Getting Your Head Right

Summary

Judges 3 explains why God left some nations in the land. The slides give four purposes: to punish Israel for apostasy, to test Israel’s faithfulness and love for God, to train a new generation in warfare under God’s leadership, and to prevent the land from becoming wild before full conquest. Israel instead lived among the Canaanites, intermarried and served their gods.

Three deliverers follow. Othniel, Caleb’s younger brother, is raised up after eight years under Cushan-rishathaim, and the land has rest for forty years. A chart traces the repeated cycle across Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson. Ehud, a left-handed Benjaminite, uses wisdom and strategy to defeat Eglon of Moab, and the land has rest for eighty years. Shamgar strikes down 600 Philistines with an oxgoad.

The takeaways stress that God uses unlikely people, that wisdom and strategy matter, that God responds when we turn from our idols, and that He can use what is in your hand. The lesson also uses John 15 to ask what it means to abide in the vine.

The lesson also pauses on a slide about passing faith to the next generation, a theme that runs through Judges 2:10. Drawing on survey data, it compares parents for whom faith is a major factor in parenting with those for whom it is less important. Where faith was a major factor, 62% of parents said their oldest child matched or exceeded their own Christian commitment; where faith was less important, only 18% said so, and 62% said their child was less committed or not committed at all. The point for families is that children need guidance, and that what parents treat as important shapes the faith their children grow up with.

Reasons and rescuers

The chapter is a list of reasons followed by a list of deliverers.

Practical takeaways

The slides draw out these lessons from Ehud and Shamgar: