WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 We're going to read together from the Old Testament, from the book of Judges. 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:09.919 We're going to read chapter one. 00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:14.880 After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:18.960 who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? 00:00:19.519 --> 00:00:24.000 The Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:29.920 And Judah said to Simeon, his brother, come up with me into the territory allotted to me, 00:00:30.560 --> 00:00:34.560 that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:41.200 territory allotted to you. So Simeon went with him. Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites 00:00:41.200 --> 00:00:47.359 and the Parasites into their hand, and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. They found 00:00:47.359 --> 00:00:55.359 Adonai at Bezek and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Parasites. Adonai, Bezek, 00:00:55.359 --> 00:01:00.000 fled, but they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. 00:01:00.879 --> 00:01:05.200 And Adonai, Bezek said, 70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off, 00:01:05.200 --> 00:01:10.079 used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:15.439 And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem 00:01:15.439 --> 00:01:21.359 and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. And afterwards, 00:01:21.359 --> 00:01:25.679 the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country in the 00:01:25.679 --> 00:01:32.879 Negev and in the low land. And Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron. Now the name 00:01:32.879 --> 00:01:41.200 of Hebron was formerly Kyriath Arba and they defeated Shashai and Ahimon and Tal Ma. From there, 00:01:41.200 --> 00:01:47.280 they went against the inhabitants of De Beir. The name of De Beir was formerly Kyriath Sefer. 00:01:47.280 --> 00:01:52.480 And Caleb said, he who attacks Kyriath Sefer and captures it, I will give him 00:01:53.600 --> 00:01:59.920 Aqsa, my daughter, for a wife. And Othiniel, the son of Canaanites, Caleb's younger brother, 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:06.320 captured it. And he gave him Aqsa, his daughter, for a wife. And when she came to him, she urged 00:02:06.319 --> 00:02:11.840 him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey and Caleb said to her, 00:02:11.840 --> 00:02:16.799 what do you want? She said to him, give me a blessing. Since you have set me in the land of 00:02:16.799 --> 00:02:22.400 the Negev, give me also the springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:28.959 springs. And the descendants of the Kenai, Moses' father-in-law, went up with the people of Judah 00:02:28.959 --> 00:02:34.319 from the city of Palms into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the Negev near Arad. And 00:02:34.319 --> 00:02:38.719 they went and they settled with the people. And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, and they 00:02:38.719 --> 00:02:46.319 defeated the Canaanites who inhabited Zephaph and devoted it to destruction. So the name of the city 00:02:46.319 --> 00:02:54.639 was called Hormah. Judah also captured Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory, 00:02:54.639 --> 00:02:59.840 and Ekron with its territory. And the Lord was filled, was with Judah, and he took possession 00:02:59.840 --> 00:03:04.640 of the whole country. But he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:11.039 chariots of iron. And Hebron was given to Caleb, as Moses had said, and he drove out from it the 00:03:11.039 --> 00:03:17.039 three sons of Anach. But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem. 00:03:17.039 --> 00:03:22.480 So the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. The house of 00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:28.000 Joseph also went up against Bethel, and the Lord was with them. And the house of Joseph scouted 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:33.759 out Bethel. Now the name of the city was Lutz. And the spies saw a man coming out of the city, 00:03:33.759 --> 00:03:38.479 and they said to him, please show us the way into the city, and we will deal kindly with you. 00:03:38.479 --> 00:03:42.639 And he showed them the way into the city, and they struck the city with the edge of the sword. 