our community responsible for its sin and require that it make changes when necessary. Above all, we must remember that our ultimate purpose transcends both ourselves and our community; our purpose is a right relationship with God.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
My mouth shall recount your mighty acts and saving deeds all day long; though I cannot know the number of them. — Psalm 71.15

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Judges 3 (Listen – 4:30)
Acts 7 (Listen – 8:49)

Read More about Readers’ Choice 2021
It is time to hear from you about the posts from the past eleven months (September 2020 – July 2021) that have challenged, comforted, and helped you find new meaning in the scriptures.

https://forms.gle/ozM13qvW9ouSWhJS7

Read more about The Necessity of The Spirit
Israel suffered and Othniel could not save them. Until God’s Spirit came on him.

The Necessity of The Spirit
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Our Forgetfulness, God’s Faithfulness

Scripture Focus: Judges 2.11-14
11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist.

Student Writers Month:
This month, The Park Forum welcomes college and seminary student writers pursuing ministry careers. For more info about our yearly Student Writer program, see our website.

Reflection: Our Forgetfulness, God’s Faithfulness
By Savannah Green

Forgetfulness leads to apathy.

After Joshua’s passing, Israel began worshipping other gods. The next generation did not know God, or remember the promises he made to his people. The Israelites had forgotten their covenant with God.

Just one generation before, God’s people had been faithful and obedient to him. Yet within a short time, Israel abandoned God. 

Their forgetfulness led to apathy.

Israel became unconcerned with serving and worshipping God. Instead, they served the Baals and Ashtaroth. Even more, their sin was not hidden; it was done before God’s eyes.

This is a testament to us as well. We are often quick to forget the faithfulness of God. We forget his promises. We forget his steadfast love for us.

Our forgetfulness leads to apathy.

When we lose the habit of recalling God’s faithfulness, we become apathetic in our relationship with him. Obedience to him becomes less of a priority, and the promise of salvation moves from the forefront of our minds. False idols shift our focus and receive our worship.

Inevitably, in our humanity, we will become forgetful of God and his promises. When apathy begins to trickle into our souls, may we call to mind our dependence on God. We resist forgetfulness and apathy by remembering God’s faithfulness.

Our Forgetfulness, God’s Faithfulness

Apathy
Found in people
Found in Israel
Found in me

God brought them to the land
Promised to their fathers
“I will never break my covenant.”
Swore the Father of fathers

But God’s people did what was evil
They abandoned the Lord
And forgot the promise sworn
God’s anger kindled against Israel

How familiar this sounds
How similar it reads
To my daily wandering
From the crowned-with-thorns King

A promise of a covenant
A promise of land
Like the promise of salvation
I mindlessly neglect

May Israel’s unfaithfulness
Remind me to not forget
God’s steadfast faithfulness
Covers my debt

Israel’s apathy
Reflects my apathy
And my need
Of the true King

Divine Hours Prayer: The Morning Psalm
As a doe longs for running streams, so I yearn for you, my God.
I thirst for God, the living God; when shall I go to see the face of God?
I have no food but tears, day and night; and all day long I am taunted, “Where is your God?”
This I remember, as I pour out my heart, how I used to pass under the roof of the Most High
Used to go to the house of God, among the cries of joy and praise, the sound of the feast. 
Why be so downcast, why all these sighs? Hope in God: I will praise him still, my Savior, my God. — Psalm 42.1-6

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Judges 2(Listen – 3:19)
Acts 6(Listen – 2:35)

Read More about Readers’ Choice 2021|It is time to hear from you about the posts from the past eleven months (September 2020 – July 2021) that have challenged, comforted, and helped you find new meaning in the scriptures.

https://forms.gle/ozM13qvW9ouSWhJS7

Read more about Remember Jesus Christ
Remembering in Scripture is often a calling to focus on God’s commands or to recall God’s intervention in history.

Remember Jesus Christ
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Hope Sees Us :: Editor’s Choice

Luke 19.4, 9
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
…Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house…”

Reflection: Hope Sees Us :: Editor’s Choice
By John Tillman

The post quoted below, Hope on a Limb, was originally published on December 5th as a part of our Advent series. It struck a chord and resonated, picking up so much traffic in the remaining twenty-five days of December that it was our most viewed page on our entire website in 2018. Seven more months have passed and it is still keeping ahead of other posts. People are still looking for hope.

