Dear Friends and Editors,
Please read then freely print this weeks Penny Pulpit Column in your papers, bulletins, emails, bloggs and twitters . Thank you for this consideration.
Pastor Ed Rice, Good Samaritan Baptist Church, Dresden NY 14441
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Msg #1317 Judges, the Main Thing
What The Bible Says
Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice
Simon says, Take four steps back. That game is meant to teach careful obedience to only one master. Taking four steps backward through the book of Judges is meant to teach the same. We started at the end where a depraved society would have no God to reign over them, and every depraved man did what was right in their own eyes. We back stepped through the God selected judge, Jephthah, and found him and his vow a portrayal of what God was feeling and yet promising. A step back found us analyzing Abimelech, the leader chosen by majority vote and mimicking our own dilemma wherein it is said, In the voting machine we trust. One more step back puts us at the beginning of this book called Judges, and the ugly plight of mankind is portrayed in God's words. The people of God, fresh settled into the promised land, flowing with milk and honey, forsook the LORD God of their fathers and served other gods and bowed to them (2:12). They moved the LORD to anger, he delivered them into the hands of spoilers (vr 14), and yet he saved and delivered time and again with his judges. “And it came to pass when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and to bow down to them.” Sounds like the Big Bang worshiping, humans came from monkeys reasoning, secular-humanist people I have been called to preach the gospel to! Indeed the book of Judges is a mirror, a mirror that shadows the face of the USA we are called to reach for Christ. Wow, … discouraged but not in despair, keep the main thing the main thing in these last of the last days.
An Essay for week #17 Sun, Apr 28, 13
Published at www.GSBaptistChurch.com/ppulpit/biblesays13.pdf
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