Today's post is by guest writer Doy Moyer.

Have you noticed occasional stories and word studies that border on the sensational? Something is presented in a way that arouses interest through inflated details that may in fact prove to be false. For example, you may have heard that the meaning of the names in genealogies up to Noah create a sentence that tells the gospel story. Or perhaps you have heard that every time we breathe, we are saying the name “Yahweh.” Don’t buy it.

One story often passed around is based on this statement of Jesus: “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:24). The assertion is that the “eye of a needle” is not referring to a “sewing needle,” but is instead referring to a gate called the eye of the needle that had a little door through which people would pass, and a camel could go through it only with great difficulty once it sheds its burden. This might make an interesting illustration, but for one problem: there is no evidence of this in the first century world. I’ve noticed that when things like this get passed around, they lack references by which we can fact check them.

This can easily happen with archaeological finds, and I’ve been guilty. Something is found and a theory is put out that seems to support something important, but before it is fully vetted and tested, we are passing it around like it’s absolute. Later it turns out to be fraudulent (shades of the James Ossuary or the claim that first century copy of Mark was found). There are legitimate findings, but we need to let things get worked out before jumping on board too soon. And we should always be modest about such claims, for things can quickly change.

Be careful. This kind of thing can hurt credibility in our efforts to teach truth. Test and verify before charging ahead with something that sounds cool or seems almost too good. Better, tell the gospel as presented in Scripture and let it do its work.
 
Doy Moyer
From the blog Searching Daily

What do you do when someone you love is in the middle of a crisis?  Prayer is probably the first thing that comes to mind, but after considering this awhile, I realize that a few other things must come before that.
            First we need to get our lives in order.  The effectual fervent prayer of the righteous avails much, we are told in James 5:16.  If you really care about the ones you are praying for, nothing will keep you from making sure you live a righteous life.  None of us can be righteous by being perfect, but we can all be made righteous by forgiveness.  Usually the only thing standing in the way of that is pride, and pride will form a ceiling past which your prayers cannot travel.  If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear, David wrote in Psa 66:18.  Whatever needs fixing in your life, first get on your knees and fix yourself before you even try to pray for anyone else.
            That one was obvious.  This one not so much.  God will never hear the prayers of a grudge-holder.  So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift, Matt 5:23-24.  Adam Clarke says, “A religion, the very essence of which is love, cannot suffer at its altars a heart that is revengeful and uncharitable, or which does not use its utmost endeavors to revive love in the heart of another.” 
              Do you know the easiest way to fix this problem?  Stop wearing your feelings on your shirtsleeves.  Stop being so easily offended and insulted.  Stop seeing the worst in everything anyone says or does toward you.  Love does not keep account of evil, Paul says in 1 Cor 13:5.  Love covers a multitude of sins, Peter reminds us in 1 Pet 4:8.  If we weren’t so quick to make something out of every little thing that comes along, maybe more of our prayers would be heard.  “First be reconciled,” Jesus said.  There is a definite order to these things. 
            And the last thing I thought of?  I need to stop distracting those who are praying about this huge crisis with my own petty problems.  I know that it is impossible to overwhelm God—He can handle as many problems as we feel compelled to send his way.  But his people can be overwhelmed.  They can be distracted.  Feeling emotionally swamped can paralyze you, and keep you from the service that others desperately need.  The shepherds shouldn’t have to take time putting band-aids on boo-boos when a couple of other sheep need CPR. 
            So, just for now, while the crisis looms, you and God handle your problems, and God and I will handle mine.  God and even just one of his children are more than a match for any one or any thing.  When any crisis is at hand--I must be aware of priorities, and do my best not to cause other problems.  “Act like a man!” Paul told the Corinthians.  “Man up!” is the current way of putting it, or just, “Grow up!”  During a crisis the last thing the people of God need is someone raising a fuss or whining for attention. 
            I have a friend who needs the prayers and the undivided attention of the saints right now.  I do not want to be the one who fails her.
 
Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, "Now, O LORD, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: "Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the LORD, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you…2 Kings 20:2-5.
 