The post is about hope and where we place it. But it is also about how Jesus is not the king that our flesh cries out for. Instead, Jesus is the king that our broken and busted souls need.

As much as we do not understand why Jesus chooses to, he still loves us. Our problem is that we don’t like all of the people whom Jesus also loves…

“He gave the gift of his presence, salvation, and peace to Zacchaeus—a traitor, a government thug, and a corporate thief.
He gave a warning parable about an unwanted king, “because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.”
He gave, in his parable, more resources to the already rich, over the objections of the crowd.
Then he ran the rich and powerful out of the Temple in order to give it back to the outcasts, the foreigners, the blind, and the lame.

Jesus is, for some, the unwanted king of the parable. His Advent will frustrate those who wait for earthly adulation and success.

But Jesus is for others, the yearned-for King of Glory. He endlessly supplies those whose hopes rise higher.

What we hope for in Advent is not a political power broker.
What we hope for in Advent is not a market economist.
What we hope for in Advent is not a government regulatory watchdog.
What we hope for in Advent is not a resource of earthly wealth, success, fame, and power.

The king we hope for brings healing.
The king we hope for brings peace.
The king we hope for brings love.

In the season of Advent, we climb out, hopefully, on a limb with Zacchaeus.”

Not just in Advent, but in every season of the year, if we climb out on a limb searching for Jesus, he will come by. Hope sees us out on that limb. He will call us down. And he will make himself at home at our table.

Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.” — Matthew 11.28

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Judges 15 (Listen – 3:13) 
Acts 19 (Listen – 5:47)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Submit a Readers’ Choice
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A Berean Palate

Acts 17.11-12
Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

Reflection: A Berean Palate
By John Tillman                                                                                                                                     
The contrast between the Bereans and the Thessalonians has come up in our devotionals before. Despite the Thessalonians having two epistles in the New Testament, Luke tells us in Acts that the Berean culture was more intellectually mature. Maybe Thessalonica just needed more help.

Truthfully, most of Paul’s letters were intended to be read by all the churches in the area. So Thessalonian letters were likely read to the Bereans as well.

But as for us, there is little doubt that our modern culture is more Thessalonian than Berean. 

The Thessalonians were prone to being riled up by exaggeration and falsifications. Just like we are. From our earlier post on this topic:

“If you think people today are more sophisticated, more cultured, or more intellectual than those of the ancient world, you have been paying attention neither to ancient history nor to Facebook.”

The Bereans’ nobility is specifically related to their openmindedness, and their mature evaluation of new information according to the scriptures. We may need this discipline now even more than they did.

Our social media feeds and the 24-hour news channels we frequent are like a neverending buffet of poorly-cooked, unsanitary, and ill-prepared foods. It is no wonder that uncareful consumers end up vomiting thinly veiled racism or totalitarianist dogma masked as a joke or a critique or a supposedly “logical” argument. We need to develop a more discerning palate concerning the articles, posts, and even memes that form the majority of our information consumption. If the posts we see were all simply political, that would be bad enough, but many posts, especially contentious political posts, either directly or indirectly address theological concepts. 

As Acts and much of the New Testament teaches us, “Fake News” is not new. Mobs and riots are not new. Hate-mongering political leadership is not new. What is new is that too many Christians care less about the facts, than they do about political victory. To this point, we often quote Ed Stetzer, who has said, “Facts are our friends.” 

May we develop a discerning, Berean palate that we not only apply to scripture but to our reading of our culture and our reading of all the information that algorithms and the hysteria factories called “newsrooms” can throw at us.

“Christians need to develop a more Berean attitude about not only the scripture we read, but the news we share. It’s hard to share the incredible news of the Gospel when the rest of what we share is in-credible.”

Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “I give you a new commandment: love one another; you must love one another just as I have loved you. It is by your love for one another, that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.” — John 13.34-35

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Judges 13 (Listen – 3:44) 
Acts 17 (Listen – 5:28)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift.

Read more about A Berean Take on Fake News :: Readers’ Choice
It’s hard to share the incredible news of the Gospel when the rest of what we share is in-credible.

