✯✶✰☆ Jehovah Roi ☆✰✶✯ ✯✶✰☆ The Lord is My Shepherd ☆✰✶✯ by Diane Stortz ~~ Psalm 23:1 "The Lord is my shepherd" ~~ From 1 Samuel 16-17; Psalm 23. "David, the youngest son of Jesse, lived in Bethlehem. He had seven older brothers. Three of them were soldiers in King Saul's army, but David tended his father's sheep. "This way, little sheep!" David Called, and his sheep twitched their ears. They recognized David's voice... They nudged each other as they gathered together and followed David. He always took them somewhere good! Sometimes David took the sheep to a sunny pasture with delicious green grass for them to eat. He found quiet streams of clear water where they could safely drink. And on hot days, he found cool, shady places where the sheep could lie down, chew their cud, and take a nap. David rubbed their noses with oil first to keep the file away. While the sheep rested, David played his lyre and sang to them. David loved God, and all his life he wrote and sang songs to God to praise Him. One of David's songs begins like this: 'The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need. He gives me rest in green pastures. He leads me beside calm water. He gives me new strength. (Psalm 23:1-3) Wild animals sometimes roamed through the countryside where David tended his sheep. Sometimes David had to fight off a hungry lion or bear looking for a lamb to eat. He would save the lamb and bring it back to the flock. At night, David kept safe in a fenced-in space, with a fire to keep wild animals away. One day, God told the prophet Samuel to go to Bethlehem to see Jesse, David's father. "The next king of Israel will be one of Jesse's sons," God said. Samuel traveled to Bethlehem and invited Jesse and his sons to a feast. When Samuel saw Jesse's son Eliab, he thought, This must be the one God has chosen. But God said, "No, he is not the one. Eliab is handsome, but I don't judge by how someone looks. I care about the heart--how someone thinks and acts." Samuel met six more brothers. "God hasn't chosen any of these," he told Jesse. "All are your sons here?" "There is one more, the youngest," Jesse said. "He is out in the fields, keeping the sheep." "Send for him and bring him here," Samuel said. "We won't eat the feast until he comes." Jesse sent for David, and when David came in, God told Samuel, "This is the one." Samuel poured oil over David's head as a sign that David would be the next king of Israel. ~~ God proves what we need, just as a shepherd provides good grass and clean water for his sheep, God shows us how to live and the right paths to follow. He watches over us, and if we wander away from Him, He looks for us and brings us back. He protects us just as a shepherd protects his sheep from wild animals. Jesus said, 'My sheep hear my voice...and they follow me' (John 10:27)."
The kids who are 15 and older are receiving a series of letters on Judges! This month is Tola's story. For kids who are 13-16 and attend the same project, one teen is receiving the names of God series and the other teen is receiving the Judges series.
Dear Friend, the next judge, Tola, is mentioned in only a few verses of the Bible, in Judges 10:1-2, "After the time of Abimelek, a man of Issachar named Tola son of Puah, the son of Dodo, rose to save Israel. He lived in Shamir, in the hill country of Ephraim. 2 He led[a] Israel twenty-three years; then he died, and was buried in Shamir." I encourage you to also read the previous chapter, Judges 11, which talks of an evil king, and of the brave woman who defeated the king by dropping a stone from a wall (Judges 9:52-53). Stuart Chase writes this about the lessons we can learn from the brief mention of Tola in Judges: "First, in the judgeship of Tola, we find a story of order restored: “After Abimelech there arose to save Israel Tola the son of Puah, son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, and he lived at Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim. And he judged Israel twenty-three years. Then he died and was buried at Shamir” (10:1–2). We can say very little about Tola with any certainty. We know the names of his father (Puah) and grandfather (Dodo) and that he was from the tribe of Issachar. We know that “he lived at Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim.” Apart from a reference to this city being given to Ephraim (Joshua 15:48), there is no other mention of a city by this name in the Bible. Some have appealed to linguistic support to suggest that it was an older name for Samaria, but we cannot know for sure. We know that he judged Israel for 23 years and then died. The key to understanding Tola’s judgeship is the reference to Abimelech: “After Abimelech there arose to save Israel Tola.” We have grown accustomed to a particular formula in Judges, in which an oppressive power is mentioned and the judge rises to deliver Israel from the oppressive power. Ordinarily, the oppressive power is identified as a foreign nation, but here the oppressive power is an Israelite: Abimelech. We saw last time that God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and his followers, which resulted in chaos in the land. Crime and anarchy became the norm and eventually things spiralled into civil war. When Abimelech was finally killed in war, the people were thrown into disarray. Unsure of where to turn next, and with no clear leader on the horizon, they all simply returned home. Tola stepped up to rescue God’s people from the chaos and disarray that Abimelech brought about. He is not a man who is widely remembered or celebrated. No New York Times bestseller biography was written of him. He was simply a faithful Israelite who went about the task of helping to restore order where chaos reigned. Take a moment to note that Tola didn’t need to have an earth-shattering, world famous ministry in order to be of help to God’s people. He simply needed to be faithful where God had called him. He was and God blessed his faithfulness."
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