Information. 2
Chapter 1: The Worst Of Times. 3
Chapter 2: The Paraclete's Prototype. 11
Chapter 3: Ehud, The Handicapped Hero. 18
Chapter 4: Shamgar, The Unconventional 26
Chapter 5: Deborah, The Exceptional 34
Chapter 6: Gideon, The Fearful 42
Chapter 7: Gideon, The Faithful 52
Chapter 8: Gideon And The Fleece. 61
Chapter 9: Gideon, The Fighter 70
Chapter 10: Gideon, The Fallen. 79
Chapter 11: Jephthah, The Reject 88
Chapter 12: Samson, The Promising Start 97
Chapter 13: Samson, The Broken Vows. 107
Chapter 14: Samson, The Vengeful Victor 116
Chapter 15: Samson, The Lustful Loser 124
Chapter 16: Samson, The Blind Visionary. 133
Appendix A: Micah And His Mercenary Minister 141
Appendix B: God's People In The Gutter 150
Appendix C: The Angel Of Jehovah. 159
Appendix D: Effective Prayer, by C.H. Spurgeon. 168
![]()
David Legge studied at the Irish Baptist College, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He served as Assistant Pastor at Portadown Baptist Church before receiving a call to the pastorate of the Iron Hall Assembly. He now serves as pastor-teacher of the Iron Hall, and resides in Belfast with his wife Barbara, daughter Lydia and son Noah.
The audio for this series is available free of charge either on our website (www.preachtheword.com) or by request from info@preachtheword.com
All material by Pastor Legge is copyrighted. However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and the copyright is included. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit "donations" from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all. Any exceptions to these conditions must be explicitly approved by preachtheword.com.
Men For The Hour - Chapter 1
"The Worst Of Times"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Charles Dickens, the novelist, began his classic 'Tale of Two Cities' in these words: 'It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times'. As we turn to Israelite history, we find that in the epochs and different ages of their existence, this period of the Judges was certainly the worst of times for them. Indeed, you could say that both the books of Joshua and Judges are a tale of two very distinct and contrasting generations. The generation of Joshua, one that conquered the land in great triumph in the conquest; and the generation of the Judges being that which polluted the land that God had given them, by their compromise and sin. Joshua's generation fought her enemies, but by the time we get to the end of the book of Judges, the next generation has made friends with God's enemies and are now turning within to fight each other. The book of Joshua begins with the rule of God among the people, theologians call it 'theocracy'; but by the end of the book of Judges there is no rule of anyone, we have anarchy - every man does that which is right in his own eye, because there was no king in Israel.
Whereas Joshua rings with a shout of victory as God's people enter the promised land and cross the Jordan, and all the pieces of land are allocated to each particular tribe because they are children of the promise; Judges is a book that echoes with the sobs, the cries, the weeping and wailing of God's people under bondage, chastised by the hand of God because of their sin against Him. Some of you will be familiar with the proverb in Proverbs 14:34: 'Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people'. Essentially what we have here in the book of Judges is an historical record of the demise of a nation, a nation who fell from the heights of great spiritual heritage and covenant blessing from God to the depths of unparalleled depravity. It is evidenced in their flagrant idolatry and their unashamed apostasy. One Christian writer has commentated and called this particular period of Israel's history 'the dark ages' of the Old Testament.
Now as such, would you not agree with me in saying that this book has a great deal to teach us in our particular day and in our modern age? The similarities of the Israelite generation and ours today is uncanny, as we will consider through this series. If ever there was a verse that had the ring of the 21st post-modern century age in which we live, it is the last verse of this book: 'There is no king in Israel, and every man does that which is right in his own eyes'. It could be the model of every archetypal permissive age that has ever lived, every generation that has no standards because they've rejected God's truth. That verse, as I said, is not only the key in understanding this particular book, but I believe it's the key in understanding our society today - why things are going wrong, why there is a moral and spiritual chaos in our day and generation. It's also the key to understanding human nature and human depravity; because there is not Christ's Lordship and the rule of God's sovereignty and providence in individual lives, that is the reason why there is anarchy - because man cannot guide his way, man cannot pilot his own vessel.
So the application of this book, as we will go through it, is painfully obvious when we consider the most rebellious characteristics of this ancient society and compare it to our post-modern one. Let me draw your attention first of all to the fact that the book of the Judges is found among the historical books in the Old Testament. Let me just say on that vein that all history is important, because we, through the study of history, learn the mistakes that our forefathers have made - and hopefully learn how to avoid those mistakes, or at least be aware of making them again. How much more then should the spiritual history of God's people be important to us as the church today? Whatever distinctions you make between the Church and Israel, Israel were the people of God in the Old Testament, and we are the people of God in the New. We ought to learn from their mistakes and make sure, in whatever shape or form, that we do not make them in our own day.
The philosopher George Santiana said: 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'. Sadly God's people are uniquely guilty of repeating historical mistakes of their past, simply because they will not study biblical history and the history of God's people. I fear that we are in danger of being like those in Hosea's generation, where God said to them: 'My people are destroyed through lack of knowledge'. So let us, as we introduce this book of Judges today under the title 'Men For The Hour', and particularly under this study this morning 'The Worst of Times', let us learn from these mistakes of God's ancient people and make sure that we don't make them today.
I want to consider our study this morning under three headings, and the first in introduction is: the causes of the chaos that there were among this particular generation. Ultimately we find that the cause, the prime cause for the predicament that the Israelites find themselves in here, is that of compromise. They had begun to compromise with their enemies and the enemies of God. Isn't it true, when we consider this for a moment in this context, that in every occasion - right back to Genesis and Adam and Eve's disobedience of God - that disobedience is the reason for chaos universally, wherever we find it. Disobeying God's commands is the reason why God must chastise us, discipline us, and why ultimately we suffer from time to time. Disobedience, not doing what God says, not having God's reign and rule and Lordship in our lives, but rather doing things our own way.
But I think sometimes, more subtle than simple disobedience, a partial obedience is our problem and is equally fatal. What do I mean? Well, perhaps it's too obvious a tactic of the devil when he comes to tempt us, rather than tempting us with a blatant sin - to commit adultery, or murder, or something like that - he will tolerate us just disobeying in a minute thing. In other words, keeping God's whole law and walking before God in a pleasing manner, and perhaps falling down and being unfaithful or disobedient in a small area that seems insignificant to us - but he knows, perhaps more than we do, as Paul taught us, that 'a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump'. Or as Solomon put it: 'A little fox can spoil the vine'. So there were small seeds of compromise that began in the nation, and those small seeds of compromise produced the fruit of failure in Israel that would eventually mean that God allowed their enemies to overcome them in discipline.
Now let's look a bit more specifically at some of the acts that caused the chaos in the nation. Here's the first act: a partial obedience and a deficient view of their sin. Now note that down if you have a pen and paper, it's important that we remember these things: a partial obedience among the people and a deficient view of their sin. When we turn to chapter 1 we find that nine and a half of the tribes of Israel that settled in Cana land didn't drive out the Canaanites as God had commanded them. In chapter 1 there's a list of eight incomplete conquests by Judah, Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephriam, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and Dan, and the other two tribes that aren't mentioned, Issachar and Simeon, it is presumed that they did the same - that they did not drive out the peoples that God told them to.
Here's the lesson right away for us, even in our Christian lives today many centuries later: a partial obedience to God, obeying God in many things but leaving something undone that we feel is of little significance to God or anyone else, is not only showing a deficient view of sin in our eyes, but will be the seed that will eventually lead to failure in that particular area of our lives. In other words, practically speaking, anything but a root and branch severing of sin in our lives preserves the problem for a future day. If we do not amputate sin in our lives in any shape or form that we find it, we are storing up trouble for ourselves in the future.
Now a question that often comes out of this particular era of Israelite history within people's minds and hearts, and even amongst sceptics and doubters concerning the biblical history and the goodness of our God is: how could a God of love and a God of grace command the killing of these Canaanite people? How could God do it? I'm not going to in the problems that are involved in this, and I don't have time to expound that question in one iota this morning, but simply to say that Campbell Morgan answered the question very well when he said: 'God is perpetually at war with sin, that is the whole explanation of the extermination of the Canaanites'.
You see, sometimes we need to attain God's view of sin afresh, because we lose it, if we ever had it. What was it the Lord Jesus Christ said in the Sermon on the Mount? If your hand offends you, cut it off; if your eye offends you, pluck it out - a root and branch treatment, amputation of sin. Do not flirt with it! Do not allow it to take root! You see, if you do not obey God completely, only in a partial obedience, you will be conquered. If you do not conquer that sin, that sin will conquer you! Do you have a partial obedience, and a conscious partial obedience to God? That could be a sign that you have a deficient view of your sin. I happen to believe in the total depravity of human nature, and I think we have lost the Biblical doctrine that we are sinful, we are undone, we are without God, without hope. Whenever you start doubting total depravity, you need to read the book of the Judges.
Here's the second act that caused the chaos in the land: compromise and a cooperation with the world. Not only partial obedience and a deficient view of sin, but compromise and cooperation with the world. We read, as we read through this history in chapter 2, that the Israelites went into league with the Canaanite people, verse 2 of chapter 2 God prohibited them from marrying with them, intermarriage, and in chapter 3 and verse 6 we see that they disobeyed God in that regard. In that same verse, chapter 3 and verse 6, we find that that intermarrying led to idolatry, the Israelite men or women adopted the gods of their spouse. The end result was disobedience and eventually complete apostasy from God, a falling away, a standing apart from the truth.
Here is the act that started the chaos, the embryo seed: compromise and cooperation with the world. This is teaching us very clearly that failure comes with compromise, not only partial obedience and a deficient view of sin, but a compromise with the things of this world. That's why Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians and chapter 6 verses 17 and 18, in our particular context in this New Testament age: 'Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you'. We underestimate the impact upon our spiritual lives of compromising with the world. Are you compromising with worldliness? What is worldliness? That is a very hard word to define, and in our modern age it's getting more difficult!
Let me give you an inkling, I'm not going to mention specifics, but the first step to worldliness, James 4:4 tells us, is friendship with the world. Are you friendly with the world and the things of the world? Friendship with the world, James tells us in chapter 1 and verse 27, means that you will become spotted by the world, you will be contaminated - whether consciously or unconsciously, it matters not. The next step after that spotting with the world is to love the world and the things of the world, 1 John 2:15. Gradually having a relationship and affection towards those things in the world, you will become, Romans 12:2 says, conformed to the world - the world will have a control over you, and the likeness of the world will be in your character rather than that of Christ. Then that can eventually lead, as 1 Corinthians 11 tells us, to be, even as a believer, condemned with the world. That's the kind of judgment that came to Lot, we will see it coming to Samson, one of the Judges, and it came to Israel's King Saul because they compromised with the world, they cooperated with worldliness.
Dale Ralph Davies, who has a commentary on the book of Judges, says - and I think is tremendous - 'The principle remains', in other words whether it's Old or New Testament it matters not, 'we must retain a distinct separation from our culture, while mounting an active opposition to it, else we will blend with it'. This is lost today in modern Christianity, the opposite is what is being taught: that we must blend with the culture. He goes on to say: 'We are still called to this separation from and combat with our own godless culture'. Moffat translated Romans 12:2 like this: 'Instead of being moulded to this world, have your mind renewed, and so be transformed in nature; able to make out what the will of God is, namely what is good and acceptable to Him and perfect'.
A partial obedience and deficient view of sin caused the chaos; a compromise and cooperation with the world; and thirdly, they lacked personal experimental knowledge of God. They lacked a personal experimental knowledge of God. Now we must dig deeper to find this one, another cause of their compromise. You see, in the history we learn that Joshua's generation did the fighting, Joshua's people conquered the land. It was through their conquering and conquest that the later generation, the Judges generation, entered into rest and comfort if you like. Here's a subtle lesson and danger for all of us: when another generation fights the fight of faith and wins the victory for us, and we enter into their blessings and enjoy that comfort of their struggles, we can lose sight of the fight! Because they chose in the Judges generation not to wrestle against the enemy within, they became comfortable, they got used to the status quo. Their comfort led to complacency or indifference, and then that led to their compromise. The simple lesson is this: when you relax in your spiritual life and stop to wrestle, eventually it will end in rebellion. You may not believe that, but you just try it! Let your guard down, allow the devil in, and he will overcome you!
Some writers have called this 'the second-generation syndrome'. If you look at chapter 2 and verse 10: 'And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers', the first generation of Joshua, 'and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done'. They had no personal, experimental knowledge of God in their lives. In other words, the Judges generation answered 'Yes' to the question:
'Shall I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fight to win the prize,
And sail through bloody seas?'
You might be here as a second or a third-generation Christian, and you don't know why all chaos has been let loose in your life, why you're overcome with sin and temptation you fall at at every turn. It could be that you've come into the heritage of your forefathers, but you yourself do not have an experiential knowledge of God in your life. Sidlow Baxter put it like this: 'The God of their fathers was simply a convenient resort in time of extremity, when things were tolerably comfortable bare-faced betrayal of Jehovah was the order of the day'. Oh, when we're in trouble we call upon God, but when others fight and wrestle for our victory and we enter into the rest, and we live mostly, generally speaking in a free country where we have so many luxuries that others do not have, how complacent we can be! 'Who needs a personal knowledge of God?'.
Well, we must move on, because those are the causes of the chaos, but secondly I want to share with you the signs of their decline. The signs of their decline were manifest in a downward spiral of sin that affected every facet of Israelite life. They became socially degraded, morally perverted, and the result was spiritually bankrupt for approximately 400 years of this history. Socially, through the intermarriage; morally, the last verse of the book says it well 'Every man did that which was right in his own eyes' - and I want you to note that it says that they did 'what they thought was right', that's the essence of the problem. They didn't choose to do things that were wrong, or that they thought were wrong, but the problem is - one of the recurrent expressions in this book is 'the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord', so what they thought was right was wrong, and what God thought was wrong they thought was right! That is what's called relativism, that is the spirit of the age today. There are no absolutes, no black-and-white wrong and right. So this society is such a mirror image of ours: there is murder in chapter 9, there is rape, abuse sexually and emotionally, there is violence in chapter 19, there is homosexuality in chapter 19 - this is the archetypal permissive society without standards, without attributes, without laws, because they have forsaken God!
Morally, and then spiritually, boy, I couldn't even begin to go into this one. Yahweh, Jehovah is the Holy God of heaven, He is high above creation, He is not assimilated in it - although it gives glory to Him. The Canaanite god was different, the Canaanite god was Baal who was the god of storm and fertility, and it was important to worship this god if you wanted crops every year, if you wanted to produce children and livestock and have blessing upon your family. Baal's female consort was Ashteroth. Now bear with me, and I don't want to go into this in too much detail, but in Canaanite theology and indeed in their agricultural system, the fertility of the land depended on the fertility of the relationship between these two gods - Baal and Ashteroth.
Now, this leads us into how they worshipped that God. They practised what is called 'ritualistic prostitution', 'sacred prostitution'. Every man who worshipped Baal would go to their temple, or under a grove, and they would copulate with a temple prostitute. The thinking in theology was this: that by that act of sexual intercourse there would be a stimulation of Baal and Ashteroth in heaven, who in turn would copulate, and from it the reign would come and the sun would shine, and the blessing of natural reproduction in the earth would come to pass. So when you read in the Scriptures the words 'to go a-whoring', it is not just a turn of phrase, it is more than a figure of speech. This is how these Canaanites worship their god, this is how Israel was starting to turn away from God and worship this god. There was a sexual explosion in this particular generation.
Now I say to you today, and whilst you might think I'm touching on things that shouldn't be touched on from the pulpit, whether you like it or not these things are in scripture. Whilst we have to be guarded and careful in how we speak while we're in the midst of younger people, the fact of the matter is: if you don't hear it here, you're going to hear it in the world, and you'll hear it according to the world's standards and interpretation. Can I say something very directly this morning? There is a pornographic explosion in our world today. Now some of you folk who are very sensitive, and of an older generation who don't know how to turn the computer on, let alone work on the Internet, bear with me here - because what I am saying, I hope that you will trust my judgment. The Internet is filled with pornographic filth, filled with it. The danger of it is simply the anonymity of how you can sin on the Internet, no one knows, no one has to know, you can do it for free. In spirit, effectively what this is is falling into such a pagan worship of sex. Archaeologists have actually dug up carvings and pictures of this Canaanite age and how they worshipped, and there's nothing to touch it today even in our pornographic world. We live, and they lived in a generation of degeneration!
Now I'm asking you, whoever you are, are you showing these same signs of decline in your life? Socially, morally, spiritually: these are the diagnostic symptoms of compromise with the world, and in Judges about six or seven times there's this merry-go-round - only it's not merry, it's a go-round of vice and vileness. They rebel against God, God brings divine retribution against them and judges them, then they seem to repent in tears. Then God restores them, but then they sin again when the Judge dies, even more than they did in the first instance! Why is this? Because they don't realise the extremity of their sin, they have a deficient view of their sin. In verse 5 of chapter 2 we read that they wept, and they wept in a place called Bochim, and 'Bochim' means 'weeping', 'weepers'. These people, when God started to judge them for their rebellion, started to cry out for mercy. They were crying, it seemed, in repentance. It even says in chapter 2 and verse 5 that they made sacrifices to the Lord, but it was all superficial - because in verses 18 and 19 we read that once that particular Judge died, they went back to their old ways. This was superficial repentance. So not only had they a deficient view of the sinfulness of sin, they had a deficient view of the depths of true repentance.
I hit, I believe, another sore point in evangelicalism today. Repentance is hardly mentioned, and when it is mentioned in Gospel sermons the preacher - and this has happened to me - can be accused of adding something to the grace of God and not preaching a salvation that is faith alone. We do believe that it is by grace through faith, but it is not a salvation by grace through faith without repentance. The fact of the matter is, Saul fell into the trap that these Judges' generations did. Remember he spared the King of the Amalekites, and he spared some of the livestock to sacrifice to God, and what did the prophet Samuel say to him? It was the word of God to his heart: 'To obey is better than sacrifice'. As Matthew Henry in his commentary said: 'Many are melted under the word, maybe even melted to tears, then harden again before they are cast into a new mould'. Is that any of us today? You're melted before God's word, but before you can allow God to cast you into a new creation you've hardened again into your old ways. Weeping, there's very seldom any weeping in our meetings today, and I find that my eyes are too dry as well - but even if people weep for their sins, it doesn't mean that it's true repentance. These people wept, that's further on than we are today, but it meant nothing!
Martin Lloyd-Jones was accused on one occasion of encouraging emotionalism when he ministered in a congregation in Wales. His retort was: 'It is very easy to make a Welshman cry, but it needs an earthquake to make him change his mind'. That is repentance, a change of mind, and a change of mind that is evidenced in a change of life. They needed to understand true repentance, as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 7:10, 'Godly sorrow worketh repentance not to be repented of' - repentance unto salvation.
Thirdly and finally let me leave with you, in summary of this book and in introduction, the answer for this age. The answer for this age is the answer for every age, and it is simply the grace of God. There's an astonishing story of salvation in this book, if you look at chapter 2 and verse 14 for a moment, the first part, it says: 'The anger of the LORD was hot against Israel'. Now take that statement and then bring it to verse 16, the beginning: 'Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them'. If you were writing that, you would never have put those two statements together - but verse 18 says that God, like those in bondage in Egypt, God heard their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them. It was God that sent them to vex them, to make them thorns in their side, but God was doing it out of love - because He loved them, He chastened them.
Fossett has said, and I think it's wonderful: 'It was not their repentance of sin, but God's repentance because of their cry and distress that brought Him to their help'. Isn't our God a wonderful gracious God? It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed! God sent to this generation, in all their degradation, Judges, 'Deliverers' is the word, 'Saviours' - and what a motley crew they were! Othniel, a young brother, the eldest was not sent; Ehud, was a left-handed man which was seen as weakness, perhaps, in those days; Barak was urged to be a man by Deborah, who was the Judge herself, he wouldn't go and do the job, she had to try and push him on. Gideon went to war with only a lamp and a pitcher; Shamgar had an ox goad; Jephthah was an outlaw; Samson used the jawbone of an ass - and you know the sexual weaknesses that Samson had. But God is communicating to these people that He doesn't use the mighty, He doesn't use the noble, He uses the weak things of this world that God can take, and who will allow Him to take and use.
The wonderful message of this book, I believe in the light of the New Testament, is that these people - yes, they were in bondage; and yes, God sends them a deliverer - but as we have seen from chapter 2, they were mere human deliverers, they were fallible, they were full of faults. They may have been men with hearts of iron, as one has said, but they had feet of clay. Whilst the deliverer lived the people were free, but once the deliverer died they came under oppression again. What they needed was a deliverer who would never die. Thank God we have one! Hebrews says: 'This man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them'.
You need to understand God's view of sin. You need to understand God's view of repentance. But we all need to understand that Christ is the answer for this age, and He is the answer for every need. We trust that we will see more of our blessed Lord Jesus as we go through this series together.
Isn't it great to have a God who gives us more than we deserve, isn't it? Can I ask you: have you true repentance in your life? I'm not asking you do you believe Jesus is the Son of God, do you believe He died for your sin - could the reason that you're going around in circles regarding sin, never having victory over it, be because there was never true repentance in your life at the beginning. I pose the question to you, to make sure that your faith is sure. But believers, let us never lose sight of the awful sinfulness of our hearts. Repentance is necessary every day, but let us never forget what God has done for us in saving us in His Son. I heard a testimony the other evening of Mary Peckham who was converted during the Lewis Revival, she talks about her testimony leading after conversion - but this is what I want to leave you with: when she came to the point of realising her own sinfulness in a meeting just like this, she prayed a prayer. But it's not the prayer that a lot of people pray, here's what she said - and it's shocking: 'Lord, I'm a sinner, send me to hell'. How many of us could pray like that? When she said those words from her heart, she heard the preacher say: 'He was wounded for your transgressions, He was bruised for your iniquities', and she says her heart melted as the grace of God was applied to it.
Father, we thank You for a wonderful Saviour. We know that He is the answer for this dark age, let us never lose the thrill of our salvation, and the depth of the repentance that needs to be there day by day if we are to be useful to Him. We thank You for the Saviour, our eternal Saviour, Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - August 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 2
"The Paraclete's Prototype"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Judges chapter 3 we're turning to, under the title 'The Paraclete's Prototype' - and 'Paraclete' is another word, in fact it's a Greek transliteration, which means you take the Greek letters and correspond them to English letters rather than translating the word from Greek to English. You just take the letters and spell it out as it is in English letters, and it's the name given at times in the New Testament to the Holy Spirit. 'One who comes alongside', that's what it means, 'para-clete', 'and helps, strengthens, comforts, and gives us God's divine aid'.
What is a prototype? Well, when a new technology comes along and is invented, usually the idea precedes the object. Someone has an idea of an invention, and then they actually get to work on it and make the thing. I've been thinking about this, and this is why I've used this word 'prototype', because usually there is a uniform pattern from the development of an idea until the object is materialised. The idea, the principles of how the invention works, is then put into practice and engineered by a machine or by men's hands to create an object. More often than not the pattern goes like this: first of all there is the blueprint, the plans are drawn up based upon proven principles. In other words, if you want to take an aeroplane, an aeroplane's plans are drawn up on the principle of aerodynamics. When you get that blueprint, the second step is that a prototype is engineered - in other words, a model, a working model based upon those plans and those principles. Then the third step in the uniform pattern, as far as I understand it, is that copies are then made of the prototype.
So follow with me: there is the blueprint, the plan, based upon the principles and the laws - the idea that you have. Then you make one unique model, a prototype, the first type like the plans - putting in practice, engineering upon those principles. Then thirdly, if the prototype works, you make copies and those are the things that are sold. Now, if you will, I want to use that as a type of illustration of chapter 2 and verses 11-19 that we read together; because that, if you like, is the blueprint for God's deliverance of His people. Those are the principles laid down there by the Holy Spirit. God's people were sinning and rebelling, then eventually they would cry out in some kind of pseudo-repentance we saw in our last study in introduction, it wasn't repentance at all - but yet they cried out, they groaned to God under their task masters, just like those in Exodus. God had mercy upon them, sent them a deliverer, a Judge. They seemed to turn back to God, no matter how superficial it was at the time; God blessed them, then the Judge died, then they went back to their old evil ways again.
Now we see there, if you like, the blueprint, the principles of why God sent them a deliverer. They were in rebellion, they needed to be delivered from their taskmasters, and God raised up a saviour. Those are the principles. But what we have in chapter 3 and verses 7-11, I believe, is the prototype, the Holy Spirit's prototype, the first example in the book of Judges of one of God's deliverers that He sends to His people. All the following Judges that we have, Samson and the rest of them, Gideon and so on and so forth, they are copies made of the Spirit's initial model.
Othniel then, I believe, is the Spirit's prototype. I think often people miss this as they look at this character, and some have actually found fault with the first account of a Judge - they think it's a little bit empty, uninteresting, there's a lack of colour in the account of his life. It's not very dramatic, as the other Judges seem to be - and that is true. The reason I believe it is true is because it's almost identical with the blueprint. The verses of 7-11 in chapter 3 are almost a mirror image of the same principles you find in the plans, chapter 2 verse 11-19, with just a few personal details of Othniel added in to spice it up a little, but not much. We ask the question, as we ought to always do of God's word: why is that? The Holy Spirit does not ever in a haphazard way inspire His word, so why is it that He just seems to repeat, as it were, the principles in chapter 2 adding the name of Othniel and very little else? It's not very exciting. The reason is: God's Spirit desires this first account of the first Judge to be His prototype, and for us to understand the ideal model of what He sees as His deliverer, what His Judge ought to be.
The reasons for the absence of drama and embellishment is in order that we don't miss His point, in order that we don't get taken up with the characteristic personal aspects of this man's life and miss what God wants us to see. What is that? The essential features of God's man for the hour. So the reason why Othniel seems to be a bit of a dull story that is not much different than chapter 2 verses 11-19, what God has already said, is that God wants to highlight in this first Judge to distinguish clearly, without any personal distractions, God in the life of this man. Can you see that? God wants you to see that He is instrumental in bringing Israel's salvation.
So, whilst some have concluded that Othniel's an awfully boring, uninteresting character; I think he's probably the most exciting of all the Judges, because you can see God clearer in the account of Othniel's life because the personal, biographical details - whether they account his successes or failures like the rest of the Judges - they are withheld because the Spirit desires us to see that God was the deliverer of His people in bondage. I think he's a bit like John the Baptist. Remember what he said when he introduced the Lord Jesus Christ? 'He must increase, I must decrease'. The Holy Spirit has desired a paradigm, a pattern to show us, right at the beginning, after outlining the principles of how He was going to save his people; in this first example, this prototype, He wants us to see a paradigm of salvation. 'This is my plan, I will save my own people' - salvation, He wants them to realise, is always of the Lord. Whatever instrument He chooses to use, He wants us to see that God's gracious deliverance of His people comes always from Him.
Now, in saying that, here is my first point: it is not that Othniel had nothing of himself that was commendable. In fact, to the contrary, there are few Judges like him - let alone men around among the people of God today. In fact, the Rabbis applied to him Song of Songs chapter 4 and verse 7: 'Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee'. This was a remarkable Judge. Here are some of his commendable features that I want you to note. First of all: he was born into a distinguished family. If you look at his lineage, the clan that he came from had close connections with the tribe of Judah, which of course was the leading tribe in Israel - and this was through Caleb. If you look at chapter 1 for a moment and verse 13, we read: 'And Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother' - so he was connected to Caleb, 'Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother'. Now that could mean that Kenaz or Othniel was Caleb's younger brother, but without going into the details, it's more likely that Othniel was Caleb's younger brother, probably his half-brother - we know that from other portions of historic Scripture.
The fact of the matter is, this is the point: he had a solid family background. Whether he was Caleb's brother or Caleb's nephew, Othniel had the privilege of belonging to a family that was led by an outstanding believer, Caleb. You remember from Old Testament history that Caleb, along with Joshua, were two of the greatest men of their generation. So what I want you to note is, we should never underestimate the impact that a godly family background can have upon the development of an individual character. He had witnessed, whether it was his older brother, or his cousin, or someone else, the example of Caleb, and how Caleb took a mountain even in his old age. Never forget that we are examples to others - the question is: what kind of example are you?
That was a commendable feature in Othniel's life. The second is perhaps greater, because we can have a great family background, but it means very little in the long-term - but this man had a great past victory to his life. He had made a name for himself among Israel in battle. He actually, if you look at chapter 1 again and verse 13, through it won Caleb's daughter as his wife: 'Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it: and he gave him Achsah his daughter to wife'. Really the story of Joshua 15, if you want to read it at home, is repeated in verses 11-15 of chapter 1 of Judges. All it is is that Caleb, this man of faith, though he was 85 years old, attacked the heart of Canaanite power in Kirjatharba, or Hebron, and God had given him a great victory. But the fact of the matter was, Judah had one other main centre of Canaanite power to conquer: Kirjathsepher or Debir. Caleb, after conquering one of them, issued a challenge to the people: 'The one who attacks Kirjathsepher and conquers it, I will even give my daughter Achsah for a wife'. In response, I wonder was it the example of his older brother or cousin, Othniel rose, he attacked the city, he captured it, he won Caleb's daughter - and now, years later, God chooses Othniel to lead His people against this godless leader, Chushan.
He was given a godly example from a godly family, and therefore we ought never to underestimate a godly example upon character. But added to that, we ought never to underestimate that each victory, as the hymn writer says, will help us. What do I mean? Well, simply the principle that this victory in Othniel's past set him up to be in a position where God could approach him to make a victory among the people in the present. Those little victories in his past made him a man who was ready for future battles.
Now that's a principle right throughout God's word, in fact right up to we get to heaven and we stand before the Lord Jesus Christ, and He says unto us 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful in a very little have thou authority over ten cities'. Faithful in little, little victories, God will give us the big challenges. Two commendable features: born into a distinguished family, a great past victory to his name. Thirdly, he has no weaknesses recorded about him as the other Judges have. We will explore their weaknesses individually as we proceed through this series, but the point is simply this: they had many weaknesses and infirmities, and varied ones, but there is none mentioned of Othniel.
Now I'm quite sure that he had them, for we all do, and it's commendable that he hadn't got any, and we see here a holy life - but here's the point that I want you to find in these three sub-points: none of these commendable features in Othniel's life are actually mentioned in this text as a reason for why God used him. They are commendable attributes, but here is the warning that we find in the book of Judges: whether we have strengths or whether we have weaknesses to our name, if God uses us it is of God! Lest you miss my point: his very strengths could have been his weaknesses if he thought that those strengths could commend him to the work of God.
Let me explain what I mean a little further: whilst these were commendable features, the victory that Othniel wrought in the nation is attributed to something else. What does the Holy Spirit attribute his success to? Not that he had nothing that was commendable, on the contrary, rather he had nothing to commend himself to the service of God - that's very important. What are the distinctive features as you look down at these verses, verses 7-11, that point out how the battle was won for Israel and God? The only unique thing that is said about Othniel different than the blueprint that we find in chapter 2 verses 11-19, is that the Holy Spirit of God is mentioned in verse 10. Look at it: 'The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, and he judged Israel, and went out to war'. That's the only difference, and whilst Othniel was far more commendable than any of the other Judges - he was from a distinguished family, he had great past victories to his name, there are no weaknesses recorded of his character - with all those commendable features, the fact of the matter is: the only thing that is mentioned here is what he had in common with the other Judges, the Spirit of God came upon him.
In other words, what made him the man for the hour, and every man for the hour, is the power of God in their lives by the Holy Spirit - and not what we were, or what we are, or what we are not as human beings. I haven't got time to show you it, but if you look at the life of Gideon you find the same thing - the Spirit of the Lord came upon Gideon. The Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon Samson. Now here are some vital lessons that I want us to see in the remainder of our meeting this morning from this. He had many things commendable, but nothing to commend him to the service of God, and the thing that made the difference was God's Spirit. Here's the lesson: one, God's desire in His servants, what is it? This is what we're learning here, this is what the Spirit wants us to see in His prototype. God desires for men and women, whether they have great strengths or great weaknesses, those in whom He and His power can be seen. That's what God desires. He doesn't need your strength, whatever it is: intellectually, emotionally, physically - and isn't it encouraging, whilst we don't want to encourage sin or weakness, God is not hindered, necessarily, by our weaknesses. But the ingredient that made this man different here is always what made all the Judges different, and any man of God in any era: the power of God which is not of us.
