A woman named Deborah lived in the foothills of Ephraim. The Bible tells us that she was a prophetess and married a man named Lapidoth. Deborah lived during a time when an evil Canaanite king named Jabin ruled in the land. He and his powerful army persecuted the Israelites. Deborah and her people longed for relief from their cruel enemies.
Discuss:
Richard Gunther (www.lambsongs.co.nz) | FreeBibleImages.org
Deborah had faith in God and He gave her the help she needed to be a good judge. If we have faith, do you think God could use us to do amazing things?
The people suffered greatly under the Canaanites. Why did God allow Israel to suffer? Remember, God promises that obeying Him brings blessings, but disobeying Him brings trouble (Deuteronomy 30:15–20).
The Bible says that the evil king Jabin had 900 chariots made out of iron! The Israelites were crying out to God for help! Have you ever asked God for help when you were scared? How can we know He will help us?
Memory Challenge:
Judges 4:4-5
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, was judging Israel at that time. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment.
Author: Thomas White | Editorial Staff, Living Church of God
Most of us
know Matthew 24:14 verbatim: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” It’s encouraging on many levels, especially its use of the word “will.” The Gospel will be preached to all the nations. The end will come. There are no possibilities in this—only certainties that we can, and should, believe in with our might.
But why does the Gospel need to be preached to all the nations? As we well know, God’s not opening everyone’s mind now, so why is He emphatic about the Gospel being so widespread? With such a massive number of people hearing the Truth without the chance to internalize it, why must we bother making sure they hear it to begin with?
Our Sisters and Brothers
The answer is way too multifaceted for this post, but a small part of it struck me after hearing Mr. Peter Nathan’s recent Assembly on the Work in Africa. As he related the unique challenges, opportunities, situations, and brethren in that part of the world, I couldn’t help thinking that although I may be different in so many ways from everyone born and raised in any part of Africa, the African brethren and I nevertheless share a culture.
Feast of Tabernacles, Living Church of God: Kendu Bay, Kenya, 2017
Those truly in God’s Church are all part of the same unifying culture—we all read from the same book (various translations notwithstanding), worship on the same day of the week, abstain from the same meats, believe in the same upcoming eternity, share the same ultimate destiny.
There are Church members in Africa whose languages I have no idea how to speak, and yet I have more in common with each one of them than I do with almost everyone I’ll pass on the road while driving home today. Those who strive to worship God in spirit and truth inhabit a common ground that transcends all the cultural boundaries that would otherwise be impenetrable. That’s how we can call each other brothers and sisters—because in every meaningful sense, we are exactly that.
That’s already beautiful, but it becomes doubly so when you consider that God chose each and every one of us. He wanted His people in North America to be siblings to His people in Africa. He wanted Saints in Australia to be family to Saints in South America. He wanted His begotten children in Europe to see His begotten children in Asia and recognize, “Here are my sisters and brothers.”
Why?
Harmoniously Different
It’s funny—I can’t help but think of a line from Ratatouille. Yes, the animated movie about the rat chef. Not exactly a film devoted to capturing reality, but I’ve always thought there was some truth in the phrase, “Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
Feast of Tabernacles, Living Church of God: Kendu Bay, Kenya, 2017
Maybe Jesus Christ had something similar in mind when He assured His disciples that the Gospel “will be preached as a witness to all the nations.”
Sure, not everyone will believe that Gospel, but those who do believe it will be made up of people from all over the world, proving that all worldly cultures pose not the slightest obstacle to the culture that is God’s Way.
Belief in God’s Truth doesn’t make us all the same. It wouldn’t be God’s Truth if it did, since God loves the individuality of each of His children. Belief in God’s Truth makes us unified—different, but harmoniously so. Although not everyone can currently become a Saint, a Saint can come from anywhere.
Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.
https://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/africa-from-jake.jpg11251500Jonathan McNairhttps://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/logo_basic-website-300x94.pngJonathan McNair2019-11-14 12:16:492021-09-03 13:24:16Second Thoughts: The Culture We Share
Author: Thomas White | Editorial Staff, Living Church of God
If you’re
reading this, you’re probably in the Church of God, so you’ve heard sermons before. You’ve probably heard quite a few Bible studies, too, like the one Mr. Mario Hernandez gave for the most recent Assembly, in which he powerfully emphasized the command and the need for us to read from God’s word every morning and every evening.
Messages like that, instructional ones that point out things required of us, are given for what should be an obvious reason: Not everybody knows about every requirement. Case in point, I don’t remember ever hearing a sermon about how we
shouldn’t eat one another, because that’s common knowledge—the world at large pretty much agrees that if I’m hungry, you’re not an option. But messages about not hating one another, for example, will always be needed, because although that’s required of us too, not everyone knows it—it’s a bit easier to forget than the law against cannibalism.
All humans are ignorant. We’re not to try to be, but it doesn’t make much sense to deny the fact that every one of us simply doesn’t know a lot of stuff, including a lot that’s biblical. The Bible’s not exactly light beach reading, and we wouldn’t need ministers if we could all just go through it and internalize everything we’ll ever need to know.