00:03:42.639 --> 00:03:47.280 But they let the man and all his family go, and the man went out to the land of the Hittites and 00:03:47.280 --> 00:03:53.920 built a city and called its name Lutz. That is its name to this day. Manasseh did not drive out the 00:03:53.919 --> 00:04:00.639 inhabitants of Bethshion in its villages, or Ta'anach in its villages, or the inhabitants of Dore in 00:04:00.639 --> 00:04:06.560 its villages, or the inhabitants of Ibliam in its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo in its 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:12.319 villages, for the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. And when Israel grew strong, they 00:04:12.319 --> 00:04:18.399 put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not drive them out completely. And Ephraim did not 00:04:18.399 --> 00:04:23.120 drive out the Canaanites who lived in Getzer. So the Canaanites lived in Getzer among them. 00:04:23.120 --> 00:04:30.079 Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants of Ketron, or the inhabitants of Nahalol, 00:04:30.079 --> 00:04:34.639 so the Canaanites lived among them, but became subject to forced labor. 00:04:35.280 --> 00:04:42.079 Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko, or the inhabitants of Sidon, Sidon, or Achlab, 00:04:42.720 --> 00:04:50.959 or Akzib, or of Helba, or of Afik, or of Riho. So the Asherites lived among the Canaanites, 00:04:50.959 --> 00:04:55.919 and the inhabitants of the land, for they did not drive them out. Naftali did not drive out the 00:04:55.919 --> 00:05:02.479 inhabitants of Beth Shemesh, or the inhabitants of Beth Anath, so they lived among the Canaanites, 00:05:02.479 --> 00:05:08.159 the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh and of Beth Anath became 00:05:08.159 --> 00:05:14.479 subject to forced labor for them. The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, 00:05:14.479 --> 00:05:19.359 for they did not allow them to come down to the plain. The Amorites persisted in dwelling in Mount 00:05:19.360 --> 00:05:28.160 Harris, in Ajilon, and in Shah al-Bim. But the hand of the house of Joseph rested heavily on them, 00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:33.280 and they became subject to forced labor. And the border of the Amorites ran from the ascent 00:05:33.280 --> 00:05:41.120 of Akra-Bim from Sayla and upwards. This is God's holy word. Tom, come and preach for us. 00:05:42.319 --> 00:05:46.480 Okay, good to be with you all, and we're going to spend some time looking at that chapter. 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:52.720 Now, that chapter, which did take a while to read, and which contains many names that are maybe 00:05:52.720 --> 00:06:00.480 unfamiliar to you and are difficult to say, is all about places and people. People like us, 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:07.040 although different from us. And they lived through the times and the dealings of God 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:13.439 in those times that they lived. So they had to experience all the stuff that was going on. 00:06:13.439 --> 00:06:20.319 But you might be thinking, what am I supposed to do with this stuff? How am I supposed to make sense 00:06:20.319 --> 00:06:26.240 of it? And if this is a series that in some way ties into the gospel, I'm not sure how this is 00:06:26.240 --> 00:06:30.720 going to go. You might not see at this point in time how we're going to connect all of this to 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:36.879 the gospel. So what I'd like to do tonight is I'm not going to look at every single verse in the 00:06:36.879 --> 00:06:43.920 chapter, but I'd like to hopefully frame things and preach an introductory sermon to this book 00:06:43.920 --> 00:06:49.680 that's going to pick out four key themes from this chapter that I think you'll see recur 00:06:49.680 --> 00:06:56.240 as we go through the book. But I hope as well that we're going to see how God is behind all that's 00:06:56.240 --> 00:07:03.040 going on here, and we can even see the gospel even in this first chapter of the book. A number of 00:07:03.040 --> 00:07:08.560 introductory bullet points though to start with. These are these are just things to say, to frame 00:07:08.560 --> 00:07:16.160 us diving into this book, the book of Judges. First of all, I call this sermon, I don't always think 00:07:16.160 --> 00:07:22.160 of titles for sermons, but I decided to call this one Deliver Us from Evil. Now Deliver Us from Evil 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:26.400 is a line that we get from a prayer in the New Testament, but I think Deliver Us from Evil can 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:32.640 describe many of the incidents that happen throughout the book of Judges, and actually we 00:07:32.639 --> 00:07:38.959 could broaden that theme to describe the theme of the Bible. And it's also the theme of one of the 00:07:38.959 --> 00:07:44.560 greatest prayers we can make, Lord God Deliver Us from Evil. It's much of what goes on in this book. 00:07:45.680 --> 00:07:50.879 Second bullet point, and I read this, I thought it was helpful. Somebody I was reading about the 00:07:50.879 --> 