Isn't that what Zechariah said? 'Not by might, not by power', human power, 'but by my Spirit, saith the Lord'. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1 did Paul not say this, in verse 25: 'The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence'.
I heard a humourous story told by Howard Hendricks, who was involved in Moody Bible School in the States, I think he's still preaching around. He was at a Pastor's Conference, and a very pious looking brother came up to him after his message and said: 'Brother Hendricks, pray that I shall be nothing'. Hendricks replied: 'Ah man, just take that by faith'. Just take that by faith! We are nothing, and the sooner we see we are nothing, and we have nothing to commend ourselves to God - whilst we might have commendable features that have encouraged us in some way to God's service - the source of Othniel's power and every Judge's power must be the source of our power today. In Acts chapter 1 and verse 8 they were told: 'Ye shall be witnesses unto me when ye receive the Holy Spirit'. They couldn't do it without God's Spirit. That's why in Ephesians 5 and 18 we are commanded: 'Be ye filled', be continually controlled, 'by the Holy Spirit'.
Now I ask you the question today: what does our lawless generation need to see more than anything? Is it our skills? Is it our activities? It's certainly not our weaknesses and our splits and so on, but what they do need to see more than anything is God in Christ in our lives. We need to lie low and exalt Christ. If Christ is seen in our character and our lives, it will have nothing to do with our abilities, will it? It was Henry Drummond who said: 'To become like Christ is the only thing in the world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly, and all lower achievement vain'. Isaac Watts wrote those immortal words:
'When I survey the wondrous Cross', originally it said
'on which the young Prince of glory died,
My richest gain, I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride'.
You see Christ-likeness is better than any gift of preaching or whatever, and without Christ-likeness any gift that you have, Paul says, is as a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, it's empty! This is the difference with every hero that God has used in the Bible and in Christian history: Christ-likeness was seen in them! In the biography of Murray M'Cheyne, by James A Stewart, he wrote these words: 'Mr M'Cheyne's holiness was notable even before he spoke a word. His appearance spoke for him. There was a minister in the north of Scotland with whom he spent the night one evening, and he was so marvellously struck by this man that when M'Cheyne left the room he burst into tears and said, 'Oh, that is the most Jesus-like man I ever met''. 'Oh, that is the most Jesus-like man I ever met' - in another place Stewart adds: 'M'Cheyne spent hours in holy communion inside the veil, in rapturous praise and adoration, being bathed in Calvary's love. He would come forth from God's presence to leave the fragrance of Christ as he went from house-to-house in visitation. As he walked the streets of his parish, and even anywhere in Britain, the people were startled to see the look of Jesus upon his face'. Now that's New Testament Christianity! In fact in Acts 4 we read that 'they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus'.
This is a blessing that God does not give to the strong, or those who think that they're strong, but whether you have commendable features or less commendable features, either of them or nothing! As Elwood McQuaid put it: 'With God there are no extraordinary people, only ordinary ones through whom He chooses to do extraordinary things'. Othniel not only rescued the nation from bondage, but he also served his people, the record says, for 40 years. He brought rest to the land of God - here's another lesson: never underestimate the good that one person can do filled with the Holy Spirit, and living an obedient life in the will of God. Forty years rest in the nation because of one man.
That is God's desire in His servants, but here secondly is the final lesson for us: our dependence in the worst of times needs to be upon the grace and the Spirit of God - there is a lesson. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, what is the answer? What is the answer to our age? You listen to the news, you hear about 15-year-olds being stabbed and raped, and abuse mentally, physically, sexually that can't even be imagined - and it's in our land, and that's only what we hear about. There is worse going on that we never hear about! What is the answer? Well, Othniel as the Spirit's prototype was to show these people that the answer comes from God, deliverance will be from God, it is all of grace - and amazing grace it is!
God came and brought a deliverer - was it in response to their repentance? I don't believe it was, because their repentance was shallow as we saw in our introduction in the first week, it was superficial. The reason God raised up a saviour seems to be in response to their misery. Look at verse 9 in chapter 3. 'When the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel, who delivered them' - when they cried. In other words, He responded to their pain and not their penitence. Now that causes some intellectual difficulties for us perhaps, but not when we see that here is one of the attributes of our God - 'What is it?', you say. Our God is a jealous God!
We have such a negative take on that word 'jealous' that we don't really attribute it to God at times - but what it means is that even God's wrath is the hope of His people. He is the covenant keeping God: 'Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth', so to be under the discipline of God means to be immeasurably loved by God. It shows that the God who has bound Himself to His people by covenant will not allow them to be cosy in their infidelity and their sin. Let me illustrate it to you like this: suppose a husband has the sad but true evidence that his wife is having an affair with another man. The gossip is not just gossip or innuendo, it is truth, and it has been established and it has been proven. For the sake of argument, the husband, let's say - whilst it's hard to say that everybody, or anyone at times, is innocent - but let's say that the husband is squeaky clean, he hasn't been offending at all. When the husband hears that the wife has been unfaithful, he says: 'Well, you win some, you lose some, that's the way the cookie crumbles, there are plenty more fish in the sea' - what would your conclusion be? He doesn't love her! He doesn't love her, if he did, he would be upset, he would be jealous, he would be angry.
So this jealous love that God has toward us, it is showing us His immeasurable love, and at all costs He is an intolerant God towards our sin. This love divine, all loves excelling is not some soft laxity, it is a blazing intolerance, it is an absolute claim of His own children. That's why Jesus said in Matthew 10: 'Unless you love me more than your father, more than your mother, more than your children, more than your husband and your wife, you cannot be my disciples'. You see, this is the trouble having the God of Israel as your God, because He is a God who will not suffer infidelity - and if you forsake Him, He will pursue you in anger.
This is the kindness of God that ought to lead us to repentance, does it lead you and I to repentance I wonder? God wants to waken us with His goodness, but if we won't do that will we awaken with His severity? What ought to happen? You'd think these people would come and meet God's consistency and God faithfulness toward them in true repentance and faithfulness, but they don't! Whilst the ideal saviour, the Paraclete's prototype, whilst he delivered them from the King named Chushanrishathaim, which means 'double wickedness', a cruel and a powerful man - it's even enshrined within his name - Othniel was not a perfect or a complete saviour, for Othniel died after 40 years and then the people went back to their wickedness. They regressed into oppression.
But as I left with you my final point, as we enter into this study that I believe we'll glean a great deal from in the days that lie ahead, what Israel needed and what we need is a Saviour, a Deliverer who will never die! Is there one? Oh, yes there is: 'This man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them'. Christ is the answer to the age of the Judges, Christ is the answer to our age, but we've got to let Christ live from us that others will see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven.
Well, how will we apply God's word to our hearts today? Do we think that we have something that makes us commendable as a servant of God? We do at times: 'God picked a good one when He got me, you know', that's the way we think, 'I've a quare gift for this, or that, or the other'. Or do we realise that unless we can lower ourselves, and be converted to become a little child, and realise that if God's going to do anything through us it'll be all of Him and you'll not see us in it at all? That's hard.
Oh Father, help us, help us to become like that camel that goes through the eye of a needle in humility, to be poor of spirit, to abase ourselves, to submit ourselves under the mighty hand of God, that we might be exalted in due season. Lord, we are nothing, we are nothing, You don't need us, but You have chosen us in grace to be a people unto Yourself. Help us to realise that we have nothing to commend ourselves to Thee for salvation, nor for service. Even gifts that we have been given, that we may engage with are gifts of the Spirit, they're not of us. Help us in these days, the worst of days, to lie low and exalt Christ; that people would say of us: 'I see Jesus', Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - August 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 3
"Ehud, The Handicapped Hero"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Judges chapter 3, and taking up our reading where we left off in our last study, if you can remember that far back, from verse 11. We looked at the first Judge, we called him 'The Paraclete's Prototype', the ideal Judge. Verse 11: "And the land had rest forty years. And Othniel the son of Kenaz died". Then we find this cycle that is perpetual right throughout the book of Judges, that when the Judge died, the people returned to their sin.
Verse 12: "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the LORD. And he gathered unto him the children of Ammon and Amalek, and went and smote Israel, and possessed the city of palm trees. So the children of Israel served Eglon the king of Moab eighteen years. But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab. But Ehud made him a dagger which had two edges, of a cubit length; and he did gird it under his raiment upon his right thigh. And he brought the present unto Eglon king of Moab: and Eglon was a very fat man. And when he had made an end to offer the present, he sent away the people that bare the present. But he himself turned again from the quarries that were by Gilgal, and said, I have a secret errand unto thee, O king: who said, Keep silence. And all that stood by him went out from him. And Ehud came unto him; and he was sitting in a summer parlor, which he had for himself alone. And Ehud said, I have a message from God unto thee. And he arose out of his seat. And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: And the haft", or the handle, "also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out. Then Ehud went forth through the porch, and shut the doors of the parlor upon him, and locked them. When he was gone out, his servants came; and when they saw that, behold, the doors of the parlor were locked, they said, Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber. And they tarried till they were ashamed: and, behold, he opened not the doors of the parlor; therefore they took a key, and opened them: and, behold, their lord was fallen down dead on the earth. And Ehud escaped while they tarried, and passed beyond the quarries, and escaped unto Seirath. And it came to pass, when he was come, that he blew a trumpet in the mountain of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down with him from the mount, and he before them. And he said unto them, Follow after me: for the LORD hath delivered your enemies the Moabites into your hand. And they went down after him, and took the fords of Jordan toward Moab, and suffered not a man to pass over. And they slew of Moab at that time about ten thousand men, all lusty, and all men of valor; and there escaped not a man. So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel. And the land had rest fourscore years. And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel". Verse 1 of chapter 4: "And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, when Ehud was dead".
I've called my study this morning 'Ehud, The Handicapped Hero', and it will become clear why I have entitled it that as we go through our study. If you were ever looking for a biblical equivalent to the video nasty, you need look no further than this account of Ehud's slaying of Eglon. Put it this way: it's not the type of drama that you would enjoy over a Chinese meal some romantic evening, if you have any romantic evenings left in you! It's no Anne of Green Gables! It is, if it was on the shelf today as a book or perhaps as a video or DVD, it's X-rated stuff! It's incredibly violent and even vile in the account that it gives to us of this great assassination of the Moabite King. It's so vicious and gruesome in its account that some biblical scholars acutally find it difficult to reconcile this account with the rest of Scripture, Old and New Testament. In fact one expositor actually apologises for the text, and I quote him, he says: 'By even the most elementary standard of ethics, Ehud's deception and murder of Eglon stand condemned. Passages like this, when encountered by the untutored reader of the Scriptures, cause consternation and questioning'. Whilst we vehemently disagree with such an assertion as that, we can understand how this account of Ehud's slaying of Eglon can cause a shock factor, can make you stand back a little and fill your mind with genuine questions.
Now let me just warn you, because it's very easy for us to rush into a passage like this and right away allegorise it - in other words, take spiritual truths out of it, representations. We could talk about the sword of Ehud being the sword of the Spirit and so on, and that might be valid in one sense, but it's very important that when we are looking for spiritual lessons from a narrative like this, that we don't bypass the real meaning of the text. Let me put it like this: that we don't sweep the real meaning of the text under the spiritual carpet, for there are lessons that God has given to us from this actual literal account. We all believe and we defend, I hope to the end, 2 Timothy 3:16, that 'All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and', as it goes on to say, 'All Scripture is profitable'.
So, what's the profit in a story like the one we have read together today? Well, let me say, adding to that warning I've just given to you, it's important not to be ignorant also of the events of Israelite history that brought the oppression of this fat king upon the Israelites. This monster Eglon didn't just come out of nowhere, and we'll look a little bit later as to where he actually came from, his lineage, his ancestry, and why he was brought to power at this particular time. It's easy to overlook that and just read this after you've had your lovely peaceful Sunday morning breakfast, and be horrified in church, and your stomach churn at such an awful thing that happened in Israelite history, and not realise that there's a whole history behind it all.
It's easy also to underestimate the hardship that the people of Israel endured under such an iron-fisted oppressor like Eglon, or any of the other oppressors that we'll encounter in the book of Judges. It's also easy to underestimate the desperation that the people were in to escape, to get from under the iron fist of such a monstrosity as Eglon. Now how do we put this in context? Well, some of you can remember back to the war, and you may have been celebrating VE Day celebrations yesterday. Not all of us are as privileged as you, but you can remember when the Nazis were overthrown, when Hitler was defeated, the great joy and jubilation that there was. Now that was not a joy that was untainted with sorrow and sadness, but nevertheless there was a great joy - some of you can remember some of the unrepeatable songs that were sung during wartime about Hitler and Mussolini and so on. There was a kind of poking of fun at them.
This is what we have here, there is a humourous side to the biblical account of the overthrow of Eglon. There is this idea that the people of Israel would not have been tainted at all with any twinge of conscience as they heard this story, told it to their children and their children's children, and revelled in the gory assassination of a despot like Eglon. They didn't feel guilty about it at all, this man had been their oppressor, he had been their taskmaster, he had been their Hitler, their Saddam Hussein, their Stalin. They were glad to get rid of him, no matter what the way was that he was disposed of. But I believe the key to understanding this particular account is found in verse 15, if you look down at it, verse 15 of chapter 3: 'But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud'.
Now this is the key, no matter how difficult you find this passage to read and understand, God's word is clear: Ehud was God's man for the hour. This is what we've entitled this series: 'Men For The Hour', and Ehud the second Judge was God's divine choice. Now he wouldn't even have figured on our short list of applications for potential saviours, or perhaps he wouldn't even have figured on Israel's list, but the fact of the matter is - verse 15 says: ''The LORD raised up Ehud'. When we turn to verse 28, it says that it was the Lord who delivered the people through this act of assassination. Now here's my question to all these people who put a big question mark upon Scripture, and ask questions about its morality, and how it assimilates with the rest of the word of God: when will we ever learn, in reading the Scriptures, and indeed when will we as Christians, God's people today, ever learn in living life that God's ways are not our ways? For as high as the heavens are higher than the earth, God says to us in this age: 'So are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts than your thoughts'. As Paul exclaimed, lest you think this is an Old Testament thing, 'Oh the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out'. There are a myriad of other examples where God chooses saviours in the Scriptures that we never would have. Not only does He choose men that we would never have chosen, but He chooses to save His people through those men by plans that we never would have conceived of.
Here is a case in point, you see it with the rest of the Judges. I give you an example of David, he was the runt of the litter, he was the young boy of the family out keeping the sheep - yet he was God's choice, he was the one who would overthrow Goliath. How would he do it? Not with the army of Saul, but with his sling and a stone. We need look no further for an example of this than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. What do you mean? Surely He was the Son of God, you can get no better Saviour than He? Yes, but remember how He came unto the Jews. The Jews were expecting a military emancipator, but what did they get? They got a meek Messiah. As far as they were concerned, a ridiculous King, lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon the colt of an ass. Isaiah 53 told us that this would happen, for there was no attraction in the physical Christ any more than any other person in humanity. There was no form or comeliness, and when we would see Him, there was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him. That's why He was despised and rejected of men. That's why John says in chapter 1 that we hid our faces from Him, He came unto His own and His own received Him not. God's Saviour in the Lord Jesus Christ was not the choice of the Jews, it is not what they would have had or what they wanted. How did He ordain that Christ should save His people from their sins? By the cross - what a ridiculous plan! What a foolish scheme! For does not God's law to the Jews say in Deuteronomy that anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed of God? Yet this was God's plan, the foolishness of God was wiser than the wisdom of men, and so Paul says in Galatians: 'Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us'.
This is God's way! God doesn't choose the saviours that we would like, He chooses the saviours in His wisdom that He knows we need. He chooses a plan of salvation that is the only plan, and is the plan necessary for the hour. Why does God do that? Well, we read it from 1 Corinthians 1 - God does it so that no flesh should glory in His sight. Please remember that, because the man that we are looking at this morning was not mighty in his own flesh. We're going to look as well at how he was used, and here is the lesson: God has said in Zechariah 4:6, that it's not by might, it's not by man's strength, but 'it is by my Spirit saith the Lord'. If you were to be at Calvary's cross now, 2000 years ago, and saw what the Lord Jesus would have endured, you wouldn't have seen anything spectacular in it. It was an awful sight! In one sense, in that day and age, it was an ordinary sight - but it was through that means that God would redeem His people. God's men and God's methods are not your men and your methods.
Now let's understand more about Ehud the handicapped hero by looking at three points. First of all: the present threat, the present threat to Israel at this time. You might ask the question: how did they get to this position, where a man like Eglon was oppressing them? Here's the simple answer, remember this: they chose to walk in the flesh and not in the spirit. If you look at verses 12 and 13 you see three armies of Mesopotamia: the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Amalekites. Not only were these Mesopotamian people neighbours to Israel, but they were also relatives. This gives us a bit of an insight into how Israel got into its present mess. If you remember in Genesis chapter 19, Lot, the nephew of Abraham, pitched his tent toward Sodom and began to be influenced by not just sodomy, but the Sodomite behaviour and civilisation - the worldliness that was there, the materialism, the sensuousness. We read many things about Lot, and you know what happened, as God brought him out of Sodom and he fled, his wife turned and turned into a pillar of salt as she looked back at what she was leaving. But we find that Lot was the ancestor of Moab and Ammon that we read of here in Judges chapter 4. Lot was a man who is the epitome of someone who chose the flesh rather than the spirit. Because Lot chose to pitch his tent in the well-watered plain of Sodom, with those worldly people, his children learned the ways of Sodom, his wife died because of Sodom, and we read that his own children were also his grandchildren, through incest that I believe his daughters learned in Sodom.
What you have here is the archetypal breakdown of the family unit in Sodom - why? Because they chose the flesh rather than the spirit. Those are the ancestors of Moab and Ammon; and Moab and Ammon, the fathers of those people, were the children of Lot's incestuous relationship with his daughters when they got him drunk and slept with him.
Then we have Esau who is the father of the Amalekites - and you remember that Esau was the brother of Jacob. Jacob was chosen, Esau was hated, and Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He sold his right, as being the eldest son to have the blessings of God upon him, for a bowl of stew to feed his flesh. Now here's the warning: how did Israel get in the state that they are in Ehud's day? It's because they chose the flesh over the spirit. Make sure, people in our building today, that when you make any choices you do not determine those choices by the flesh, because you never know where it will lead to. Never believe the lie that sins of the flesh have no consequence, because here we see that the sins of one generation can actually reach forth many, many, many generations, and contaminate another.
Now in verse 11 when Othniel died, we see this cycle again: the people chose flesh, and they began to worship Baal again. I'm not going to go into it this morning once more, but if you were here a few weeks ago you would know what this Baal worship was. It was the worship of a fertility god, and they worshipped this God through sexual immorality. Here the people are going back again to their old ways, their old fleshly ways, and God allows Eglon to come in and discipline as the King of Moab, set up his headquarters in Jericho, and he brings these other confederate people together, these other nations - the Moabites, the Ammonites, and the Amalekites - and he reigns over God's people from Jericho. That's the city of the palm trees, Jericho, in verse 13. For 18 years they are under the iron fist of Eglon.
What do you know about Jericho? Can you tell me? We're asking the question: how did they get into the mess that they're in? What was the present threat? Not only did they choose the flesh rather than the spirit way back in Lot's day, but we're finding that Jericho was the place where there was the first victory in the conquer of the land - but what's happening in Jericho now? Well, Jericho since that has become cursed, and now Eglon is using it as his military headquarters to oppress God's people. In other words, the place of their initial victory had now been conquered by the enemy. The flesh was reigning in a place where the spirit once had sway.
Am I speaking to someone here this morning, and you have allowed the devil to steal your victory, and it's through the flesh. Maybe when you were first saved you had great victory over the flesh, that's the old nature within you, that desire and lust for sin. But as we speak, where you are now, you're defeated in the very place where once you knew a great emancipation, a great freedom. We need to beware of allegorising and just using this text as a representation, but there's no doubt in my mind that Eglon, if he represents anything, represents the flesh. How could you miss it? Verse 17: "He was a very fat man". He was obese, speaking of his indulgence. To look at, he was not admirable - that's what the flesh does to us. Then we read that he pampered his senses in verse 20, he built his own private chamber that he sat in in the summer, and he was lazy. There he was, and that's what happens when you feed the flesh, you begin to pamper yourself and become lethargic. Then we read that when Ehud stuck that dagger into him, forthwith came out the dirt - he was filthy. That's what flesh results in: not only pampering the senses and indulging your desires and passions, but it manifests itself in filthiness that others can see.
A medical member of my family was telling me just yesterday, as I told him what I was going to preach on this morning, that there's a medical authority book called 'Trauma', and it says that this story is probably the first written reference to the large bowel trauma. He pierced the large bowel, and forthwith came out all that dirt. It's speaking of inner corruption that is in all our hearts, in our sinful nature. Paul could say, 'In my flesh dwelleth no good thing'. If you want to read the works of the flesh, you can read it in Galatians 5:19, but what I'm wanting to say to you is to learn from Israel's lesson the threat, the danger, the potential danger of indulging the flesh as even a child of God. They had only themselves to blame for the ruin of their homes, their health, their happiness, because of sins of the flesh! Then again, they just turn to the Lord as a last resort, and He delivers them. Is that not the cycle that many of you find yourselves in? Sins of the flesh, then you repent of sorts, and confess your sin, and then you're back to square one again - God restores you, but you're in your sin once more like a pig returning to the trough, like a dog going back to its vomit. That is you as a sinner, that's what we're all like, our old sinful nature. That was the reason for their present threat, they didn't walk in the spirit, they walked in the flesh.
Secondly I want you to see the chosen saviour. Well, verse 15 tells us that this saviour was weak in the flesh, verse 15 tells us: 'The children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded'. He was weak in the flesh. Now, if you know anything about the tribe of Benjamin, you know that Benjamin means 'son of my right hand'. But in 1 Chronicles 12:2 we read that the tribe of Benjamin was ambidextrous, they could use either their right or their left hands, and the instance that's used there is that they could throw a stone with a sling with right or left. Verse 15 can actually be translated that 'he was a man handicapped in his right hand'. So you can imagine this: here's a man coming from a tribe that is ambidextrous, and he's not like everybody else in that he's just right-handed, but he's not even like the people in his own tribe where he can use both hands, he can only use his left hand. Often in the ancient world someone who was lefthanded, not to cause offence to anybody here today, was frowned upon - sub-standard, and even disabled in a sense. Of course you're all clever today, but then it was different - in fact, the word 'sinister' which we use for something wicked is a Latin word that means 'left-hand'. Someone with skill is said to be 'dexterous', which is Latin for 'right-handed'.
So you can see how, in the ancient world, this man Ehud would have been seen as deficient in some sense. Ehud had a handicap that in many people's eyes would have disqualified him from being used of God, but that was the very reason that God chose to use him - why? That no flesh should glory in His presence. You see the type of men that God chooses, it is those who accept themselves as they are. Those who know their weaknesses and their own limitations, and are willing to let God use them regardless of those things. Isn't it wonderful that what this text is telling us is that God can use us, whatever our restrictions may be?
Oh there are many stories I could tell you this morning about people like Joni Eareckson, who was paralysed very young, and the many people that she has blessed in her life of ministry. But one I want to share with you, that most of you will know already, is our dear brother Andrew Watkins, who provides the Preach The Word website. If you don't know who that is, Andrew Watkins is a young man in Portadown who was (as I quote him in an article he wrote not so long ago for LifeTimes), he was diagnosed at 17 years of age with a progressive muscle wasting condition. Yet he's ministering through this website. Let me tell you his story in his own words, just a few lines. He said, having been diagnosed at 17 with this progressive muscle wasting condition, he subsequently left work as a computer programmer, and he says 'I was left wondering what God could possibly have planned for my life. But I needn't have worried, He had more in store for me than I could ever have imagined, and I've proved that He "is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20)'. He's reaching the whole world with the Gospel as we speak, in five years 312,000 have entered into this website - one day last month he sent out 67 requests for Gospel Packs. Since he's been offering free CD-ROMs, he has given out 120,000 sermons all over the world. Here's how he finishes his article: 'Let me finish by encouraging anyone reading this article: perhaps you feel that there is little or nothing that you can do for the Lord? Perhaps, like me, your plans have suddenly been shattered and you're at a loss to understand God's purpose in it all? I assure you, speaking from my experience, when God says: "I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11) - He means it! His ways are best and He makes no mistakes - remember:
There's a work for Jesus ready at your hand,
'Tis a task the Master just for you has planned'.
You see Ehud accepted his weakness, his lefthandedness, but he used his weakness for the Lord! Hudson Taylor, the father of the China Inland Mission, was asked why God chose him to do this great work, and he said: 'God chose me because I was weak enough'. Are you weak enough? Some of you are too strong, too headstrong, too smart for God to use. God said to Abel: 'What is that in thy hand, Abel?'. 'Nothing', he said, 'Just a little lamb' - but he offered that little lamb to God, and from it came a sweet smelling savour unto God's nostrils. 'Moses', God said, 'What is that in your hand?'. 'Nothing but a staff, Lord, a staff for my flock'. 'Take it, and use it for me', God said - and with that he wrought more things than great Egypt had ever seen. 'Mary, what is that in your hand?'. 'It's nothing but a pot of sweet smelling ointment, Lord' - but with it she anointed the feet of the Holy One of God, and the Bible says that the fragrance not only filled the room, but has filled the world where the story has been recounted in the preaching of the Gospel. 'Poor widow, what's that in your hand?'. 'Just two mites, only two little mites' - but it was all she had, and she gave it, and her story of the two little mites has prompted the humblest souls in the giving of all that they have. 'Dorcas, what do you have in your hand?'. 'It's only a needle, Lord'. 'Take it, and use it for me' - and she warmed the poor and clothed the needy of Joppa with a little needle. The song puts it: 'Little is much when God is in it'. Here was a handicapped man, but God used him because he gave God his all.
Thirdly and finally, not just the present threat and the chosen saviour, but the story of salvation. This is wonderful! What a courageous man he was in spite of his disability! Apparently he couldn't gather together a band of men to join him, so he went to the king alone, he risked his own life, he walked into the palace, into the personal chamber of Eglon. Undeniable bravery! That's what we need today, we need men and women who are brave for God! But he also used strategy - some people that are brave for God haven't many brains at times. He was strategic, he put great planning and ingenuity into this. If you look at it, he made himself the leader of the commission that brought the tribute of the people, the money, to Eglon, verse 15. He then secured a private audience by returning to Eglon, claiming that he had a message from God - it's hilarious, isn't it? 'I have a message from God for you', and it's a dagger! He devised a quiet and quick way to kill him, because he had the dagger on his right thigh, and the guards would have checked probably the left thigh, because most people were right-handed, and if you're right-handed you go to the left thigh to unsheath a dagger - but he had it on his right. Then we see that he overcame the problem of how to escape without getting caught, what did he do? He locked Eglon in his private chamber to delay discovery of the body, and three times we read in verse 25 and 26, 'Behold, behold, behold' - and that's in the Authorised Version, not giving you the whole sense, it's the sense of surprise. Again and again and again they were surprised! What happened? This is what it actually says, his servants thought that he was using the toilet facilities, and were so embarrassed to go and disturb him that they didn't go in - and there he was, lying dead! You can see how they all were laughing about it.
What I want you to see is not only his courage and his strategy, how we need to be courageous, how we need to be planning everything that we do for God - but thirdly, it was a concentrated effort, it was a focused effort. You see, Ehud dealt with the cause of all the problems. He could have raised an army together, he could have fought in a long drawn-out battle against these three tribes in an effort to break their power, and it would have cost a lot of time, money, effort and human lives - instead he went to the source of all their suffering, the man that was on the throne. Can I ask you: who is on the throne of your life? Is it the flesh, or is it the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ? How often do you hear about people going into the doctor's surgery and being treated for the symptoms rather than the cause of their problem? Often the cause of our problem, as the people of God, is the one that is on the throne, it is the old man, our old nature, our flesh - and we're feeding him, we're bringing tribute and obescience to him rather than to Christ! Whereas the cry of the Christian ought to be, as Paul, 'I am crucified with Christ; I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, and give Himself for me'.
The answer to the victory of the flesh in anyone's life is the cross of Christ, where He has put to death our flesh if we would only believe in Him and accept His gift. One author has said: 'No left-handed saviour can break us free from our tyrant of the flesh, but there is One with nail-scarred hands who can and who does'. The only tragedy is, we so seldom cry to Him and depend upon Him, and live in Him!
Can you see the similarity, as we close this morning, between Ehud and Christ? You say, 'How? What similarity is there?'. God chooses to save His people where they are, in the midst of their own mess. Can I read you the words of an author that I think puts it very very well? 'Yahweh is not a white-gloved standoffish God, out somewhere in the remote left-field of the universe, who hesitates to get His strong right arm dirty in the yuck of our lives. The God of the Bible does not hold back in the wide blue yonder somewhere, waiting for you to pour Chlorox and spray Lysol over the affairs of your life before He will touch it. Whether you can come comfortably, put it together or not, He is the God who delights to deliver His people even in their messes, and likes to make them laugh again. He is the God who allows weeping to endure for the night, but sees that joy comes in the morning'.
Is that not what we have in Hebrews, where it says of our Lord Jesus: 'Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted'.
Could you be sitting in our meeting this morning as a Christian or as a non-Christian, saying 'Oh God, if only I could get victory over the flesh', or 'If only I could get back to my Jericho, the place where I once was' - but the enemy has come in, the victory has been stolen. Listen: there is a Great High Priest whose ministry is to prevent us from sinning, and when we do sin, to recover us from sin. 'My little children', John said, 'These things I write unto you that ye sin not, but if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous'. Before the throne of God above, I have a strong, a perfect plea, a Great High Priest whose name is Love, who pleads and intercedes for me. Your Saviour is God's choice. His plan was God's scheme - can I ask you: are you not glad?
Father, we thank You for a Saviour who is the anointed one of God. Lord, we would have chosen a different one, but yet, our Father, You have given us Your only Son as an effectual Saviour, as one who has wrought with His own blood our salvation. Help us to appreciate Him, and help us to allow Him to be on the throne of our lives, and not flesh. Whatever our human incapacities and disabilities may be let us realise, as the great apostle Paul did, that Thy strength is made perfect in our weakness. For we ask these things in the Saviour's name, Amen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - September 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 4
"Shamgar, The Unconventional"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now we're turning in our Old Testaments to the book of Judges, just after Joshua, chapter 3 this morning. Whilst we had quite a substantial reading last Sunday morning as we looked at 'Ehud, The Handicapped Hero', we have only one verse to read today and it's found in chapter 3, and this time verse 31. I want just to draw your attention to the fact of where it is found in chapter 3, of course it is at the end, but you remember last week we read on a couple of verses into chapter 4 if memory serves me correctly, maybe just the first verse. So we find verse 31 right in the middle of the account of Ehud's deliverance of God's people, as he assassinated Eglon, that great fat ungodly King. So this verse is right in the middle, and that's important as we'll see in a moment or two. We'll just read together verse 31: "And after him", that is, after Ehud, "was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel".
In chapter 5 and verse 6 is the only other mention of him, "In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways". That was just a way of dating a particular time in the history of the Israelites, by saying it was 'In the days of Shamgar, and the days of Jael'. It was a great privilege, it's like saying 'In Victorian times in Britain, we did such and such', and so it was an honour to have your name attributed to a particular time period in Israelite history. So although there's only one verse mentioned in the whole life narrative of Shamgar, verse 31 of chapter 3, we see that he must have been a very important person in the folklore and the history of the Israelites.
I want to call him 'Shamgar, The Unconventional', and that is my title for today's message. Of course, as we've been going through this series already, and as we will find in subsequent weeks, all of these Judges have their own unconventional traits. But even the very record of Shamgar, in the fact that it is only one verse, is extremely unconventional. I wonder had you ever heard of Shamgar before you came to church this morning? It's hardly a household name among Christians today. He's even less known, perhaps, than Ehud who we thought of last week. When I told some folks that I was going to preach on Ehud last week, the reaction I got was 'Eh, who?'! And after the meeting some people said to me, 'I've never ever heard that portion of Scripture preached upon'. Well, you've probably never heard of Shamgar either, and in fact his whole life story is reduced to just one sentence.
