Messy People, Merciful God

September 13: Half-Hearted Discipleship

The book of Judges. Messy People. Merciful God. As we walk through this book, we are going to encounter a lot of horrifying tales of what sin can do in people’s lives. Sin can get real messy. We can identify with that today. The book of Judges shows what happens when people stop giving full-hearted devotion to God and start offering Him half-hearted discipleship. It eventually leads to non-discipleship. It leads to people doing whatever they want to do. We see that in the world around us. What about us? Are we offering God full-hearted devotion? Or half-hearted discipleship?

September 20: Avoiding A Downward Spiral

Today we will see how important it is for one generation to pass the faith down to the next generation. The failure to do that leads to the loss of something very important. We are also introduced to the repeated cycle in the book of Judges – Rebelling against God, being oppressed, crying out for help, God sending someone to deliver, and then a return to sin. An awful downward spiral. That unfaithfulness to a God who continues to be patiently faithful is the most hurtful kind of adultery. But it shines a spotlight on how tremendously loving and gracious our God is!

September 27: Making God Real

How is it possible that people can “forget” God? We may “know” certain truths about God, but those truths don’t grab our hearts, and therefore He stops being “real” to us. The Israelites forgot God, and so idols became more “real” to them than God was. It is important that God is real to us! And if his forgiveness and salvation is real to us, then we will live it out in our lives! So let’s let his Word today remind and convince us of how real God is, and encourage us to live a life that thanks Jesus for being our real Savior. Our real “Judge.”

October 4: What Did You Expect?

Are we sometimes obsessed with the need for human approval? Whether it is your parents, peers, friends or strangers, it is easy to live a life solely devoted to trying to impress others. In the book of Judges we learn that Barak had the same problem that we all have today. So, what do you expect for what you do? Do you expect praise from others or are you trying to please your Father in heaven? Knowing our true identity in Jesus will give us the solution to our struggles of trying to impress others.

October 11: Confidence Without Boasting

Do we have the tendency to boast about and take credit for things that actually are blessings from God? We don’t like it when others take credit for what we do, and God doesn’t like it when we take credit for what He does. Gideon and his army could have been tempted to take credit for the coming victory. God took some things away to make sure they couldn’t. God sometimes takes things away from us so we can see our weakness and his strength, and trust his strength instead of ours. So we can live in confidence without boasting!

October 18: Treating God As An Idol

Are we more influenced by the Word of God or by the culture around us? We are more affected by our culture than we think. And that often leads us to try treating God like one of our idols. We treat God like a vending machine, trying to get Him to give us what we want Him to give us. And when we are more influenced by the culture around us, we struggle to see God as a God of grace. If our other “gods” don’t have mercy on us, how can God do that? Let’s let His Word influence us, and stop treating God as an idol!

October 25: Revelation Instead Of Rules

Sometimes we don’t like rules. Sometimes we do. The world lives with the mindset of “what is right for you isn’t necessarily right for me.” We don’t always want rules that limit our freedoms, but we often want rules showing us exactly how to live our Christian lives and how to make decisions and how to know what to do. Today, as we continue our series on Judges: Messy People, Merciful God, we are going to see how Samson’s father wanted these kind of rules for how to bring up the son God would give him in a miraculous birth. But God gives him something better. A revelation of who He is. God gives us revelation instead of rules!

November 1: Settling Scores

Do we realize that the sinful world around us is actually our spiritual “enemy”? Or have we gotten all too comfortable with it? Have we just accepted the fact that things are the way they are? Do the things that should bother us no longer bother us? That is the way things were in Israel during the time of Samson. The people weren’t even crying out to the Lord to help anymore. They had just surrendered to the enemy around them. We are going to see how God works not only in spite of the flaws of someone like Samson, but even through his flaws. Today’s text reads like a summer blockbuster action hero movie. We are going to see how God uses the act of “Settling Scores” to accomplish his purpose!

November 8: The Broken Victor

Rock bottom and guardrails. Messy People… No one plans on making a huge mess in their life, but plenty of people do. Often big messes happen when you begin to think that you are invincible. This was the case for Samson. He thought he was invincible and ended up hitting rock bottom in life. The sinful nature inside of us is dangerous and destructive. Merciful God… As Christians, we need to call upon Jesus for forgiveness even when we hit rock bottom.

November 15: The King We Need

Today our message series on the book of Judges comes to a close. A very sad close. A dark and disturbing look at how far God’s people had gone in living life in a way that was right in their eyes… but not His eyes. People doing whatever they wanted to do. And we aren’t talking about unbelievers. We are talking about God’s own people. Even if we haven’t done things as outwardly awful as these people, have we been any different? Do we also have dark secrets? Have we been guilty of inaction when we needed to do something? Are we guilty of telling a better story about ourselves than what is true? These are spiritual problems. We need a spiritual solution. We need a spiritual King. We need Jesus as our King.