Against a backdrop of defeat, God gives a brief glimpse of the heroes He will raise-up to deliver His people (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

The Lord talks to the generation after Joshua’s death who refused to drive out Israel’s enemies from the Promised Land (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

God tells the Israelites they are living like harlots when they could be living like heroes (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Ehud thrusts his dagger deep into the stomach of fat King Eglon then goes on to rally Israel to defeat the Moabites (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

A pagan woman named Jael kills the Canaanite captain by driving a tent peg through his head with a hammer (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Deborah and Barak sing a duet in which they praise Jael for driving a tent peg through Sisera’s skull (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon’s war against the Midianites is foretold by the Angel of the Lord while sitting under the tree at Ophrah (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

The Angel of the Lord instructs Gideon to use his father’s bull to demolish the altar of Baal, then sacrifice it on an altar he’d build for Jehovah (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon puts God to a test by asking Him to manipulate the amount of dew that is on a fleece of wool each morning (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

God selects 300 men who lap-up water like dogs to be Gideon’s soldiers (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

God sends Gideon down to the enemy camp where he overhears two Midianites discussing a prophetic dream in which they are conquered by the Israelites (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon tells his three hundred man army to simultaneously blow their trumpets at his signal (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon reveals that the two kings he has defeated and captured are the men who murdered his brothers (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon refuses to be made king, but from the moment he accepts plundered earrings from the men of Israel as tribute, he begins to act as their king (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Gideon’s youngest son tells a fable to the men of Shechem that personifies his evil half-brother, Abimelech, as a bramble bush (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Abimelech comes to a dishonorable but fitting end as a woman drops a millstone on his head that crushes his skull (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

God’s pursuit of His backslidden people illustrates for us that He is good (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Israel’s next hero, Jephthah, is “a mighty man of valor” who gives a speech about peace before engaging in open conflict (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Jephthah’s daughter and her girlfriends retreat to the hills for two months to mourn her father’s foolish vow to offer her life as a sacrifice (Pastor Gene Pensiero)

Because in their dialect they could not pronounce the SH sound, the men of Ephraim were identified and killed by fellow Israelites as they attempted to retreat (Pastor Gene Pensiero)