Most of the commentaries on the Judges limit his life to being put together in one whole chapter with the other two Judges we've already dealt with - Othniel and Ehud, and then Shamgar. He's given a paragraph or something. Many of the sermons I read on this chapter 3, they usually lump Shamgar in with the previous two also. I don't know whether this has ever happened to you, I'm sure it has done if you have a television, but you're watching maybe a film or a documentary and you're really engrossed with it - and all of a sudden there's an interruption, and there's a newsflash. It might be something very important, but it's not too important to you, it has interrupted your train of thought - and whilst you have been in some kind of suspenseful attention sitting at the edge of your seat, that has all been suspended there and then. Well, that's a bit like what we have here in a literary sense, because we're reading down this story of Ehud and Eglon and his assassination - we looked at it last week, all the gory and graphic account of how Ehud assassinated Eglon with a do-it-yourself dagger, how he was left-handed and in those days that was a handicap, how strategically he planned his escape route and so on, how because of his exploits the children of Israel had peace for some time. All of a sudden, like a newsflash in the middle of that account which is so graphic, we have a matter-of-fact statement in verse 31: 'After him', Ehud, 'was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel'.
Now I'm sure you've heard the saying: 'Little is more', and that's particularly prevalent, I think - not that I know much of it - in art and dcor today. Minimalism, I think it's called, and little is more, it says more to have little. Well, what we need to ask this morning in the fact that this man's life is only given one verse, is: what is the more that the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us through the little that He has actually said about Shamgar? I think there is a lot more, little is more in this verse, there is something substantial that God's Spirit is wanting to communicate. Now, it is true that we don't know much about him, but let's explore this morning what we do know about him and see what we can learn from it.
The Philistines are mentioned in the verse, and so we know that Shamgar lived at a time when the Philistines were starting to flex their military muscles in the southwest corner of the land. Now we know that the Philistines eventually became a great thorn in the flesh of God's people. But at this time, they were starting to just become prevalent as the oppressors of Israel. So, to meet the need of the hour at this time, God raised up this man called Shamgar. Now scholars and commentaries, as we shall see, not only debate where this man came from, what his nationality was, but even whether or not he was actually a Judge, whether we can really classify him as among one of the Judges today.
You see right away, when there are so many questions asked about this character, how unconventional he is. He is not an Othniel, who is almost perfect, the most upstanding Judge, perhaps, that we have in this book. He is not an Ehud who, though he had a handicap, he had great ingenuity, showed great strategy and wisdom and stealth in the way that he delivered God's people. Here is Shamgar, an ordinary everyday man, but he is the man that God chose to raise up to deliver Israel and strike down the Philistines.
Let me show you how unconventional he is from what we know about him. Now the first - I contradict myself a little, because this is a little uncertain - but he may have had an unconventional upbringing. Now, I say he may have had an unconventional upbringing, because his family background is very confused. Scholars are not clear on this issue, and so we must tread carefully on how we apply these facts, but the reason for the confusion in Shamgar's family background is because Shamgar is not a Hebrew name. It would be good to write that in the margin of your Bible, if you take Bible notes, it's not a Hebrew name - in fact, it is a Canaanite name. We see that he was the son of Anath, and scholars have debated that Anath might distinguish and designate a place of his family origin, because there is a Beth-Anath in Galilee region, and there is a Beth-Anath down in Judah. But others feel that, perhaps, son of Anath probably means 'a man like Anath' who was a renowned warrior. So this man, Shamgar, was a man like 'a son of Anath', the great warrior in their history.
However, others have pointed out, and I favour this particular view, that Anath was in fact a Canaanite goddess. She was, in all likelihood, the goddess of war and sex, and the sister and the wife of Baal, the god that the Canaanites worshipped. On that basis, many feel that Shamgar wasn't even an Israelite, he was a Canaanite with a Canaanite name, and he had a Canaanite father who was named after a Canaanite goddess. Then there are others who feel, well, he probably was an Israelite, but in all likelihood his family, because they lived in Canaan, had assimilated and capitulated to the paganism that was all around them. They had become infected, contaminated by the spirit of the Canaanite age. In other words, the family became so submerged in the world system of that day, and had imbibed the spirit of the age, that they had actually taken worldly and godless pagan names for themselves, and been brought up in that atmosphere.
It is the archetypal backslidden family, if you like. A group of children, or grandchildren, that eventually grow up, and they have been born into a godly home, but they reject that heritage and that influence that they have had. They go their own way, and though there is a remnant of the truths that they have been taught and disciplined in, they reject it and they adopt everything that is of the world. Maybe you're here today and you find yourself in the same scenario. Your family, generations ago, may have had a godly influence, but now you have rejected that. You're not antagonistic towards it, but you've made your own choice, and your choice is the choice of the world rather than that of God.
If you remember, Othniel, that we looked at a number of weeks ago now, had a very very illustrious family connection, because he was the younger brother or perhaps the nephew of Caleb. His family background would have been influential in making him the man of God that he was. But it seems that Shamgar did not have the same privilege as Othniel. Now, you might think that that has disadvantaged Shamgar - and in a sense it has. We ought always be very thankful to God - and I address the young people today and children who have been brought up in Christian homes - you have a lot to give thanks for to God. But isn't it encouraging to know that, whatever your upbringing has been, brought up in a non-Christian home, perhaps going as far to say a paganised worldly home, that you can still be someone who is chosen by God and used of God. Isn't that wonderful? Sometimes in Christian circles you'd think that anyone who was brought up in a non-Christian home didn't matter, sometimes that's what we glean when we hear testimonies. But yet what an encouragement it is here to see that grace, God's grace, knows no prior qualifications. Shamgar's background, we believe, was essentially pagan, yet God used him.
Now, we're more certain of these facts: he was an unconventional warrior. He may have had an unconventional upbringing, but he was an unconventional warrior - because not only was he a pagan, but he was a peasant. We know that from the weapon that he used. It says that he used an ox goad to slay these 600 Philistines. An ox goad was used by a farmer, or a farm labourer. So in all likelihood that's what he was, a farmer. Now, I ask you: if you were wanting to defeat 600 Philistines armed to the teeth, who would you nominate? Would you nominate an accomplished warrior or a farmer? You can just imagine him with a bit of straw hanging out of his mouth, and the cap turned round!
Othniel had a great past victory to his name, we read about that, didn't we? How God used him! Remember how he answered the challenge of Caleb to take the Canaanite stronghold, Kirjathsepher or Debir, and through that great victory he won Caleb's daughter as his wife. He had an illustrious victory to his name. Yet Shamgar has nothing like that on his CV. Shamgar is just an ordinary five-eight farmer. He isn't even a soldier. Yet again, what we are seeing here is that God's choice is not our choice. As we read, I think it was last week, in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 27 - and we'll repeat this right throughout Judges, because this is a spiritual truth - God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.
We might well ask the question: how did such an insignificant man like Shamgar get into this position of being God's chosen deliverer of His people? The only explanation I have to this, and I'll go into it in a bit more detail later on, is that God must have touched this man's heart. He has nothing else going for him other than that the grace of God must have reached him and touched him and enabled him to be God's man. Matthew Henry puts it well like this, he pictures how it must have been when Shamgar heard God's call, took up the ox goad, left his oxen, and went to fight. 'It is probable', he says, 'that he himself was following the plough when the Philistines made an inroad upon the country to ravage it. God put it into his heart to oppose them, the impulse being sudden and strong - and having neither sword nor spear to do execution with, he took the instrument that was next at hand, some of the tools of his plough, and with it he killed 600 men and came off unhurt'. We read in the book of Samuel chapter 10 that Saul, when he was going to be King, he went home to Gibeah, and it records that 'there went with him a band of men, whose hearts God had touched'. He was an unconventional warrior, he was an old farmer, yet God touched his heart. That says something to us this morning.
Then thirdly, he was unconventional in that he used an unconventional weapon. The enemy oppressors, we know this from 1 Samuel 13, had confiscated the weapons of the Israelites. They took their weapons of war off them in case they would rise up against them. If you like, God's people had been disarmed by the world, by their enemies - and I think that's what's happening today. The church is being disarmed, it's being told a lie, and the lie that it is sold it has bought, that it is powerless to face this secularist, pluralist world. So we feel powerless, we feel unable to overcome everything that is against us day by day. Yet what we see here in Shamgar is: he was an overcomer. He might have been from a pagan background, he may have been a peasant, but he was an overcomer. We know this because, even though he had no weapons to his name and no one in Israel had, he grabbed the closest thing to him that was like a weapon, and he used it.
So he takes this ox goad, it was probably a strong pole about 6 feet long, and at one end there was a sharp metal point for prodding the oxen. At the other end, in all likelihood, there was a spade for cleaning the dirt off your plough. Now he used this unconventional weapon because it was all that he had and the need was great. In other words, what Shamgar was communicating by his action was: 'The cause is too great for me to just sit here on my farm and do nothing. There's too much at stake'. He didn't say, like the man in the book of Proverbs, 'There's a lion in the street, so I'm not going to go out of my house'. The lion in the street, the Philistine, didn't matter to Shamgar. We read in 1 Samuel 13 that many of these Israelites who had their weapons confiscated, they took their farming instruments. They sharpened their forks and their axes, their ox goads for weapons - and Shamgar was one of them. He used what was at his disposal. He wasn't a warrior like David, he wasn't like Jonathan, he might have had a weak weapon - but I want you to see this this morning: whatever the weapon was that he had, because he had dedicated it to God, God had anointed it, and God anointed it with such power that he slew 600 Philistines!
His motto was: 'Whatsoever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might'. Now, if we look at God's deliverers for a moment, they seem to have an interesting selection of weapons. We think of Shamgar's ox goad, but then Ehud's dagger, a home-made one, last week. Then in chapter 4, we'll see later that Jael used a hammer and a tent peg. Gideon used horns and torches in chapter 7. In chapter 9 we find a woman used a millstone. In chapter 15 Samson used a jawbone - all unconventional weapons. I want to turn your attention for a moment or two to 2 Corinthians chapter 10, so that we can apply this in New Testament truth.
Second Corinthians chapter 10, Paul says in verse three of 2 Corinthians chapter 10: 'For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh'. Remember we saw that last week? The problem with the Israelites in their downfall was that they walked in the flesh, not in the spirit. If Eglon symbolises anything, it is the flesh. 'For the weapons', verse 4, 'of our warfare are not carnal', or fleshly, 'but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds'. They mightn't be weapons that the Romans had, or the Greeks had, but they're mighty because though they are weak in man's eyes, God has anointed them. He has anointed them to do this, we see in verse 5: 'Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ'.
In Shamgar we see a man who obeyed God and defeated the enemy, even though his resources were limited. Now is that not encouraging? People say in the church, especially in the West, 'Things today are not as they used to be' - don't they? 'Things aren't the way they used to be'. Whenever your romantic age of church utopia was, I don't know when it was, the 50s, the 60s, the 20s, the 1859's, whatever it was - I grant you that things are not what they used to be, but the message of Shamgar and the Judges is: though every man does that which is right in his own eyes, God is still the God He always has been! It's time we got this thinking out of our minds! I know all too well that I am no Spurgeon or Wesley or Whitefield, but instead of complaining about that fact that is all too real, what Shamgar did was he took whatever he had, and he gave to the Lord whatever the Lord had given to him. When he gave it to Him, the Lord used it!
Joseph Parker, that congregational preacher who was a contemporary of Spurgeon's, said: 'What is a feeble instrument in the hands of one man, is a mighty instrument in the hands of another. What is the distinguishing factor?', he goes on to say, 'Simply because the spirit of that other burns with a holy determination to accomplish the work that has to be done'. What makes a difference? The heart! Whether your heart is touched enough by God to see that there is a need, and to rise to meet that need - a heart for God, and a jealousy after God's glory!
This weapon, I think, probably would have required an increased patience and persistence on the part of Shamgar. Some believe that Shamgar didn't kill these 600 people in one go or in one place - I believe that if God wanted him to do that, he could have done it, but I feel that this was probably over a protracted period of time. Day by day Shamgar would go out as some kind of assassin, and take off one at a time, day after day, week after week with this ox goad - doing it for God until this great total accumulated of 600. It needed patience, it needed persistence, because he could only use what God had given him, but he used it - and no matter how long it took, and whatever effort was for the taking of it, he did it.
He was doing as much as he could with the limited resources that God had given him. Ehud was a handicapped hero, he was the left-handed one. I know that some of you were very offended who are left-handed, but we could have sang, 'Oh what can left-hands do to please the King of heaven'. That's what it's all about: whether it's little hands or left hands, or handicapped hands - if they're given to God, they're God's hands! Are you getting the point?
Well, here was his secret. Yes, he may have had an unconventional upbringing, he was an unconventional warrior, he used an unconventional weapon - but he was empowered by an unconventional God. Shamgar's courage was born of his faith in God. One thing, if anything, we learn from chapter 3 of Judges as we've been in it for three or four weeks, is that our God and the God of the Judges is the unconventional God. Isaiah 55 says: 'How high as the heavens above the earth are, so higher are God's ways and God's thoughts than our ways and our thoughts'.
Let me leave this thought to you, how he was empowered by an unconventional God, under three headings. One: this unconventional God uses completely different personalities. This unconventional God uses completely different personalities. You will not find, though you look for it, in chapter 3 a stereotype of a Judge. Now we do have a prototype, but there is no stereotype of the personality of a Judge. If you looked at Othniel, like me, you probably thought: 'Lord, I could never live up to that man's standard'. Obviously God could use him, he was a man of proven ability, he had superior character, he had spiritual depth, he was from the finest family background. Yet right away, if we try to second-guess God in the type of man that God uses when we look at Othniel, when we look at Ehud, God breaks the mould and makes another one. Here is a man with a serious limitation. He might have been prominent in his society, he was brave, he was capable, but he was handicapped. He had a handicap that in many people's eyes would have disqualified him from being a saviour to Israel. You might think: 'He might have had a handicap, but I don't even feel that I'm an Ehud. I'm certainly not an Othniel, and I'm not an Ehud'. But praise God for little Shamgar and his one verse! Surely you can identify with him, one who was a peasant, one who was a pagan, yet God raised him and God used him!
Now, don't misunderstand what I'm saying: I believe that both Old and New Testament teaches that there are standards of holiness, and consecration, and devotion to the Lord that are, in a sense, pre-requisites to being personally used of God. But what I am saying, and what the Scriptures are saying is: there is no personality mode that God uses and none other. That is tremendously liberating: you can be who you are, and God can use you. You don't need to strive to be like someone else, God made you the way you are, and God can use you the way you are. Of course, I'm not talking about sin or anything like that. You have to repent of your sin and be done with it, and so on. But what are the weaknesses in your life? Who can you identify with? Othniel, Ehud or Shamgar? Whoever you are, listen to God's voice: He will use you if you realise the next two points...
Here's the second: this unconventional God not only uses completely different personalities, but He strengthens the weakest people. He strengthens the weakest, even the prototype, Othniel, the ideal Judge that we saw at the beginning, with all his abilities, with all his talents, with all his success and all that was going for him - what did we see that first week? That none of those things were the reason why God used him, in fact the thing that he had in common with all the other Judges, with all the other differences and contrasts between them and he, was that the Holy Spirit came upon him and used him. Isn't that wonderful? In Isaiah 40 there is that wonderful passage of Scripture that describes how even the youths shall grow weary and faint, but they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. Do you know what the Hebrew literally means there? 'They that wait on the Lord shall exchange their strength'. In other words, the picture is you with your depleting strength, and maybe just weakness and emptiness, come to God and as you wait upon God He exchanges for your weakness His omnipotent strength.
You look at God's heroes, not only in the Bible but in Christian history, the Brainerds, the Mc'Cheynes, the Wesleys and the Whitefileds, the Coopers - and all of them were very weak men, but in whom God's strength was made perfect. Can I tell you today: whoever you are, wherever you are, God has a place for you, and your limitations are not a problem to Him! The question is: have you accepted yourself? I'm not talking about all this nonsense about self-esteem and all the rest, but I'm talking about the way you are, the personality you are - not your sins, not traits that you could be doing without, but I'm talking about just who you are. Have you accepted yourself, because God does! Maybe you keep getting hung up on limitations that you have, maybe that's why you don't rise to your feet in the prayer meeting, or you don't announce a hymn. Well, realise today that God accepts the limitations that you have! If you are to give them, and have faith in God that He accepts them and He is greater than them, He can use you to His glory! He could actually use you more than He has used anybody in your day and age, for that's what we have here.
Hudson Taylor, I quoted him last week, but I quote him again this week - as he looked back over 30 years during which he had seen 600 missionaries respond to the vision to reach China for Christ, he summarised what he had learned in these words. I read some of them last week, but I didn't read all of them, here is the full quotation: 'God is sufficient for God's work. God chose me because I was weak enough. God does not do His great works by large committees. He trains someone to be quiet enough and little enough, and then uses him'. Quiet enough, little enough. This unconventional God strengthens the weakest, and if you realise that He uses completely different personalities, and you come to Him with your weakness, your emptiness, your inability, He will meet it with His omnipotent, His almightiness.
Thirdly, the second thing you really need to realise is that this unconventional God's strength is perfected in those who dare to trust Him. It is perfected in those who dare to trust Him. Shamgar, Ehud, Othniel, Samson, Gideon, Jepthah, Jael - we'll go through them all eventually - all were different, all delivered God's people in different ways, but all had one thing in common: they had courage to take a risk and to step out by faith for God. They were bold enough, in a godless generation where everybody did that which was right in their own eyes, to believe what God said, to take God at His word and to confront the enemy. Boy, that's what we need today. As E. M. Bounds said in that little book that I'm continually plugging to you, 'Power Through Prayer', says: 'God is not looking for new methods, new programs, God is looking for men who will be filled with the Holy Ghost, who will take Him at His word and blaze a trail for God'. God works through men like Shamgar, unconventional - maybe we would say 'nothing going for him' - but completely yielded to God. The little that he was and the little that he had was given over to the Lord.
Matthew Henry sums up, as he often does in his little quips in his commentary, this Judge in these words: 'First of all see', he says, 'that God can make those eminently serviceable to His glory and His church's good whose extraction, education, and employment are very mean and obscure. He that has the residue of the Spirit could, when He pleased, make a ploughman a Judge, and make a fisherman an apostle'. Secondly he says: 'It is no matter how weak the weapon is if God direct and strengthen the arm. An ox goad, when God pleases, can do more than Goliath's sword - and sometimes he chooses to work by such unlikely', or I could say unconventional, 'means, that the excellency of the power may appear to be of God and not man'.
Well, we've finished chapter 3. Othniel, Ehud and Shamgar have shown us the way to serve the Lord: the answer is to follow them. Let's bow our heads.
Our Father, we thank You for those words in the verse that has been our consideration this morning: 'He also delivered God's people'. Lord, we thank You for that 'also', we thank You for the interruption in the story of Ehud to tell us of a simple man whose life was completely dedicated to God, because he saw the need and God had touched his heart. He didn't have much going for him, but all that he had: 'What I have', he could say, 'I give Him, I give Him my heart'. Lord, whoever we are today, whatever our circumstances may be: may we all give You our heart devotedly, unreservedly so that You, perhaps unconventionally, may use us for Your glory, Amen.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - September 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 5
"Deborah, The Exceptional"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now we're turning in our Bibles to the book of Judges chapter 4, and we have been going through a series intermittently - with some interruptions for obvious reasons - in the book of Judges, entitled 'Men for The Hour'. We've looked at a number of the Judges already. We've looked at Othniel, Ehud, and last week we looked at Shamgar. This morning we're going to cover really two chapters, although we're not going to read those, but we're going to cover the subject matter of both chapters 4 and 5 of Judges - looking at Deborah, who I have entitled 'The Exceptional'. Deborah, the exceptional.
We'll read all of chapter 4 together: "And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, when Ehud was dead. And the LORD sold them into the hand of Jabin king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor; the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children of Israel cried unto the LORD: for he had nine hundred chariots of iron; and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel. And Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth, she judged Israel at that time. And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in mount Ephraim: and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak the son of Abinoam out of Kedeshnaphtali, and said unto him, Hath not the LORD God of Israel commanded, saying, Go and draw toward mount Tabor, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Naphtali and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and his multitude; and I will deliver him into thine hand. And Barak said unto her, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go: but if thou wilt not go with me, then I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with thee: notwithstanding the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honor; for the LORD shall sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Deborah arose, and went with Barak to Kedesh. And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him. Now Heber the Kenite, which was of the children of Hobab the father in law of Moses, had severed himself from the Kenites, and pitched his tent unto the plain of Zaanaim, which is by Kedesh. And they showed Sisera that Barak the son of Abinoam was gone up to mount Tabor. And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him, from Harosheth of the Gentiles unto the river of Kishon. And Deborah said unto Barak, Up; for this is the day in which the LORD hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the LORD gone out before thee? So Barak went down from mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him. And the LORD discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots, and all his host, with the edge of the sword before Barak; so that Sisera lighted down off his chariot, and fled away on his feet. But Barak pursued after the chariots, and after the host, unto Harosheth of the Gentiles: and all the host of Sisera fell upon the edge of the sword; and there was not a man left. Howbeit Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite: for there was peace between Jabin the king of Hazor and the house of Heber the Kenite. And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not. And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle. And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty. And she opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him. Again he said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and inquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here? that thou shalt say, No. Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary. So he died. And, behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him, and said unto him, Come, and I will show thee the man whom thou seekest. And when he came into her tent, behold, Sisera lay dead, and the nail was in his temples. So God subdued on that day Jabin the king of Canaan before the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel prospered, and prevailed against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan".
The Bible is one message, we know that, it all points essentially to God as the Saviour and Redeemer through our Lord Jesus Christ. Although the Bible is one message, it is often delivered in different forms. For instance, in the book of Romans you have a book of doctrine; then you have in other books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, narratives, Gospel narratives recording the life of our Lord Jesus here on the earth. Then there is another medium in a sense, which is drama, there are some great dramatic stories in the Bible - and here we have a great drama, the judgeship of Deborah, and the slaying of Sisera by the hand of Jael - another man who lost his head, we didn't know we were going to hear about three of them this morning!
Now in every drama it's important to know the characters. If you ever should lift a play of Shakespeare, you will find in the first few pages that near the contents page there is a page that depicts the acts and scenes, and near it is the 'dramatis personae', that will be the title that is given, the 'dramatis personae'. In other words, it lists all the characters and tells you a little bit of who they are and about them, so that you can understand the story a little bit more. You can't fully understand any story unless you know a little bit about the characters. So, what we're going to do this morning is home in on the primary characters in this great drama.
The first two that I want us to look at are Jabin and Sisera. If you like, in this drama, Jabin is the villan, the baddie. Sisera is his partner in crime, his right-hand man, he is the Captain of his armies. My mind - very unsanctified! - went to James Bond, and I wouldn't advise you to watch those films, but nevertheless often the baddie in James Bond has a sidekick, a heavy. Sisera is Jabin's heavy. Jabin is the king of Hazor in Canaan, he is a tyrant, like all the tyrants that we find ruling over God's people with a hard clenched fist. For 80 years under the judgeship of Ehud, the people of Israel have known peace and victory. Then after Ehud you have Shamgar, who we looked at last week, and he brought victory temporarily upon the people after Ehud had died, and they went back to their sins once more.
Now we find in chapter 4 that the Israelites behaviour is going through the cycle again, and repeating itself once more. It's the pattern that we read about in our first study in chapter 2 verses 10-19, what is it? Well, if you look at it in verse 1 of chapter 1, they sinned, they did evil in the sight of the Lord. Remember that the evil that kept repeating itself in Israel was the worship of Baal, that fertility god, and all of the aspects of worship that were so vile and immoral and an abomination in the sight of God. Then in verse 2 we find that God raises up an oppressor to discipline His people because of their sin, and this is what He does in Jabin, the Canaanite who reigned in Hazor. So the people are oppressed again, they're suffering because of their sins. Then again the cycle in verse 3 is supplication: they sin, God causes them to suffer, and then they cry unto God - verse 3. Then we find in verse 4, which is probably the primary message of the whole of the book of Judges, the message that God is a God of salvation, that God raises up the deliverers, and here He does it again in Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth.
Now, just before we go on any further to look at these two characters Jabin and Sisera, does it not astound you how the people of Israel still have not learnt the message? They still haven't got the point! God wants them to repent completely and genuinely, yet they still go round in this circle of defeat, the circle of sin and then supplication, God saving them, and then they go back to their sin as soon as the Judge dies. We can criticise it, but if you're honest with yourself, many Christians find themselves in this same vicious cycle. They feel they can't get out of it. They feel they want to get out of it, but they are continually defeated, that temptation always takes them.
Well, listen carefully to the victory again that we have before us through the deliverer - Deborah, the exceptional - today. What I want you to see before we look at her, or any of the characters, is the difference between religious reformation and spiritual revival. This is terribly important. These people called out to God, and in a sense through the Judges they reformed their external behaviour, there was a religious reformation but there was not a genuine spiritual revival. Reformation is that which temporarily changes the outward conduct, while revival permanently alters the inward character. Israel, throughout the Judges, is like the man in Jesus' parable who got rid of one demon, and the house of his life was swept out, and another seven worse demons came along and inhabited him. The people of Israel seem to get worse and worse and worse after every reformation, because the empty heart is prey for every form of moral evil. Until we realise that what we need is not a reformation but a spiritual revival in which the Holy Ghost takes charge of His church and His people, we will go through this continual cycle of sin over and over again.
Let me say this: these reformations were effected largely by outside pressures. Maybe there's someone in your life, and they want you to be like this, they want you to be like him; or there's a church - though a church should instruct and exhort and encourage - that wants you to be a certain way. That's only right, but you're trying to fulfil their desires and live up to the expectations of others and you're failing! Because although it's good to give instruction from the word of God - and we must always do it - if we're to have genuine revival in our lives, God must do an eternal work by His Spirit, external reformation will not do.
R. Kent Hughes wrote a book on the Beatitudes, and his title is intriguing - he entitled it 'Are Evangelicals Born Again?'. That's a good question, isn't it? We might have all the trappings, but are we born-again - do we have the life of God in our bosom? Are we living the life of Christ? That is the true life that He wishes us to portray. That's the reason why, even in the church today, every man does that which is right in his own eyes. It's why it's going on in the world, lawlessness and chaos and anarchy - because there's no true repentance. That's what I fear at times, there's no deep work of God that has been done in people's hearts. Do you know that? True repentance does not consist of an experience of the supernatural. People say to me: 'Oh, I felt the Lord that night I was saved, I felt His presence and His touch' - all that is tremendous, but has your salvation been manifested in a departure from evil? Repentance is the true fruit of faith in God. Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2 and verse 19: 'Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity'. Well, my question to you is what Israel needed to answer: is the prayer of your heart, 'Lord, create in me a clean heart'?
Let's look at Jabin, this King of the Canaanite stronghold Hazor, and his commander Sisera who boasted 900 chariots of iron, with which he held the Israelites - as you see in the first couple of verses - under dominion for 20 years. We see here that this oppression brought a cry from God's people, and God who - remember we thought last week - is unconventional, the God who is the unpredictable, surprises the people and does again a new thing: He raises up a woman to be the deliverer. Deborah, she is the heroine of this drama. Her supporting actor, if you like, your male lead, is Barak. Deborah, the woman of faith, the woman of courage, her name means 'bee'.
Now let me just say a little bit of warning before we study Deborah this morning. Some people use Deborah as an excuse for overturning New Testament injunctions regarding the role of women in the church. I have a lot of time for Deborah, as you will see in a moment or two, but we need to remember that the Old Testament Israel is not the New Testament church. The New Testament teaches in 1 Timothy 2 and verse 12 very clearly that we are not to suffer women to usurp authority over the men in the assembly, nor to teach. That's what God has said, whatever our society may think of it. Secondly, we need to remember that the days of the Judges was a time of declension. There was obviously a need of an exception in this particular circumstance - but, having said all that, we cannot diminish the fact that Deborah is an exceptional woman. Whilst we must always keep within the biblical boundaries concerning male and female roles in the church, God used a woman, and used a woman here in a way, I believe, some of the men were uncomfortable with.
She was, as we see in verse 4, a Judge and a prophetess. We see that God led her by His Spirit to summon Barak to deliver Israel in verse 6. She sent for Barak, and called him in the name of the Lord God of Israel to command the people. Then we see in verse 8 that he refused, and Barak said, 'Unless you go with me into the battle, I won't go'. Then we see that in verse 9 Deborah agrees to accompany him to battle, but she tells him that because of his reluctance to lead the people, that the victory promised to the Israelites will be attributed to the hand of a woman. Then in the midst of the battle in verse 14 we see that it is Deborah who encourages and inspires Barak, she says 'Up; for this is the day in which the LORD hath delivered Sisera into thine hand: is not the LORD gone out before thee?'. Then in chapter 5, we'll not have time to look at it of course, but she sings a great song of victory unto the victory that the Lord has brought to the Israelites. Even in chapter 5 she rebukes the tribes of Israel who didn't rise up and didn't help the cause of God - what a woman! What a woman!
Twofold encouragement from Deborah the heroine, and from Barak, her supporting actor, that I want to leave with you. First of all: isn't it wonderful that the weaker vessel is a vessel in which God's power can be displayed? We have been looking at male weaklings in this book. Some of them had great handicaps, Ehud was left-handed, Shamgar was probably a farmer who had no weapons or no military skill, but the point of this book if there is any point is that God is the deliverer of His people! God delights to deliver through weak things, so that the excellency of His power might be displayed, and praise should come unto God rather than men. Here we have a Judge who is the weaker vessel, but the weaker vessel in this period of Israel's history is the vessel in which God's power can be most perfectly displayed.
Now I believe, in a sense, that it was an act of humiliation for the Jews, who lived in a male dominated society, to be delivered by a woman. They wanted, perhaps, a mature and a male leadership. Indeed, Isaiah 3 and verse 12 tells us: 'As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them' - that was a detrimental statement. Could I just say, to make an application to the church of Jesus Christ today, I believe leadership is at a low-ebb more than it has ever been, not just in the political world and in family life, but also in the church - and, can I say, especially among men. Whether it's feminism or political correctness, something in our society has emasculated the leadership role. So, whilst women are more empowered in our age than they have ever been, and I don't think that's necessarily a wrong thing or something unwelcome, many men are confused and demoralised concerning their role in society and the home and the church. I say to you today: one of the reasons why women are taking leadership positions in the church of Jesus Christ is because the men have become more effeminate in their role in the church, and lie back and let them! It's time for you men, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16, and we have sung, 'Quit you like men!' - act like men and be strong!
But nevertheless. God gave His people a woman Judge. He was treating them like children, I believe, but yet we need not underestimate the fact that there are some notable women in the holy Scriptures. Let me name a couple of them to you: Ruth, a faithful woman; Hannah, an ideal mother; the Shunammite woman, the hospitable woman who brought the prophet in and fed him and gave him rest; Esther, the self-sacrificing woman, the woman who was prepared to go in before the King and say 'If I die, I die, if I perish, I perish'. In the New Testament there's the Syro-Phoenician woman, a woman of great faith - Jesus said there wasn't such faith in all of Israel. Mary Magdalene was the transformed woman, delivered from her sin and iniquity. Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus, the chosen woman of God. Mary of Bethany, the woman who is immortalised by Christ because she poured out that ointment, and Christ said that wherever the Gospel would be preached her name would be mentioned. Martha, the industrious woman; the woman at the well, the evangelising woman; Anna, the praying and fasting woman; Dorcas, the benevolent woman who used her needle and thread to clothe the people of Joppa; Lydia, the businesswoman, who being converted opened her home to the church; Priscilla and Phoebe who served the church of Jesus Christ, serving women. Incidentally, the word that is used for Phoebe's service is the word that we use for 'deacon' in the New Testament.