Dene Ward

Just as I was taught in my college pedagogy classes, I ran my music studio with a policy letter.  It explained what the students and parents could expect of me and what I expected of them.  It explained the payment schedule, and all the things they received for their money—far more than the minutes I spent parked on the bench next to their child.
            The letter also explained my “instant dismissal rules.”  The trick to instant dismissal rules is to have very few, but to enforce the few you do have without fail.  Suddenly you are being treated like a professional instead of the little old lady down the street who teaches a piano lesson or two to pass the time.  I was a professional, the professors told me, with 13 years of training—about as much as a doctor, so I did deserve to be treated that way.  I went over the letter at an interview before ever accepting a student—especially the instant dismissal rules--and the parents signed it and kept a copy.
            My instant dismissal rules?  If you miss seven lessons in the year, whether excused or not, you are dismissed.  If you miss three consecutive lessons, whether excused or not, you are dismissed.  Those two were as much for the student and his parents as they were for me.  If a child was missing that much, he wasn’t getting his parents’ money’s worth.  It also wasn’t fair to my two year waiting list to have to wait for a spot held by a child who was seldom there.  Since the applicants had come from that list themselves, they understood that point immediately.
            My last rule was this:  if you miss the Spring Program you are instantly dismissed.  Why?  I spent at least $200 a year on my annual program in recital hall rent, refreshments, paper goods, printing, and props.  Besides solos, we always had group numbers, and if one child missed, it wrecked a whole piece for several students, not just him.  And finally, this was my advertising; this was how I showed the parents that I was worth the money they were spending.  A wrecked Spring Program was a business disaster.
            In 35 years I think I invoked the instant dismissal rule only twice.  One student was ready to quit anyway, so she simply didn’t show up for the Spring Program.  She knew exactly what she was doing, and since I halfway expected it, I managed to keep the damage to a minimum.
            But another time, a young man who was doing very well didn’t show up and had not called ahead.  (Yes, if there was a legitimate emergency I was not a Hard-Hearted Hannah.)  No one else knew where he was either, and I had to scramble at the last minute to find an older, accomplished student who could pinch hit for him with no warning.
            The next morning I called his mother and told her he was dismissed and why.  Her reaction?  She was furious.  “We had company!” she exclaimed, and I then made mention of the policy letter she had signed, telling her that her company would have been more than welcome.  “That old thing?  I haven’t even looked at it since you handed it to me.  How am I supposed to remember all that stuff?”
            Any time I tell that story, people are horrified at that mother’s attitude.  Her son’s piano lessons obviously meant nothing much to her.  Yet while we will shake our heads at that story, we often do the same thing to God.  Imagine the mother above had been talking about the Bible. “That old thing?  I haven’t even looked at it since you handed it to me.  How am I supposed to remember all that stuff?”  I have a feeling some will try the same line on God at the end of the “term,” and will find out the God enforces his instant dismissal rules too. 
            My Spring Program was also an awards ceremony.  I managed to find enough things to award that any child who worked at it even a little could win something.  Only a few walked away with first or second place trophies from State Contest, yet anyone who came to every lesson, or met the make-ups I offered for excused absences, could win a perfect attendance ribbon.  If a student went away empty-handed it was because he didn’t try, and for no other reason.
            God is going to be handing out awards too, and you get the big one for simply following the rules in the policy letter and doing your best every moment.  Pull it out today.  He does expect you to read it.  He does expect you to remember it.  He doesn’t even mind if you bring your company with you.  But don’t expect Him to change the rules just for you.
 
