3.149 As Soon As

In Matthew 5, Jesus calls us the salt of the earth and the light of the world, reminding us that our lives are meant to preserve, illuminate, and point others to Him. This season on Savory Salt, we'll walk through the Old Testament, one verse and one thought each day. Perhaps these moments will add greater savor and brighter light to our lives as we seek to truly live as Savory Salt.

Hello, my friends. It's a new day with new opportunities. Choose you this day whom you will serve.

We've all had at least one of these as soon as moments in our lives. Let's talk about them, the humorous side and the warning side as well. We are continuing our reading inside of the Book of Judges.

And yesterday we talked about this mighty man of valor, whether he believed it or not at the beginning, Gideon. And then we get to read Gideon's story of his 300, which becomes an epic story inside the Old Testament as he rescues the Israelites again. We get to the end of his story and then we have this as soon as moment in Gideon's world.

And I think we can see it in our own world as well. Let's take a look at our verse for today in Judges 8 verse 33. This is the end of Gideon's life as he has just been buried in verse 32. 33 says: "And it came to pass as soon as Gideon was dead that the children of Israel turned again and went a whoring after Baalim, and made Baal-berith their god." Now my friends, these people just experienced a miracle as the Lord took just 300 of them and conquered their enemies and brought freedom back into their lives.

And as soon as Gideon was dead, they turned again and went a whoring. Now, let's switch gears to the humor side for just a second, because I think we've all had a story similar to this. But let's bear in mind the warning as well.

We have a fun story that we like to tell often in our family of when our children were young. We lived close to my father and mother-in-law, and my wife needed to run over to their house very quickly. And the kids, you know, were old enough to take care of themselves for just a second.

And so she said, 'Look, I've got to run over to Grandma's. I'll be back in just a second. Keep things in line.' And so she left, she ran over, she dropped off whatever she needed to drop off.

She came back to the house, opened the door. And what did she find? She found our kids.

One of them—I think maybe a couple of them—sitting on top of the kitchen table. The other one sitting in the chairs around the kitchen table with a package of Oreos opened up and Oreos all over their faces. Right?

Now, there's the humor side where we've all experienced a moment of a child doing something they're not supposed to do. As you go forward, the choices you're making are internally based, based on the covenants that you made with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. You're making those decisions in your life and those choices because you choose to do so and want to do so, not because you're afraid some authority figure is watching over you and making sure that you're doing all the right things.

I know I've experienced it at different times in my life as well. We are now at the end of this series of episodes. All of our Savory Salt listeners today.

That's all for today, my friends. You and I have come here for such a time as this. Step forward in faith and let's be Savory Salt. We will be here tomorrow and we hope you are too.