There are many special distinctions of women in the Bible. Did you know that the last people at the cross were women? The first to the tomb was a woman. The first to proclaim the resurrection was a woman. The first preacher to the Jews in Luke 2 was a woman. Those that attended the first prayer meeting in the upper room were both men and women, the women were there. The first to greet the missionaries in Europe in Acts 16 were women. The first convert to Europe in Acts 16, Lydia, was a woman. Here we have in the Old Testament, Deborah, a woman who says of herself in her song in chapter 5 and verse 7: 'I Deborah arose, a mother in Israel' - a woman! I almost said, 'Hallelujah for women' there, but I may pay for that later on!
The fact of the matter is: whilst we believe in the teaching of the New Testament regarding the role and responsibilities of women, sometimes we denigrate what women can do for Jesus Christ. There is an encouragement that the weaker vessel is a vessel in which God's power can be displayed. But secondly, looking at Barak, though at first he was reluctant, he is commended of God. Barak was a bit like Moses, who said 'I can't speak. You're not going to send me, are You?'. He was a bit like Gideon, who said 'I am of the least of the tribes in Israel'. A bit like Jeremiah, 'I'm only a child, I cannot speak'. Here is Barak, he's reluctant, he says: 'I'm not going to go unless you go with me'. Yet in Hebrews chapter 11 verse 32, Deborah is not mentioned, but Barak is mentioned along with Gideon and other of the Judges for his great faith - isn't that an encouragement? As we look at Deborah, or we look at Barak, or we look at Othniel, Ehud or Shamgar, what God is saying is: 'I use weak people'. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1 that we have read so many times, that is what is outlined for us: God chooses the foolish things that He should confound the mighty, and that His glory should be known.
We've looked at Jabin, the villain, and his partner in crime, the captain Sisera; Deborah the heroine, and the supporting actor, Barak. But thirdly let us look at the Lord, the Lord is in this drama, in fact the Lord is the writer, He is the director, He is the producer. In other words, He is seen and depicted as the one who is in charge of the war and in charge of the weather. The Lord is behind all of the scenes that occur here in this drama. He's not only controlling the enemy army, but He is bringing a trap before them and He's controlling the weather itself and using a storm to defeat Sisera's troops. The message here is: God is our salvation, God has always been the salvation of His people and He always will be such.
The daily notes for the Scripture Union depict this historical scene. Let me read it to you: 'Barak openly showed his force of 10,000 on the southern slopes of Mount Tabor. Sisera arose to the bait, he and his troops crossed the dry Kishon riverbed at the fort just south of Harosheth. They raced southeast along the ancient highway toward Taanach. Israelites from the south, from Ephraim entered the valley of Zaanaim and joined forces with Barak, his northern troops in the valley of Taanach, south of the Kishon. Deborah called for the attack in verse 14, 'Get up! Go!'. The footmen went against the iron chariots, and at the critical moment the rain fell from the hand of God turning the plain into mire, utterly confounding the chariots and horses. The advantage was now fully with the infantry, those on foot. Barak pressed the attack, Sisera was separated from the men and fled. The leaderless troops, not used to fighting on foot, ran to their base. The rains continued, the Kishon rose to a torrent. Those who were not slain by the Israelites in pursuit were swept away by the Kishon as they tried to cross the ford of Harosheth'.
This was an unexpected victory, why? Because it came directly from the hand of God. When you're weak enough - this is the message now - when you're weak enough and low enough, God's power will come upon you and demonstrate what He can do! Then fourthly, another character is Jael. I've called her 'the undercover agent' in this drama. She is the wife of Heber, and Heber the Kenite was a neighbour who was at peace with Jabin. He was at peace with him, he was quite happy to live in his kingdom boundaries, and so he was sort of in cahoots with him. But we find that as Sisera runs from Barak and his armies, that he seeks refuge in the tent of Jael. As he goes into that tent she gives him food, she gives him lodging, and while he sleeps, what does Jael do? What a hostess! The hostess with the mostess - she takes a hammer, she takes a tent peg, and she hammers it into his temple! It says she actually hammered his head to the ground!
Then as Barak passes by, she goes out, calls him in - 'Is that the boy you're looking for?'. She was fulfilling verse 9, you remember Deborah said to Barak that Israel would be delivered from Sisera by the hand of a woman - it wasn't Deborah, it was Jael. God used Deborah, who's a mere 'honey bee', to cast down the human reason and the kingdom of the flesh in Jabin when it exalted itself against the knowledge of God. The judgment came upon him, 'Barak' means 'lightning', the judgment of God came upon Sisera and his troops. Here is Jael, which means 'climber' and she uses a tent peg - which is a witness to the fact that she was a nomad, because the women pitched the tents in those days, the good old days! - and she uses this tent peg and this hammer to slay God's enemy.
Does Paul not say in 2 Corinthians that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual to the pulling down of strongholds - mighty through God, casting down imaginations, every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Now, how do you view Jael? This is a difficult book, Judges, isn't it? It's not the kind of book that you read as a scriptural reading when you're going to preach on the Sermon on the Mount, to love your neighbour, and love your enemy, and turn the other cheek. Would you bless Jael, or would you blame her for what she did? Imagine this: she invited Sisera into her tent, she welcomed him, she treated him kindly, she told him not to be afraid. So ultimately she was deceitful. The Kenites were at peace, as I've already said, with Jabin - so was her husband Heber - and so she violated a treaty and an agreement with the people. She gives Sisera the impression that she would guard the door and keep him safe, and she broke a promise therefore. Then she kills a defenceless man under protection - we would say that makes her a murderess. Yet Deborah sang in her song in chapter 5 verse 24, look at it: 'Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber the Kenite be, blessed shall she be above women in the tent'. The only other woman that that is said of in the holy Scriptures is the Lord Jesus Christ's mother.
What's the point? Well, let's not read back into an era of the Judges spiritual standards that are taught by the Lord Jesus or by the apostles, and let's keep in mind as I said last week that this was a time of oppression. If you look at verse 30 of chapter 5: 'Have they not sped?', this is the troops of Sisera, 'Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two' - what does that mean? Ultimately, if this evil man Jabin and his captain Sisera had overcome the people of Israel, he would have led the daughters of Israel away, and ultimately raped and pillaged the nation. These were wicked men, these were oppressors, these were the vilest most brutal creatures on the earth. But the fact of the matter is, no matter how terrible the bondage was, Deborah was God's deliverer, chosen of God - and His ways are not our ways, and His thoughts not our thoughts.
I'm going to leave with you finally the chorus that we find in Deborah's victory song in chapter 5. It does three things for us that bring this drama into focus and put it into context, which is almost synonymous with the context of our day and age in which we live. First of all we see from her victory song the details of the desperate days in which they live. Chapter 5 and verse 8, look at it: 'They chose new gods'. Spiritually they chose new gods, they rejected Yahweh the God of Israel, the covenant God; and they chose Baal and Ashteroth the Canaanite gods. That is what is happening today in our age. People in Ulster and the United Kingdom are rejecting their heritage. I watched 'Question Time' on Thursday evening, there was a man on it from 'Christian Voice' - and whilst I might question some of the things that they have done, the fact of the matter is everyone...it was almost like a setup, an ambush, everyone just came upon him to reject his Christian views! That is the world we're living in. One lesbian even said: 'Your God who you claim has created the world', and put at His feet guilt for some of the things that are going on in our universe. This nation has chosen other gods, but make sure that we don't: materialism, sectarianism, factionalism - we could go on and on and on...comfort.
Not only spiritually were they desperate days, they were socially desperate days. In verse 6 we read: 'In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways'. Do you know what that means? You couldn't go out at night. You couldn't walk along the highways, the main roads were empty - does that sound familiar? Wasn't so long ago that our main roads were empty, but for a lot of thugs. People had to go round the byways, they had to go the back roads. In verse 7: 'The inhabitants of the villages ceased', the people who lived in villages had to leave their homes and move into the cities. In verse 8, even the cities were not safe, there was war at the gates and the people were disarmed. The city under siege, yet the people weren't equipped - verse 8 says there wasn't 'a shield or spear seen among forty thousand in Israel?'. They felt inhibited. What a day!
In that day, Deborah and her song denounces those who stood away from the work. Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh were those who came to help, but Deborah - and God's Spirit records for us perpetually those who did not help - she said: 'Reuben, he stayed behind in the sheep folds looking after his own interests in comfort and affluence. Gad, did not cross the Jordan, he was so lazy, so pampered, he didn't want to get up and fight. Dan remained in the ships. Asher sat idly at the seashore having his holiday!'. God still notes those who fight in His battle, and those who stand by and spectate. Zebulun and Naphtali were outstanding, so much so that Deborah says they didn't go for any spoils in the battle, in other words they fought without being paid. Meroz is cursed in verses 23 to 27, singled out for failing to come to Jehovah's help.
Here's the third thing that I want you to notice and finish on: the details of the desperate day that denounces those who stood away from the work, but the delight in God's deliverance. There's a holy sarcasm - you didn't know that existed, perhaps - in chapter 5 in verses 28-31. 'The mother of Sisera', Deborah says, 'looked out at a window, and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? why tarry the wheels of his chariots? Her wise ladies answered her, yea, she returned answer to herself, Have they not sped? have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two; to Sisera a prey of divers colors, a prey of divers colors of needlework, of divers colors of needlework on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil?'. She envisages Sisera's mother standing at the window looking for him coming back, 'Where is he?' - but he's not coming, because he's got a tent peg in his head! God delivered the people, and the message is that Deborah delighted in God's salvation. That's why they can rejoice about such a horrific scene and drama, because it came from the hand of God - delighting so much that verse 31 says: 'So let all thine enemies perish, O LORD: but let them that love him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. And the land had rest forty years'.
I think you'll agree she was an exceptional Judge, wasn't she? But may God give us, in such desperate days when so many are standing away from the work of God, delight in a new deliverance from His holy hand.
Father, we give thanks this morning for our great Deliverer, the Captain of our salvation, the Captain of the Lord of hosts, our Lord Jesus. We pray, we hope from hearts truly repentant and filled with faith, that You will come and deliver us again in the desperate dark days in which we live, both in state and church. Oh God, may every man put his hand to the work, and every woman. May we know what it is to delight again in the deliverance of our God. Hear us we pray, and bless us as we wait in this place upon our God. Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 6
"Gideon, The Fearful"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Judges chapter 6 is where we take our reading from, Judges 6, and this morning we're beginning to look at the character of Gideon - the fifth Judge. We'll spend a number of weeks looking at Gideon, for he's such a substantial character among all the Judges, but this morning our title will be 'Gideon, The Fearful'.
Verse 1 of chapter 6: "And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made them the dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds. And so it was, when Israel had sown, that the Midianites came up, and the Amalekites, and the children of the east, even they came up against them; And they encamped against them, and destroyed the increase of the earth, till thou come unto Gaza, and left no sustenance for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor ass. For they came up with their cattle and their tents, and they came as grasshoppers for multitude; for both they and their camels were without number: and they entered into the land to destroy it. And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD. And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD because of the Midianites, That the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land; And I said unto you, I am the LORD your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice. And there came an angel of the LORD, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him, and said unto him, The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valor. And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? And he said unto him, Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man. And he said unto him, If now I have found grace in thy sight, then show me a sign that thou talkest with me. Depart not hence, I pray thee, until I come unto thee, and bring forth my present, and set it before thee. And he said, I will tarry until thou come again. And Gideon went in, and made ready a kid, and unleavened cakes of an ephah of flour: the flesh he put in a basket, and he put the broth in a pot, and brought it out unto him under the oak, and presented it. And the angel of God said unto him, Take the flesh and the unleavened cakes, and lay them upon this rock, and pour out the broth. And he did so. Then the angel of the LORD put forth the end of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the flesh and the unleavened cakes; and there rose up fire out of the rock, and consumed the flesh and the unleavened cakes. Then the angel of the LORD departed out of his sight. And when Gideon perceived that he was an angel of the LORD, Gideon said, Alas, O LORD God! for because I have seen an angel of the LORD face to face. And the LORD said unto him, Peace be unto thee; fear not: thou shalt not die. Then Gideon built an altar there unto the LORD, and called it Jehovahshalom: unto this day it is yet in Ophrah of the Abiezrites" - verse 24 will be our final verse.
'Gideon, The Fearful' - Warren Wiersbe says Gideon started his career as somewhat of a coward. In chapter 6 that we've read, we find that of him: he was a fearful man. Then in chapter 7, through most of chapter 8, we find that he turned into a conqueror, one who God uses after breaking him and melting him, moulding him and filling him. But sadly as we'll see in chapter 8, the remainder of it, he also became and ended his days as a compromiser. A man who was a coward, then a conqueror, and then ended his days, some would say, as a compromiser. There's more space devoted to the Judge Gideon, 100 verses or so, in the book of Judges than to any other Judge. We're going to follow his progress this morning and in subsequent weeks in the will of the Lord.
What I want you to see first and foremost, as we have learned from each of these Judge characters, is the condition that was recurrent in the nation. We find that outlined for us in the first two verses of chapter 6, and really again it is a reciprocation of the pattern that we saw in chapter 2 and verses 11 through to 19, another cycle of backsliding among God's people. 'They did evil', verse 1 says, 'in the sight of Jehovah: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years. And Midian prevailed against Israel: and because of the Midianites the children of Israel made dens which are in the mountains, and caves, and strong holds'. You would be forgiven, I'm sure, for asking the question: when are these Israelites going to learn the lesson? This is the fourth time they have fallen into the same trap. After Deborah and Barak, and after the great song that we read in chapter 5, they have been emancipated from their enemies. God has had mercy on them and heard their cry, and delivered them. But now again they fall into the same recurrent condition of backsliding, they fall into the same sin that was their besetting sin in the beginning: they did evil in the sight of the Lord - and often that is just a synonym, another phrase, for 'they followed Baal and Asherah' those wicked immoral gods and goddesses.
You see, sin is not a privilege to the child of God. That's what God, through His Spirit is communicating to us through the Judges. Of course, it's not a privilege to anybody, sin is more like a poison, but we seem to think at times, even as believers, that we are missing out if we don't partake of certain things that are found in the world. The Israelites could learn a lesson, God was trying to discipline them as sons and daughters in the covenant: 'Sin will harm you, it'll take you further than you want to go, and rob you of the blessings that I have promised you'. Through discipline He wants them to learn: 'Ye are bought with a price, ye are not your own. Glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's'. Of course, we know that whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. Here we find again He has to discipline His people.
This time the cane of discipline that He uses are the Midianites, and they were simply a Bedouin tribe of marauders from the north-west part of Arabia. They dwelt in tents, and they rode upon camels, hence some of the verses that we read this morning. They were also the people that sold Joseph into slavery, they had been the arch enemies and previous historical enemies of the children of God. But we see here that they are prevailing over God's people, look at this phrase, don't miss it: 'The hand of Midian prevailed'. Now here is a lesson, if ever there was one for every child of God in this place today: the enemy always prevails when you give in to sin. The enemy will have you cowering if you give him a foothold in your life.
Here you have the people of God, look at verse 2: they're making dens in the mountains, they're hiding, cowering in fear from these Midianite oppressors. The hand of Midian is prevailing against them - it's a pathetic picture for us, isn't it? When we consider, if we look back at chapter 4 and verse 24, we read there: 'And the hand of the children of Israel prospered, and prevailed against Jabin the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed Jabin king of Canaan'. So they have come from the position of spiritual victory, where their hand was prevailing over their oppressors, to actually have the hand of their oppressors upon them and crushing them - what a lesson! I wonder am I speaking to someone here this morning, and you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're a child of God, but at this present vantage point in your Christian experience you are overcome by the enemy. The hand of Satan, whether through the world, through the flesh, or through his own minions, is prevailing over you, is oppressing you - you're overcome!
Three very practical lessons, that I have learned through studying the condition that was recurrent in the nation here again, I want to leave with you. The first is this: how the Lord has to withhold blessings from us at times to get us to see our great need of Him. The Lord was disciplining His people, the Lord was withholding blessing so that the people would come and ask for it, because there was a stage at which they didn't even think they needed it - they were rich, they were increased in goods, they were floating along on the winds and waves of previous experience and triumphs. But God had to take away from them spiritual victory to make them realise that they still needed to rely on Him.
The second lesson I have learned is similarly from our perspective, how it is only in times of difficulty - whether they be temporal or spiritual - that we seem to cry for God's aid. Isn't it? God often has to bring us into a predicament, has to corner us in some difficulty until we start to seek Him early, and then find Him. Then the third lesson I have learned is that even when we do seek Him at times, often it can be shallow, it can be superficial. That's what we find in the life of Israel here in the Judges, that's the way their repentance was. It wasn't a true, deep, meaningful repentance; because each time they went back to their sin. We must always beware of such decisions and commitments that are only superficial and shallow.
Now you might be sitting here and thinking: 'Well, I'm being overcome by the devil and by sin and by evil in this world, how do I know whether or not my initial repentance was superficial and shallow?'. Here's the easy answer: are you finding yourself, at this moment, in the vicious cycle that the Israelites found themselves in? They're now in the fourth cycle of sin, sorrow, in crying out to God for repentance and mercy, they are restored, and lo and behold they're back like a pig wallowing in the mire, they're like a dog going back to their own vomit. Second Corinthians 7 verse 10 teaches us that godly sorrow that works repentance is not to be repented of. If you have known true salvation, your repentance will be such that you will have a deep sorrow for your sin that has led you to full restoration - I'm not saying you can never be backslidden, of course you can, but there's something wrong if you're continually falling, getting up again, falling, getting up again, and never ever experiencing true victory in the life of faith.
The condition that was recurrent, is it recurrent in your life? I call it 'roller coaster Christianity'. Someone else has said it's the 'Grand Old Duke of York' spirituality - when you're up, you're up, and when you're down, you're down, and when you're only halfway up, you're neither up nor down. You don't know where you are this morning, sometimes you're on the peak of your roller coaster, other times you're in the depths of the valley. I tell you today, from the heart of God, because it's the spirit, I believe, of this book of Judges: God needs more than that from you! But on a note of encouragement: you can expect more than that from the Christian life - and marrying those two statements together, God has promised you more in Christ! But yet, this is the condition that is recurrent in your life as well as the Israelites, and I have to warn you: if you never ever rise above this recurrent condition, you will experience the enemy's oppression and the result of it as they did.
What was that? Well, it was a harvest that was condemned, in verses 3 to 6 we read of this. Some of you - I dare not say 'grumpy old men' - but some of you, when you get your daffodils pulled out of your garden, well, you feel it, don't you? You don't like when the vandals come along, and the teenagers, and start to mess up your handiwork. Well, that's correct, but that's not your livelihood - you're not relying on your little patch in the front garden to feed on and to keep you alive. These Israelites were, and here these Midianites were coming, this Bedouin tribe in their tents, and waiting until the Israelites were asleep or preoccupied, and then they would come in and wreck their livestock and their agriculture. They would take their camels and ride over all their produce and fields of crops. There they are, continually out on the periphery of God's people, trying to intimidate them, demoralising them. How do you think they felt, when they have waited all to harvest, and then the crop is flattened by mere vandalism and terrorism?
You see, what the Midianites wanted to do, and I want you to note this please because there's a spiritual principle behind it, they wanted to take the ground from under the feet of the people of God that God had given them. They wanted the land back. God had given them the land, promised them the land, but the enemy wanted to pull it from beneath their feet - and that is always the enemy's tactic. We, as the New Testament people of God, are not living in a particular land that God has given us, but we have the promises, the spiritual promises, that we read of in Ephesians in chapter 1, in heavenly places in Christ. We read in Ephesians chapter 6 that we're in a battle, not to get the victory, we have the victory in Christ, and He has put us on the victory ground through His cross work and His resurrection - but it is the devil's ploy and scheme to push us off the ground and make us think we're losers.
That is what the Midianites were trying to do: 'They came', it says, look at that, 'as grasshoppers', verse five, 'for multitude'. Children of God today are facing a multitude of locusts that are ready to eat their harvest of spiritual fruit. As Martin Luther could say in those early days of Reformation, and it's still applicable to us:
'Still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great
And armed with cruel hate
None else on earth is his equal'.
Now what I want you to notice is that often the Lord allows the enemy to overcome His people when they're in sin to discipline them. That's what happened Job, now he wasn't in sin as such, but the reason why all that came upon him did come upon him was that he might be purged, that he may be brought nearer to God and see God more clearly. But there are times when God allows us to be disciplined because there is sin in our lives.
Turn with me for a moment to Haggai, if you can find it, and chapter 1. Haggai chapter 1 - if you find Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, after Haggai, Zechariah - it has fourteen chapters, so it's an easy one to find, and then before it Haggai chapter 1. Here's an account of just this, God disciplining His people because of their sin, verse 3: 'Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled', your fancy, luxurious, 'houses, and this house', God's house, His temple, 'lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. Ye looked for much, and, lo it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands'.
Now this is a principle, we're all very familiar with the principle of 'You reap what you sow' - but here is a principle that says: there are some times that you don't reap what you have sown. There are times when you sow, and you reap nothing, it comes to nothing. You say: 'How can that be, and why would that ever be?' - if the seed that you sow is contaminated by sin! I'm not going to spend too much time going into this, but this is a spiritual law of discipline: God can cut holes in your pockets so that the more you put in, the more falls out. God can blow upon your riches, God can give you the opposite to the Midas touch, and everything you touch breaks or rots or is destroyed. Now we do not live by the natural laws of the land of Israel that the Old Testament saints were under, but this same spiritual law applies to us in a spiritual sense. Amos chapter 8 and verse 11 said: 'Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Jehovah'.
There is nothing new under the sun, and God still disciplines His people for disobedience. 'How does He do it?', you say, 'Does He still withhold harvests?'. Well, I don't know if He withholds physical harvests or not, but I'm almost certain that He does withhold spiritual ones. I ask you: what other explanation can there be, if the Lord Jesus said in John 4 and Matthew 9: 'The fields - look up! - they're white unto harvest. They're ready to be reaped', and yet if a harvest is withheld and there's so little fruitfulness, what other explanation can there be other than that there is a transgression of this spiritual law of discipline in sowing. Though we sow and sow and sow, God can blow upon it, God can cut holes in our spiritual pockets so that it all vanishes away. As the hymn writer put it, you cannot be channels of blessing if your life is not free from all sin - that's it!
Now we see that when God's people cried out for mercy and help, God on this occasion did not immediately deliver them as He had in the past. He sends a prophet, and the prophet brings an indictment to them in verses 7 and 10, and he leaves them hanging at the end of the message, he doesn't give them any hope at all really. He just tells them that they have not obeyed God's will. But what he does do, and I want you to notice this, he reminds them of God's past deliverance of His people. 'Remember Egypt, remember how God delivered you out of Egypt, gave you all the covenant blessings. He drove out your oppressors from before you', and the implication that the prophet is bringing to the people is: is your God not this God, can your God not do the same? 'This is the point that you're missing, your God is the same, but', mark these words, 'ye have not obeyed My voice'. Do you see that in verse 10?
God hasn't changed. I wonder is this a personal word to someone here in our meeting this morning. Maybe you're asking the question that Gideon asked, and we'll get to him in a minute in verse 13: 'Why then is all this befallen me? Why am I undergoing this discipline? Why is there a spiritual harvest in my life that seems to be condemned, and what I try to do for God fails continually, and I feel so impotent in a spiritual sense?'. Could it be that God is withholding the blessings from you, in order that you might see that there's something in your life where you are not obeying His voice?
Well, for Gideon, there was a crisis as God's word and God's ways seem to clash. I'm not suggesting there was sin in his life, but in a sense there was because we find here that Gideon is an extremely fearful man. Like the nation, he almost typifies it, for in verse 11 he's hiding, cowering behind the winepress threshing wheat. Now normally wheat would have been threshed out in the open air in order to blow away the chaff, but here he is hiding because of the Midianites. Basically what this is communicating is that he's just eking out a living, he has an impoverished existence. Does that not speak to us, as believers today, when we think of the great wealth that we have in Christ in heavenly places, the victory that we're meant to enjoy as Christians - yet so many believers are just existing, they're just saved and stuck, they're ticking over!
Well, the Lord comes to such mouse of a man as Gideon, and He says - and this is remarkable in verse 12: 'The LORD is with thee, thou mighty man of valor'. Now, that was too rich for Gideon, even if it was from an angel - because the implication of what he says in verse 13 is: 'Well, if I'm such a mighty man then, and if God is with us the way you say He's with us, why? Why is the land in the condition that it is? Why is our harvest condemned?'. In the psyche of Gideon there is a clash, a crisis, as God's word seems to clash with His ways.
How many times do we ask the question: 'Why?'. Personally, and as the church, and as a body of God's people in this land, we ask: 'Why? If God is with us, if God is blessing us, if all these words are true in this book, why? Why does this happen? Why does this not happen?'. Usually the reason why we ask 'Why?' is because we walk by sight and not by faith. Now what am I talking about? Well, turn with me for a moment to 2 Kings 6 to give you an illustration of this. Second Kings chapter 6, and here you have the servant of Elisha who sees God's enemies surrounding the nation, the Syrians. In chapter 6 of 2 Kings, verse 15: 'The servant of Elisha was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do? And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha'.
A little girl on one occasion was listening to the great stories of the Bible that her mother told her about Moses, and Joshua, and Samson, and Daniel. Finally she ended by saying: 'Mummy, God was much more exciting back then'. Is that how we feel at times? Gideon said: 'Where is the God that our fathers told us of?'. Is He really around today in the 21st-century post-modernist society? We ask: 'Why does this happen to me personally if God is in my life? Why is there a lack of blessing as it used to be in the church?'. Maybe our question progresses, as it did for Gideon, to say: 'Where are the miracles of our fathers? Did not God, our God, bring up Israel from Egypt?'.
Now, there are such pious pukes about who would come and censure Gideon for saying such things. You get them sometimes in prayer meetings, when you start to get real with God they come around and say to you: 'Now, you shouldn't really say that, you know'. I know that we ought not to get familiar with God in our address to Him, but Gideon is not talking from the vantage point of doubt here - he's not doubting God or testing God. This is not over-familiarity, he's not dictating to God as the Almighty, but he's standing on the vantage point of faith and he wants to prove God, he wants to know that God's promises are true. This is the point of this passage, I believe, God loves to show Himself true to His promises! He loves to show Himself as faithful to answer prayer that is prayed on the foundation of His word.
The old saints of God used to call this 'holy argumentation'. If you bought off the book stall at the week of prayer Spurgeon's little book of sermons on prayer, I think it's called 'Praying Effectively' or something like that, 'Effective Prayer' [See Appendix] - he has a sermon in it on Job 23 verses 3-4 where Job says: 'Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! I would order my cause before him, and fill my mouth with arguments'. Talking about how we bring the promises of God and plead them before God. How do you interpret a verse like Isaiah 45:11, God says to His people: 'Concerning the work of my hands command ye me'. Staggering, isn't it? It's not presumption, now, we want to be careful of that, but God is saying: 'I have put myself at your disposal through the exceeding great and precious promises in Christ'. Gone are the days, it would seem, when the violent storm the heavens to take blessings from God with forceful faith and righteous argument. Not because God is reluctant to give us the blessings, but God is trying to teach us, God is wanting to bring us into His school. He wants us to reason with Him, that He might bless us.
Now let me ask you: have you ever been in a situation where God has made the heavens brass, where He has made the earth barren and dry? Do you know what He is doing? He's wanting to bring you into a place where you don't just call in desperation upon God as a last resort, that's not what we're talking about, but you're calling upon God in faith as your only hope - that's different. Is He pushing you into a corner to challenge Him according to His words? Oh, some of the accounts of revival are staggering. One young man in Lewis, when he was praying, prayed like this: 'Lord, Your honour is at stake'. A wee woman that met Duncan Campbell, along with her sister had been praying for a revival on that island, was praying to God and was heard to say: 'Lord, if You don't do this upon Your promise, I don't think I could ever trust You again' - upon the promise! She wasn't asking God to do something He didn't say He would do. Faith that is prepared to either break down or breakthrough is what God wants! Like Rachel, to come, because she had a promise that she would have children, and say 'Give me children or I die!'. That's what we're talking about.
Well, God told them that the commission from Him remains the same. Whether the condition of the nation was recurrent, and the harvest was condemned, and there was a crisis in his mind because God's word and God's ways seemed to clash, God told him: 'The commission from me remains the same'. Verses 14 and 16, and I would urge you to study this portion in comparison and parallel with Moses' call - it's almost identical, and the excuses that Moses and Gideon give also. But this is the pre-incarnate Christ, this is the Angel of Jehovah - look how Gideon addresses Him in verses 13, 15 and 22, he calls him 'the Lord', and He speaks as the Lord. Here he is before the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus tells him four things: 'Go in this thy might'. Two: 'And thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites'. Three: 'Have not I sent thee?'. Four: 'Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man'. What promises! If Gideon could only embrace them, those promises would equip him for everything that lay ahead.
But Gideon wanted a confirmation that the Lord was still with His people. In verses 17 to 24 he got it, he got this offering and made it for the Lord Jesus in pre-incarnate form. He brought it to Him, and in verse 21 we read that fire came out of the offering, out of the rock beneath it, and this supernatural sign of fire consumed Gideon's offering to show that it was accepted with God. But what it did to Gideon was, it filled him with awe and fear, because what God was saying was: 'Thou shalt see now whether My word shall come to pass unto thee' - I'm confirming it for you! That's not a sin, by the way, we need to believe God's word, but sometimes in His grace He confirms it for us.
Let's finish on this note: the crux of Gideon's problem. You find it in verse 11, verse 13, verse 15, verse 17, verse 22-24 - what is it? He's fearful! A prophet's sent to the people, he still fears. The Lord Jesus Christ as the Angel of Jehovah appeared before him, He shows him a supernatural sign of confirmation that God is still with him and his people, yet he's still fearful. If Gideon had a besetting sin, it was fear. Is that your besetting sin? Anxiety, worry, call it what you like, it's still fear - and how debilitating it is! The fear of man brings a snare, Proverbs 29 says, it's paralysing - it takes away spiritual, and even at times physical power. Yet look at Gideon, and we'll show his progression over these next weeks: look at the mighty warrior he became! Why? Because, in his weakness that he admitted, God's strength could be made perfect when he believed what God had said.
When I was reading and studying this, I asked the question: why does God describe Gideon as if he were the opposite of what he clearly was. Here he is, a mouse of a man, hiding in dens like the rest of the people behind the winepress. Why does He describe him as a mighty man of valour? Because God saw Gideon's potential if he embraced the divine power. Can I put it like this: God saw not just what Gideon was presently, He saw what he could be if he believed God. It's like a sculptor looking at a great clump of rock, he doesn't see it as an ugly piece of rock, he sees it as a piece of art once he's finished with it. Before God could do a work through Gideon, God had to do a work in Gideon - and it's the same with us, and when he came to the point of a sense of his own weakness and impotence, then he became a vessel meet for the Master's use.
One weak man with God became the majority. Oh, if there's a lesson in Judges it's this: to be confident of this very thing, that if we give our lives to Christ and acknowledge the weaknesses of them, He that has begun a good work will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. He gave him His peace: Jehovah - Yahweh - shalom, 'The LORD, my peace'. He spoke His peace into the fearful heart of Gideon, and that's what we need. Now here's the point, please don't miss it: God spoke to him, faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God, and in Hebrews 11 we read that he is in the hall of faith - a great man of faith, because faith comes by hearing, he believed what God said, and God gave him His peace and His strength.
Now can I leave you with this intrinsic thought: where did he get it? He got it in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the fire of God came upon him. That's the open secret - it's no secret at all. In the presence of Jesus, in a crisis of faith, he turned from the fearful to the faithful. That can happen to you too.