00:07:59.519 book of Judges said, read Judges before you read Judges. So I like that. What he meant was, I think, 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:07.759 first of all, read it through, as you would a story, so as to get a feel for what's going on. 00:08:08.639 --> 00:08:14.159 Because as we read it, you will have got the sense that an awful lot is going on. And if you come to it, 00:08:15.359 --> 00:08:20.560 cold as it were, and maybe in a sermon, you spend most of your time trying to catch up with what's 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:23.919 going on. So if you've got time, and if you're going to be a part of St. Columbus for the next 00:08:23.919 --> 00:08:27.919 little while listening to this series, then it might be good. You may not have thought about 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:32.080 doing this, but maybe spend some of your evenings reading through the book of Judges and just getting 00:08:32.080 --> 00:08:40.480 a feel for what's going on. In the book of Judges, third bullet point, you'll meet 12 Judges. So if 00:08:40.480 --> 00:08:45.759 you're totally new to the book and you don't know what's going on, there are these key figures, 00:08:45.759 --> 00:08:52.800 characters, most of whom are men, but not all of whom are men. And they don't always judge. That's 00:08:52.800 --> 00:08:56.720 what's slightly confusing about it. You know, if you think of them just as people who will lay down 00:08:56.720 --> 00:09:02.560 the law in a kind of courtroom context, you won't find too much of that. But another way to think 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:08.879 about them is perhaps to call them deliverers, deliverers from evil. These are figures who God 00:09:08.879 --> 00:09:13.360 uses to help deliver the people from some of the messes that they get themselves into. 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:24.240 On that though, as judges or deliverers, these are flawed types of a greater and perfect judge 00:09:24.240 --> 00:09:29.759 who is to come. One of the things we see over and over through the scriptures is that as God 00:09:29.759 --> 00:09:36.480 works through time and history, through individuals and humans like us, who are therefore fallible 00:09:36.480 --> 00:09:43.360 and flawed like us, in many ways points forward continually to the need to somebody who can do it 00:09:44.080 --> 00:09:50.799 properly, who can really perfectly judge and administer justice and save the people. Many of 00:09:50.799 --> 00:09:56.559 the judges, in fact, not all of the judges, don't do everything perfectly. And so there are many 00:09:56.559 --> 00:10:02.479 mistakes and problems in the Book of Judges. Next bullet point, I've lost count of which 00:10:02.479 --> 00:10:07.759 bullet point I'm on, but the next one is that as a result of these judges being flawed types of the 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:14.319 perfect deliverer, we meet troubling material in the book. Now, it might be that all you know of 00:10:14.319 --> 00:10:19.919 the Book of Judges is what a friend of a friend has said, that it's the kind of book that should 00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:24.719 never be in the Bible. It's deeply worrying. There's war and all kinds of things going on. 00:10:25.279 --> 00:10:28.399 And so you might be thinking to yourself, I don't know how to handle this book. 00:10:29.360 --> 00:10:34.559 Oh, you might have read it and thought, you're quiet time and you're reading about some battle 00:10:34.559 --> 00:10:41.759 and devastation and so good question and good point. And I think the answer to that, 00:10:41.759 --> 00:10:46.879 because this is a bullet point in brief, is rather than looking away or trying to kind of 00:10:46.879 --> 00:10:52.000 shovel it under a carpet somewhere, we actually take the time as you're going to do over the next 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:58.720 number of weeks to read it through and say what's going on here in the context of the wider book, 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:04.960 the Bible and God who is over all of this. We're nearly done with the bullet points. 00:11:06.559 --> 00:11:14.559 Second last one is to say that this is a part of God's scripture. Jesus affirmed the Old Testament. 00:11:14.559 --> 00:11:20.799 Jesus didn't caveat the book of judges and say, actually, there's a problematic bit that I'm not 00:11:20.799 --> 00:11:25.439 too comfortable with. So let's remove it. He didn't do that. And therefore we take this as 00:11:25.439 --> 00:11:33.199 his scripture and we approach it in that way. And finally, as we approach this book in a very 00:11:33.199 --> 00:11:39.439 ancient context with much that might seem distant and strange and troubling to us, 00:11:39.440 --> 00:11:47.200 this is in essence a book about how humans should live. And therefore it's a book that 00:11:47.200 --> 00:11:54.640 matters to us. It's a book about how humans should live and who will rescue them when they go astray. 