{"id":27566,"date":"2023-08-18T22:00:26","date_gmt":"2023-08-19T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/judges-12_1-15-copy\/"},"modified":"2023-08-01T23:09:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T06:09:37","slug":"judges-13_1-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/judges-13_1-14\/","title":{"rendered":"What Faith Looks Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

Judges 13:1-14 \u00a0 <\/strong>Click here for Bible Verses<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Judges 13:1-14.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Judges 13:1-5 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n1\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the\u00a0LORD, so the\u00a0LORD\u00a0delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.
\n2\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless.
\n3\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The angel of the\u00a0LORD\u00a0appeared to her and said, “You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son.
\n4\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean,
\n5\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 1-5:\u00a0 The purpose of a Nazirite vow was to live a life that was specially set apart for God for a short period of time.\u00a0 According to Numbers 6:1-8, a person making a Nazirite vow must abstain from wine, haircuts, and touching dead bodies.\u00a0 Usually a Nazirite vow was something that a person took voluntarily for a set period of time.\u00a0 In the case of this child to be born in Judges 13, the Nazirite vow was a calling he was given by God (it wasn\u2019t voluntary) and it was to last all his life.<\/p>\n

Personally, I would have struggled with being a Nazirite, in particular because I dislike growing my hair long. \u00a0(The wine and touching dead corpses I can live without.)\u00a0 That said, whether we take a Nazirite vow or not, we are called to live our lives set apart for God.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t drink wine or can\u2019t get our hair cut or can\u2019t attend a funeral.\u00a0 It simply means that we carry on the attitude that in whatever we do we want to give God glory.\u00a0 So\u00a0though we might never take a Nazirite vow specifically, may we live our lives set apart for the LORD<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Judges 13:6-14 (NIV)<\/strong>
\n6\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Then the woman went to her husband and told him, “A man of God came to me. He looked like an angel of God, very awesome. I didn’t ask him where he came from, and he didn’t tell me his name.
\n7\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0But he said to me, ‘You will conceive and give birth to a son. Now then, drink no wine or other fermented drink and do not eat anything unclean, because the boy will be a Nazirite of God from birth until the day of his death.'”
\n8\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Then Manoah prayed to the\u00a0LORD: “O Lord, I beg you, let the man of God you sent to us come again to teach us how to bring up the boy who is to be born.”
\n9\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0God heard Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman while she was out in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her.
\n10\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The woman hurried to tell her husband, “He’s here! The man who appeared to me the other day!”
\n11\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0Manoah got up and followed his wife. When he came to the man, he said, “Are you the one who talked to my wife?” “I am,” he said.
\n12\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0So Manoah asked him, “When your words are fulfilled, what is to be the rule for the boy’s life and work?”
\n13\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0The angel of the\u00a0LORD\u00a0answered, “Your wife must do all that I have told her.
\n14\u00a0<\/sup>\u00a0She must not eat anything that comes from the grapevine, nor drink any wine or other fermented drink nor eat anything unclean. She must do everything I have commanded her.”<\/em><\/p>\n

On verses 6-14: \u00a0In these verses, Manoah and his wife demonstrate two ways that faith shows up in our lives.
\nFirst,\u00a0faith shows up in our willingness to believe what God says even when the circumstances say otherwise<\/strong>.\u00a0 For Manoah and his wife, experience told them that Manoah\u2019s wife was not able to get pregnant.\u00a0 Yet both Manoah\u2019s wife and Manoah showed a willingness to believe what the angel of the LORD told them.\u00a0 In verses 6-7 Manoah\u2019s wife shows that she accepts by faith what the angel of the LORD told her, that she would be pregnant have a son (v3).\u00a0 Manoah, upon hearing what his wife experienced, didn\u2019t doubt or second guess her; rather Manoah prayed for confirmation and wisdom about what the LORD had said (v8).\u00a0 Both Manoah and his wife exercised faith through a willingness to believe.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean that people with faith are necessarily gullible.\u00a0 But people with faith have an openness to the idea that God can and does speak to people.<\/p>\n

Second,\u00a0faith shows up in a willingness to obey.<\/strong>\u00a0 We see this in Manoah.\u00a0 When the angel of the LORD returns to them, Manoah asks him \u201cWhen your words come true, what kind of rules should govern the boy\u2019s life and work?\u201d (v12)\u00a0 In other words, Manoah believed what the angel said (\u201cWhen<\/em>\u00a0[not if] your words come true\u201d), and Manoah was committed to obeying whatever the LORD was saying.<\/p>\n

A willingness to believe and a willingness to obey \u2013 these are the basic hallmarks of faith.<\/p>\n

Father, I pray that I would live my life set apart for You.\u00a0 Holy Spirit fill me today that I would be willing to believe what God says over what my circumstances tell me, and that I would be willing to obey whatever You say.\u00a0 In Jesus\u2019 name, AMEN!<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2021 Justin Lim. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi GAMErs!<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s passage is Judges 13:1-14.\u00a0 Let’s go!<\/p>\n

Judges 13:1-5 (NIV)
\n1\u00a0\u00a0Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the\u00a0LORD, so the\u00a0LORD\u00a0delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.
\n2\u00a0\u00a0A certain man of Zorah, named Manoah, from the clan of the Danites, had a wife who was sterile and remained childless.
\n3\u00a0\u00a0The angel of the\u00a0LORD\u00a0appeared to her and said, “You are sterile and childless, but you are going to conceive and have a son.
\n4\u00a0\u00a0Now see to it that you drink no wine or other fermented drink and that you do not eat anything unclean,
\n5\u00a0\u00a0because you will conceive and give birth to a son. No razor may be used on his head, because the boy is to be a Nazirite, set apart to God from birth, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines.”<\/p>\n

On verses 1-5:\u00a0 The purpose of a Nazirite vow was to live a life that was specially set apart for God for a short period of time.\u00a0 According to Numbers 6:1-8, a person making a Nazirite vow must abstain from wine, haircuts, and touching dead bodies.\u00a0 Usually a Nazirite vow was something that a person took voluntarily for a set period of time.\u00a0 In the case of this child to be born in Judges 13, the Nazirite vow was a calling he was given by God (it wasn\u2019t voluntary) and it was to last all his life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gametime-sharing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27566"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27571,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27566\/revisions\/27571"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}