I read a story this week, listen to it, and I close with it. In May 1855, an 18-year-old boy went to the deacons of his church in Boston. He had been raised in a Unitarian Church, not believing in the supernatural deity of Christ, the resurrection, the blood and so on. In almost total ignorance of the gospel he came to them, but when he had moved to Boston to make his fortune, he began to attend a Bible-believing church. Then in April 1855 his Sunday School teacher had come into the shop were he was working, and simply and persuasively shared the gospel and urged the young man to trust in the Lord Jesus. He did, and now he was applying to join the church. One fact quickly became obvious: this young man was totally ignorant of Bible truth. One of the deacons asked him: 'Son, what has Christ done for us all, for you, which entitles Him to our love?'. His response was: 'I don't know. I think Christ has done a great deal for us, but I don't think of anything in particular as I know of'. Hardly an impressive start, you would say. Then years later a Sunday School teacher said of him: 'I can truly say that I have seen few persons whose minds were spiritually darker than was his when he came into my Sunday School class, and I think the committee of the church seldom met an applicant for membership who seemed more unlikely ever to become a Christian of clear and decided views of the gospel truth, still less to fill any place of public or extended usefulness'. Nothing happened very quickly, as you can imagine, to change their minds; and the deacons decided to put him off for a year of long instruction to teach him the basic Christian truths. Perhaps they wanted to work on some of his other rough spots as well. But not only was he ignorant of spiritual truths, he had trouble reading, writing, and his spoken grammar was atrocious. The year did not help very much, but since it was obvious that he was a sincere soul, they accepted him into the church membership. 'Over the next years, I'm sure', the writer says, 'that many people looked at that young man convinced that God could never use a person like that' - if they did, they had written off Dwight Lyman Moody.
God used him, because there are no lost causes with God. God's grace and God's love to Moody transformed him into the one of the most effective and significant servants of God in church history, a man whose impact is still with us today. This is the spiritual truth of Gideon and all the Judges: He does not see us just for what we are, but for what we can be if we believe Him and allow Him to work in our lives.
'The Midianite is in the land,
Bleak devastation reigns.
Charred fields and looted granaries
Give witness to their gains.
A lonely figure threshes there
'Neath Ophrah's grizzled tree,
Then stunned, he looks
To find himself in regal company.
The Angel of the Lord, no less,
Now graces Gideons view.
'I've come to vanquish all your foes,
My weapon will be you!'
My Lord, what instruments have I
To drive the tyrant hence?
Just two, but all sufficient they -
FAITH and OBEDIENCE'.
Our brother George Bates, a couple of weeks ago, said during his preaching: 'If you fear God, you'll fear nothing or no one else'. That's the message in summary this morning: what are you fearing, what sin is in your life that you won't let go of? Maybe God has called you to the mission field to be an evangelist, to be a pastor or teacher, but you haven't answered His call, you've not obeyed His voice. Maybe it's something very very simple, and God has withheld His spiritual harvest because of it. Trust God, believe His word, leave your sin and embrace the Angel of Jehovah, the Lord Jesus.
Father, help us all to be at His feet, like Gideon, humble, saying 'I am the least'. May we, like the Baptist, decrease ourselves, deflate our egos, that we may uplift Christ. Let us always know that we have the Saviour with us, for then we can go without any fear as we follow in His footsteps. Oh, to know 'I am with thee always, even unto the end of the world. Go and make disciples'. Thank You for Your word, and may it find a resting place in all our hearts, for Christ's sake, Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - October 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 7
"Gideon, The Faithful"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now we're turning in our Bibles to the book of Judges chapter 6 for our reading. You remember - maybe you don't remember! - it was about three weeks ago when we last looked at Gideon, but the last title we had was 'Gideon, the Fearful'. We looked at verses 1 to 24, and how God encountered Gideon and called him to be the Judge and deliverer of God's people against the Midianites. This morning we're going to look at Gideon, this time under the title 'Gideon the Faithful', and our reading will comprise of verses 25 through to verse 35.
So let's begin at verse 25: "And it came to pass the same night", that was the night in which Gideon encountered the angel of the Lord, and we'll recap a little bit over that previous experience, but that same night "the LORD said unto him, Take thy father's young bullock, even the second bullock of seven years old, and throw down the altar of Baal that thy father hath, and cut down the grove that is by it: And build an altar unto the LORD thy God upon the top of this rock, in the ordered place, and take the second bullock, and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the grove which thou shalt cut down. Then Gideon took ten men of his servants, and did as the LORD had said unto him: and so it was, because he feared his father's household, and the men of the city, that he could not do it by day, that he did it by night. And when the men of the city arose early in the morning, behold, the altar of Baal was cast down, and the grove was cut down that was by it, and the second bullock was offered upon the altar that was built. And they said one to another, Who hath done this thing? And when they inquired and asked, they said, Gideon the son of Joash hath done this thing. Then the men of the city said unto Joash, Bring out thy son, that he may die: because he hath cast down the altar of Baal, and because he hath cut down the grove that was by it. And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save him? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death whilst it is yet morning: if he be a god, let him plead for himself, because one hath cast down his altar. Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal plead against him, because he hath thrown down his altar. Then all the Midianites and the Amalekites and the children of the east were gathered together, and went over, and pitched in the valley of Jezreel. But the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet; and Abiezer was gathered after him. And he sent messengers throughout all Manasseh; who also was gathered after him: and he sent messengers unto Asher, and unto Zebulun, and unto Naphtali; and they came up to meet them".
Now we began reading at verse 25 about this night, and you remember what happened during this night, comprised and recorded for us in verses 1 to 24. We're confronted in verses 1 and 2 with the condition that was recurrent in the nation again, the nation had fallen into sin - and as it is put so graphically for us in verse 1 and right throughout the book, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. That is really a phrase that encompasses Baal worship, they started to worship the false god Baal and turned their back on their covenant God Jehovah. So this was a recurring problem, again and again and again, after each Judge who was raised to deliver them died, the people went back to their old sin of Baal worship. But we see specifically here in verses 3 to 6 that the harvest was condemned as a judgment upon the people for their backsliding on this occasion, and we saw, taking spiritual lessons, how our spiritual harvest can be also condemned and affected when we dabble in sin.
Then we saw in verses 12 to 13 and verse 15 that Gideon personally experienced a crisis, because as far as he was concerned it seemed that God's word, what it was saying, and God's ways, how God was leading His people in providence, were clashing, they were contradicting one another. Now the obvious reason for that was because of their sin, and God wanted them to see their sin. But God also wanted to bring them to the knowledge of who He is in His promises, and what He had done for the people in the past. Then we see that in verse 14 and verse 16 God again commissions Gideon with the promises that He is still the same God as He has always been, and as He was with Gideon's fathers, He would be with him and the people if they followed Him once again.
Then we saw a sign in verses 17 to 24, God confirmed that He was still with the people in a miraculous way, and the fire came out of the rock whilst the Angel, or the Lord Jesus Christ, the Angel of Jehovah was with Gideon. We saw also the crux of Gideon's problem in verse 11, verse 13, verse 15, verse 17, verse 22, verse 24 - his problem was fear. The Lord Jesus Christ, as the Angel of Jehovah, was confronting Gideon with his problem, and trying to get him to the place where he could overcome it and be the Judge of God's people.
Can I ask you this morning: have you ever had a crisis experience in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ the way that Gideon had? Have you? I'm not talking about salvation, although it may happen at the same time as conversion, but I believe all of us need to get to a place, even after conversion, where we have a crisis experience where God's call comes to us - because we're continually like the Israelites, in a condition of recurrent falling into sin. OK, I know you repent when you're converted at first, but the Lord Jesus Christ has taught us that we need to continually repent, and there comes a time in our lives when we have ceased to repent for so long, and sin has built such a wall between the fellowship that we ought to have in our souls with God our Father that there needs to come a crisis, where God needs to call us again to consecration, to commitment to Himself.
As this happened in Gideon's life he was given at this crisis time not only a call to consecration and commitment, but a command. God's command was that he had to comply with God's Word. In other words, at this crisis experience that Gideon had in the presence of Christ, where God called upon him to commit himself again, to consecrate him to His service, He commanded him to obey. Please do not miss that, because the theme of all that we will study this morning is the ramification and the results of obedience to God in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Christian's duty to obey God's word.
So we're looking at how Gideon was faithful in this particular regard. Let me leave four points with you this morning. The first is: obedience to Christ for Gideon, and indeed to us, meant entire consecration. Obedience meant entire consecration. We find this in verses 25 to 27. In verse 25 we read: 'The same night', Gideon was called to destroy his own father's altar that his father had erected in their homestead to Baal. It was an ordinary altar, but in a sense it was very elaborate - much more elaborate than altars of Jehovah, the altars of Jehovah were very simple, yet the altars of Baal were quite elaborate, sometimes studded in stones and jewels. Beside the altar was a wooden image, and it was the Asherah pole. Now verse 26, where it mentions a grove, is speaking of this altar to Baal. Some translations translate the actual image beside it as 'Asherah pole', so these were places of worship that represented Baal and his wife god 'Asherah'. The practice of the worship of these two gods we've looked at and touched in a very superficial way because it's vile, and we wouldn't like to go into the details of it in a family service, but the fact of the matter is: the worship of these gods was such an extent of sexual immorality that this was the reason why God was disciplining and judging His people.
They did evil, as verse 1 of chapter 6 says, in the sight of the Lord. Indeed, archaeological excavations have discovered in Meggido, not far from Ophrah where Gideon lived, a 26 foot square, 4.5 foot high altar and monument unto Baal and Asherah made of stones and cemented by mud. So this was not some little grove that was above his fireplace that he bowed down to in his living room, this was something that was quite substantial and was probably outside in his garden or his yard, for want of a better phrase. God commanded Gideon - now I want you to gauge the ramifications of this - to go to his father's house and his father's grove, his father's altar unto the god Baal and Asherah, and destroy it! Now how would you feel if God commanded you to do a similar thing? Keeping in mind again that Gideon's besetting sin was, what? Fear! If Gideon was fearful at the best of times, how afraid must he have been to carry this out towards his own father's house? Proverbs 29 tells us that the fear of man brings a snare, but the fear of man - isn't it multiplied and amplified when it is the fear of men and women in our own family? You know and I know that it's hardest to be righteous, and take a godly stand, and even witness to those in our own family. To his credit, Gideon was faithful, he obeyed God.
Now let me say that when we come to the New Testament Scriptures, the child of God, the Christian, is called by God in a similar way. What am I talking about? Well, when you're converted, and you turn your attention to the things of God, often your experience has been that family and friends, and neighbours and work colleagues, don't understand. They may even oppose your new life, they may make it hard for you as a Christian. It would be no different than the Lord Jesus Christ, if that were the case, for we read in John chapter 7 verse 5: 'Neither did his own brothers believe in him'. Indeed, when we come to Luke's gospel, and we read in chapter 8 of Luke's gospel and verses 20 and 21: 'And it was told him', the Lord Jesus, 'by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it'. Then in Matthew's gospel chapter 19 and verse 29, we read there also that the Lord Jesus said: 'And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life'.
You see, commitment to Christ, we find, whatever age it may be in, often sets us at odds with the world and even with our family. We have to, at times, go against our family's wishes and break our family principles, or absent ourselves from certain family practices. Indeed, the Lord Jesus teaches further in Matthew's gospel chapter 10 on this regard, verse 34 He says: 'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it'.
You see, the Christian is called, like Gideon was called, to entire consecration even if it means going against those who are in our families, even the nearest and dearest to us in human terms. I wonder have you entirely consecrated yourself to God as a Christian? Or is there an area of your life, it may not be particularly this area of family and friends, but it may be another that I don't know of but God knows and you know - and you're holding it back from God. One writer has put it well regarding the story of the rich young ruler: 'Jesus did not hand the rich man a decision card and tell him to check the box beside 'Follow me', instead He exposed the moral man's transgression of the first commandment, and called on him to smash his idol, then he could follow Christ'.
God and Christ requires all men in every age to smash their idols. What is your idol? Now don't say: 'I don't have one', we've all got one! The question is not whether we have one, or maybe more than one, but what we have done with them - whether we have smashed them:
'The dearest idol I have known,
Whate'er that idol be,
Help me to take it from Thy throne.
And worship only Thee'.
Have you done this? Elijah said there can be no limping between two opinions, between God and Baal. This night, the same night, this altar in the heart of Gideon and his family was broken down - and how many rival altars to the altar of God in our hearts have been broken down in the dead of night when a saint of God has encountered the Saviour? Have you ever had a night in your life like this, whether it's on your own or it's with a group of God's people, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, just as Gideon experienced, touches the very thing that you don't want to let go of but is causing your lack of blessing. You see Gideon had to learn, and his family, and the nation, that the Lord's altar and Baal's altar could not stand side-by-side, for it was a direct contradiction of the first commandment: 'Thou shalt have no other gods before me', or, as some translations put it, 'beside me'.
Our nation needs to realise this. We have to say that we must welcome all peoples of all races and all creeds and cultures, and I believe we must defend the freedom for them to worship their god in their way, but we as a nation must maintain the heritage that we have and the church. We must realise that in a pluralistic society that God will not share His glory with another. Whilst our society may be a tolerant society, our God Jehovah is a jealous God. Israel had to realise that before any Judge could declare war on Midian, they had to declare war on Baal.
To Gideon's credit he was faithful, and in verse 27 we read that 'Gideon did as Yahweh', Jehovah, 'had commanded him'. Now some blame Gideon for demolishing Baal's altar by night, because he feared his relatives and the city fathers, but at least he obeyed God. He may have been fearful - but do you know what he did? There's a significance of it: Joash, his father, was obviously the local shrine keeper for Baal and Asherah worship, and he probably intended sacrificing this young bull. So you see the significance, even the irony and the humour of this in God's mind, that he is taking the young bull that would be sacrificed to Baal, and he is using that very bull to pull down the altar and the Asherah pole. This second bull was seven years old, the Bible tells us, and that is exactly the time that Midian reigned over Israel. So what God was communicating was 'This sacrifice of obedience to me is what will break the iron grip of oppression upon the people of God', and from that moment on the oppression of the Midianites went up in smoke just like the sacrifice.
My friend, I can't be more plain to you this morning: whatever that altar is upon the heart, whatever is taking the place of Christ in your life, whatever is going before God or beside God, whatever is preventing you from being entirely consecrated to the cause of Christ, it needs to be put on the altar, it needs to go up in smoke - and until you do that, you will not know victory in your life! It's as simple as that! Obedience meant entire consecration.
But obedience also meant secondly, we see from verses 28 to 30, enduring opposition. What a furore there was in the town! Alexander Whyte very perceptively remarks: 'The worshippers of Baal never neglected their morning devotions. 'Early will I seek thee', they could say to their god with truth and good conscience'. When they went for their early morning quiet time to the Baal shrine that particular morning, god was gone! Imagine in the market the traders of Ophrah, discussing with one another, the women at the well, the council elders: 'Did you hear what happened last night? Our monument, our sacred divine monument, desecrated! Lord Baal's altar! Asherah, our lady's icon has been wrecked, wait till we get our hands on the one who has done this! We must eradicate this religious fundamentalism from our midst!'. Isn't it mighty to see that, when even one man in a godless community starts to live for God with all that he has, it can shake that whole community for God?
You see it in the apostle Paul, in Acts chapter 19 people were getting converted, and they were leaving the worship of the goddess Diana, Diana of the Ephesians. There was a great riot that transpired in the city of Ephesus, because those tradesmen who were making the little icons and idols were losing out on money because people were turning to Christ, turning their back on their idols. What a lesson there is here, whether it's the Old or the New Testament, that when you touch people's idols they go mad! You can preach about a nice miracle man called Jesus and people will tolerate you for a while, but if you preach against sin, just like He did, they'll do what they did to Him. I'm telling you: you preach about alcohol, preach about porn, preach about adultery, preach about apostasy in the church, preach about idolatry and Roman Catholicism and other religions and other cults, and people will lynch you - and they'll queue up to do it, even in the church!
When someone starts to get serious about God, even in the church other people become uncomfortable - because what you're doing is you're disturbing their slumber and their sleep. Do you know what the problem is in the church today? Maybe it's not so much in this church, but in the church at large, particularly in the West, no one is against anything. Everyone is for everything, it seems, and because of that no man's hand is against us. But Paul told Timothy, a young pastor: 'Those that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution'. Inevitable was the fact that if Gideon was obedient, it would mean enduring opposition not only among his family, but among his friends and the people of the city. It was John Wesley that said: 'If you're on fire in the pulpit, men will come to see you burn'. He started to get worried when he wasn't getting bricked when he was preaching! Gone are those days.
Obedience also effected conversion. It meant entire consecration, it would lead to enduring opposition, but it also effected conversions - verses 31 to 33. In the morning, when the people got up and saw that their idol and altar was desecrated, the men of the city were ready to kill Gideon. Just like the wee fellow that breaks the window, you go round to the father's door - and all the people went round to Joash's door, and said: 'Where's your son?'. This wasn't going to be a reprimand, this was going to be a slaying, they were going to kill him! I want you to notice: whose altar was it that was desecrated? Joash's. Who was most likely in charge of that altar, as a representative of the religion in that town? Joash. When they come to Joash's door, Gideon's father, what does he say? 'If Baal is truly god, he should be able to defend himself'. Joash is basically saying that if he is divine and supernatural and all-powerful, let him sort my son out himself. He even went as far as to say that if anyone espouses Baal worship, he should be executed and not my son. From that day forth Gideon was nicknamed 'Jerubbaal', which means 'let Baal plead for himself'.
Now let me show you, before we look at Joash, Gideon's father's conversion, let me show you Gideon's conversion. You remember that his besetting sin was fear. Now listen: if your besetting sin is fear, anxiety and worry, you need to learn what Gideon learned. What was that? The effect of his obedience to God did not have the ramifications that he feared with the people of the town or with his own father. Tearing down the altar, he would have feared that his father would have turned against him. Tearing down the altar, he would have feared that the people would have turned against him - and although initially that may have been the case, we find that both father and people were converted.
What the lesson here? First of all, if you're worrying, half the things that you worry about - more than half, in fact nearly them all - never ever happen. Gideon learned that, but he also learned that the tables are turned when one man believes God, even when it's with imperfect faith. Do you remember the man whose daughter was ill, and he came to the Lord Jesus and said: 'I believe, help thou my unbelief'? Here's Gideon, wracked with fear, it's his besetting sin, and God comes and tells him to pull down the altar and the Asherah pole of his father, and he goes and does it by night. You might say: 'That's terrible Gideon, you're full of unbelief, going and doing that by night' - but don't miss this: he obeyed God! With the little faith he had, he obeyed God. What's the lesson here? It's simply the lesson that's right throughout the Bible: God honours even little faith, mustard seed faith. If you have faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you'll be able to move mountains, Jesus said. I think of that little woman who had that issue of blood for 12 years, and she hadn't even the guts to come to Jesus personally face-to-face and ask Him for help. So, what did she do in the crowd? She goes and touches the hem of His garment - did Jesus say, 'No, I'm not going to heal you'? It says in that very moment she was made whole. He did call her out, He did get her to confront her fear, but fear was not a grounds for Him refusing to heal her - was it? She had a lot to learn, and she had only little faith, but God honoured that faith. Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, but praise God: he came to Jesus!
Gideon was beginning to learn the power of faith in his walk, and from that small act of simple mustard seed faith, he was converted into a mighty man of faith that we read of in Hebrews chapter 11. He was converted, just like Jesus said to Peter: 'Peter, Satan has desire to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith fail not, and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren'. Gideon's act of timid obedience turned him into a mighty man of valour, one who is known as one of the greatest warriors that ever was. Now I'm saying to you this morning: you go to God with whatever you've got, whatever little faith or belief you have or conviction, take it to God, use it for God, and God will strengthen you. Paul could say to Timothy: 'Even when we believe not, he is faithful, for he cannot deny himself'. Gideon comes out of this whole escapade a hero, and in a fact what has happened is: he has been reborn, he's even given a new name - 'If Baal is god, let him defend himself!'. You'd hardly recognise Gideon.
Then we turn to the conversion of his father. His father, when they come to his door, says - if I can paraphrase it - 'He doesn't need any help from Ophrah's town council to maintain his honour. If Baal is a god, he should be perfectly able to zap my son himself'. It sounds a bit like Elijah when he was on the mount. Remember the prophets of Baal were there, and he challenges them, and when they come and make their sacrifice they begin to cry and wail, rip their clothes and cut their flesh. Do you remember what Elijah says? Can I paraphrase it for you, because the meaning isn't all clear in our English translation: 'About noontime Elijah began mocking them. He said: 'You'll have to shout louder', he scoffed, 'for surely he is a god''. The Hebrew rendering literally means this: 'Perhaps he is in deep thought, or he is relieving himself, or maybe he is away on a trip, or he is asleep and needs to be wakened' - do you see the scorn that the great prophet Elijah speaks to these prophets of Baal with? Then we read in 1 Kings chapter 18 that he lifts his eyes to God, and he says: 'LORD God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, Jehovah, he is the God; Jehovah, he is the God'.
'If Baal is god', Joash said, 'Let him be god'. I'll tell you, do you know what God's looking for in these days? He's not looking for wet blanket Christians. He's looking for men and women of faith, who will be willing to challenge the status quo of our pluralistic ecumenical age, and prove that God is the God who answereth by fire - not with a mouthful of verbose claims and evangelical cliches that mean nothing, but with a life that proves, that effects conversions.
Gideon's obedience effected conversions in his family in a way that he could never have imagined. Was it Gideon's personal stand that awakened a spiritual awareness in his father? Perhaps. Or maybe Joash was just longing for someone in his family to take the first step, he didn't have the courage to do it himself. But yet, when Gideon took that stand, God converted his father. Maybe there's someone here this morning and you're a wife of an unbeliever, or you're a husband of an unbeliever, can I encourage you from the words of 1 Corinthians 7 and verse 14 and 16? 'The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy', verse 16, 'For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?'. Save them by what? Your godly example.
What stand do you take in your family? What kind of husband are you, or wife are you, or father, or mother, or child? What example do you give to the rest? Do you know what the lesson was God was teaching Gideon here? He had to take his stand in the home before he could take his stand in the battlefield. Because he was obedient, he was converted, his father was converted, and thirdly we see that the people were converted - because we read in verse 33, if you look back at Judges chapter 6, that the people rallied round. The tribes round about came to the cause. Do you know how your stand can affect other people? It's hard to make that stand at times, especially when it's against your family, when it's against even perhaps the church system or trend that is happening, when it's against the spirit of the age - but don't underestimate the effect it can have!
Joash's words to the city men reminded me of something that happened in the life of John Knox, the great reformer in Scotland. In the year 1548 he was a prisoner on a French slave ship, he was chained to a rowing bench and lashed constantly by the guards. He was there because he preached the word of God, the gospel, and he opposed the Roman Catholic system which of course was the majority church of that particular day. One day a Lieutenant on the ship brought aboard a wooden image of the Virgin Mary and demanded that all the slaves kiss it. Of course, Knox refused to kiss it, and then it was pushed violently into his face. Do you know what Knox did? He grabbed it, he threw it overboard, shouting: 'Let Our Lady now save herself, she's light enough, let her learn to swim'. You might think that's ungracious, but the fact of the matter is: when Knox was not struck down by divine anger, two things happened. Never again from that event were believers required to engage in Roman Catholic exercises against their wishes, and the second thing that happened was: men started to look to John Knox as their leader, and eventually the Scottish Reformation was the result. Do not underestimate how your obedience can affect not only your own life, but your family and even a whole nation!
Fourthly and finally - we have seen that obedience to Christ meant entire consecration, enduring opposition, effecting conversion, and finally: experiencing unction - verses 32 to 35. 'Therefore on that day he called him Jerubbaal, saying, Let Baal plead for himself', and when we go down to verse 34, and after all the tribes came round, 'the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet'. When God calls us to do a specific job for Him, and when we move out in obedience to that call, you can be sure that God will equip you. God never calls us and then fails to equip us. Now 'Midian' means 'strife', and there was strife in the land, and Gideon has had this meeting with the Lord Jesus Christ in the middle of the night, he's had this struggle with his own fears, God has called him and commissioned him and asked him to consecrate himself to the cause. He has now commanded him, but you might say: 'What has changed the situation in the nation? What has turned the strife and sin into almost a reformation for God? The situation hasn't changed yet, what was it that changed it?'. What was the instrumental fact that made the great difference? Verse 34 is it: 'The Spirit of Jehovah, Yahweh, was put upon Gideon'.
Now the Authorised Version doesn't render this in its full extent, in fact very few translations do. Do you know what this literally says, verse 34 that's translated 'the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon'? It literally means, now please catch this: 'The Spirit of Yahweh put on Gideon' - the Spirit of God put on Gideon, or 'the Spirit of God clothed Himself with Gideon'. What was the secret? It's not by might, it's not by power, it's by my Spirit saith the Lord. The Spirit of God clothed Himself with Gideon, the word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament to describe a man putting on his clothes, or a warrior putting on a suit of armour. It's like putting on a glove! Could I translate it like this in a sort of paraphrase: 'The Spirit of the LORD put Gideon on like a glove'.
One of the professors at Dallas Theological Seminary, Howard Hendricks, years ago used to say to his students - I quote him: 'Men, every morning I pray, 'Lord, here am I. I want to be your suit of clothes today. I want You to take me and use me. Lord, just walk around in me today''. Obedience meant experiencing unction for Gideon, to the extent that the Spirit of God took him as a suit of clothing and lived in him.
There's one thing about a suit of clothes: it doesn't fight the wearer, sure it doesn't? You put it on and it should stay there. It submits to the human body, doesn't it? Wherever you go, whatever you do, your clothes move with you. That's the way we ought to be as believers, we ought to get to a place of consecration, no matter what the opposition may be. We need to get to a place of surrender, submission, that we're on our face before Christ the risen Lord, and we're willing to be His clothes in our world. The trouble is, we're not often a passive suit of clothes, we grieve the Spirit by our sinfulness, we quench the Spirit by our selfishness, and we're told that we need to continually be refilled by the Holy Spirit. Isn't that why Paul said in Ephesians chapter 5, speaking as it was almost of the days of the Judges you would think, but it was his day and it's our day: 'See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be continually filled with the Spirit'.
Are you filled with the Spirit? Maybe you don't even know how to answer that question, maybe you think that's a pentecostal or charismatic question - it's not. That's what makes the difference. When a group of British ministers were discussing the advisability of inviting D. L. Moody for a crusade in the mainland, one man asked: 'Why must it be Moody? Does D. L. Moody have a monopoly of the Holy Spirit?'. Quietly one of the other ministers replied: 'No, but it is evident that the Holy Spirit has a monopoly of D. L. Moody'. Does the Holy Spirit have a monopoly of you? Are you His glove? Do you realise that Baal must go before Midian can? If we're ever to have victory in our lives, in our church, in the nation: the personal altars in our hearts and our homes must fall. God's altar must be rebuilt, and God's altar cannot be built until Baal's altar is destroyed - because God will not share His glory with another, and the place we must begin is our own backyard. Entire consecration, obedience even if it means enduring opposition, but praise God: it will mean effecting conversions in our own lives, in our family, in our church and in our nation; and we will experience the unction of God in our lives in a way that we have never done - if, like Gideon, we are faithful.
'Trust and obey,
For there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus,
But to trust and obey'.
Let's all bow our heads. Now let me say this: most Christians, especially those who have been converted at an early age, find the need at some stage in their life to make a second, or a third, or fourth or more decision to re-consecrate their lives to the Lord. You're not superman or superwoman, and you need to repent of something in your life, don't you? You know what that idol is, and this morning I'm calling upon you, and God is calling upon you through this word, to cast down that altar, cast down every idol, and raise a monument in your life to the true and the living God.
Father, hear our prayer, glorify Your name. Oh, for the day when You'll be exalted again among all our people, for Christ's sake we pray, Amen.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word November 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 8
"Gideon And The Fleece"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Judges 6, and the title this morning - I keep forgetting to give it to these boys at the back, but they're very gracious and patient with me - 'Gideon and the Fleece'. The first study in Gideon, as we are going through a study in the Judges entitled 'Men for the Hour', the first study that we looked at in Gideon was 'Gideon, The Fearful', and then last week we looked at 'Gideon, The Faithful', and this morning we're looking at this quite controversial passage of Scripture 'Gideon and the Fleece'.
Beginning to read chapter 6 and verse 36, and after all that transpired - and if you don't know what that is, you need to read the rest of the chapter: "Gideon said unto God, If thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said, Behold, I will put a fleece of wool in the floor; and if the dew be on the fleece only, and it be dry upon all the earth beside, then shall I know that thou wilt save Israel by mine hand, as thou hast said. And it was so: for he rose up early on the morrow, and thrust the fleece together, and wringed the dew out of the fleece, a bowl full of water. And Gideon said unto God, Let not thine anger be hot against me, and I will speak but this once: let me prove, I pray thee, but this once with the fleece; let it now be dry only upon the fleece, and upon all the ground let there be dew. And God did so that night: for it was dry upon the fleece only, and there was dew on all the ground".
Now if you don't know the background, God has called this fearful man Gideon to fight His battle. He has been called to fight the oppressors of the people of God in the land, the Midianites. Of course, the people were in this predicament because of their sin against the Lord, but in His grace, as we have found as we go round in a cycle time after time, again and again in this book, God raises up deliverers - 'Judges' is their name - to deliver His own people when they cried upon Him. So Gideon has been raised up as God's new deliverer to deliver the people from the hand of the Midianites, and God has called him to go and fight against these Midianites, but Gideon wants a pledge from the Lord that what He has said will happen, that he will have victory, that the Lord will be with him.
The first pledge that he seeks is that, as he puts out this fleece, a coat of a sheep, that dew would fall on the fleece of wool, but that in the morning there would be no dew roundabout on the ground - that all the dew that fell at dawn would just fall upon the fleece, none on the ground round it. Then we find that that isn't good enough initially for Gideon, and he asks a second pledge. The following night he asks that the dew would fall around on the ground, but that the fleece would be bone dry. So those are the two tests or signs that Gideon has asked God to give to him as a pledge: first of all the fleece is to be wet, the ground is to be dry; and then the next evening the fleece had to be dry, and the ground had to be wet.
Now this is a very difficult passage to understand - maybe you're sitting here thinking: 'How's he going to apply this passage to us this morning?'. Well, that is where the controversy enters in: how do you apply a passage such as this? There's a great divergence of opinion regarding what it means, and how you apply it to the present day in which we live. Of course, the reason for the controversy is because the underlying subject of these verses is the great subject of guidance, one many of us are confused about, a problematic issue that many of us haven't come to the secret of yet. So, it should be no surprise that there's a great variety of opinion on a text such as this.
Then this problem of guidance is added to when we read in the New Testament, in Ephesians 5:17, Paul says: 'So then, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is'. So it's not good enough to say: 'Look, I'm so confused about this issue of guidance, and there are so many different ways that seem to be set forth in scripture to find out God's will, that I've just come to the conclusion that we're not really meant to know God's will, we just walk as near to Christ as we can and everything that happens - Kay-sera-sera - is meant to be'. But Ephesians says: 'Don't be foolish, you need to understand what the will of the Lord is'. You can know God's will - that adds to this great problem of guidance, because so many of us don't know how to find it.
So how do you find it? Well, some people say you find it by putting out a fleece. Not literally! But asking a sign from God, asking a pledge from God. Now generally there are three views regarding this passage of Scripture, and I've tried to sum them up like this: first of all, there are advocates of putting out the fleece. These are people who say: 'Well this, what Gideon did, is a method of discerning God's will and we should practise it today'. Then the second interpretation is those who are opponents of putting out the fleece, and they say: 'No, it was a sin for Gideon to put out the fleece, because it betrayed his unbelief. He should have just taken God at His word, God had given him promises and he should have believed it, that should have been enough'. Then there's a third group of people, and this is the understanding approach: these folk recognise that Gideon did lack faith, and he did betray unbelief in a sense, and he should have just believed God. They also recognise that putting out a fleece, just as Gideon did, is not a pattern that we should be using today for discerning God's will. But these folk, the 'understanding approach', they also recognise that God graciously condescended and gave the signs to Gideon that he requested - in other words, God recognised Gideon's faith even though it was very weak, and He still gave what he needed in order to assure him.
Now, which am I? Well, I'm in number three, the understanding approach, and I'll show you why as we go through our study this morning. But let's deal with each of them individually - you might think this is a bit technical, and it certainly is very practical, but I hope of the end of this morning's lesson you will have gleaned a great deal that will help you in this area of guidance and knowing God's will. First of all, let's look at the advocates of putting out the fleece. They believe that what Gideon did, testing God in this way, looking for a sign, they believe and advise that we should do it today in order to discern the will of the Lord personally for us. Of course, it involves asking God to fulfil some condition that we lay down: 'Lord, You do this and let me see this if this is Your will - give me a sign'.
