Church Age Lesson Two - Book of Judges

MESSAGE FOR PEOPLE TODAY FROM THE BOOK OF JUDGES

Please watch the Video Before Reading the Lesson Plan

Church: Ephesus                             7 of 39 lessons                                Theme: Grace

Background Information

The church of Laodicea taught how faith works by love.

Statement of Faith to Say Amen to for the Book of Judges:

I can accept God’s grace with love by not mixing prosperity with God’s grace.

Essential Question

Can I accept God’s grace if I am working for prosperity?

Book of Judges

Have students read pages 12-15 in the book, The Pattern of Sound Teaching.

After students read the information ask them, "What do you want to talk about?"

Remember the Issue:

Does the world teach us to love God? How does the world get us to build our foundation of faith on sinking sand instead of The Rock of Faith?

The world is trying to separate God from His creation with a worldview that works for prosperity, and lives in fear of not having prosperity. We need to know the truth to combat the enemy’s lies.

Remember the Truth Jesus Brought:

When the world teaches us to work for prosperity, we can look to the sacrifice that Jesus made to understand how we are to love God and not money or material things. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus addressed this issue saying, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” Jesus’ teachings on wealth and prosperity can be misunderstood because Satan, the father of lies, likes to put prosperity in our path so we will work for prosperity and deny God’s grace. However, we can look at the life that Jesus lived to understand that we should live a life that does not store up treasures on Earth but instead store up treasures in heaven. The world will not teach us that we should look at eternal things. Just as the world taught a message to associate the sacrifice of animals' blood with prosperity, the world is teaching a message to associate the sacrifice Jesus made with prosperity.

The Old Testament has a message for people today. In the book of Judges, we learn how the Hebrews went out to live among the people who were not sacrificing to God, and they began to sacrifice to false gods. The sacrifice to false gods included people being able to work for prosperity and then to be protected by just performing a sacrifice afterward. The world was teaching this sacrifice. After sacrificing to false gods, the Israelites would be sold into slavery and abused by the group that was sacrificing to a false god, and then the Israelites would remember the miracles of God. The Israelites would remember that the false god was not protecting them the way God had protected them. They then remembered the promise of God. God said He would protect the people who were in a covenant with Him and punish the people serving false gods. Just as they remembered the promise of God to combat the enemies' lies, we also need to remember the promise of God to combat the enemies' lies.

Remember the Rock God Established:

The next generation in the book of Judges did not remember what God had promised. It is important for each generation to remember the promises of God, so they can teach God’s promises to the next generation. The book of Judges includes twelve stories of how the next generation of Israelites forgot the miracles that the Lord performed. The miracles were important for them to remember because God had performed the miracles to teach the Hebrews that faith includes a sacrifice. The sacrifice had been taught to the people directly by God. The next generation had begun to sacrifice the way that the people serving false gods were sacrificing.

God taught specific details on how to perform the sacrifice, and the main idea was the relationship between the sacrifice and God’s commandments because God’s commandments recognized the justice of God’s holiness. The people who were serving false gods were seeking prosperity while making a sacrifice. God had told the Hebrews not to mix with the people who were serving false gods.

When the next generation mixed with the people serving false gods, they realized that God's law and the sacrifice were given to the Israelites to protect them from evil people. The Israelites would then remember the promise of God to protect them, and they would turn back and stop sacrificing to false gods. The Israelites had twelve messages of miracles with a judge where God protected the Israelites. However, the Gentiles had twelve messages of Gentile blood being shed. With each of the twelve judges, the Israelites were moving further from God’s grace and closer to prosperity. These twelve stories have some very odd ideas of how to sacrifice when the Israelites tried to include prosperity with the sacrifice. The sacrifices that the judges were performing were getting more and more bizarre because they were mixing prosperity with God’s grace. Each sacrifice got more bizarre than the last.

Students will read a story about Micah that illustrates how the Israelites forgot about the miracles the Lord performed for them, and what happened when the Israelites mixed God's grace with the corrupt nations that had faith in serving false gods that supported a prosperity message. Read the story of Micah in Judges 17 and 18 to hear how Micah tries to earn and work for God’s blessing.

Now we can look at the sacrifice that Jesus made and remember how Jesus beat death. The world is still teaching people today to work for salvation. Just as the world taught a sacrifice to false gods would cover chasing prosperity in the past, the world is trying to separate God from His creation by teaching God’s righteous servants to work for God’s grace. When we mix a prosperity message with God’s grace, we need to turn back to our first love, God.

Activity:

The activity directions are located in Appendix 1 – Step 2. Students will take on the role of a creator to understand the relationship between the creator and the creation.

Conclusion:

In the book of Judges, there were twelve messages of how the Israelites were including a prosperity message with the sacrifice to God, and how they turned back to their first love, God.

Next Lesson:

In the next lesson, the Hebrews were awakened in 1 Chronicles by the miracles of God to understand that God only accepts the sacrifice that bears good fruit. Now we are awakened to build an internal temple that bears witness to how to achieve eternal prosperity and not worldly prosperity.

BLOG: Write (1) a statement of faith and (2) a testimony - to lay a foundation for the internal spiritual church of Ephesus.

The statement of faith will choose to be reborn again with grace by the spirit of God through having faith in Jesus, or to have faith in the world.

The testimony will identify what is given up in the name of love for a higher purpose.

A testimony will have faith in Jesus or the world. A testimony will give up the world for Jesus, or it will give up Jesus for the world. We cannot be of the world and have Jesus in us.

Everyone's statement of faith and testimony will be different. Please see the prompt starters below to help begin writing. Using the prompt starters is optional.

Statement of faith prompt starter:

In making a statement of faith for the church of Ephesus, I will choose

Testimony prompt starter:

My testimony is defined as not what I take up, but what I give up that is valued as important, such as ________________ for the sake of _________________________, as being regarded as more important. My testimony is that

Because your faith and a personal testimony are important parts of salvation, please write a statement of faith and a personal testimony in the comments section below.

NOTE: With your testimony, now you are building the temple with stones on the rock foundation you established. The next 29 lesson plans will teach you how to align your stone with the chief cornerstone on the rock of faith. The stone will witness against those who choose to love like Jesus and then decide to be a lover of self with lukewarm faith.