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:59.520 And that's a book that I need to read. And I would suggest it's a book we all need to read 00:11:59.520 --> 00:12:04.960 and take some time to consider. So with those eight or nine or however many bullet points 00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:08.640 that were in mind, and you might have had others to introduce the book of judges, but maybe you'll 00:12:08.639 --> 00:12:14.240 pick up on them over the next few weeks. Let me now turn with you to the chapter. And as I said, 00:12:14.240 --> 00:12:20.720 we're going to look at four particular themes that I want to pick out of the chapter itself. 00:12:20.720 --> 00:12:26.080 And the first one is leadership. So read verse one with me, please. 00:12:27.039 --> 00:12:31.199 After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:38.400 who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? Leadership. 00:12:39.920 --> 00:12:49.440 The people act as a body, as a group, and they take a question to God. So what that tells us 00:12:49.440 --> 00:12:57.360 immediately is here is a people whose sense of self, at least in this moment in time, is intricately 00:12:57.360 --> 00:13:03.039 bound up with their deity. They want to know what God will say to them about the predicament that 00:13:03.039 --> 00:13:10.159 they have. Now part of the predicament that they have is because the previous leader that they had 00:13:10.159 --> 00:13:17.039 has now died. So Joshua is a pivotal figure in the history of God's people, the Israelites, 00:13:17.039 --> 00:13:23.680 and in the Old Testament. He was preceded himself by Moses. You've probably heard of Moses, 00:13:23.679 --> 00:13:30.959 huge figure, very important figure in the Old Testament. Again, a leader designated by God 00:13:30.959 --> 00:13:36.559 to lead his people out of captivity where they had been in the slavery of Egypt and on 00:13:37.279 --> 00:13:43.439 toward the promise that he had given them. When Moses had died, Joshua had taken over. 00:13:43.439 --> 00:13:52.240 Now Joshua has died. Who's going to take over? Who did they go to? Who should they ask for help? 00:13:52.240 --> 00:13:58.960 And what we find is that in this moment in time, they go direct to God and they ask him for help. 00:13:58.960 --> 00:14:03.360 And please notice what maybe answer they get. So we follow through into verse 2. 00:14:04.080 --> 00:14:10.480 Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? The Lord said, 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:15.120 Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hands. 00:14:16.960 --> 00:14:21.600 Now what that tells us immediately is that God isn't unprepared for their question. 00:14:21.600 --> 00:14:26.159 You see the way that he answers their question with a decisive answer. He says, 00:14:26.159 --> 00:14:31.120 here's what's going to happen. I've made this decision. These are the tribe that are going to do 00:14:31.120 --> 00:14:36.480 this and this is going to be the outcome. And the reason for this is because the events that we're 00:14:36.480 --> 00:14:45.440 reading through here aren't random. I mean, we encounter our lives in a sense cold. We come into 00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:48.960 each day not really knowing what's going to happen. And it may well have been the same for 00:14:48.960 --> 00:14:54.720 these people. They were a pivotal point in their life, their history, and their inquiring of God, 00:14:54.720 --> 00:15:01.440 but the events aren't cold to God. Now part of the reason we can say that is because, as I said, 00:15:01.440 --> 00:15:08.400 we take this book in the wider context of the Scriptures, a couple of things on that. 00:15:09.360 --> 00:15:16.639 This is all about God's people at this moment in time on a journey. Now, you may love or you may 00:15:16.639 --> 00:15:22.159 think it's really corny to speak about life as a journey, but these people literally were on a journey 00:15:22.159 --> 00:15:28.799 and they were on a journey to a land, a land that had been promised to them by God, because it was 00:15:28.799 --> 00:15:37.039 his will that he would establish his people in a place where they could worship him. Now, that 00:15:37.039 --> 00:15:40.639 goes way back. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but that goes way back to somebody 00:15:40.639 --> 00:15:47.679 like Abraham, again, a pivotal figure in the history of the Israelites. Genesis chapter 12, 00:15:47.679 --> 00:15:53.840 God calls Abraham, he makes a promise to Abraham, a lot of which is tied up with the journey he will 00:15:53.840 --> 00:16:01.279 make to a place. And in that place, God will establish him and his offspring, and they will 00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:06.799 be there to worship him. If I was to take you back to the start of the preceding book, we're in 00:16:06.799 --> 00:16:11.759 Judges here, but if I was to take you back to Joshua, that's the kind of thing that you'll see 00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:18.559 right at the beginning of the book. I will take you back just for one moment in the first verse, 00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:23.919 after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua, the son of Nun, 00:16:23.919 --> 00:16:30.799 Moses' assistant, Moses, my servant is dead, now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, you and all 00:16:30.799 --> 00:16:37.599 these people into the land that I am giving them to the people of Israel. So this hasn't come out 00:16:37.599 --> 00:16:44.000 of nowhere, they're on a journey, and that journey has been given to them in many ways by God. 00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:50.079 The purpose of that, of course, is that they won't be wanderers, they will have a place, 00:16:50.079 --> 00:16:55.599 and they will have a place where they can know the Lord. They were to be God's covenant people, 00:16:55.600 --> 00:17:01.440 he declared that he was their God, and they would worship him, which is appropriate. 00:17:02.159 --> 00:17:06.319 That's what God wanted for them in many ways. And can I just say one more thing on this? 00:17:07.440 --> 00:17:12.400 As they traveled and as they set up camp along the way in their wandering days, and then as they 00:17:12.400 --> 00:17:18.319 finally established themselves later in the story in the place, one of the key things about them was 00:17:18.319 --> 00:17:24.480 that they were to be God's people in God's place under his rule, under his good oversight, knowing 00:17:24.480 --> 00:17:31.120 his justice and his mercy and his goodness and all of this, and worshiping him. And if you like, 00:17:31.120 --> 00:17:37.599 being that light to all the surrounding peoples so that they would see the goodness of the true 00:17:37.599 --> 00:17:43.360 God who is over all things. And in many ways, that itself isn't random. If you think about the 00:17:43.360 --> 00:17:50.400 wider context of the Bible, take it as far back as what God did in the garden, where he established 00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:56.160 a people in a place under his good oversight and his rule. What a blessing that must have been 00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:03.680 to have lived in that environment as a good place, spoiled of course by the tragedy of the fall. 00:18:03.680 --> 00:18:08.480 And go to the other extreme, if you follow through the Bible, through the pages of the New Testament 00:18:08.480 --> 00:18:14.800 and to the promise of what will come and what God is going to do, he will make a new heavens and a 00:18:14.799 --> 00:18:20.960 new earth. The Lord Jesus will be with his people and it will be again a place where God's people 00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:26.960 are in God's place under God's good oversight and his rule. That is what God wants. He wants human 00:18:26.960 --> 00:18:35.919 beings to live in a beautiful, blessed, worshipful space. And if you like, he's taken this people 00:18:35.919 --> 00:18:41.680 in this moment in time and he's put them on a particular journey, but it's all so that they 00:18:41.680 --> 00:18:47.840 will know the goodness of his oversight and his care. And he wants all the surrounding people 00:18:47.840 --> 00:18:51.440 to see that. But there's more to say and I don't have time to go into all of that. 00:18:53.519 --> 00:18:57.519 Leadership is a theme that will occur. I'm not going to say any more about it, but you see the 00:18:57.519 --> 00:19:02.880 way in which after the death of Joshua, these people go to God. Now that's a good start. 00:19:02.880 --> 00:19:14.880 Verse 1 is a good start. Second theme and it's a big one is war. This may be one of the reasons why, 00:19:14.880 --> 00:19:20.480 if you've read the book before, we don't always find it an easy read. But we find war very quickly 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:25.360 cropping up because again, I don't have to go much outside of verse 1, the people inquired of the 00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:33.359 Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? Okay. So these 00:19:33.359 --> 00:19:38.799 are the people who live in the land. Here are God's people coming in and their intention, 00:19:38.799 --> 00:19:43.439 their understanding of themselves at this moment in time is that they are to fight against these 00:19:43.439 --> 00:19:51.599 people. Now immediately, as I said, we might feel uncomfortable with it. We might feel that this is 00:19:51.599 --> 00:19:56.159 something that God wouldn't want. We might feel that God's people are behaving improperly and 00:19:56.159 --> 00:20:02.079 that's an understandable question as well. So it's worth us giving some time initially. 