There was a lady in the United States on one occasion who wanted to go to the Holy Land, Israel, and one night she read about the trip in the brochure. She read down the whole itinerary, she looked at the guides and the places to visit, then she noticed that she would be flying, if she went out, on a Boeing 747. As she was going to sleep that night, just about to close her eyes, she prayed to the Lord and said: 'Lord, is it Your will that I should go to Israel?'. She committed herself to Him and then she went to sleep, and she woke when her alarm went off in the morning - and guess what the time was on the alarm clock? 7:47 - and right away she thought: 'Right! That God's will, I have to go to Israel!'. Many people seek God's will in the same way, and that could be said in a sense to be those who put out a fleece - but I'm not sure that it is, and I'll show you what I mean in a little moment or two.
Many people who advocate putting out a fleece, they lay down their own conditions before God for a sign like this: 'Lord, if Pastor Smith rings before midnight, I'll know that it's your will', or, 'If the weather changes by tea-time, if it rains or if it clears up, I'll take that as a sign from You'. Now maybe you're sitting here this morning, and you're saying: 'Well, can God not do that? Can God not make Pastor Smith ring before midnight? Can He not change the weather before tea-time?', and I say yes, of course He can, but the problem is: so can the devil, and so can Pastor Smith of his own volition ring you before tea-time, and the wind can change. It's not necessarily God changing the wind directly to show you His will, but it could just happen because of the weather. Hence a lot of this putting out of the fleece, or what people claim it to be, is a lot of hot air. The tragedy of it is that such practices have wrecked lives as people have made monumental decisions based on nothing more than the changing winds of circumstance.
Don't misunderstand me, you'll see a little bit later that circumstances are not unimportant when we discern God's will, but circumstances and signs must be interpreted always by the word of God, otherwise they are subjective, there's nothing to test them by. Now maybe you're objecting, and you're saying: 'But God did this for Gideon'. Well, I ask you: did He do that for Gideon? This is where many advocates of putting out the fleece fall down. What did God do for Gideon? Did He do what the advocates of putting out the fleece today claim is done for them? The answer I think is categorically 'No'.
Let me show you on two counts why that is the case. Gideon was not looking to his fleece for guidance, now please note that. He was not looking to the fleece for guidance, he was looking to the fleece for confirmation of guidance that had already been given to him by the word of the Lord. God had already told him through the scriptures, or through the spoken word in his day, what to do. So he was just seeking assurance of his success. So to pluck this out of the book of Judges, and misrepresent it and misapply it as a way to be guided by God today is doing despite to the word of God.
Secondly: Gideon asked, please note, for a supernatural sign, he asked for the miraculous - not a natural sign, but a supernatural one. What Gideon asked for would never have happened without the direct intervention of God. But today many advocates of putting out the fleece test God and ask God for a sign that could happen naturally, without any divine intervention - Pastor Smith ringing before midnight, the weather changing before tea. Hence they can often be misled. When you're being guided of God, you need to know somehow that it is unmistakably God that is speaking to you - and Gideon knew that because God did the impossible. So, be careful if you're one of these advocates: note that Gideon did not seek guidance, but confirmation; he did not seek for a natural sign, but a supernatural sign.
Now let's look for a moment at the opponents of putting out the fleece. Now, if you have a pen and paper it would be good for you to take some of these notes, because you'll never remember it - I couldn't remember it, so I'm sure that you'll not, but they will help you. Opponents of putting out the fleece go further than the two points I've already shared with you, and here's a number of them that I've tried to summarise from some of the commentaries that I've been studying this week. First of all they say that Gideon was sinning against God, because in verse 36 and verse 37 of the chapter God had revealed His will to Gideon. God had already told Gideon what His will was, so Gideon knew it. In verses 12, 14 and 16 we see that God gave a commission to Gideon, told him that He would be with him. In verse 21, if you look down at it, you remember that God had already given a miraculous sign to him - and the Angel, who we believe was the Lord Jesus Himself, calls out of this offering that Gideon had brought of food, fire to come out of it that devoured it, and that was a sign toward Gideon. Then in verse 34, you remember when he was called upon to pull down his own father's altars to Baal and Asherah, that the Spirit of the Lord clothed Himself with Gideon - what else would he need, they say, other than God to use him in such a great triumphant victory.
They move on from that, that God has revealed His will to Gideon, to say secondly: therefore fleece-setting is evidence of doubt and not faith. This showed that Gideon was doubting and was not exercising faith. They point us to verse 36, where Gideon says, if you look at it: 'If thou wilt' - 'If you're going to do this, God', Gideon says, 'show me a sign'. They say right away: 'Why would he say 'If you're going to do it', if he really believed that God was going to do it?'. Then when he asks for the second sign in verse 39, he approaches the Lord like this: 'Let not thine anger be hot against me', almost knowing that what he was doing was wrong. Saying, as we would say: 'Lord, I know what You've said, but I'm still doubting, just give me one more sign'. He's struggling with fear and unbelief, they say.
Of course, there are Scriptures that support this because if you turn to Matthew 12 and verse 39, the Lord Jesus said: 'An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas' - an evil and adulterous generation seek signs. Then in 1 Corinthians we read again in verses 22 and 23: 'The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness'. So the New Testament definitely doesn't authorise sign-seeking, in fact on the contrary.
Then a third objection that they have to putting out the fleece is: they believe that fleece-setting is dictating to God, telling God what to do on your terms - 'Lord, show me this, and then I'll believe'. Indeed, one author put it like this, and I quote: 'When you think about it, Gideon's request was both absurd and presumptuous. Why should God suspend the laws of nature because a man told Him to?'. Then fourthly, opponents of putting out the fleece say: 'Well, these signs did not solve the problem'. The first sign, incidentally, could have had a natural explanation, because the moisture of the dew would naturally be absorbed by the fleece and dry up quicker on the hard ground. Obviously wool retains moisture for longer. Maybe after that first sign, Gideon would say: 'Now, was that a coincidence? I mean that has a natural explanation, was that a coincidence?'. So that sign was not enough, he needed another sign, and the problem was that the next time he still needed to believe God in spite of the sign, he still had to take a step of faith. So what these opponents say is that signs don't present certainty and produce it in your heart. At the end of the day, you've got to believe God.
Yet, I have my own objections to it, and I believe everything that has been said there by those opponents, but here's a question for you all: do you never have spiritual victories and then doubt God? Are you never in the same position as Gideon was? Do we not all, no matter who we are or what our previous spiritual highlights have been, do we not always need assurances from the Lord, because we're so weak? Sometimes when we read the Scriptures we're so inhuman about the characters that we read about. I think when I get to heaven, certainly, and probably you too, I'll have to apologise to Jonah and to Peter and to Gideon - all these men that I've slated because of their unbelief! But the question is: where are you? Where am I? What would we have done in this particular situation? Where are we regarding faith, believing God? You have to remember, and put yourself in Gideon's shoes: here's a man from a pagan background. Though he was from the children of Israel, his father was the chief man in charge of the shrine of Baal and Asherah, he had been brought up in paganism even though he was a Jew. He was a fearful man, fearful of God's enemies, fearful of his own family and the people in his own town - and now God is calling him to do something that has seemingly impossible odds.
If you look at chapter 7 and verse 12 you see this, 'the Midianites and the Amalekites', who he was going to fight, 'and all the children of the east lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude'. The number was 135,000 of these Midianites versus 32,000 of the Israelites, and we know and find out next week that that 32,000 Israelites was whittled down further and further and further as a test of their faith in the Lord. But be gentle with Gideon, that's my plea. Be human when you're thinking about him, put yourself in his own shoes and ask yourself: if you were going to do battle with 135,000 and you only had 32,000 on your side, what would you feel like, no matter what God had told you?
Then secondly, the Lord gave signs before in the Bible, and gave one to Gideon already. In verse 21, I spoke about it, this meal that the Angel of the Lord brought fire out of and consumed - the Lord knew that when He was calling Gideon, he needed a sign to assure him. Incidentally, note that on that occasion, or on this occasion, God did not rebuke Gideon. Whether it was right or wrong, God obliged Gideon, gave him what he felt he needed. Now Gideon wasn't the first, by the way, to ask a sign of God - when he was promised all blessing, Abraham, when he was promised to inherit the land Abraham replied to the Lord Jehovah: 'Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?'. 'How will I know?', and God wasn't offended in the slightest. The Bible records that God gave him a vision of a furnace and a flaming torch, and God confirmed it to him.
Thirdly, regarding what that writer who I quoted to you said, 'When you think about it, Gideon's request was both absurd and presumptuous. Why should God suspend the laws of nature because a man told Him to?' - well, God suspended the laws of nature in the past because a man told Him. Turn with me to Joshua chapter 10 for a moment, keep with me, Joshua chapter 10 and verse 12: 'Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day. And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the LORD hearkened unto the voice of a man: for the LORD fought for Israel'. Now that doesn't mean God never answered a man's request before or after, but it means in that sense of holding the sun still, it never happened before and it never happened again.
Israel, God said to them, 'Prove me now'. God said to King Ahaz: 'Ask of me a sign'. Now, if it's so sinful, why would God ask a man to ask Him for one? This is why I belong to the third group, the understanding approach to putting out the fleece. I don't believe, as the opponents of putting out the fleece believe, that it is advisable to do it, I don't believe it's biblical to do it in the light, particularly, of all that we find in the New Testament regarding guidance. The ideal is to just believe God's word with all your heart, but please do not miss the point of this passage: regardless of the fact that Gideon had weak, imperfect, doubting faith; God stooped, God condescended to his request. That's the point! Though he may not have been perfectly right, God answered him. Let's face it: is every prayer request that you make perfect?
Can I let you into a secret, in case you don't already know it: there isn't one prayer that you have ever prayed that was perfect. That is why you need the Holy Spirit as an Advocate, that is why you need the Lord Jesus Christ as a Great High Priest on the right hand of the Father to present your prayers perfect, because they are so imperfect. But here's the lesson, don't miss it: we have a God who, even when we don't do things particularly correct, is gracious, He is patient, He is long-suffering, He has a desire that we should know His will even at times when we're not seeking it in the right way. Psalm 103 verse 13: 'Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust'. Thank God that Gideon didn't fall into the hands of some Bible commentators, but fell into the hands of the Lord! Amen? Isn't that what David said when he was being judged by God for numbering the people? He was given a choice how God should judge him: 'And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man'. It's better to fall into God's hand than man's.
Many of us, I know this morning, including myself, are trembling Gideons when it comes to doing God's will. If you read most of the stories of the giants of Scripture and the giants of church history, they were all the same, they all had their doubts, they all had their struggles and fears. Maybe this wasn't sin in the sense of complete unbelief, but maybe Gideon was just being hesitant regarding what God had said. Have you ever been hesitant? Are we anything else than hesitant at times?
One person has said: 'It was not the absence of faith, but the caution of faith that we see here'. He knew the great cost if this thing went wrong, and he was only human like you or me! One commentator says: ''God said it, I believe it, that settles it' may be a snazzy bumper-sticker theology, but it doesn't always neatly cover the struggles of believing experience'. That's the way it should be: 'God said it, I believe it, that settles it' - is that the way we always behave? But isn't it wonderful to know that even when we don't just get there all the time, God is a God who is gracious.
Am I telling you to put out the fleece? No, I'm not, this does not sanctify the process, but it does mean that the Lord at times honours our faith even when it is very weak. Isn't it lovely that our Lord, a bruised reed shall not break, a smoking flax shall He not quench? Isn't it wonderful that your God is a God who is not ashamed to stoop down and to reassure us in our fears and in our doubts? Imagine your three-year-old daughter or son, or niece or nephew, and they come in gurning their eyes out because the neighbour's dog nearly bit their head off - what would you say? 'You're a cissy! You're a chicken! Go back out there and face that Rottweiler, or whatever it was!'. Do you think God is like that with us? He is patient even in our weaknesses, and think of it: He doesn't mind humbling Himself in order to bolster our fragile faith. That's why God gave in, because this man we read of in Hebrews 11 became this mighty man of valour, this warrior, this man in the hall of faith. God recognised him, would he have got there if God hadn't condescended in this way regarding his wavering grip on His word?
One has said: 'God is so eager to do just that, that He has provided a table instead of a threshing floor, and bread and wine in place of a feast'. If you were with us this morning breaking bread and drinking the cup, do you know what those were? Signs. Why? Because we are weak and forgetful. The Lord knew that we need signs, and I believe that the purport of this passage is, like the wee man who said 'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief. I'm nearly there, but I'm not all the way' - praise God that our God is not one that says, closing the door behind you, 'Well, go away and come to me when you've got it'.
Let me leave with you in the last few moments the ideal method for knowing God's will, and if you want to know more of this see the study I did in 'Back to Basics' not so long ago, number 6 on 'Guidance' - but I'll leave you with an overview of all of this. Sidlow Baxter said: 'The faith which always needs supernatural signs and wonders is still in the kindergarten'. How do we get out of the kindergarten? John says in 1 John 5:4: 'Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'. Romans 10:17 says: 'Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God' - if we're to have faith to believe in God's guidance, where do we get it? One: the principles and precepts of the word.
There are seven of these, here's the first - the principles and precepts of the word, even Gideon found out God's will from the word. Although he maybe doubted a little, he had an objective base for what God wanted him to do: 'Thy word is a lamp on to my feet, and a light unto my path to guide', the Psalmist said. Now this is done in two ways by God: first, specific commands, 'Thou shalt' and 'Thou shalt not'. Then secondly, general principles right throughout the whole of the Scriptures. Why not go out and drink yourself silly as a Christian? Because there are many weaker brothers who become alcoholics from it, if that's your problem there's the guidance this morning in two seconds, a principle in God's word that we're not only to look after ourselves but look after other brothers. We're to read both the commands, specific, and the principles, general; and prayerfully apply them to our lives - because God's word never contradicts itself.
A man on one occasion came to R.A. Torrey and said that God was leading him to marry a certain woman, she was a very devoted Christian he said, and they were greatly drawn to one another and began to love one another. He felt that God was leading them to be married. R.A. Torrey replied to the man, 'You're already married, you already have a wife!'. You see, obviously God's word does not contradict another part of God's word, no matter what the subjective leading that you feel might be. Sometimes I hear: 'Well, God showed me, or God told me' - well, if it's against this book, you're lying or you're being misled!
Secondly, peace of God in our hearts. Not only the principles and precepts of the word, therefore you need to study them not just in emergency matters, but in the small everyday things of life day by day. But secondly, you need to know the peace of God in your hearts - Colossians 3:15 says that the peace of God ought to rule our hearts. That Greek word for 'rule' is the verb form of the word for a judge in public games, or an umpire or referee in a sports match - someone who decides upon disputed matters. If you don't know what to do, then he will decide for you. Philippians 4 tells you about that - be anxious about nothing; all things by prayer and supplication, make your requests known unto God...and the peace of God will rule your hearts and minds - 'rule', the same word. The peace of God.
Thirdly, persuasion given by the Spirit. We find this in Psalm 37 and verse 4, the Psalmist says: 'Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of your heart'. God places, by His Spirit, specific desires in your heart so that you might, in the cycle of prayer, ask for what He has given you to desire. So the cycle goes round, and God gets His will done on earth as it is in heaven by these persuasions given by His Spirit. Psalm 145 speaks of the same, where we read in verse 19: 'He will fulfil the desire of them that fear him: he also will hear their cry, and will save them'. Now guard against sudden ideas that just flood into your mind, or impulses due to emotional tenseness you're going through - test all these subjective experiences by the objective word of God, and distrust anything that robs you of the peace of God.
So: one, the principles and precepts of the word; two, the peace of God in your heart; three, persuasion given by the Spirit - four, the providence of circumstances. Now, this is only when you have the word of God for something - number 2, number 3 and number 4 only apply when you've got God's objective word on the matter, the principles and precepts of the Scriptures agree. But when that happens, the Lord may arrange circumstances for you in such a way that it indicates an open door or closed door. So if God gives you leading through His word, and then He opens the door and there is this persuasion and peace in the heart, you can know that this is God's will.
Fifthly there is perspective of other believers. This is one that is often missed, perhaps because some people's perspective leaves a lot to be desired, but nevertheless in the scripture, in Proverbs chapter 11 verse 14, we read: 'Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety'. Now advice is only as good as the source that you're getting it from, so go to spiritual people, seek their counsel, those who have experienced guidance in their life, those who know the things of God - and remember: too many cooks spoil the broth. Don't go to everybody in the church!
Sixthly - and these next two, six and seven, are often missed, and I don't want you to miss them because these are the key to guidance, I believe. Personal surrender to God's will. First there are the precepts and principles of the word; the peace of God in your heart; persuasion given by the Spirit; the providence of circumstances; perspective of others - but all those five will mean nothing, in fact you'll probably not get any of them, until you have personal surrender to God's will. In other words, God is more concerned about what I am - the hangup often in this dilemma of guidance is: 'What should I do? Where should I be? Where should I go?', but God is wanting you to ask the question 'What should I be in the sense of my character, my person, as a spiritual entity?'. God is more interested in what you are - do you know that? Maybe someone says: 'Well, David, I've been trying for years to find God's guidance on this particular issue, and I just can't find God's will on it'. Maybe the problem is that there is another area in your life where you're very gladly not seeking any guidance from the Lord, and you're being disobedient? The question is, if you want to know God's will in your life: are you willing to be guided whatever the cost? The cost is that you give your whole life to Him! Maybe you've found out His will in a certain area of your life and you don't like it, and that's why you're not getting guidance in another area. You see, guidance is not just to enable us to fulfil God's will, it is to enable us to bend our own will - not bend His! To break us, and not just to be guided, but to be used by God. All things hang on complete surrender to the Lord.
On one occasion there was an ocean liner that sank off the Irish coast years ago. The maritime world was bewildered because the ship's captain was an excellent seaman, and no one could figure out what the cause was. Divers were sent down, and one of the items that was brought up was the ships compass box. As it was opened, they found a point of a penknife blade inside. Apparently, while cleaning the compass, and unwary sailor broke off the tip of his knife - it became lodged inside the device, and just one tiny piece of metal was enough to cause the compass to give a bad reading. The result was the ship took a wrong course and crashed, and people perished. Romans 12 says: 'I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, and then you shall know what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God'. Tozer said: 'The man or woman who is wholly and joyously surrendered to Christ can't make a wrong choice, any choice will be the right one'.
Then seventh, not only personal surrender to God's will, but private communion with the Lord Jesus. God doesn't just want to give you guidance, He wants to give you the Guide - that's what the whole Christian life is about! The Lord said: 'My sheep hear my voice', and they follow Him - do you hear the voice of the Shepherd? Do you spend time with Him? Are you alone to listen to Him? That's what happened to Gideon: he was alone that night, and he encountered Christ. That's the key to guidance: if you know the Shepherd, and your life is completely surrendered to Him, you'll be guided - you can't go wrong! As Luther said: 'I know not the way He leads me, but well do I know my Guide' - do you know Him?
Ancient sailors of the seven seas, from the Phoenicians to the Vikings, all fixed their sights on the heavens, on the polars and on the Pole Star - in particular the North Star, which is the brightest star in the sky, and indeed the most reliable of all guides because it sits still, it does not move. On one occasion an artist drew a picture, and it represented a night scene. There was one solitary man rowing a little skiff across a lake. The wind is high and the storm blows and billows the white and crested waves, they rage around this little frail bark. There's not a star in the sky, it's all bleak and dark except one: one shines through the dark above the angry sky. There that voyager is pictured in the painting fixing his eyes, and he keeps rowing on and on and on through the midnight storm, and written beneath the picture are these words: 'If I lose that, I'm lost'. If I lose that, I'm lost.
You need to be guided through the principles and precepts of the word, through the peace of God in your heart, persuasion given by the Spirit, providence of circumstances, the perspective of others, personal surrender to God's will - but if you lose sight of Jesus, communion with the Lord Jesus, you'll be lost. There's a hymn I love, most people don't know it today - don't worry, we're not going to sing it! - but it goes like this:
'O pilgrim bound for the heavenly land,
Never lose sight of Jesus'.
If you keep your eye on Him, you'll not need to put out any fleeces - He'll lead the way if you will follow.
Our Father, we're ashamed that at times we criticise men like Gideon. We know that he maybe didn't believe as he should, in the way that is required; but yet, our Father, which of us have done that? We pray that we will learn how to do it more, the ideal way to seek Your will, but those of us who are so weak - all of us Lord - we thank You for signs of Your grace that You've given to us that were not required. But teach us to fix our eyes on the Saviour, and to give our lives and will completely over to Him, that we may know what it is to acknowledge Him in all our ways, trusting in the Lord with all our heart, not leaning to our own understanding, and then He shall guide our paths. Lord, draw us nearer to Him, and then we'll know that we are in the centre of Your will. Hear our prayer, and bless us as we go our separate way - and we do pray: lead us, Heavenly Father, lead us, Amen.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word November 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 9
"Gideon, The Fighter"
Copyright 2005
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now we're turning to Judges chapter 7. Judges chapter 7, and we'll take time to read all of this chapter:
"Then Jerubbaal, who is Gideon", verse 1, "and all the people that were with him, rose up early, and pitched beside the well of Harod: so that the host of the Midianites were on the north side of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me. Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from mount Gilead. And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there: and it shall be, that of whom I say unto thee, This shall go with thee, the same shall go with thee; and of whomsoever I say unto thee, This shall not go with thee, the same shall not go. So he brought down the people unto the water: and the LORD said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men: but all the rest of the people bowed down upon their knees to drink water. And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand: and let all the other people go every man unto his place. So the people took victuals in their hand, and their trumpets: and he sent all the rest of Israel every man unto his tent, and retained those three hundred men: and the host of Midian was beneath him in the valley. And it came to pass the same night, that the LORD said unto him, Arise, get thee down unto the host; for I have delivered it into thine hand. But if thou fear to go down, go thou with Phurah thy servant down to the host: And thou shalt hear what they say; and afterward shall thine hands be strengthened to go down unto the host. Then went he down with Phurah his servant unto the outside of the armed men that were in the host. And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the children of the east lay along in the valley like grasshoppers for multitude; and their camels were without number, as the sand by the sea side for multitude. And when Gideon was come, behold, there was a man that told a dream unto his fellow, and said, Behold, I dreamed a dream, and, lo, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the host of Midian, and came unto a tent, and smote it that it fell, and overturned it, that the tent lay along. And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host. And it was so, when Gideon heard the telling of the dream, and the interpretation thereof, that he worshipped, and returned into the host of Israel, and said, Arise; for the LORD hath delivered into your hand the host of Midian. And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers. And he said unto them, Look on me, and do likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that, as I do, so shall ye do. When I blow with a trumpet, I and all that are with me, then blow ye the trumpets also on every side of all the camp, and say, The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon. So Gideon, and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the watch: and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers, and held the lamps in their left hands, and the trumpets in their right hands to blow withal: and they cried, The sword of the LORD, and of Gideon. And they stood every man in his place round about the camp; and all the host ran, and cried, and fled. And the three hundred blew the trumpets, and the LORD set every man's sword against his fellow, even throughout all the host: and the host fled to Bethshittah in Zererath, and to the border of Abelmeholah, unto Tabbath. And the men of Israel gathered themselves together out of Naphtali, and out of Asher, and out of all Manasseh, and pursued after the Midianites. And Gideon sent messengers throughout all mount Ephraim, saying, come down against the Midianites, and take before them the waters unto Bethbarah and Jordan. Then all the men of Ephraim gathered themselves together, and took the waters unto Bethbarah and Jordan. And they took two princes of the Midianites, Oreb and Zeeb; and they slew Oreb upon the rock Oreb, and Zeeb they slew at the winepress of Zeeb, and pursued Midian, and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon on the other side Jordan".
Now, our first week's study in the life of Gideon was entitled 'Gideon, The Fearful', and we have found out what a fearful character Gideon was. Yet in the subsequent week we found out that Gideon was also a faithful man, and he took his fears to the Lord. Now, that was not without questions and doubts, yet nevertheless he took them to the right place and he argued them through in the presence of, we believe, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who was the Angel of Jehovah that we read of in this story. So up until now we've seen that Gideon, and particularly this story that we'll consider this morning, in particular shows us that weakness and faithlessness is not the same thing. Did you hear that? Gideon shows us, and particularly the story that we will consider this morning, that weakness and faithlessness is not the same thing.
Let me explain: you can be strong and also be faithless. You can be naturally strong, both physically and mentally, emotionally and even in a spiritual sense other than the true spirituality that you find in Christ - you could be a very strong religionist in a quasi-spiritual sense. But contrariwise you can also be weak and full of faith, and that's what we're going to see this morning, and indeed that's what we see, I believe, through all the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11 and right throughout the whole of the word of God. This teaches us, if ever a character in the Bible did, that you cannot be, in fact, a person of faith without first of all being weak and recognising your own weakness.
The fact of the matter is, we tend to think of the faithful, particularly in a spiritual Christian sense, as being those who are the strong. The unfaithful are those who we think of as being the weak. I think, perhaps, that the value system of our own society has contributed to that view. For instance, some of you can remember your schooldays, some of you haven't got that long ago to remember them - you were taught, perhaps, evolution. Some of our young children, even in primary school, are taught this. They are indoctrinated by this idea of the survival of the fittest, that it was the strongest who crawled out of that primeval soup millions and millions of years ago, who survived; and they killed off their rivals and ate them, and then, as it were, grew upon their strength and became stronger. There's this philosophy right throughout evolution that it is the survival of the fittest - only the strongest in our world survive, and the weakest die. Now often that is translated into our world in ways that, perhaps, we're not so perceptive of - yet even in education we see this. You're only really important and counted if you go to university, some think, or if you're a highflyer and you get all 'A's in your GCSEs or your A-levels, if you have a good career and you keep climbing the ladder - that gives you worth in the worldview that people have in our day.
There is a lot of egoism about. There are a lot of self-image gurus who tell you that you need to love yourself, and whilst there is a measure of truth in the fact that you need to have self-acceptance, they go over the top and tell you that you almost need to worship yourself, and provide so much comfort and luxury and pampering for yourself that it becomes, in a biblical sense, sin. You can go into a bookshop today and find many self-help programs in book form and cassette form, you can even put some of them on in the middle of the night and listen to them, and supposedly when you're unconscious your subconscious takes it all in. All of it is an attempt to get us to search for the strength that is in all of us, they tell us - search, as the song says, for the hero that is inside yourself.
Now, there's an obvious assumption made that the fittest are the strongest, and therefore the strongest are the most successful. We as the Christian church, and as individual Christians, need to be very very careful that we don't imbibe that same value system to the extent that the world has. In a Christian church today, contemporarily speaking, that shows less difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, I think we have swallowed this great lie. Let me show you how we can succumb to it. Many Christians and churches believe that the bigger the church, the more successful it must be. That is false. Some believe that the size of the congregation reflects the success of the preacher. That may be true on the level of a human sense, but it certainly is not in a spiritual sense. Some think the size of the building reflects the success of church programs, that may be the case on a human level, but is it in the eyes of God a successful church? Some think that the size of our bank balance reflects how much God is blessing us, is that the case? Others believe that the number of young people that come to your church reflects how relevant your church is - is that so?
Now, those things that I have described in a Christian context, they all describe success to a certain extent and on a certain level, but they should never ever be construed as spiritual victory or as the triumph of faith. These things may be success in a human sphere, but in no sense are they success in God's eyes. We have to get rid of the 'strength breeds success' attitude, for it is in fact the antithesis of God's way. We will see this in Gideon this morning, for in this passage we shall see how to be triumphant for God, God's way. How to be a victorious Christian God's way; how to be a success, in other words, in God's eyes.
First John 5:4 reads: 'This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith'. Faith is the key, but note what we said at the very beginning: faith and weakness are not necessarily cancelling each other out. We tend to think of people with faith as being strong, but what we're going to see this morning is that it is the opposite: that people of faith are the weakest people in the world. Now let me show you this from this account of Gideon as a fighter. First of all, what I want to share with you is found in verses 1 to 3, and then in verses 4 to 8, and it's simply this: if you're going to have victorious faith and be a success in God's eyes, you have to be broken down. You must be broken down.
Now in verses 1 to 3 we find the first sifting of Gideon's army. If you look at it and glance at it you'll find that Gideon had 32,000 volunteer soldiers. God said to him: 'Gideon, I want you to whittle this down', and eventually it came to 10,000 - 22,000 were subtracted from his ranks. Now, how was that done? Well, upon the authority of Deuteronomy 20:8, which reads like this: 'The officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? let him go and return unto his house, lest his brethren's heart faint as well as his heart'. He told the fearful, the fainthearted to go home - and 22,000 of them left, and left Gideon with 10,000!
Now you might say: 'Well, that just doesn't make sense!' - and it doesn't make sense. If God wanted Gideon to be a victor, and He wanted the Israelites to overcome the Midianites, it does not make sense to break down the army, to subtract 22,000 from them. But I ask you the question: in whose mind does it not make sense? In your mind, in my mind, but God's ways are not our ways, and God's thoughts are not our thoughts. In verse 2 this was the thinking behind what God did: 'I want you to make them this small', He says in effect, 'because if you don't they will vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me'. You see, God wanted Gideon's faith not to be in his strength or in the strength of the numbers of his army, God was going to teach Gideon and the army this lesson: that there had to be a breaking of false faith and false security and of false reliance, before true faith and true victory could take the field.
Then we have the second sifting in verses 4-8, and this simply goes like this - the second test: the surviving 10,000 soldiers were asked to drink at the river. Basically those who got on their knees to drink from the water, probably lapping up the water with their hands, they were eliminated - God didn't want those. Those who got down on their belly and lapped up the water like a dog with their tongue were kept, and there were only 300 of those. So it goes from 32,000 to 10,000, and now from 10,000 to 300.
Now, the question is: what was the significance of this second sifting and this second test? Well expositors, and I've read quite a few preparing for this morning's message, there's different interpretations of this, and you may have heard certain interpretations at Sunday School, you've maybe even taught it, you've maybe even preached on it. There are those who say: 'Well, you see those who took the time to kneel down, and to cup their hands, and to lap up the water with their hands, they had taken their eyes off the enemy. These people were showing the flesh, whereas the ones who quickly fell on their belly, and lapped up the water quick and ready like a dog, and then got quickly on their feet again - they kept their eye upon the foe, they were disciplined and self-sacrificing'.
Now, what is the problem with that interpretation? Well, the problem with it is there are those who take the opposite interpretation and see those who got on their knees as the spiritual ones, and those who got on their bellies as the fleshly ones. But the main problem with any interpretation like that is that the text, the Bible doesn't tell us that - and it's dangerous reading between the lines, what the Holy Spirit has not revealed to us. The other thing is that, whether they kept their eyes on the enemy or took their eyes off the enemy, as far as I'm concerned, is a red herring - because the enemy was miles away, and they would have had to have binoculars to keep their eyes on the enemy!
The sad thing about it is this: if we are looking in the 300, or the ones who left, for virtue or strength in either group - even the first group that we've talked about who were sent home, the 22,000 - we are missing the whole point of what God was doing, and the reason why God chose them in the first place. What am I talking about? Well, I believe that all the Lord was doing in this first sifting in verses 1 to 3, and the second sifting in verses 4 to 8, was He was indiscriminately whittling down the army to show that if they were going to be victorious it was going to be His doing. Sure, if these 300 were mighty men they could have walked away like peacocks, and said: 'Well, it was because we lapped up like a dog, and didn't kneel down and do it with our hands'. We're missing the point, the whole point was that God didn't care, in one sense, how He whittled the numbers down - that was the purpose: to show that no matter how He did it, and how few were left, if there was going to be victory it was because He was with His people. Do you see it? Often we miss the real point of Scripture and make some clever point that isn't even there, and the sad fact is that we end up contradicting the very point that God is trying to make. What is it? Verse 7, He said: 'By the three hundred men that lapped will I save you, and deliver the Midianites into thine hand' - even by these!