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. Rom 2:6-8
 
Dene Ward

Now that we have the inside of the house livable—not perfect, but so much better—we have been thinking about the outside. 
             The sod is in bad shape.  In fact, it is the wrong type of grass for the climate here, we were told by a professional landscaper, a brother in Christ.  And the shrubbery was unkempt and in need of a haircut.  The windows were half hidden, and most of the bushes were ragged or wilted from the recent drought, or left to grow in an unwieldy, leggy manner. The drainage put in by the original contractor had been wrecked by the previous owner's irresponsible planting to the point that rainwater stood along the sides of the house or seeped onto the back porch.  Then there is the color, which I have already ranted about in a previous post, so we will let that go this morning!
            So yes, there is a lot left to do, but some of that can wait without causing any harm.  After all, it's the inside that counts, isn't it?  At least, that's what we always say.  Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside may become clean too! Woe to you, experts in the law and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead and of everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you look righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. (Matt 23:25-28).
            Even though we know that, or at least give lip service to it, I find that sometimes we go overboard just a little on "what something might look like."  Anyone with a smidgen of imagination can come up with terrible things that the most innocent action might "look like."  Let's just say that the men of the church decided to get together and take care of some much needed lawn and building maintenance themselves and save the church the cost of hiring someone else to do it (not that there is anything wrong with that).  About noon, the ladies of the church decide they will do their part by furnishing lunch for these hardworking men, so they show up with several kinds of sandwiches, bowls of potato salad, various sorts of chips, brownies, cookies, and beverages.  After a good meal, the ladies clean up while the men finish the work.  What in the world could possibly be wrong with that?  Good motives, good hearts, good attitudes all around, and saving the Lord's money to boot.
            I will tell you what someone said many decades ago:  "Why, imagine what that looks like!  Anyone driving by would think we were having a church picnic with the money coming out of the treasury.  We shouldn't be doing that!"  And so that person would deny people the opportunity to serve simply because of what it might "look like."  He would spend the Lord's money, money that could have gone to a needy saint or for preaching the gospel.  And all because of "how it might look."
            "How something looks" is not the source of authority for New Testament Christians.  Our source of authority is God's Word.  Period.  Paul regularly scolds those who would make ridiculous arguments and hinder the work and the saving of souls because of it.  If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ…he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people… (1Tim 6:3-6).
            So, as our Lord said, take care of the inside first, then worry about the outside.  Nothing those brothers and sisters did was wrong, but the heart of the one who complained certainly had something amiss to be able to make assumptions about passersby he did not know, and who probably never even noticed what was going on because the building is well off the road. 
           As for me and my new house, that might mean we look like a big cement block for a while longer, but inside, we should still strive to be a home of love, faithfulness, and godliness.  Soon enough, we can work on the outside.
 
I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house (Ps 101:2).
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.

The second verse of “I’ll Fly Away” identifies a problem with the attitudes of many, “Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I’ll fly away.”
 
Why don’t we think of life as “prison bars?” Surely that is the implication of the song.  Certainly, “When the shadows of this life have grown” implies the infirmities of age.  But more seriously, we need to consider that life is a prison that keeps us from home whatever the state of our health.
 
Have we become so comfortable on the compound that we no longer see the razor wire surrounding us?  Everywhere we go we find corruption and wickedness.  Instead of forming an escape committee to dig a tunnel, we long to join in.  Many seek to blend in.  Where is our holiness? Why do we not feel we are on “bread and water” rations as our beliefs are openly assaulted daily?
 
We line up to watch the latest movies, catch the latest TV series which are full of foul language, but much worse, every portrayal of love is contrary to God’s view; we cheer when the "good guy" exacts revenge on the "bad guy," forgetting that God said vengeance is his exclusive right (Rom 12:19).  Do we not feel brainwashed? Deprogrammed? Do you wonder whether the angels marvel that we willingly subject ourselves to such?
 
Even when one is young and full of health, life is a prison. We can never be with God until we escape.  We can never be free from temptation and filth until we fly away.  No wonder many churches are being overcome with carnality. We do not teach our people to want to escape or to know that life is a prison. Nor, do we teach them the way free people live. 
 
The world sees what we refuse to admit for no one asks concerning the hope within us when they see that ours is the same as theirs. (1 Pet 3:15).
 
We have the key in our hands and many simply lock themselves in every day.  Now is the time to use it to set ourselves free.
 
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee (2Cor 5:1-5).
 