Yet how many of us, after hearing an enlightening message of instruction, feel terrible about having not known something? Maybe we haven’t thought to read the Bible every morning and evening. Maybe it never occurred to us that we need to keep a third tithe. Maybe it never crossed our minds that a daily part of our vocabulary might be a word we really shouldn’t say.
Nineveh’s Response
We didn’t know. But now that we do, what should our reaction be? For some, the first reaction is shame, as though they’re somehow stupid for not having made these connections themselves. Certainly, a godly sorrow is appropriate, because a sin committed in ignorance is still a sin, but if we sincerely ask God for forgiveness and determine to change whatever it is we’ve been doing or not doing, what’s the use of guilt-tripping ourselves over what, until recently, we had no idea was a problem?
Nineveh’s a good example of the right reaction. When it was made abundantly clear that major change was essential, the king of Nineveh didn’t wallow in guilt and think, “Well, we’ve been seriously missing something, so, I guess we’re terrible people who deserve whatever we have coming to us.” His response was almost the opposite—“let every one turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who can tell if God will turn and relent, and turn away from His fierce anger, so that we may not perish?” (Jonah 3:8-9).
What Defines Us
Nineveh accepted that they’d been ignorant of something important, and they determined to change. No “I can’t believe I didn’t know, I’m so stupid and awful”—just a desire to make the most out of what they now knew, and even, in their own way, an understanding that God is a merciful rewarder of heartfelt repentance.
So, if we hear a message that makes us aware of something wrong we’ve been doing, or something right we haven’t been doing, Nineveh might be a good place for our thoughts to go. God’s a whole lot more interested in our future than He is in our past, so we’re not defined by our ignorant mistakes—we’re defined by what we do about them.
Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.
https://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/siora-photography-hgFY1mZY-Y0-unsplash.jpg9861500Jonathan McNairhttps://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/logo_basic-website-300x94.pngJonathan McNair2019-11-07 16:46:502021-09-03 13:21:53Second Thoughts: In Response to Ignorance
Author: Thomas White | Editorial Staff, Living Church of God
A psychologist by the—awesome—name of Solomon Asch conducted a super unnerving experiment in 1951. He had a group of eight people look at four drawn lines—three “comparison” lines and one “target” line.
Each member of the group had to say, out loud, which of the comparison lines they thought matched the target one in length, and this was repeated with eighteen sets of lines. It wasn’t hard; the right answers were intended to be really obvious.
The
catch—there’s always a catch with these tricky psychologists—was that most of
the time, seven of those eight people purposely gave blatantly wrong answers. Asch
had told them to. The unsuspecting eighth participant was the real focus of the
study—would he, despite the obviously wrong answers of all his peers, conform to them, answering in the same way? Asch
conducted this experiment over and over again, and found that 75 percent of
these participants did, at least once, do exactly this.
Bulletproof Evidence
For his
student Assembly, Mr. Ames let us watch a movie (I love it when people do that),
Unlocking the Mystery of Life. It’s a
documentary presenting several scientists and their reasons for embracing the
theory that our mind-bogglingly complex universe had, itself, a mind behind it.
It’s right here, if you
want to watch it.
That the universe was intelligently designed happens to be true,
But as
Solomon Asch demonstrated, something being obviously right doesn’t mean we won’t
abandon it for what everyone else says
is right.
The Target Line
Asch found
that people tend to conform for one of two reasons. Either they know they’re
wrong and are okay with that, because “At least I won’t be ridiculed,” or they honestly
believe that if most people are saying something, that something must be true.
Neither of
these influences make a whole lot of sense, but they are, undeniably,
influences, and those who try to tear us away from the God of the Bible make
great use of both. Such people have also been told to give the wrong answers,
but by someone infinitely more nefarious than Solomon Asch—and they actually
believe the wrong answers they’re giving.
Encouragingly, in Asch’s experiment, 25 percent of participants consistently refused to conform to the wrong answers of those in their groups. The advantage we have over them is that we know exactly what’s going on; God’s word tells us that the others in our “group” are spewing fake info, blinded by a spiritual veil and victims of a truth-deprived society. With that knowledge, we can be confident that we aren’t wrong; there is a God, He did inspire the Bible, and we are in His Church.
As for ridicule, since the Designer of reality informs us that we’re not stupid, I think we can safely ignore Richard Dawkins & Friends saying otherwise. Like the 25 percent in Asch’s experiment, we can be confident and unyielding. The line that includes God, His word, and His Church, obviously matches the target line—no matter what anyone says.
Thomas White was one of the onsite Living Education students for the 2018-2019 semesters. He also has a Bachelor’s Degree in English. Thomas currently works as an Editorial Assistant for the Living Church of God. According to his wife, he eats pizza in entirely the wrong way.
https://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/stormtrooper-1343877_1920.jpg11221500Jonathan McNairhttps://www.lcgeducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/logo_basic-website-300x94.pngJonathan McNair2019-11-04 11:42:052021-09-03 14:01:08Second Thoughts: The 25 Percent