Now Gideon's faith was being tested, that's for sure. Was his faith in the strength of his armies, or in the strength of his God? That's a good question. I know you have faith, but the big issue is: where is it? Can you say with the Psalmist in Psalm 118, I was reading it this week, verse 6: 'The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? The LORD taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes'. If God tested you, or tested me the way He tested Gideon, how would we fare? To prove whether Gideon was trusting in his armies or in the Lord, He took away his crutch, the only strength he had. Through Gideon's actions he had raised up an army, a faithful army of faithful men - and now God was coming and decimating it, and turning it to 1% of its original number! What was God doing? He was taking away his crutch.
Have you got a crutch? Is it necessary for God to take it away before you'll really trust in Him and Him alone. Trevor was telling the children this morning about how Satan challenged God concerning Job. The accusation of the devil was that Job didn't really have faith in God, but Job's faith was resting in the material blessings that God had given him. 'Take the crutches away', Satan said, 'and Job will fall and so will his faith, and he'll turn and curse You'. Do you remember what Satan said to God in chapter 2 of Job? 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face'.
We are going to see this morning in the time that is left that the victory that is wrought by faith has only glory in it for God. It is impossible to understand in any other way than the fact that God has taken the field, and God has wrought the victory. You see, people who live by faith - and I'm not talking about faith missions or anything like that, I'm talking about everyday people who live trusting the Lord - they know their own weakness more and more as they more and more depend upon the Lord. Is that a revelation to us today? People of faith are willing to be known for what they are: weak, helpless. You see, when you see yourself as God knows you are, the outcome is that you are broken, you're broken before God and it is then that brokenness that brings in the blessing.
Let me put it in Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 12:10: 'For when I am weak, then I am strong', or as F. F. Bruce paraphrased it, 'My power is most fully displayed when my people are weak'. My power is most fully displayed when my people are weak! The Lord is saying: 'I am the Lord, it is my name, and my glory will I not share with another'.
If you look at verse 8 you see the weapons this army carried, not only were they few in number, verse 16 outlines it as well, but what strange weapons they had: a torch, a trumpet and a jar. Paul said: 'The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual' - they would have to be, for this army wasn't going to do anything with a torch, a trumpet, and a jar without God! I don't know whether you read much of Christian history, I try to read as much as I can and particularly biography - but it's an astounding fact that the men that God used, particularly in awakenings and revival, were men who the rest of society would have considered to be the weakest of the weak, the runt of the litter.
I was reading this week about William McCulloch, who was used in revival. He was the parish minister in Cambuslang in Scotland about 1740, and he was a scholarly pastor. He excelled in the Biblical languages, especially Hebrew, but he had very little gift in the pulpit - he could hardly preach. In fact, his own son described him as, I quote: 'Not a very ready speaker, not eloquent. His manner was slow and cautious'. In fact the people of his day called him an 'ale minister', because when he started to preach everybody went out and quenched their thirst at the local inn with ale! He wasn't anything to listen to, yet the fact of the matter is that William McCulloch was chosen of God to prepare the way for a revival in Cambuslang, and later, after he was used of God, George Whitefield - a mighty gifted man, filled with the Spirit - came and preached and many were converted. But arguably it was not the human dynamism of Whitefield, or the eloquence of that great evangelist, but it was this man William McCulloch in his weakness and his brokenness that God used to prepare the way. Do you see this? This is where spiritual victory and success is: you must be broken, God has to sift you, once, twice, however many times it's necessary.
Then secondly, what I want you to see is you must be broken, but you must be built up. Now Gideon is quite an unheroic hero, he certainly is no John Wayne filled with true grit. But perhaps you're saying: 'Well, surely these great heroes of faith are not all weaklings?', no, don't make that assumption, I'm not making that equation at all. If we look at Hebrews 11, you don't need to turn to it necessarily, we find that men of faith were far from weaklings: 'What shall I say more of Gideon, of Barak, of Samson, of Jephthae; David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens', and so on and so forth. But there is the key: out of their own weakness God made them strong, they became strong but their strength was not their own strength, it was the strength of the Lord. Incidentally, it was not a false weakness, it was not a weakness induced by mere modesty. Weakness was their real condition, and they knew all about it too well - but once they were broken down, once they had been sifted of their own false illusions of themselves and their strength, they had to then be built up again by God in the strength of the Lord. As Jude says, they had to be built up in their most holy faith. The Lord was coming to Gideon, after breaking him down, decimating his army, giving him these pathetic weapons, and now He wants to encourage his faith and weaken his fear.
He did this in two ways, first of all by fellowship, and I think this is beautiful. In verse 10, God is so merciful, isn't He? He says: 'If you fear to go down, Gideon, take with you Phurah, your servant, with you to the host'. God has been so merciful to Gideon, and He's so merciful to us. Gideon needed someone beside him, he needed fellowship. Ecclesiastes 4 outlines this for us: 'Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up'. Isn't it amazing how God provides for us? If we would only open our eyes to see it! Fellowship for when we are in weakness. If we are only willing to confess ourselves as weak, so often God will bring along a companion who will share in our danger and stand by us, like Phurah stood by Gideon.
God supplied Gideon with a Phurah, David with his Jonathan, Paul with his faithful Barnabas - we could go on and on and on, and He'll do the same for us if we look for it. You see, some of us shut ourselves up in our grief, or in our pain and don't let anybody in. Some of us can remember situations in which we felt dreadfully alone and fearful, and how often the Lord in His mercy sent someone to our side, and God helped you through a friend. That's what God's doing for Gideon - I just love the way the Lord is portrayed in this story. The Lord doesn't say: 'Would you go yourself, you cissy, how many promises do you need? How many signs do you need?'. God says: 'Look, if you need somebody to go down with you, there's Phurah, take him with you'.
Phurah was Gideon's friend in need, do you have a friend in need? Don't worry, I'm not going to sing any Disney songs! But it's true, the fact of the matter is: a friend in need is a friend indeed. But maybe the question should be asked, not 'Do you have one?', but are you one? Are you a friend in need? Do you know something: the church is the fellowship for the Christian, and fellowship is essential to our victory and our success when we're fearful, when we're fretting, when we're weak. Who of us isn't weak? It's not all those people that are bereaved, and all those people who are ill that we apply this to, it's all of us! We're all weak and we all need each other!
He had to be built up by fellowship, but then secondly he had to be built up by another supernatural sign that we find in 13 and 14. The sign simply was, they were eavesdropping - not to sanction that in anyway! - but they were listening in to a conversation of the Midianites, and this man had had a dream about a barley loaf that had rolled down the hill and hit a Midianite tent and destroyed it. His mate said to him: 'There can be no other interpretation than that this is speaking of Gideon and the armies of the Lord'. Now, that gave great faith to Gideon. How could we ever criticise him with the fleece when we see that the Lord gave him a sign here to help build up his faith, to help banish his fears - 'As the father pitieth his child, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him'. He remembers that we are dust, He knows our frame - thank God that He is the way He is!
This enemy assured Gideon that the battle would be his. Suddenly Gideon grasped it from the mouth of the enemy - what was it that he grasped? Listen: the foe that he feared had already been defeated, and he was hearing it from his own mouth, and victory was assured. Maybe you're saying: 'I'd love a sign like that' - you have a sign like that. Do you know what our sign is? Our sign is the sign of the cross. Not the literal sign of a cross, but what happened on the cross, where Jesus died for our sins and when He rose again the third day in glorious life that is endless - what does that portray? It portrays that our foe is defeated, there's nothing to fear. This is the sign that God has given us: he is a defeated foe!
Oh to God that we would know what John says in 1 John 3 and verse 8: 'For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil'. The devil has been mastered by the Lord Jesus, and since Calvary Satan's way has ever been downward. Now you would think it was his heyday, wouldn't you? He's having his innings at the moment, but the fact of the matter is: his outcome is not in question. He is plodding towards his execution, and he knows it, and we need not cower before him. He does possess great power, and we cannot face him on our own strength, but our Lord is greater than he is - and greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world!
Surely that deserves a hallelujah? That drove Gideon to his knees, and we find in verse 15 that he worshipped, he grasped it and he fell and he worshipped. He had to be a sincere worshipper before he could be a successful warrior. That's the secret, if there is any, to spiritual success and the triumph of faith - what? We need to be broken worshippers at the foot of the cross, where Jesus bought the victory for us. If you ever get up from that cross you're in trouble. If your head or your heart ever gets filled with pride, and you think: 'I can do this myself, you know I was weak when I was first saved and all the rest' - maybe you were relying more on the Lord when you were first saved, when you were weaker!
You must be broken down and built up, and then do you know what will happen? You'll beam out! If you're broken down and the Lord builds you up, you'll beam out! Gideon returned with this assurance in his breast to the Israelite camp with built-up faith. He divided the 300 into three companies of a hundred soldiers, with a trumpet and earthenware pitcher, and a lamp inside it - and they all marched to the fringe of the Midianite camp. As, when appointed, the signal was given, they blew the trumpet, they broke the pitchers, and the light was let out - and they all cried 'The sword of the Lord and Gideon!'.
Gideon was the example for them to follow, look at the change in this man's life. In verse 17, one translation puts it like this: 'Watch me', Gideon says, 'Follow my lead', Gideon says, 'Do exactly what I say' - he had come a long way, hadn't he, from the winepress? He was no longer asking, as he had in chapter 6 verse 13: 'If? Why? Where? Lord show me'. This story of Gideon began with a man hiding in a winepress, and in verse 25, if you look at it, it ends up with the enemies of God, the princes of Midian and those nations being slain at a winepress. Where Gideon had his fearfulness, he was now having divine victory!
Now God gives His own interpretation, I believe, to this incident in 2 Corinthians 4 and verse 7, if you care to turn to it. Verse 4 we'll read: 'If our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world', that is Satan, 'hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us'. Paul is saying Christ dwells within the Christian, and our body is like an earthenware vessel, and it's only as we are broken, constantly broken - verse 9: 'Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed', and so on - as we are broken and delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the light of the knowledge of Christ, the knowledge of God and the face of Jesus, can shine forth to others.
Oh, do you see it? It's so simple, yet it's so profound: 'Lord, bend that proud stiff-necked I, help me to bow the head and die, beholding Him on Calvary who bowed His head for me'. He must increase and I must decrease. You've got to be broken down, friends, you've got to be built up - and only then will you beam out. Do you see yourself as insignificant this morning? Can I tell you something: you can't be too small for God to use, but some of you need to realise you can be too big for Him to use. If you want the credit for what God's doing, He'll not use you. That's why, when you look around, you see God moving in miraculous ways through some of the very weakest people, the people who are careful to give God all the glory. Does it bother you that you're not very significant? Does it discourage you that you've no prominent gifts? Praise God! You're just the kind of person that He uses! Do you see it? Some of us are walking around: 'God's lucky He has me, isn't He? I'm a natural leader, I'm a natural preacher, I'm a natural organiser. I can do this, I can do that' - if you're like that, you're in for a bitter disappointment, if not now then at the Judgment Seat. We need to alter our current stereotypes of what a servant of God in Christ is. We dupe ourselves into thinking that it's someone dynamic, it's someone assured, confident, brash, fearless, witty, adventurous, glamorous with one or two appearances on Christian television or radio - nothing of the sort! It's someone who is broken.
Some of the oddest souls in creation have been mightily used of God, because God brought strength out of their weakness and shone the very face of Jesus Christ out of their brokenness. Gideon the fighter: may we all know what it is to be broken down, to be built up, and to beam out.
I wonder is there someone here and you're not even a Christian. Well, you know, the formula is no different for you: you have to be broken down of your own self-sufficiency, the thought that you're good enough, that you're not one of these sinners that needs born-again. You have to become weak, Jesus said, like a little child, and repent of your sins and confess it. Just say what you are in God's eyes, know it and say it, and you are to be built up at the foot of the cross too, by the precious blood that was shed to make you right before God. By faith, embrace that gift of salvation there, and say: 'Lord, I'm a sinner, and Jesus died to save me. I want You to save me now', and you'll beam out from this day forth, that's for sure. Is there a backslider here, and the cracks have been plugged up by your own pride, and you've stopped beaming? It's time to get broken again. I'll tell you this: there's not one of us here today that doesn't need a fresh breaking, not one - and if you think you're that one, God help you for you're in need of it more than any of us.
Lord, all we can say is as we sang at the beginning: 'Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us. Break us, melt us, mould us, fill us. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us'.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by: Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - December 2005
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 10
"Gideon, The Fallen"
Copyright 2006
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
We're turning this morning to the book of Judges again and chapter 8, and we have been going through, with a few interruptions here and there for obvious reasons, a study entitled 'Men For The Hour' in the Judges - the characters who are called Judges in the book of Judges. We have been spending quite a number of weeks on this character of Gideon, and I want to deal with him again this morning in what is probably the final study in the life of Gideon, and it's very appropriate for the fact that today is New Year's Day, and we're looking ahead into the unknown. We spoke last evening on a message specifically to do with the New Year, if you weren't there, well I'm sorry that you weren't, but you can get the tape recording - and why not get that message for the New Year. We'll be looking at Gideon this morning, but it has a slant and an aspect upon the relevance of this particular time of year as we'll see later on.
We're going to begin reading at chapter 8 and verse 22, we'll summarise, when we look at it later, what has come prior in this chapter to these verses that we're going to read. But let's take it up from verse 22: "Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you: the LORD shall rule over you. And Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey. (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) And they answered, We will willingly give them. And they spread a garment, and did cast therein every man the earrings of his prey. And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was a thousand and seven hundred shekels of gold; beside ornaments, and collars, and purple raiment that was on the kings of Midian, and beside the chains that were about their camels' necks. And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither a whoring after it: which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house. Thus was Midian subdued before the children of Israel, so that they lifted up their heads no more. And the country was in quietness forty years in the days of Gideon. And Jerubbaal the son of Joash went and dwelt in his own house. And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives. And his concubine that was in Shechem, she also bare him a son, whose name he called Abimelech. And Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age, and was buried in the sepulchre of Joash his father, in Ophrah of the Abiezrites. 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 Baalberith their god. And the children of Israel remembered not the LORD their God, who had delivered them out of the hands of all their enemies on every side: Neither showed they kindness to the house of Jerubbaal, namely, Gideon, according to all the goodness which he had showed unto Israel". Amen.
I don't know whether you can recall, with all the interruptions - and let me just say in parenthesis there a big thank you for your prayers over the last number of weeks at the birth of our little son. We appreciate your prayers, and both Noah and Barbara are doing very well, and also of course your gifts to us, both for Christmas and for the birth of the baby - we're very grateful. But if you can remember back when I was last with you in the pulpit on a Sunday morning, we were studying through the life of Gideon. We began with 'Gideon, The Fearful', and we saw that this man was wracked in his original state by anxieties and fears and inadequacies. Then we looked further at 'Gideon, the Faithful', and how, when God called him to destroy the shrine that was erected in his father's property to Baal and to Asherah, he very timidly, it has to be said, obeyed - but yet he obeyed. Even during the night he broke it down, but he did it, and he was faithful. We began to see a progression in this man's life. Then we saw, spending a week looking at the subject of guidance in 'Gideon and the Fleece', how we can discern God's will in our lives. Then the last study that we did was 'Gideon, The Fighter', and how Gideon, on a human level, with very little resources - only 300 men - destroyed the army of the Midianites. It wasn't really Gideon of course, it was the Lord; and the Lord was teaching Gideon that if he was going to succeed and have victory in life in his judgeship, and if the children of Israel were going to succeed with God, they would have to realise that their victory was in Him and not by the arm of the flesh.
Sadly this morning our title is 'Gideon, the Fallen'. Someone has said well, 'It is not how you begin a thing that matters, but how you finish it'. What a good motto for the New Year that is for us on this New Year's Day, when we consider the many resolutions that people make - and if you're honest, you'll have to admit that very few of us see them through until January 1st the next year. But this story has so much to teach us any day in the year, indeed whatever stage of life we are in as a Christian. It's especially relevant, I have to say, for those of you who are nearing the end of the journey.
We have watched as Gideon the fearful graduated through God's academy to become Gideon the faithful and Gideon the fighter. Ultimately we see him being formed by God's Spirit into a hero, and we know that because when we turn to Hebrews 11, the hall of faith in the New Testament, God's Holy Spirit has the record there that Gideon was a great man of faith, named with many other great giants of the Bible. Yet here, solemnly and poignantly, we are considering the end of Gideon's judgeship under this title 'Gideon, the Fallen'. I think there is perhaps little else more tragic in life than a fallen hero. Some of you have had your heroes, whether in the secular or sporting world, or even in the church; and it's hard to watch them fall when they fall from such great heights. It's tragic to see a hero of the people fall, but what is more tragic is when a man or woman of God falls. It is bad for the people who look up to them, but more than that it is bad for the witness and testimony of God itself, and the world warms its hands at the thought of the fires of shame - yet how often it happens. It is perhaps happening more today than it has ever done.
Let me just say by way of preface and warning, as we enter into this study this morning: we all have to say, as we look at this fallen hero, Gideon, 'But for the grace of God, there go I'. There are none of us here today immune from falling. First Corinthians 10:12 reminds us: 'Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall'. We have to ask the question today: where did it all go wrong for Gideon? Can I summarise it by giving you what I feel is the bottom line? The reason for Gideon's fall was simply that he got too big for God to use, too big for God to use. That often happens. At first, a man is humbled that God should ever call him, maybe he's even fearful or uncooperative, as Moses was before Gideon was. If you turn back to chapter 6 for a moment and verse 15, we see the humility of this man. As God calls him, he says: 'Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house'. That's where this man started: God called him in this humble state, though he was fearful and anxious.
God begins to take him through a process, through His school, if you like, and He journeys him through the low valley of humiliation to show Gideon that he's right, he is nothing and the Almighty is everything. If he's going to succeed as a leader of God's people, he has to keep always in view his low state and God's high state and necessary provision for him in the work that he has to do. It is at this point that Gideon learns that it is in his weakness that God's strength will be made perfect. If you look down to verse 34 of chapter 6, you'll be able to read this. At that point, when he realised his weakness but then was enabled to look to God for grace and help: 'The Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon', we noted how the Hebrew literally reads 'clothed Himself with Gideon and he blew a trumpet'. He led the people of God into great victory.
All of a sudden this man who is humble at the beginning, sees his humility and his inability, he is caused to see that with God's Spirit, when he is low, the Spirit of the living God, like a low valley, will flow through him to the river of living waters. God is enabled to do mighty things through this broken pot vessel, Gideon. Even in a miraculous way God's power is evidenced in his life, and we see that if you turn and remind yourself of chapter 7 and verse 2: 'The LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me'. God did a miracle, He whittled Gideon's armies from 32,000 down to 10,000, and then down to 300 - and armed with nothing but pitchers, lamps and trumpets, they trounced the enemy of the Midianites. That was to show that God gave them the victory!
But sadly we're here to memorialise the fact that somewhere along the way Gideon forgot where the source of his power came from. Somewhere, somehow he began to see himself as strong, he began to view himself as gifted and successful, wise and knowledgeable - and before long the Lord is left outside the door, because Gideon's ego takes over an area and territory that was once the Lord's domain. Let me say to all of us this morning, and I include myself in these remarks, that this has always been one of the devil's more subtle and yet successful strategies. We should not be surprised at that, because of course that's how Lucifer fell himself. As one has said, pride was the sin that made the devil the devil. Lucifer's job, as the Sun of the Morning, as the light bearer, was as a cherub to reflect the glory of God - he had no glory of his own, though he was a glorious creature, the glory in him was a reflection of the glory of God. God had created him to reflect and display the wonder and light of the Godhead. Yet we read in Ezekiel 28:17, God says to him in condemnation: 'Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty'. He began to think that he had something going for himself, and there is where the very first fall took place. Gideon's fall is along the same lines: he began to forget where the source of his power came from, and thought there was something in himself.
Now let's look more specifically and ask: how did this fatal fall occur in Gideon's life? The first thing I want to leave with you today is: his fall came shortly after a great triumph. This is a lesson we all do well to learn, this is often the tact of the enemy: that it is after the spiritual mountain tops that the valleys come, and the challenges, and the falls. You remember it was Elijah on the Mount, as he challenged the prophets of Baal in a great victory, after which the devil came to him and whispered in his ears that he was useless, and God had finished with him, and he's down in the valley and he's ready to die, for he's not as great as his fathers. Gideon's fall too came shortly after great triumph. I wonder, just in a way of caution: has the last year been a good year for you as a Christian? Praise the Lord for that! I don't want to pour cold water on it at all, I want to rejoice with you - but be very careful, because don't think or assume right away that this year must be the same. Andrew Bonar said well: 'Let us be as watchful after the victory as before the battle'.
Now, what we see here is a great victory of Gideon, another one. We see in the first number of verses that we did not read this morning in chapter 8 that Gideon deals in a textbook manner with division among God's people. Now anyone who has ever been in leadership, and who has experienced division among God's children, knows that is one of the most difficult situations to deal with. Gideon had four conflicts in his life that we know of: first of all there was the conflict with his own heart, the fears that he had. Then after that there was the conflict with Baal in chapter 6, as he pulls down the shrine of his father, and in effect goes against his family and his neighbourhood and the whole religious system of the time. Then thirdly he has this fight and battle with Midian in chapter 7, and he trounces those armies with 300 men. But now his final battle, and incidentally the battle after which he falls in chapter 8, is the battle with Israel, a battle with God's people - isn't that ironic?
Of course, he knew how to deal with the problem people among the ranks of the saints. Let me share a little bit with you, because it sets the scene of this great triumph before Gideon's fall. First of all, there were those in the crowd of God's people who were critical of Gideon, they were resentful. Critical people are often resentful, and we find them in verse 1: 'The men of Ephraim said unto him, Why hast thou served us thus', chapter 8 verse 1, 'that thou calledst us not, when thou wentest to fight with the Midianites?'. Ephraim was angry, they were miffed with Gideon. Gideon had left them out when they were going to fight the Midianites, and therefore they did not share in the glory of Gideon. In other words, they felt that their importance had not been recognised.
Now Ephraim is a tribe here which epitomises people, whether they're children of God or not, who are often filled with a sense of their own self-importance. I don't know whether you know any saints like this or not, I do - I'm not going to name them from the pulpit! - but they often get offended when you don't make enough of them. They have this attitude if you bypass them: 'Oh, I wasn't asked. I wasn't recognised, or I wasn't consulted, or I was overlooked. I have been totally ignored in this whole affair'. Well, Ephraim was like that, he was a prima donna. If you want to put it in a New Testament light, he was Diotrephes, who loved the preeminence, he loved to be made much of, recognised. Incidentally, isn't it interesting that this dispute many many hundreds of years ago among the children of God is fuelled by pride? Pride, the sin that made the devil the devil; and pride, the sin that has divided God's people down through all time, and which probably is the seed of every sin imaginable.
Let me ask you the question: how would you deal with these Ephraimites? 'Oh, you didn't consult me!' - critical and resentful - 'We weren't in the victory!'. Well, I imagine a lot of Ulster Christians would say: 'Those boys need to be brought down a peg or two, someone needs to tell them a few home truths, and I'm the one to do it'. But Gideon's quick-witted proverb was what did the trick, in verse 2: 'He said unto them, What have I done now in comparison of you?'. He panders a little bit to them in the proverb, and he says: 'Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer?' - and Abiezer is simply the house of Gideon. He's saying: 'Your vintage wine, what you have done, is it not greater than what I have done and my people?'. You see, Ephraim killed two of the leading kings in the enemy ranks, and what Gideon was saying was: 'You've knocked down two of the big guns, and we've been dealing with the smaller ones. You're really greater than we are at the end of the day'.
Now we need to ask the question: is that the truth? I'm not saying that Gideon was telling a lie, but was it really greater for Ephraim to kill two kings than for Gideon to attack 135,000 men with 300 and to conquer them? Of course it wasn't - but you see, what we need to see is that in the mind and the heart of Gideon he was prioritising. He wasn't playing fast and loose with the truth, but with a godly pragmatism Gideon realised that the unity of God's people at this time was more important than personal pride. Someone has said: 'It takes more grace than I can tell to play the second fiddle well'. Gideon was willing to play the second fiddle so that, whether he was wrong or mistreated or criticised, it didn't matter, what was important to him was that the people of God were one, not that he was vindicated.
He says in verse 3: 'God hath delivered into your hands the princes of Midian', and he names them. He blows them up a little bit, he doesn't come down on them like a ton of bricks - and this shows to me the great discernment that Gideon had as a leader of God's people, which is so lacking today. How did Gideon meet resentful criticism - and we've all faced it? He met it with gentleness, a gentleness that defused the situation completely. He was following, whether he knew it or not, Proverbs 15 and verse 1: 'A soft answer turneth away wrath'. We don't often get soft answers, but that was what was necessary at this particular time. Those who were critical and resentful in Ephraim, Gideon met them with gentleness and the unity was maintained.
Then there's a second group, and they were the cynical. The cynical tried to discourage Gideon - we see them in verses 4 and 5: 'Gideon came to Jordan, and passed over, he, and the three hundred men that were with him, faint, yet pursuing them. And he said unto the men of Succoth, Give, I pray you, loaves of bread unto the people that follow me; for they be faint, and I am pursuing after Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian'. Now you imagine the scene: 300 tired warriors, they're absolutely exhausted. They've gotten a great victory for God, they're seeking refreshment in Succoth among their own people, and one of these Israelite towns on the other side of Jordan closes the door upon them, and says: 'Go away! We don't want anything to do with you!'. Imagine this! Gideon's 300 men have won a victory, and these people of Succoth should have appreciated what God had done through them, through Gideon and his 300 men. He had liberated them from the oppression of the Midianites, but instead of appreciation, what do they get in return? Discouragement. All these soldiers wanted was a drink of water and a piece of bread, but the attitude of the people of Succoth was cynical. They were saying, in effect: 'Why should we help you? You still haven't won the war! You may have won a little battle...' - and maybe they were thinking in their subconscious, 'What if you don't win the whole war, if we help you the Midianites will come back and they'll sort us out because we give you a hand in the matter'.
It's true, though I don't like saying it, that the Lord's people can be very discouraging at times. I have to say to you that there's an element of realism that is needed if you do anything for the people of God, that if you don't accept that they can be discouraging, you'll not survive in church life - because saints are only sinners saved by grace. There could be times when we feel we ought to be appreciated, but all we get is discouragement. The fact of the matter is: the danger is that Gideon at this point could have said, like some of us do at times, 'I'm jacking this in, I am wasting my time, I'm not doing this any more!'. The problem is when the discouragement that we face from even the people of God becomes disillusionment, we allow it to affect our spirit. Though Gideon, I'm sure, was discouraged at the resentfulness of the critical, at the lack of appreciation of the cynical who discouraged them, Gideon was determined that he would not be disillusioned, he would not be set off course from the calling of God.
He refused to be deflected from God's purpose on his life, and he promised to come and visit these men in Succoth and after the battle, and he did - and, boy, did he visit them! How did he meet discouragement? He met it with perseverance, with tenacity, with steadfastness. He reminds me a little bit of Nehemiah - you remember he was up building the walls in Jerusalem, and Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem sent their friends to call him down from the wall, to distract him from the work of God, and he sent messengers back to them saying: 'I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease whilst I leave it and come down to you?'. I think it was Livingstone who said: 'God loves plodders'. Gideon was able to discern how, with a soft answer, to answer the critical and resentful; but how, also, with harshness and with steadfastness and sternness to address the cynical who were going to discourage him. What a leader! What victories these were!
Then thirdly there were the flatterers who sought to exalt him. In verse 22 we read of them, because of his great victories that we've mentioned: 'Then the men of Israel said unto Gideon, Rule thou over us, both thou, and thy son, and thy son's son also: for thou hast delivered us from the hand of Midian'. 'As a reward for delivering us, we appreciate you at least: be our King!' - well, we find that Gideon resolutely resisted the pressure. He declared to them that the Lord would rule over them, not a King. What a man, eh? We might well say: 'Where did he go wrong?'. Can I say that this is so subtle that it is frightening to me, because from this moment on, just after this, without so much as a murmur of prayer for direction from God, we see that after refusing the throne Gideon announces his own strategy to the people in verse 24. 'Gideon said unto them, I would desire a request of you, that ye would give me every man the earrings of his prey' - the Lord isn't mentioned from the mouth of Gideon for the rest of the record that we have of his life and his judgeship.
He now announces to the people his own strategy, what he thought was the answer for the people. Albeit unconsciously, Gideon at this point took a direction, and that direction was to take the driving wheel of the people of God, effectively, out of the hands of the Almighty and into his own frail grip. Now I have no doubt he was well-meaning and sincere, but his fall came just after great triumphs, when he simply took one step too far ahead of God. I don't know about you, but that scares me.
His fall came shortly after great triumph, but then secondly his fall began when he leaned on his own understanding - his strategy! He may have followed the wisdom of Proverbs 15 verse 1: 'A soft answer turneth away wrath', but he mustn't have read, or at least he had forgotten Proverbs 3:5-6: 'Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path'. You see, in chapter 7 and verse 2, if you look at it for a moment, you will remember that God chose to deliver the people through 300 Israelites so that it would be seen that God had delivered them and it was not their own hands, lest they vaunt themselves against God saying 'Mine own hand hath saved me'. But now Gideon is beginning to lean on his own hand, his own understanding, and he's not trusting in God to do the impossible.
I know that I preached to you not so long ago on King Hezekiah, under the title 'The Best of Men, A Man At Best'. In 2 Kings 19, this man who finished his life in dishonour also, when he received the letter from King Sennacherib, and all the threats and vaunting and blasphemy against the Living God, likening Him to the other gods of the nations, we see that Hezekiah took that letter from the hands of his messengers, and the Bible says he read it, he went up to the house of the Lord, and he spread it before the Lord. If you ever get a letter like that, that's what you need to do, spread it before the Lord. Let me say to you at the beginning of this New Year: that's where we need to be as children of God. Whatever happens, we ought not to take a step - and you have no idea how this is speaking to my own life - without spreading everything before the Lord. It's important - why? Because Gideon shows us that one wrong step can lead to depths of depravity that are unbelievable, because thirdly: his fall ended in open idolatry and blatant hypocrisy.
Imagine that this one, Gideon, who had destroyed his father's shrine to Baal when he was a young man, now as an older man in later life he becomes the actual instrument of the devil to reintroduce such idolatry to the nation! Isn't that incredible? In verse 27, if you look at it, back in Judges 8 we read: 'And Gideon made an ephod thereof, and put it in his city, even in Ophrah: and all Israel went thither prostituting after it: which thing became a snare unto Gideon, and to his house'. What did he do? He got all the earrings of the Ishmaelites and all their ornaments made of gold, and put them in the melting pot and he made a gold ephod. Now an ephod was the priestly garment, and from these spoils of war the ephod, which was part of the High Priest's attire - a sleeveless tunic that was worn over other garments, made of very costly materials, gold, blue, purple, scarlet, fine linen - he made a gold one of these, and it became a snare to him. Now I don't know whether you know this, but attached to the ephod in the Old Testament priest there were not only twelve jewels that represented the twelve tribes of Israel, but there was a pocket, and in the pocket resided the Urim and the Thummim. Now the Urim and the Thummim were the instruments whereby the people of God of old discerned the will of God in particular matters.
I believe with all my heart that Gideon's intent was to remind the people that they wouldn't have a King, that the Lord would rule over them, and maybe the Urim and the Thummim was a reminder that they were to be guided by the sovereign providence of God - but the irony is this: though this might have made sense to Gideon, God wasn't in it! He may have done it for the right reasons, it may have given the right message; but it was from the wisdom of a man, not the will of God. Here's a warning, if ever there was one, for all of us: never ever replace divine wisdom with human strategy. There is nothing - I don't care how many letters you have after your name, or how many seminars you have been to, or books you have read - that can replace God's word, that can replace the Holy Spirit and can replace believing prayer: nothing!
Idolatry from the man who trounced it in the past, but also hypocrisy because, after rejecting the throne, he lived the life of a King. In verses 29 to 32 it describes the lifestyle, effectively, of a monarch. Gideon said: 'I won't be King, my son won't be King, my grandson won't be King', and then he goes on as a Judge to retire, not as an army officer or as a Judge, but more like a monarch. He's wealthy, partly from the spoils of battle I imagine, and partly from the gifts of the people. We read on that he has many wives, he has at least one concubine. His wives bore him seventy sons - it doesn't mention the daughters, how many they were. His concubine bore him one son, and in fact the son that his concubine bore him he named Abimelech - and do you know what that means? 'My father is King'!