Keith Ward

The first few years I only had one catbird at my feeder, a chary fellow who only visited during winter when he couldn’t find anything easily on his own.  He sat clumsily on the suet cage, which was almost too small for him, and pecked away, but it only took a micro-movement from me on the other side of the window to scare him off.
            Although I had read that the catbird got its name from its call, I had never heard him utter a peep.  He quietly came to the square of suet, ate his fill, and left.  The other morning, as I sat by the window he flew into the nearest azalea on the other side of the feeder and I heard it, a “mew” just as clear and sweet as a newborn kitten’s.  And what caused him to mew?  There on the suet perched another catbird--he was jealous.  Suddenly he flew at the interloper and chased him away.   
            Within a week, a third catbird had joined the fray, this one a bit smaller and slimmer, probably a fledgling.  Now they all go at it.  It isn’t enough to chase one away and then eat your fill.  They think they must sit guard and keep the others from getting any of it.  This is not the catbird personality I had always seen before, and I hear that mew more often, too.  Now I know what truly lies beneath those slate gray feathers.
            I have seen it happen with people, too.  You think they are one sort of personality but when circumstances don’t go their way, suddenly they morph into someone you have never met before.  Sometimes that’s a good thing, like quiet mothers who instantly, and fiercely, protect their young, but others times it means we have not really become new creatures, we have just hidden the old one and stress made him rear his ugly head once again.
            Becoming a better person is difficult.  Baptism doesn’t instantly fix the flaws in your character.  They have deep-seated roots from childhood or traumatic experiences in your life.  It takes effort to change yourself.  You have to first realize where the problems lie.  Then you have to prepare yourself to meet those stressful situations with study, prayer and meditation, deciding ahead of time how you will react should the same thing happen again.  You have to learn to accept the help of others, even if it does come in the form of a stern rebuke or disapproving look.  Finally, you have to be on watch.  Most of us just let life happen to us, then wonder why we weren’t able to do better “after all these years,” as if time were the only thing that mattered.  Doing better must come from being better or it won’t last.
            God will not remove the stress from our lives.  He won’t make the trials suddenly disappear.  Any time we convert someone with the promise that all of their problems will now be solved, we are giving them false hopes.  The true hope is that now we have help with our problems--if we use it.  God does not allow trials so we will have an excuse for bad behavior but so we will become stronger and better able to handle those trials. 
            I watch those catbirds and wonder if I have really become a new creature.  Today it’s time to get up out of my chair and work on it.
 
For the love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again…Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they have become new. 2 Cor 5:14, 15, 17                                                           

That "the Father has sent his Son" is not only the chief test of doctrinal orthodoxy but also the supreme evidence of God's love and inspiration of ours.  The divine-human person of Jesus Christ, God's love for us, and our love for God and neighbor cannot be separated.  The theology which robs Christ of the Godhead, thereby robs God of the glory of his love, and robs us of the one belief that can generate a mature love within us. 

