Thank goodness that’s over. I had to fire a resident assistant at the very end of November, which meant I got to take over her shift of 4:30-10 p.m. on Wednesdays throughout this month because I’d already made the schedule for assignments.
Fortunately, I was able to listen to Shorewood over the internet this evening and, despite the dozen or so interruptions from residents and RAs, I got in some good meat (not to mention material for my writings).
This has been a long day for me. I got up early to make our second food pickup of the month from the Greater Chicago Food Depository. The highlight was there was NO traffic on Lake Shore Drive and Lake Michigan’s waves were kicking up pretty good from my vantage point in our super-long Ford Econoline handicap van. (The lowlight was finding out after my late-late workday that my internet service was suspended due to non-payment even though I was led to believe I successfully transferred to an automated payment service through my credit card!)
I’ve always loved this week between Christmas and New Year’s, where half the population abandons the city and the other half isn’t really working. The one regret is I didn’t get to take advantage of it for a smooth, no-hassle drive out to church tonight!
Anyway, here’s an outtake from tonight’s message:
“Gideon’s one of my favorite guys in the Bible because he’s just so human. I read through the whole Bible at least twice a year and in my personal reading just this past week one of the books I read was the Book of Judges.
“It’s hard to beat Gideon. I always think, ‘Lord, I’m glad you put that guy in the Bible because he demonstrates how God has dealt with folks like us before!' Sometime you think nobody’s ever messed up like you’ve messed up or been as dumb as you’ve been, that kind of stuff, or been as proud or self-righteous as you are.
“You just look at Gideon and you get it all. I’m just amazed by the guy. When you come to Judges 9 Gideon’s life is over. He lived quite a life. In Chapter 7 he delivers Israel with the little band of 300 and then he lives a prosperous life. If you look at Judges 8, it says, ‘[29] And Jerubbaal the son of Joash went and dwelt in his own house.
[30] And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives.
[31] And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, whose name he called Abimelech.’
“That dude had 70 kids! He had to have had a lot of wives to have had that many kids. I mean, you go figure.
“Gideon didn’t end so well. When he made an ephod, an ephod is a part of the garment of a priest. It’s like the robe the priest wears. Gideon wasn’t a priest, though. One of the great sins in the Old Testament that you’ll see great men (Saul, for example) do they try to usurp the priesthood. They try to take the office of a priest. Sometime they’re prophets, sometime they’re kings, there’s only one person outside the Lord Jesus Christ that met all three offices in one person and that’s King David.
“Samuel, for example, was a prophet. He also functioned as a priest, offering sacrifices. But he wasn’t a king. Saul was a king who tried to usurp the priest office and lost his kingdom because of it.
“Getting between God and man, Gideon was a judge. He wasn’t designed to be a priest. But what he does is he gets into a spiritual declension and he begins to spiritually fail and he adopts apostasy. And you get to verse 31, he has his favorite son; Abimelech is the name of a heathen king.
“You know, you sort of name your kids after your heroes. Why would Gideon name his boy after a pagan king? You scratch your head at that; he’s not ending well."
(To be continued . . . )