'There's a wee bit of a contradiction here', you say. I think it's more of a compromise. We see from the rest of the book of Judges, subsequent verses after chapter 8, that this son Abimelech later tried to live up to his name as the son of the King, and he tried to become ruler over all the land. Gideon seems to have tried to assume priestly duties with his ephod; consulting God, perhaps, on behalf of the people. What's the lesson here, my friend? It is complete hypocrisy! His private life did not measure up to his public confession. Did you hear that? Listen to me: his private life did not live up to his public confession. He says to the people with his mouth: 'There'll be no King ruling over you. I'll not be it, nor my son, nor my son's son. The Lord will rule over you', and then he goes on to live like a king. Isn't it true that many believers begin with a blaze of glory, but they end in a bog of shame. We have to say, sadly, so many great and useful men and women of God, before they finish their course they write, or they say, or they do something - and, though it may not undo all the previous work that they've done for good, it leaves some kind of a blemish on their good name, and a question mark on their testimony.
I wonder is there someone here this morning and you're beginning the Christian life? Can I give you this warning: stay humble. R. A. Torrey wrote a book entitled 'Why God Used D. L. Moody', and I've recited this to you before, but there are very few other things have impressed my life as much as this quote. He warns young men and women that humility was the secret to this man's ministry, and they ought to make it the secret to their lives. I quote him: 'Oh, men and women! Especially young men and young women, perhaps God is beginning to use you. Listen: get down upon your face before God. I believe here lies one of the most dangerous snares of the Devil. When the Devil cannot discourage a man, he approaches him on another tack, which he knows is far worse in its results; he puffs him up by whispering in his ear: "You are the leading evangelist of the day. You are the man who will sweep everything before you. You are the coming man. You are the D. L. Moody of the day"; and if you listen to him, he will ruin you'. Listen to this: 'The entire shore of the history of Christian workers is strewn with the wrecks of gallant vessels that were full of promise a few years ago, but these men became puffed up and were driven on the rocks by the wild winds of their own raging self-esteem'.
Someone said to me once: 'Stay low, don't blow, and go slow'. Are you beginning the Christian life? Stay humble. Perhaps you're nearer the end of the Christian life - can I ask you: are you still humble? Have you ever been humble? I'm led to believe, I haven't had it documented for me, that RAF fighters during the Second World War made most of their mistakes not when they were out in the dogfights over the seas and oceans of Europe, but they made the most errors when they were coming in to land. They were all tense up there in the air fighting for their lives, but when they were coming in they began to relax, feeling that they had made it - and they dropped their guards, and many died.
In the course of his final series of Bible lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, Harry Ironside said in his prayer, listen to this: 'O God, keep me from becoming a foolish old man'. What a prayer! Could you pray that? Dr Culbertson retired as president of Moody Bible Institute, and he heard that the trustees were planning to name a building in his honour. He protested, and do you know what he said? 'Men, you do not know how I will end'. It's not how you begin that matters, it's how you end. Take heed, he that thinks he stand, lest he fall - and the most spiritual Christian may fall, and that's why we need to keep our eyes on the unfailing example of the Lord Jesus. It's interesting to contrast Abraham's reaction after his battle with the kings of the plain, with Gideon's here - because after that victory, Abraham took nothing for himself, but he made sure that others received the spoils of the victory. We actually read that he especially refused to take anything from the heathen King of Sodom. In Genesis 14 verse 22 he says to the king of Sodom: 'I have lift up mine hand unto the LORD, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, That I will not take from a thread even to a shoelatchet, of that which is from you, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram rich'. What a difference!
Do you know how Abraham spends the next chapters of the record in Genesis? Fellowshipping with another King, Melchizedek, a type of our Lord Jesus Christ - he kept his eyes on the unfailing example. Micah could say that God has showed us 'O man, what is good; and what the LORD requires of us', this year and every day, 'to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?'. I'm not really concerned this morning how you began the Christian life, I'm not concerned how you went on in your early days, and the trail you blazed for God. I'm asking you this morning: how are you now? How are you going to end? As a bitter twisted old man or woman, or as someone who has just passively let the flame go out in their heart? As we begin a New Year, may we all be able to say - whatever happens, whether the Saviour comes or calls us - like the apostle, as he looked up from the chopping block: 'I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith'.
Lord, we borrow the words of Jude and say that we long that glory should be brought unto Him who is able to keep us from falling, to present us faultless before the throne of the Glory on high. We do not want to bring shame upon the testimony of God. We want to tread and take each step carefully. Lord, forgive us and help us to forget the past and press on for the high calling of God. Lord, all of us fall from time to time, but though we fall seven times, may we rise again to the glory of God - and if we get up, Lord, keep us up; that it may never be said of us that we turned and forgot our first love and source of power, and lent on our own understanding. For us as individuals, this we pray, and for the Iron Hall as a church - God forbid that we should ever live for a name or a reputation, but let us live with our eyes firmly fixed on Christ, the unwavering example. Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - January 2006
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 11
"Jephthah, The Reject"
Copyright 2006
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now we're turning again this morning to the book of Judges, this time chapter 11 - and, ironically, it is the 11th study we have made so far these Sunday mornings in our series on the characters of the Judges entitled 'Men for the Hour'. We're looking at a new character - we have spent several weeks, I think five in total, looking at Gideon - and this week we're going to do, hopefully in one session, a study of Jephthah. The title is 'Jephthah, The Reject'.
We begin at verse 1 of Judges 11: "Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor, and he was the son of an harlot: and Gilead begat Jephthah. And Gilead's wife bare him sons; and his wife's sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father's house; for thou art the son of a strange woman. Then Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him. And it came to pass in process of time, that the children of Ammon made war against Israel. And it was so, that when the children of Ammon made war against Israel, the elders of Gilead went to fetch Jephthah out of the land of Tob: And they said unto Jephthah, Come, and be our captain, that we may fight with the children of Ammon. And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father's house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress? And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, Therefore we turn again to thee now, that thou mayest go with us, and fight against the children of Ammon, and be our head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head? And the elders of Gilead said unto Jephthah, The LORD be witness between us, if we do not so according to thy words. Then Jephthah went with the elders of Gilead, and the people made him head and captain over them: and Jephthah uttered all his words before the LORD in Mizpeh".
Then verse 29 of the same chapter: "Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed over Gilead, and Manasseh, and passed over Mizpeh of Gilead, and from Mizpeh of Gilead he passed over unto the children of Ammon. And Jephthah vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering. So Jephthah passed over unto the children of Ammon to fight against them; and the LORD delivered them into his hands. And he smote them from Aroer, even till thou come to Minnith, even twenty cities, and unto the plain of the vineyards, with a very great slaughter. Thus the children of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and, behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! thou hast brought me very low, and thou art one of them that trouble me: for I have opened my mouth unto the LORD, and I cannot go back. And she said unto him, My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the LORD, do to me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth; forasmuch as the LORD hath taken vengeance for thee of thine enemies, even of the children of Ammon. And she said unto her father, Let this thing be done for me: let me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. And he said, Go. And he sent her away for two months: and she went with her companions, and bewailed her virginity upon the mountains. And it came to pass at the end of two months, that she returned unto her father, who did with her according to his vow which he had vowed: and she knew no man. And it was a custom in Israel, That the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year".
Scandal had been rumored in Ramoth-Gilead. It was said that one of the village's leading citizens had become involved in an illicit sexual affair with a local woman of the street. In Ramoth-Gilead few secrets were held, like any village or town even in our own province, and bad news travelled fast. One can just imagine the local gossips going early to fill their waterpots at the public well, and lingering long in order to savour every sordid morsel as it came to light. It soon became evident that the rumour was true. Gilead, this man in the city of Ramoth-Gilead, that was his name, had been publicly named as the father of a child that was being carried by a common prostitute. Unlike many men who walk away from offspring born under such circumstances, Gilead, to his credit, we find takes full responsibility for his act. When the infant was born, he takes it into his home and effectively raises it as one of his own family.
It's all conjecture, reading between the lines, but we must wonder what his wife must have felt with that child in the home, knowing the failings of her spouse. But we read from God's word that in process of time other sons were born to Gilead of his true wife, and those sons would have taken their place in the family circle and hierarchy. We find that it wasn't long after those sons were born until they grow, and they look down on this son of a prostitute and their father, and they begin to see him in a different light. They played with him as any other of the children when they were toddlers, but as they grow and as they become aware and conscious of these weightier matters in life, they realise that this one - as far as they're concerned - is unworthy of the family name, and certainly unworthy of the family privilege.
As the animosities between these young men heighten, Gilead's health begins to decline and eventually he dies. Now, with Gilead's restraining hand away from this situation, the smouldering resentment between these brothers and Jephthah comes to the surface. When the issue of the will, the inheritance of their father, comes to be settled, Jephthah's illegitimacy is thrown in his face by his half-brothers. You can just imagine it: 'You're not even one of our family! How can you expect to have anything in our father's will? You're only a son, an illegitimate son of a harlot!'. Eventually we find in chapter 11 and verse 2, that it came to the brothers driving Jephthah out of the home: 'Gilead's wife bare him sons; and his wife's sons grew up, and they thrust out Jephthah, and said unto him, Thou shalt not inherit in our father's house; for thou art the son of a strange woman'. In other words, what they were saying is: 'Jephthah, you don't belong! Whatever the reason was our father brought you into our home and treated you like another son, you don't belong. He's gone, and you need to get up and go!'.
Now it is apparent that Jephthah made an appeal to the elders of the city, which of course was to no avail. Verse 7, when he comes to the fore in this whole situation in the land, we read that he says to these elders who have requested his return: 'Did not ye hate me, and expel me out of my father's house? and why are ye come unto me now when ye are in distress?'. As leaders and elders in the town, they should have been the ones to protect those who were vulnerable. But like many, even in our own day, they fell into the trap of making a child pay for the mistakes of its father. One writer has said: 'In so doing, they joined the sanctimonious village snobs in opposing a youth who was guilty of nothing except being born'.
How many times has this story been repeated in history? Imagine it, a child born under some cloud of shame, or into a dysfunctional family, and as they grow that cloud seems to hover over them and grow larger and larger, and others delight in pointing out its presence over their head and reminding them of their shameful past. There are many like that in our society. Whilst we do not take personal responsibility away from any, the fact of the matter is: there are those who, by nature of their birth and the prejudice that comes to them because of their birth, aren't given a chance in their family or in general society. They're rejected without trial by those around them. There are many, if we broaden out this example, many who have been wronged through no fault of their own. Because of something that someone else has done to them, they seem to be destined to live under the mantle of the transgression of another.
We could all sum it up in one word: rejection, whether rejection as a child, rejection as an adolescent, as a teenager, as a young adult, rejection as a spouse, rejection as a father or a mother. We could go on and on and give myriads of examples, but the fact of the matter is: many who experience rejection do exactly what Jephthah did. What was that? They react to rejection by running away. That's what he did. We read in verse 3: 'Jephthah fled from his brethren, and dwelt in the land of Tob: and there were gathered vain men to Jephthah, and went out with him'. He ran away, he drifted, essentially, from bad to worse; and we find that he found himself in bad company - and, as the saying goes, 'Birds of a feather flock together', and I imagine that a lot of these same young men came from similar backgrounds and may have been outcasts and rejects from their own home and society.
So Jephthah goes to Tob, a city north-east of Ramoth-Gilead, and he becomes a leader of this group of outlaws, bandits. He's a kind of Robin Hood figure. He's essentially not bad in and of himself, but he is the victim of his own circumstances that have been foisted upon him, and he lands in amongst all this other group and becomes a natural leader of them. Let me say, before we look any more Jephthah, that I believe that the author of the book of Judges is trying to depict for us in Jephthah's personal circumstances, Jephthah's rejection, how Israel, God's people, had rejected their God, covenant God, Jehovah. Now, I believe this is evident, if you look at it - we don't have time to read the verses in chapter 10 verses 6-18 - but we see again the shameful account that has been a cycle right throughout this book. God's people find themselves under the oppressive hand of another nation attacking them - and what do they do? They call to God, and God tells them that they are under this discipline of punishment because of their sin, because they've gone after Baal and Asherah, false gods of other nations. Then they cry unto God, it would seem, in genuine repentance - even though we have found out at times it is superficial - and God answers them in mercy. Peace reigns in the land because a Judge, God's saviour and deliverer for that period of time has come and been raised up by the Almighty to bring peace to the nation. But when that Judge dies we see over and over again that they go back to their old ways.
Here we see this typified, if you like, for us in the life of Jephthah. The nation is powerless before their enemies, the Philistines and the Ammonites, because they have sinned against God once again. In verses 10 to 16 of chapter 10 we see that they cry out to God, and God refuses their first plea. He doesn't answer them, and He cites several instances of past deliverances, and reminds them that after each of them they had turned away - verse 13 of chapter 10: 'Yet ye have forsaken me, and served other gods: why should I deliver you any longer?'. Of course, God wanted to see within their hearts true repentance. That's why, at first, He doesn't listen to them until, as we see in verse 16, He is sure that they have put away their idols: 'And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the LORD: and his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel'.
He wanted to make sure that the repentance was not superficial, it was genuine; and the evidence would be in the works that outflowed from it - in other words, that they put these gods away from them for good, and then He would have compassion upon them. Now here is an elementary lesson not only regarding salvation, but the Christian life, and it's this: God is not mocked, and whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. God knows whether repentance is genuine or superficial, and God is angry, and God disciplines even His people when they play fast and loose with Him; when they think that they can just get away with sin, and in the next breath confess and repent of their sin it would seem, and God just forgives them and restores them to fellowship - and then they go through this Israelite cycle again of sin and shame.
I wonder is there anyone here this morning that's playing fast and loose with the Almighty? I think it's interesting that Jephthah agreed to be the people's saviour, as we will see in a few moments, but he only agreed on the condition that he would be their Lord as well. In verse 9 of chapter 11, if you look at it, it reads: 'And Jephthah said unto the elders of Gilead, If ye bring me home again to fight against the children of Ammon, and the LORD deliver them before me, shall I be your head?'. He was wiser than many children of God today, he realised that you can't have your cake and eat it. You can't have Christ as Saviour, and then say: 'Well, I'm going to be in charge of the rest of my life. I'm on my way to heaven in a boat, but Christ is not going to have my life'. Jephthah knew that if this was going to work he would have to have charge of them. If your Christian life is going to be - and I use this term advisedly - a success, victorious, and fulfil the purpose for which God saved you and Christ died, you've got to realise that it's not all about getting your sins forgiven and getting a free ticket to heaven, it's about being surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord. So, what an elementary lesson.
Then we see also in the same way, the elders who once rejected Jephthah, and ejected him out of the town, are now requesting that he returns as saviour. I just wondered as I was studying this, whether or not Jephthah felt used. Do you ever feel like that? Maybe people who have rejected you return to you and they're wanting a favour, wanting you to do something, and you feel like saying: 'Aye, you're only interested in me when you're looking for something'. Here we have it here, but it led me to the question: I wonder, as we see this as a mirror example of what Israel was doing to God, I wonder did God ever feel used by Israel, His people? I know we have to be careful in trying to guess the thoughts of the Almighty, but the mirror image is here, isn't it? How many times do we come to God, and I say it reverently: you use Him like some kind of divine salvation slot machine - we put our prayer in and we hope to get the results out! We almost expect it as a right, don't we? He's obliged to do it.
But the point, really, that I want you to focus on this morning is that when God again wanted to deliver Israel from this awful predicament that they'd brought themselves into, who did He choose? He chose a reject. I love this verse in verse 1: 'Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty man of valor', and in the same sentence, almost without blinking, the author says, 'and he was the son of an harlot'. The plainness of Scripture, he was a reject from his family and his society. He was the underdog - could we say: he was the despised and the rejected of men? I think it is plain to see the parallels in this saviour with the great Jehovah's Saviour in the New Testament, our Lord Jesus Christ. When you consider that there was a shadow over His birth, of course He was virgin conceived, and that is the truth of the miracle of Christmas time that we've just celebrated - but nevertheless people levelled at Him the fact that He was of illegitimate birth, they rejected Him on that ground. The society in Israel, His brethren in the religious establishment, but also His kith and kin round about Him rejected Him and effectively ejected Him from Jerusalem. John 1:11: 'He came unto his own, and his own received him not'.
When we turn to the book of the Acts we find that it is written there, as Peter preaches this sermon to the religious council in chapter 4 and verse 10, he says: 'Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth', a despised town, 'whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by him doth this man stand here before you whole. This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved'. This Jesus Christ of Nazareth that you despise, that you crucified, God raised from the dead - it was God raised Him! He was the stone rejected by you, but you've got to realise that there isn't salvation in any other - do you see the parallel? Jephthah had been rejected because of his birth, he had been thrown out of the city, and now after a period of years the elders are coming cap in hand, tail between their legs: 'Could you come back and help us?'. They had realised that there was salvation in none other.
I don't know what reputation he had got as he was in Tob with this band of no goods, outlaws. He had probably got a reputation for bad, but nevertheless they knew he was a fighter, they knew he had been successful in what he was doing there, and he was a Gileadite so he could help them. It's the same with our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, isn't it? Because we read in Zechariah and chapter 12 that there's a day coming, yet future, when Israel will look upon Him whom they have pierced, the One who they rejected and ejected and crucified, they'll look upon Him and they'll say 'Baruch Ha Ba BShem Adonai', 'Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord'. 'Baruch Ha Ba BShem Adonai', 'Come Lord Jesus, and be our Saviour'. The poet put it like this:
'They cried for God to send a man to slay cruel Ammon's hand,
He made his boast and then swept down to claim Jehovah's land.
Their hero by design must know bold courage, virtue, truth,
Be of the proper heritage, twice blessed with strength and youth.
God made His choice, and shocked them all when He revealed His aim
To use a harlot's outcast son, one Jephthah was his name'.
This is a tremendous character, Jephthah the reject, because if you're a reject today for one reason or another - maybe it's questionable birth, and it has haunted you right throughout your whole life. Maybe it's family dysfunction that you have been born into, or that your own family has known. Maybe it is the sense of being forsaken by another. Maybe you have been orphaned or divorced through no fault of your own. Maybe you have been abused, mentally, emotionally, sexually, or in a mere physical way. The result of this has been that you live day by day with an inferiority complex that has been foisted upon you. Do you know what can often happen? When a person with that type of background becomes a Christian, they think that because of their past they are disqualified from doing anything for God or being anything for God. They feel a real underdog in the things of God.
Now I would have to also say that sometimes Christians - yes, that's right, Christians - can reinforce this attitude, this perception in their minds. In effect, sometimes you hear them saying words in kind: 'Now you know that because of your past, you'll not amount to anything in the church. Maybe we'll spring on you some night when we're looking for a good testimony, but don't you think that you'll be able to do too much because of the baggage that you have'. Christians often have a canny knack at keeping their rejects at arms length. I even heard a brethren man say on one occasion - and the brethren have a lot of good to say, but this is what he said: 'A person can be fit for heaven, but not fit for the assembly'. Now I know there's church discipline, and I know there's rules and regulations, and I'm not saying that we open up the boundaries of church fellowship to everyone and anyone, of course not. But that attitude that keeps rejects from families and societies at arms length could not be further from the truth, and I believe that the devil would love to keep people in that pathetic state of mind - but here we have the Almighty God choosing an unlikely saviour, if there ever was one, a son of a harlot! If you look into the law, we don't have time, into Deuteronomy; you'll find that the son of a harlot was prohibited from the congregation of Israel. You work that one out, I cannot.
The lesson that we have is simply: God chooses what men reject - is that not an encouragement to you, if you find yourself as one of life's rejects? I don't use that disparagingly, I'm not trying to enforce you in that type of mindset, I'm trying to let you see that God chooses what men reject. God chose this man Jephthah, and we read in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 27: 'God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are'. First Peter 2 talks about the Lord Jesus as being that stone that was rejected of men, but was chosen of God.
There are more rejects in the Bible than Jephthah. There are the other Judges - what a band of a motley crew they are. There's Joseph in the book of Genesis, you know the story, rejected by his brothers - and then what happened to him? He eventually became their saviour, their deliverer! When we read the story of David we find it took him seven years to gain the full support of the twelve tribes of Israel, he didn't have it all on a plate right away - he was rejected, and then he became the greatest king ever. Even Paul the apostle, when he was converted to Christ, was rejected by his former companions in Judaism and then by the Christians, who he had come to as a brother, he is held in suspicion. For three years he's on his own in isolation in Arabia, and God reveals to him many of the mysteries of the New Testament there - but he was a reject! God chooses what men reject!
You may not know that Alexander Whyte, who was a well-known minister in the Free Church of Scotland, St George's Edinburgh in the late 19th century, an outstanding preacher and writer - many of his character studies are wonderful - but many do not know that in 1836 Janet Thompson brought him into this world out of wedlock. But that didn't matter to God, because God chose. Jephthah found, like many rejects before him, that through a period of isolation he was undergoing, maybe unconsciously, a process of preparation. In verse 4 of chapter 11 we read these wonderful words: 'And it came to pass in process of time'. He had been rejected, he was in isolation, but he was being prepared because, being faithful to God in the waiting time, he found out not only that God chooses what man rejects, but God uses what men reject. The big question that I want to pose to you this morning, particularly if you're one of those in the category of being rejected, is: what is your attitude to your rejection? God doesn't hold it against you, and if He doesn't hold it against you, why should you let it hinder you from being used of God?
Now we didn't have time to look at Abimelech, who you'll remember was Gideon's son who turned out to be a real bad egg - but when you compare Abimelech to Jephthah we find that their circumstances were similar to begin with. Abimelech was the son of a concubine of Gideon, but Abimelech brought shame to Israel; yet Jephthah brings joy and glory and blessing to Israel, though he was the son of a harlot. What was the difference? I can only imagine that the difference is his attitude to his rejection. He was not going to allow his past to burden him in such a way that he would not be faithful to God in the small things, and when he remained faithful to God his hour came when God chose him as God's man for the hour. My friend, I'm saying to you today that if you accept and embrace the rejections of your life, bring them to God but embrace them and accept what they are with a positive attitude, your opposition will one day turn to opportunity. As Psalm 27:10 says: 'Though mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up' - for what man rejects, God chooses.
Jephthah is a kind of Cinderella story, the reject elevated to a place of honour and authority. The only problem with the Jephthah story is it doesn't end happily ever after, because after the great victory that God gave him over the Ammonites and Philistines, he experienced anything but happiness. We read about that in verses 29 to 40 of chapter 11. Before he went into battle we were given a glimpse of what he said to God, he made a rash vow that he would devote to the Lord whatever first came out of his doors. Verse 31, look at it: 'It shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up for a burnt offering'. The Lord gave him victory, and as he returned to the house, to his horror and ours as we read the narrative, who trundled out but his only daughter whom he loved with all his heart!
What lesson can we possibly learn from this? I was sharing this with Barbara during the week, and she said 'How can you apply that one today?'. Well, it's simply the opposite to what we've already said: God chooses what men reject, but God rejects what men choose. What am I talking about? Well, Jephthah was no more immune to danger in victory than his predecessors were in the book of Judges. Like them, his personal strength became his weakness.
As we read his story we find out that Jephthah was an expert negotiator, and I'm assuming that because I can't imagine how else he could keep a band of no goods together up there in Tob - he must have been great at debating and keeping peace among those thieves and criminals. When we come to his conversation with the King of Ammon in verse 12 of chapter 11, we find that he asked the question: 'Why are you invading us?'. The reply comes from the King of Ammon: 'Because Israel took away my land at the time of Joshua, so I want you to return it peacefully'. The King of Ammon made an accusation: 'Israel has taken my land and I want them to return it', and so Jephthah negotiates, and he argues first of all from history, and he tells them: 'We didn't take the land from the Ammonites but from the Amorites' - verses 15 to 22. Then he argues from theology, he says: 'The Lord gave us this land, we can't surrender it to you', verses 23 to 25, 'We didn't take it, the Lord give to us, and we didn't take it from you'. Then thirdly he argues from reason, he tells them for 300 years they have lived in the land, yet they haven't come to claim it until now, and it's too late to make land claims now. What skill he had as a negotiator!
But do you know what he does? That was his strength, and now we see he overplays his hand, and in a momentary attempt at a pious bargain with God to get the victory over Ammon, he effectively bargains with God and says: 'If You give me victory, whatever comes out of my front door when I return home I'll sacrifice it to You as a burnt offering'. Now God rejected that: what man chooses, God rejects. God rejected it as a basis for victory - don't you think for one minute that God gave him the victory because he made this vow! Far from it. You see, God's word had been given to Jephthah, and that was enough. But you say: 'God made Jephthah honour his vow', He did, and do you know why He made him do it? Out of discipline. Jephthah decided to vow this vow to the Lord, and I use that word 'decided' because this was something that God did not require of Jephthah. It was in a moment of overzealousness with the prospect of victory in his head that caused him to make this hasty vow, but it was the promise of God that mattered more for victory - not anything that Jephthah would do for God. Victory would be based on God's word and God's power, not on some bargain that Jephthah made, bending God's arm up His back.
First Samuel and chapter 15 and verse 22 I think is a great commentary on this event. You remember God said to Saul through the prophet Samuel: 'Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams'. Have you ever considered that obedience doesn't just mean doing all that God has asked you, but not doing more than God has asked you? The tragedy of the story is in the fact that although this was not required of God, indeed it was rejected; because he had vowed a vow to the Lord, God required him to keep his word. Deuteronomy 23:21 says: 'When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee'.
A vow in the Old Testament was a purely voluntary act, but once the vow was made you were committed before God, and for that very reason God warns against taking vows in a rash or thoughtless way. Because he had opened his mouth to the Lord, in verse 35 he says: 'I cannot go back, I can't take it away'. What a warning that is to all of us, not to make any commitment to God carelessly or thoughtlessly. Solomon said in Ecclesiastes: 'It is better that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay'.
Now there is considerable disagreement as to what Jephthah did to his daughter. One view is that he killed her and sacrificed her, and offered her as a burnt offering - and that is probably the most obvious initial reading of the text before us. However the idea of human sacrifice in the Bible is repulsive to God, He condemns it in the law in Deuteronomy 18. Jephthah would have known God's law, he was no country bumpkin. The other common interpretation is that Jephthah gave his daughter to be a perpetual virgin in the service of Jehovah. Whatever came forth his doors, the sense of verse 31, if you look at it your margin may render it this way: 'Whatever comes out of the doors shall surely be the Lord's, or I will offer it upon the altar for a burnt offering' - the word could be 'or' rather than 'and'. As we go down the passage, we find that she requests to bewail her virginity on the mountains, and all these daughters of Israel go with her. We find in verses 37 to 39 that it's commemorated from this day on in Israel, of how she bewailed her virginity in this way. I believe the meaning was this: she was dedicated to the Lord, probably to the service of the tabernacle as a perpetual virgin. She couldn't marry and Jephthah wouldn't have any children and progeny to his name.
Whatever the meaning is, what is the lesson? We should never make rash promises and vows to God. If we open our mouth, God will require us to pay what we have said. There are great consequences when we vow to the Lord. Let me share in closing what the consequence of overzealousness was for Jephthah. Do you remember his background? He was treated with cruelty, he experienced gross injustice by his brothers and townspeople. He had been forced to bear the consequences of an act which he was completely innocent of. Others decided his fate for him, condemned him to it whether he agreed with it or not - and then what happens? In a moment of overzealousness Jephthah does precisely the same thing to his own daughter that had been done to him. She became the sufferer of the lot of the consequences of her father's ill-advised act.
How often it happens to the best of us, Satan seems to take great delight in manoeuvring us into positions where we impose on others the very things that have been great sources of trial to us. Are we guilty like that? Guilty of enforcing on people standards that we set for them, and we forget at times how we chaffed under the impositions that we felt were unfair in bygone days. Maybe we're parents and we make the mistake of attempting, without any explanation, to impose things on our children that we ridiculed and resented when our parents did them towards us. Apart from those things: here we see in Jephthah a fallible saviour, and a saviour who perpetuated upon his descendants his own sin and fate. But isn't it wonderful today that we have a Saviour in Christ Jesus who followed the will of God perfectly, who knew the mind of God completely, who displayed the power of God fully - and He now has made His descendants, in the Spirit, more than conquerors through Him who loved us; so that we, as Hebrews says, have a Great High Priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities - why? Because He was tested in life in the flesh in all points as we are, apart from sin.
Isn't it wonderful that though we are a reject today in man's eyes, God chooses what man rejects. Let us be careful not to make a choice that God would reject in our lives, and impose upon others the rejection that we have found - but let us rejoice in our wonderful Saviour, in whom we have full complete and eternal salvation. May God bless His word to our hearts.
Father, help us all to realise this morning that it doesn't matter who has rejected us if we are accepted in the Beloved. Father, let none make the false conclusion that because men have rejected them for no fault of their own, that God has rejected them for His choice and His use. May we all realise today that there is a work for Jesus ready at our hand, it is a work the Master just for us has planned, may they haste to do His bidding, yield Him service true. May they say today: 'Lord, forgetting the past, I press on for Your call'. Bless this word to every heart we pray, and may it make a difference, for Jesus' sake, Amen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcribed by Andrew Watkins, Preach The Word - January 2006
www.preachtheword.com
info@preachtheword.com
Men For The Hour - Chapter 12
"Samson, The Promising Start"
Copyright 2006
by Pastor David Legge
All rights reserved
Now let us turn in our Bibles to the book of Judges again - chapter 13 this morning. If you're a newcomer, a visitor with us today, we have been studying the book of Judges, or at least the characters of the judges in the book of Judges over the last eleven weeks. This is our twelfth week, and we have looked at them as individuals, and spent a number of weeks on some of them - Gideon, for instance, we spent I think five or six weeks on him. We're starting another character, indeed probably the one who will be the last character in the series, and he will take a couple of weeks as well - that is Samson. This morning we're looking in chapter 13 verses 1 to 23, and our title is 'Samson, The Promising Start'.
We begin our reading at verse 1: "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren, and bare not. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold now, thou art barren, and bearest not: but thou shalt conceive, and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing: For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines. Then the woman came and told her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible: but I asked him not whence he was, neither told he me his name: But he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and now drink no wine nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing: for the child shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death. Then Manoah intreated the LORD, and said, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again unto us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born. And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again unto the woman as she sat in the field: but Manoah her husband was not with her. And the woman made haste, and ran, and showed her husband, and said unto him, Behold, the man hath appeared unto me, that came unto me the other day. And Manoah arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman? And he said, I am. And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him? And the angel of the LORD said unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware. She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing: all that I commanded her let her observe. And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, I pray thee, let us detain thee, until we shall have made ready a kid for thee. And the angel of the LORD said unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread: and if thou wilt offer a burnt offering, thou must offer it unto the LORD. For Manoah knew not that he was an angel", or 'the angel', "of the LORD. And Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honor? And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret? So Manoah took a kid with a meat offering, and offered it upon a rock unto the LORD: and the angel did wonderously; and Manoah and his wife looked on. For it came to pass, when the flame went up toward heaven from off the altar, that the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. And Manoah and his wife looked on it, and fell on their faces to the ground. But the angel of the LORD did no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the LORD. And Manoah said unto his wife, We shall surely die, because we have seen God. But his wife said unto him, If the LORD were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things, nor would as at this time have told us such things as these". We'll read verses 24 and 25 as well: "And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson: and the child grew, and the LORD blessed him. And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol".
'Samson, The Promising Start'. I think few stories are more tragic in the Scriptures than Samson's. There are many fallen heroes that we have even encountered over the last number of weeks, and right throughout from Genesis to Revelation that we could cite, but it seems that there is none greater than Samson. I used to play a bit of rugby - I wasn't good at it by any stretch of the imagination - but I always remember our coaches telling us that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. It's the same regarding the heroes of God that have fallen in the past. Samson was a great man, a great man of faith, a great man of God, chosen of God, yet he had a great fall. We shall see over these next weeks, specifically this morning, how Samson started out with great promise. We'll see a little bit in verses 24 and 25, but in subsequent weeks it will become more clear how God's power was uniquely imparted and displayed through him. We will see that the outcome of that power