John Stott, Authentic Christianity

The way we camp now is considerably different than the way we started.  The first year, when the boys were 4 and 6, we left on a 10 day trip with two suitcases, one tent, a camp stove, a propane lantern, and a couple of pots stuffed into our car trunk.  What we have now fills the back of a camper-topped pickup to the brim.  When Lucas went with us for the first time in nearly 20 years, he smirked and said, “You guys don’t rough it.  You camp in style.”
            Yes, we put a screen over the table now so we can eat without bugs, and even in the rain.  We have a larger tent, and pull an extension cord in through one of the zipped windows to plug into an electric blanket and stuff it inside the double sleeping bag.  Since we camp in the fall and winter that only makes good sense.  So does the queen-size eighteen inch high air mattress—getting up off the ground is not so easy any more.
            Keith designed and rigged up a PVC-pipe light pole from which we hang a couple of trouble lights, and we sit in our outdoor lounge chairs by the fire now, instead of always at the table.  We carry a couple of wooden tray tables to hold our coffee cups and the books we are reading.
            We have two stoves now instead of just one, but since they are only two burner stoves and you run out of room when breakfast includes pancakes and sausage on a two burner griddle and a stovetop coffeepot, that has become a necessity too.  I also found a folding rack that hooks to the side of the picnic table to hold things like paper towels, antibacterial wipes, dishwashing liquid, and salt and pepper so we have more room on the table itself.
            Yes, we camp “in style” now, but I would still never leave my modest home to do it all the time.  Eight to ten days a year is fun because it is different, but every day would be a pain in the neck, especially considering the relative luxury I am used to.
            I think we miss the first, and huge, sacrifice Abraham and Sarah made.  Our arrogance tells us they were primitive people anyway, so what was the big deal when God called them?  Here is the big deal:  God called them out of Ur, a thriving metropolis for its time.  One book I read said the city had its own educational system and some form of running water. 
            Abraham was a wealthy man.  He had an entourage of servants that included an army of 318 trained men (Gen 14:14).  Whenever he arrived at a new place with his thousands of flocks and herds and hundreds of servants, the kings wanted to meet him.  Undoubtedly, they were anxious to know why he was there, and not a little afraid of the possible reason.  Especially in a small city-state like Gerar, Abimelech had reason to worry—Abraham’s army might actually have been bigger than his!  Imagine the home they must have lived in, and the status that wealthy couple must have enjoyed before they left Ur.
            Yet when God said go, Abraham and Sarah went.  They left a fine home in a then-modern city to wander in places they were only promised and often unwelcome.  I imagine they “camped in style” for the time, far better than the desert nomads because of their wealth, but it was still camping.  No more running water--even the kind they had back then--constantly subject to the weather, sand in your clothes and probably in your food if the wind blew wrong.  Can you imagine Bill Gates leaving his various homes to live in an RV for the rest of his life, much less a tent?  Do you think they would do it even if it were the best RV money could buy?  Even if he had a caravan of RVs behind him, holding his most important employees?  And especially if he had to do it in a foreign country less advanced than ours?
            I don’t see that happening.  Even with your less than Gates-esque dwelling, would you give up your own cozy bedroom, where you could walk a few steps to the bathroom in the middle of the night should you need to?  Where you could stay warm and dry regardless the weather?  Where you have places to store all your “stuff?”  Where you have a job and financial security, and a place in a community that accepts you?
            Abraham and Sarah had a long way to go in more ways than one when God called them.  Yet God saw in them a faith that would grow and a trust that would never give up.  He believed that with his tender cultivation, Abraham would become “the father of the faithful,” and Sarah the mother of all godly women and the “princess” through whom the King of kings would eventually be born.
            What do you think God sees in you?  Do you have that potential?  He thinks so or he never would have sent his Son to die for you.  Here is the test for today:  would he have even bothered to tell me to pick up and go, or am I too tied to this world and its luxuries?  He may never ask you to give it all up, but he must see in you a willingness to do so if the need arises. 
            If he does call and you go, God may allow you, like Abraham and Sarah, to camp in style, but it’s still camping.  He expects you to understand that the real home is ahead of you.
 
So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33
 
Dene Ward

He said he didn't understand "how a person became a thing."  His father had opposed serfdom, as had Catherine the Great before him.  But trying to get the approval of the nobility was not an easy thing.  In fact, Catherine had given up.  Yet Tsar Alexander II did not.  It took five years and the murder of one of his emissaries to finally, on February 19, 1861, receive the approval he needed to pass the legislation abolishing serfdom forever from Russia.  Things did not go smoothly afterward as the peasants expected to be given land along with their freedom, but it is still a monumental event in Russian history, and because of it, Tsar Alexander is called the Liberator.
            But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and [have] been set free from sin…(Rom 6:17-18).  We have been blessed with a far more important liberation.  For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace (Rom 6:14).  We have our freedom now, freedom to choose not to sin.  We have been blessed with the ability to overcome with the help of our own Liberator (1 Cor 10:13).  We might have wished we were free to choose before our baptism (Rom 6) but it was simply impossible.  So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members (Rom 7:21-23).  Truly we were wretched (7:24) and in need of deliverance.
            It took years of planning, and it involved the murder of the King's Son, but finally it happened.  The King's Son rose from the dead and abolished the slavery to sin.  …Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!...There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. (Rom 7:24-8:1).
            And now we are free, never again enslaved to sin, a truly monumental moment in history.
 
