January 22, 2008

Ehud and Eglon, Deborah and Jael - what a day!
Today we started class by playing a variation of the game Encore. The students didn't have to sing, but they volleyed back and forth as many names as they could come up which referred to the apostasy. Yes, as we enter the book of Judges, we are entering the beginning of the apostasy. We looked at the cycle which the Israelites followed once Joshua died. They would be righteous for a time, then then would forget and begin to follow idolatry and sin, then life would become awful and they would be miserable, they would cry to the Lord who would then intercede and life would be good and then they would begin the cycle again. We compared this with the Nephite pride cycle - exact same thing - just a different continent. Do we see this in our life? Absolutely - things are going good- we slack off on the scriptures, prayers, church etc, and then start to make some unwise decisions, finally we wake back up, repent and follow the Lord again before the cycle once again begins. Something we didn't talk about today that relates to that (I just thought of this) is the antithesis of this cycle. The Faith cycle... we exercise our faith - and are obedient, and we see results and exercise more faith - another cycle, just a much more positive one (too bad I didn't think of it earlier).
Anyways - we discussed how some of us hold on to our favorite sins - bad language, not daring to walk out of a bad movie, listening to possibly inappropriate music, etc.. We have to be willing to give up all of our sins, when we hold on to our sins, we are like the Israelites who although they were commanded to wipe out the Canaanites and all of their idols and altars etc, instead they allowed them to live and share the land. When we don't eliminate sin from our lives, it is the same - it works on us just like the Canaanites (and other inhabitants of the land) influenced and eventually brought about the apostasy of Israel. Satan always starts a little at a time and carefully leads us - he crafty and subtle instead of blatant and obvious.

The districts were each assigned a chapter - 3 and 4 and they acted out the story in each chapter. We had Ehud and Eglon (and the double edged sword). Eglon was so large that Ehud couldn't get the sword back out after he'd stabbed him. Then Israel was able to come down and conquer the land. Then we had Deborah the prophetess who took them all into battle with Barak. Jael, Heber's wife gave Sisera a cup of milk and fluffy blanket, and then pegged him through the temple to the ground. Although both of these stories are violent and somewhat extreme - do we take the same attitude in regards to getting rid of sin or wickedness? The Lord doesn't tolerate sin... neither did some of these individuals - as we were able to see today.
Our scripture mastery for this week is Isaiah 29:13-14