{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"hearthis.at","provider_url":"https:\/\/hearthis.at","height":"150","width":"100%","title":"11_08_20 The Groves Everything Must Go","description":"Exodus 12:18-20 (CEB)\r\n18 In the first month, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day, you should eat unleavened bread.\r\n19 For seven days no yeast should be found in your houses because whoever eats leavened bread will be cut off from the Israelite community, whether the person is an immigrant or a native of the land.\r\n20 You should not eat anything made with yeast in all your settlements. You should eat only unleavened bread.\u201d\r\n \r\nJudges 6:11-14 (CEB)\r\n11 Then the Lord\u2019s messenger came and sat under the oak at Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite. His son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites.\r\n12 The Lord\u2019s messenger appeared to him and said, \u201cThe Lord is with you, mighty warrior!\u201d\r\n13 But Gideon replied to him, \u201cWith all due respect, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his amazing works that our ancestors recounted to us, saying, \u2018Didn\u2019t the Lord bring us up from Egypt?\u2019 But now the Lord has abandoned us and allowed Midian to overpower us.\u201d\r\n14 Then the Lord turned to him and said, \u201cYou have strength, so go and rescue Israel from the power of Midian. Am I not personally sending you?\u201d\r\n \r\nJudges 6:25-30 (CEB)\r\n25 That night the Lord said to him, \u201cTake your father\u2019s bull and a second bull seven years old. Break down your father\u2019s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah that is beside it.\r\n26 Build an altar to the Lord your God in the proper way on top of this high ground. Then take the second bull and offer it as an entirely burned offering with the wood of the Asherah that you cut down.\u201d\r\n27 So Gideon took ten of his servants and did just as the Lord had told him. But because he was too afraid of his household and the townspeople to do it during the day, he did it at night.\r\n28 When the townspeople got up early in the morning, there was the altar to Baal broken down, with the Asherah image that had been beside it cut down, and the second bull offered on the newly built altar!\r\n29 They asked each other, \u201cWho did this?\u201d They searched and investigated, and finally they concluded, \u201cGideon, Joash\u2019s son, did this!\u201d\r\n30 The townspeople said to Joash, \u201cBring out your son for execution because he tore down the altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah that was beside it.\u201d\r\n \r\nDeuteronomy 20:16-18 (CEB)\r\n16 But in the case of any of the cities of these peoples\u2014the ones the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance\u2014you must not spare any living thing.\r\n17 Instead, you must place these under the ban: Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites\u2014just as the Lord your God commanded you.\r\n18 Then they can\u2019t teach you to do all the detestable things they did for their gods, with the result that you end up sinning against the Lord your God.\r\n \r\nDeuteronomy 23:9 (CEB)\r\n9 When you are camped in battle against your enemies, guard yourself from every possible evil.\r\n \r\nDeuteronomy 29:16-19 (CEB)\r\n16 You know firsthand how we used to live in Egypt and how we passed right through the nations that you passed through.\r\n17 You saw the horrific things, the filthy idols of wood and stone, silver and gold, that they had with them.\r\n18 Make sure there isn\u2019t any one among you right now\u2014male or female, clan or tribe\u2014whose mind is turning from being with the Lord our God in favor of going to serve these nations\u2019 gods. Make sure there isn\u2019t any root among you that is sprouting poison and bitterness.\r\n19 When that kind of person hears the words of this agreement, they congratulate themselves, thinking: I\u2019ll be fine even though I insist on being stubborn. This would cause something wet to dry up and become like something parched.\r\n \r\nJoshua 7:18-26 (CEB)\r\n18 He made each soldier of his family come forward. Achan was selected. He was a son of Carmi, grandson of Zabdi, great-grandson of Zerah, and of the tribe of Judah.\r\n19 Joshua said to Achan, \u201cMy son, give glory to the Lord the God of Israel. Tell me what you have done. Don\u2019t hide anything from me.\u201d\r\n20 Achan answered Joshua, \u201cIt\u2019s true. I\u2019ve sinned against the Lord, the God of Israel. This is what I have done:\r\n21 Among the booty I saw a single beautiful robe in the Babylonian style, two hundred shekels of silver, and a single gold bar weighing fifty shekels. I desired them and took them. Now they are hidden in the ground inside my tent, with the silver on the bottom.\u201d\r\n22 Then Joshua sent messengers. They ran to the tent. There it was, hidden in his tent, with the silver on the bottom.\r\n23 They took the things from inside the tent. They brought them to Joshua and to all the Israelites and emptied them out before the Lord.\r\n24 Then Joshua seized Achan, Zerah\u2019s son, along with the silver, the robe, the gold bar, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys, flocks, tent, and everything that belonged to him. All Israel joined Joshua. They brought them up to Achor Valley.\r\n25 Joshua said, \u201cYou have brought disaster to us! May the Lord bring disaster to you today!\u201d Then all Israel stoned him. They burned them with fire and stoned them with stones.\r\n26 They raised over him a great pile of stones that is still there today. Then the Lord turned away from his fury. So he named that place Achor Valley. It is still called that today.\r\n\r\nJoshua 24:31 (CEB)\r\n31 Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua. They had known every act the Lord had done for Israel.\r\n \r\nJudges 2:1-4 (CEB)\r\n1The Lord\u2019s messenger came up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, \u201cI brought you up from Egypt and led you into the land that I had promised to your ancestors. I said, \u2018I will never break my covenant with you,\r\n2 and you are not to make a covenant with those who live in this land. You should break down their altars.\u2019 But you didn\u2019t obey me. What have you done?\r\n3 So now I tell you, I won\u2019t drive them out before you, but they\u2019ll be a problem for you, and their gods will be a trap for you.\u201d\r\n4 When the Lord\u2019s messenger spoke these words to all the Israelites, they raised their voices and cried out loud.\r\n \r\nJudges 8:22-28 (CEB)\r\n22 Then the Israelites said to Gideon, \u201cRule over us, you and then your son and then your grandson, because you\u2019ve rescued us from Midian\u2019s power.\u201d\r\n23 Gideon replied to them, \u201cI\u2019m not the one who will rule over you, and my son won\u2019t rule over you either. The Lord rules over you.\u201d\r\n24 But Gideon said to them, \u201cMay I make one request of you? Everyone give me the earrings from their loot\u201d; the Midianites had worn gold earrings because they were Ishmaelites.\r\n25 \u201cWe\u2019ll gladly give them,\u201d they replied. And they spread out a piece of cloth, and everyone pitched in the earrings from their loot.\r\n26 The weight of the gold earrings that he requested was one thousand seven hundred shekels of gold, not counting the crescents, the pendants, and the purple robes worn by the Midianite kings, or the collars that were on their camels\u2019 necks.\r\n27 Gideon fashioned a priestly vest out of it, and put it in his hometown of Ophrah. All Israel became unfaithful there because of it, and it became a trap for Gideon and his household.\r\n28 So Midian was brought down before the Israelites and no longer raised its head. The land was peaceful for forty years during Gideon\u2019s time.","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/img.hearthis.at\/4\/2\/2\/_\/uploads\/9620302\/image_user\/w1200_h628_q70_ptrue_v2_----cropped_1615836450224.jpg","thumbnail_width":1200,"thumbnail_height":628,"html":"