July 14, 2021 – Michelle Lesley

Ladies, welcome to Open Hearts in a Closed World 2021 online conference!

All this week, I’ll be posting each daily conference session here on the blog. You can watch here, or on the AGTV app, YouTube, IGTV (Instagram), or Facebook every day this week, July 12-16, 8:30-11:00 a.m. (CST).

The conference is totally free and you don’t have to register or sign up. Just tune in each day at your convenience and watch the teaching sessions. You could even gather up some friends and watch together! (Send me some pics if you like!)

Many have asked whether or not the sessions will still be available to watch later in the day and after this week. Yes. (As a matter of fact, if you missed last year’s conference, you can still catch all the sessions here.) BUT – once the live broadcast (8:30-11:00 a.m. CST) is over, it will take approximately one hour to process the YouTube version of the video (below) from “live” to “permanent” status, so it will not be available during that time period.

Special exclusive for my followers:

I’ve put together a two page outline for you that goes with my teaching session on Thursday (July 15) in case you’d like to take notes and have all the Scripture references handy. You can grab it here.

Here’s today’s session. (For more info. on the conference, speakers, schedule, etc., keep scrolling.)

Due to processing from “live” to “permanent” status on YouTube, this video will be unavailable between approximately 11a-12p CST.

Watch the remaining sessions of the conference at these links: Day 1 Day 2 Day 4 Day 5

The theme of this year’s conference is Reverence in Radical Times, and our focal passage will be Titus 2:3-5:

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Titus 2:3-5

2021 Speakers:

2021 Teaching Schedule:

For more details on the conference, visit the OHCW website, follow Open Hearts in a Closed World on Instagram, or join the OHCW Facebook group and ask the conference organizers directly.

Welcome, ladies! Just a reminder, please do not skip Lesson 1 from last week (link below). Not only will it answer any questions you may have about the study itself, but if you want to study Judges properly, you must do the background work contained in Lesson 1.

Previous Lessons: 1

Read Judges 1:1-2:5

Questions to Consider

1. Review your notes from last week’s introductory lesson. What are some things to keep in mind as you begin to study the text of Judges today?

2. Carefully examine Deuteronomy 7. How does this passage serve as the historical backdrop for 1:1? How does Judges 1:1-2:5 carry out, and fail to carry out, Deuteronomy 7?

3. In your own words, and using your cross-references, describe what is happening in 1:1-3. Why was it important that the people inquired of the Lord? Were Judah and Simeon individuals?

4. Using the maps in your Bible, or these maps (scroll down to “Judges”), attempt to identify as many locations mentioned in today’s passage as possible, and describe, in your own words, the confrontations at each location.

5. In 1:27-36, who are Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan? How did they fail to carry out God’s instructions from Deuteronomy 7?

6. In 2:2, God says to Israel, “You have not obeyed my voice.” List the ways Israel had disobeyed God. Did God give them “credit” for their partial obedience in 1:1-26? It has been said that “Partial obedience is disobedience.” Explain this statement in light of today’s passage.

Israel was a corporate body of God’s people, similar to the way the local church is a corporate body of God’s people. What happens to a local church when part of the body is walking in obedience, and part of the body is walking in disobedience?

7. At the end of 2:3, what was God’s main concern with Israel’s failure to drive the pagan nations out of the Promised Land? Think about what you know of Old Testament history from this point on. How did the Canaanite gods become a “snare” to Israel?

8. Examine these New Testament passages. How is what God teaches Christians in the New Testament about avoiding false teachers and professing Christians who live in unrepentant sin similar to God’s commands in Deuteronomy and Judges about driving out the pagans so Israel wouldn’t be drawn away by sin and false gods?

9. What was the people’s response to God pronouncing the consequences of their sin in 2:4-5? Does it seem from these verses that this was a godly grief over their sin or a worldly grief over the consequences? What kind of grief does God want us to have when confronted with our sin? Does God always remove the consequences of our sin when we repent? Watch, as we continue our study in Judges, to see if God removes the consequences of Israel’s sin.

10. Today’s passage lays the foundation for what is to come in the book of Judges. Describe the foundation Israel laid, and what you expect to see happen when they build on that foundation in the chapters to come.

Homework

Think about your church. Is there any way part of the body is walking in disobedience? How? Commit to praying for your church about this, and prayerfully consider whether you should speak to your pastor about it, and how you might influence your brothers and sisters in Christ toward obedience to Scripture.

Consider your relationships and partnerships in light of the New Testament passages linked in #8. Is there any way you need to “come out from among them and be ye separate”? Pray about how God would have you be set apart to Him when it comes to these relationships and partnerships.