00:20:02.639 --> 00:20:08.559 And this is just an initial look at this theme of war. And I want to tie in particularly war 00:20:09.119 --> 00:20:14.240 with the theme that Corey mentioned, which is idolatry. These things will keep recurring as you 00:20:14.240 --> 00:20:24.160 go through this book. War, as I said, we might think, well, this is the God of peace. I'm a 00:20:24.160 --> 00:20:30.240 Christian. You might be a Christian. You might follow the teachings of Jesus who says, love your 00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:37.279 enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Absolutely, you should do that. So what do we 00:20:37.279 --> 00:20:42.559 do with war? What do we do when we find God answering His people in the affirmative? Again, 00:20:42.559 --> 00:20:47.200 you might have said, oh, the people are asking God, we're going to fight the Canaanites, 00:20:47.200 --> 00:20:50.960 who shall go up against them? Maybe God's going to say, no, no, no, no, don't do it. 00:20:50.960 --> 00:20:56.720 Don't fight a war. I don't wish you to do that. He doesn't say that. He affirms and says, this is 00:20:56.720 --> 00:21:02.799 who's going to go up and fight this initial battle. And as we go through the chapter, again, 00:21:02.799 --> 00:21:08.480 I'm not going to pick out all the instances by any means, but in verse 4, you find the figure of 00:21:08.480 --> 00:21:16.720 10,000 people who've been killed. If you were to go to verse 7, you come across a gruesome story of a 00:21:16.720 --> 00:21:27.440 king who's effectively brutalized, his digits are cut off, and things progress in this way. And actually, 00:21:28.319 --> 00:21:34.480 in many ways, the spiral or cycle of things in the book gets worse as you go through it. 00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:41.360 Things seem at points to be getting out of control. What's going on? Let me just say a 00:21:41.360 --> 00:21:47.440 couple of things. And again, this is an introductory sermon. What can we say about war? Well, the first 00:21:47.440 --> 00:21:54.880 thing to say is that God in many ways is testing his people. Now, that might be a strange thing to 00:21:54.880 --> 00:22:03.120 say and think, but I'm just going to dip into chapter 2. I'm cheating a little bit. In chapter 2, 00:22:03.119 --> 00:22:09.679 and in verse 22, let me read this. I'll read from verse 21. God says, 00:22:09.679 --> 00:22:14.239 I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died in order to 00:22:14.239 --> 00:22:19.919 test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers 00:22:19.919 --> 00:22:28.159 did or not. Now, as I said, I'll say more about God's purposes tied to idolatry. God does want 00:22:28.160 --> 00:22:34.800 the people to move the Canaanites out of the land. One of the initial reasons he gives here is that 00:22:34.800 --> 00:22:39.279 he's testing them to see whether they'll obey him or not. So this is something that he wants to happen, 00:22:39.920 --> 00:22:45.040 and God gives a directive to them. And the question that God has is, will they obey me? 00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:54.960 Let me just tie that word test to a word, excuse me, preceding. It's the same word that is used 00:22:54.960 --> 00:23:03.759 when God comes to Abraham and gives him a terrible request. He asks him to take his son and put him 00:23:03.759 --> 00:23:10.559 to death. And of course, the answer in that dreadful scenario is that Abraham doesn't have to go 00:23:10.559 --> 00:23:16.799 through with it because God provides the sacrifice, but God sees there the way in which his servant 00:23:17.360 --> 00:23:22.960 is so faithful and trusting and does as the Lord commanded. One of the key things that will come 00:23:22.960 --> 00:23:27.920 out of the book of Judges is whether or not the people will listen to God. They asked him a question, 00:23:28.880 --> 00:23:35.279 they asked him what they wanted him to do, what he wanted them to do. And one of the key things 00:23:35.279 --> 00:23:42.960 is whether they'll listen or not. So testing is a key thing and also preparing. In chapter 3, 00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:48.640 verse 2, he talks about the way in which they will need to be prepared for warfare. 