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.   For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father! (Rom 8:2, 15).
 
Dene Ward
 

Today's post is by guest writer Lucas Ward.

All ancient books of history, Biblical or secular, are written for their object lessons.  Ancient historians were not interested in just telling the stories of what happened, nor of charting social movements across time, but they told the stories of great men, great battles, great villains to highlight the lessons to be learned.  Maybe it is because I just led a study of the book of Judges, but I think it may be one of the most obvious collections of object lessons out of any ancient history. 
            Most are aware of the cycle of the Judges:  Israel sins.  God punishes Israel.  Israel repents and cries out to God.  God sends them a Judge to save them from their oppressors. There is peace in the land during the life of the judge, but after he dies, Israel again sins and the cycle starts over.  Many studies of the book of Judges start and end with that cycle, but there is so much more to the book that that.  First, it isn't so much a cycle as a spiral, as Israel's sins get worse and worse and God's punishments get more and more severe.  (Compare Jdgs 3:7 with 10:6 and then 3:8 with 10:7)  Surely there are lessons we can learn from that.  More interesting to me is the fact that every excuse given for the failure of the Israelites to complete the conquest of the land is answered by the various salvations performed by the judges. 
            In Judges 1:19 the tribe of Judah could not drive out the inhabitants of the valleys because they had chariots of iron.  From this point, the rest of the chapter is a litany of failure as tribe after tribe did not drive out the inhabitants of the land as God had commanded. Often the reason given is that the Israelites wanted to keep them around as slaves, but by the time of Deborah the Israelites were enslaved to these same Canaanites.  Vs. 34 says the Amorites forced the tribe of Dan up into the hills and would not allow them into the coastal areas.  In all of these cases we see the Israelites making decisions based upon their own strength, their own wisdom, and their own desires rather than following God's instructions in faith.  Reading between the lines, their concerns seemed to be the numerical superiority of the Canaanites, the superiority of the Canaanites' weapons, and their own desires for slaves and, maybe, just friendly neighbors.
            By the time of Deborah the questions of fighting against a numerically superior foe who has better weapons should have been answered by Othniel's victory over an empire-building king from Mesopotamia.  The idea of friendly neighbors should have been answered by the Moabite oppression, relieved by Ehud in a secret agent mission worthy of 007, and by the early troubles with the Philistines, answered by Shamgar.  Now, the erstwhile Canaanite slaves have banded into a coalition headed by Jabin, king of Hazor and they have enslaved the Israelites.  Sisera, commander of Jabin's army, had 900 chariots of iron at his disposal.  These chariots were rather long wagons with high sidewalls which protected the multiple archers who rode in them.  They were as nearly impregnable in their day as M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks are today against foot soldiers.  When God commanded Deborah to send Barak to fight against Sisera, Barak had only 10,000 infantry men.  Human wisdom said that Barak did not have a chance. His army would be run down, trampled upon, and shot to pieces.  However, God fought on Israel's side and they won a decisive victory.  If you trust God, maybe you can defeat chariots of iron.
            Gideon then takes on an enemy as numerous "as the sands on the seashore" (7:12), a phrase normally reserved for Israel and the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham.  Gideon had all of 300 men with him.  Though the Israelite army later joined Gideon for the mop-up and pursuit, the greatest slaughter of Midianites occurred when Gideon only had 300 men with him.  If God is on your side, maybe the enemy's numbers don't matter? 
            Gideon and Jepthah both conquered cities.  Samson vividly demonstrated that one person plus God is all the army anyone needs.  Samson also demonstrated that to "dwell among them" was untenable as his downfall came as a result of being too friendly to his enemies. 
            Over and over, all the reasons for Israel not driving out the Canaanites, stated or implied, are answered by God every time He saves them via a judge.  It is almost as if He is saying, over and over, 'If you had trusted me in the first place, you wouldn't need saving now'. 
          Just a thought:  Maybe the same is true of us today, in our battles against worldliness? 
 
Jude 24-25  "Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, and now, and for evermore. Amen."

Lucas Ward