Cover to Cover
Reading: Judges 12:1-14:20
Focus: Judges 13:8-14
We live in an age where parenting has become a business opportunity: there is a never-ending list of parenting seminars, books, how-tos, podcasts, etc. In a world where the definition of community is no longer easy to define, the community where parents and children alike would grow up has been lost. With so many differing parenting solutions, you wonder why there is so many different ideas and practices. Where can people turn? What can people rely upon? How did our parents survive without all these seminars, books, how-tos!
Enter the time of the Judges, the society is overrun with immoral practice and God has handed them over to the Philistines. How do parents raise their kids in such an environment of ungodliness, idolatry and oppression? An angel, appearing as a man, appeared to a barren woman, declaring that she would be with child and that child would free the people from their oppression. Her husband desired to meet this man which declared the coming of this child and the mandate which he was given by God. The truth was that this man, Manoah, wanted to ask how the child should be raised; and given the state of the society he lived in, who wouldn’t?
To their surprise, Manoah and his wife discover that this man was no less than an angel of the LORD. This dramatically changed everything for them. In stark contrast to their society, they would raise a child in the ways of God, so that he might fulfil the mandate given to him. We might be quick to realise that the world we live in today is not much different. The standards, values and principles of the world we live in give us reason for concern as we think about the future of our children.
As with Manoah and his wife, there is only one place to which we can come, one place to which we rely on for firm, solid foundations upon that we can build the lives of our children upon. In this unstable world we live in, where community is broken, values and principles compromised…we have solid ground upon which we stand—the Word of God. In this Word, we can have confidence and hope of a brighter future.
Next Reading: Judges 15:1-17:13
