Presby-Musings

I've always had this thing for the story of Gideon from the book of Judges in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Gideon has this miraculous moment where an angel from God tells him that he's supposed to lead an attack against a more powerful tribe that is terrorizing the Hebrew people.   And Gideon asks, "Why me?  I'm not up to that.  I don't think that will work for me.  You're asking the wrong guy.  Give me a minute, and I'll think of some other excuses."   That's my not-so-literal translation of the conversation from the ancient Hebrew.   And the angel of the Lord answers, "Uh, yeah.  Did you not just hear what I said?"  To which Gideon says, "You said you would help me save Israel, fine.  What I need is a sign that this is for real, that I'm really supposed to do this."   Then he says, "I'm going to ask something impossible.  I'm going to put this wool fleece outside tonight and will check it in the morning....

There is this story in the book of Judges in the Old Testament about Jewish hero named Gideon, who defeated thousands of soldiers from a rival tribe with only three hundred Hebrew warriors.   But before Gideon was a great hero, he was just a guy--a guy keeping his head down, trying to make ends meet and desperately afraid of having his grain and goods raided by members of the aforementioned rival tribe.   In the story, an angel from the Lord appeared to Gideon and exclaimed, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."  To which Gideon replies, "Beg your pardon, but it sure doesn't look or feel like the Lord is with us.  I mean look around you, we're all afraid, we're uncertain, things are bad.  How could the Lord be with us when things are so bad?"   I love this.  The guy has an angel appear to him and tell him that he's favored by God and he argues with the angel.   But how different is that from the way that so many of us act?   Have...

This Sunday we'll begin a brand new sermon series that will begin our church's journey through the Old Testament .  We'll be encountering some of the great characters in Scripture along the way---characters that undoubtedly dominated many a Sunday school class for some of us church-y types. I'd like to think that this sermon series is kind of a "Sunday School Remixed," sort of thing.  We're going to be going over some familiar ground for many of our church members but hopefully we'll all learn some things that surprise us when we do.  And if you are tuning in and you don't have much of a history with the Bible---you will definitely get the chance to learn more than you bargained for if we do this right... Part One of this first series in our study is centered on the story of Gideon and is entitled: "Ancient Stories: The (Very) Reluctant Hero ."  This story comes right out of Judges chapters 6 & Judges chapter 7 In the first...