A Berean Take on Fake News :: Readers’ Choice

Read more about Honoring The Truth
Seeking the truth is not only a spiritual quest. It is sometimes a civic one. Or a legal one.

Honoring The Truth

Readers’ Choice Submissions

It has been so good to hear from many of you about posts for Readers’ Choice, but we still have some room in August for your input.

Share with our community about the post or posts from the past eleven months that have challenged and comforted you.

Follow the link to fill out the form. Please limit your submissions to posts published this calendar year, between September of 2018 and today.

For any questions contact John Tillman at john@theparkforum.org

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The Necessity of The Spirit

Acts 7.55
But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.

Reflection: The Necessity of The Spirit 
By John Tillman

We look ahead today reflecting on our readings for tomorrow and two extraordinarily different outcomes for two men led by the same Spirit…

Many times in Judges, the Israelites rebelled over the course of one generation and from the next generation a Judge would rise up to save them. But not the first Judge, Othniel. He had been there the whole time.

Othniel was already a great hero of Israel. He had every advantage and privilege available to him at that time. He was wealthy from his military conquests. He was part of an influential family. He was a seasoned military leader. He had a strong spiritual heritage, being from the family of Caleb, a mighty hero of faith. But despite this, Israel suffered and Othniel could not save them. Until God’s Spirit came on him.

Othniel was a great leader and a great warrior. But it was the Spirit of God, not Othniel or his skills that saved Israel. In Othniel’s day, the Spirit of The Lord coming on a leader was a rare, miraculous event. But in our case the miracle has already occurred. The main thing keeping us from accessing the Holy Spirit is…us.

Jesus promised the Holy Spirit and told the disciples that it is to our benefit that he leave and the Spirit come. But the benefit may not be something that looks like victory to the world. In Acts, we read of Stephen, who was filled with the Spirit and spoke with power. We like that part. Then he was stoned to death.

Othniel and Stephen are two men touched and led by the Spirit of God to very different outcomes. From the world’s point of view, one was a victor and one a victim. In many ways, the Kingdom perspective of their situations is the reverse.

Othniel seems to have won a great victory and Stephen seem to have lost everything, until you keep reading. 40 years later, Israel is back in the same predicament, tragically repeating the same mistakes over and over. But 40 years after Stephen’s death, the church he died for was spread across the known world by one of the very men who helped put him to death.

We need the Spirit in our lives not because our skills, our wealth, and our influence cannot accomplish things of significance, but because what is truly significant is often hidden, like a treasure buried in a field, and we must follow the Spirit, forsaking all else to find it.

Prayer: The Greeting
O Lord, I cry to you for help; in the morning my prayer comes before you. — Psalm 88.14

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Judges 2 (Listen – 3:19)
Acts 6 (Listen – 2:35)

Today’s Readings
Judges 3 (Listen – 4:30), Acts 7 (Listen – 8:49)
Judges 4 (Listen – 3:57), Acts 8 (Listen – 5:10)

Thank You!
Thank you to our donors who support our readers by making it possible to continue The Park Forum devotionals. This year, The Park Forum audiences opened 200,000 free, and ad-free, devotional content. Follow this link to join our donors with a one-time or a monthly gift. 

Readers’ Choice Submissions

It is once again time for us to seek out the voices of our readers and hear from you about posts from the past eleven months that have challenged and comforted you and helped you find new meaning in the scriptures.

Readers’ Choice posts will be republished during the month of August and periodically throughout the Fall.

Follow the link to fill out the form. Feel free to fill out the form multiple times for multiple submissions. Please limit your submissions to posts published this calendar year, between September of 2018 and today.

For any questions about The Park Forum, or to make suggestions of posts via email, contact John Tillman at john@theparkforum.org

Why Do We Need the Leading of the Spirit?
The leading of the Spirit—O, how highly necessary is it! Who can be without it?

Why Do We Need the Leading of the Spirit? :: Throwback Thursday

Read more about Spiritual Practice as EDC
The daily practices of prayer, reading the scriptures, meditation are tools that can connect us powerfully to the Holy Spirit, help us define who and whose we are, and allow us to walk with the confidence of our secure identity in Christ.

Spiritual Practice as EDC