00:23:48.640 --> 00:23:58.080 Again, you might say, really, is that really so necessary? These were brutal days in many ways, 00:23:58.080 --> 00:24:04.080 and warfare was just in the air often. If you think about it, God's people had been 00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:10.160 subjugated, they'd been slaves, they'd been freed from that captivity, they'd been wanderers, 00:24:10.960 --> 00:24:16.240 and they were going to have to inhabit a land and defend a land against all kinds of people 00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:20.720 who were going to come against them. And so in many ways, practically speaking as a nation, 00:24:20.720 --> 00:24:25.440 they needed to learn the art of warfare. Now, still, you may say, I don't like this theme, 00:24:26.079 --> 00:24:30.960 but these are verses that come out of the passages that chapter 2 and chapter 3, 00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:35.759 that help us understand some of what's going on here in the history of this people. 00:24:36.960 --> 00:24:41.200 But let me say one more thing about warfare, and now I'm kind of kind of bridged into the third 00:24:41.200 --> 00:24:45.680 point. So we've thought a little bit about leadership, we've thought initially about warfare, 00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:51.279 and let me connect in now to the theme of idolatry. And this is a key theme in the book, 00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:56.880 and in fact, it's a key theme in the Bible, and it's a key theme in our hearts. 00:24:59.200 --> 00:25:07.759 Idolatry was rife in the land as the people entered. The people were not worshipers of God, 00:25:07.759 --> 00:25:12.799 Yahweh, as we meet Him in the Old Testament. They had their own deities, they worshiped 00:25:12.799 --> 00:25:18.480 their own deities, they quite literally worshiped idols, statues, and all kinds of different things. 00:25:20.079 --> 00:25:26.399 That's a problem for the God who is the true God over all things, and who won't, if you like, 00:25:26.399 --> 00:25:33.279 share the platform with these confected gods of the peoples. That's a problem for Him at that level, 00:25:33.279 --> 00:25:40.799 but it's also a problem because of the practices that idolaters employ in their idolatry. 00:25:40.799 --> 00:25:48.960 And what I mean by that is this was a land that was saturated by a behaviour that would mean that 00:25:49.599 --> 00:25:55.039 you wouldn't want to have lived there. There were many practices that we would describe as evil. 00:25:56.159 --> 00:25:59.519 They would make you really, really uncomfortable to be anywhere near this place, 00:26:00.559 --> 00:26:06.639 and they were detestable to God. And so the first thing to think about in terms of the context, 00:26:06.640 --> 00:26:13.120 as these people, God's people, move into the land, is that the idolatry that they discover there 00:26:13.120 --> 00:26:18.640 isn't, if you like, morally neutral. They're not moving into a place that was just nice, 00:26:19.360 --> 00:26:27.120 and the people were nice at that level. Here is a place that is infected, if you like, by moral evil. 00:26:28.400 --> 00:26:32.720 Let me say a few more things then about this idolatry and the way in which God deals with it. 00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:40.480 As He moves His people in and He seeks to cleanse or move those who lived in the land out, first of all, 00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:46.000 this is not the random judgment of the idolates. Now we often object when we see countries going 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:52.880 to war against one another for good reason. And I think we should do, because often what's involved 00:26:53.600 --> 00:27:00.960 is the brutal and irrational hatred of one human being for another. We have no right to do that. 00:27:00.960 --> 00:27:06.720 I have no right to look at my neighbour and despise them for who they are. If they're a different 00:27:06.720 --> 00:27:12.880 ethnicity, they've got a different culture or whatever. That's not what is happening here. 00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:16.880 This is not about God's people seeing another people group and saying, we don't like them, 00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:21.200 we don't like them to the extent that we're just going to wipe them out. This is about a people 00:27:21.200 --> 00:27:28.559 who've been commissioned by God to exercise His verdict and His judgment on the land and on the 00:27:28.559 --> 00:27:34.639 people. Now even there you may say, well, what gives God the right to do that? There's still a 00:27:34.639 --> 00:27:41.119 problem there, and I'm still quite uneasy about what's going on here. So let's address that question. 00:27:42.639 --> 00:27:50.480 Remember what God is doing in the big picture. Remember what He wants for humanity, and remember 00:27:50.480 --> 00:28:01.039 what He designed and made. He made a world that was perfect, where it was peaceful, where you would 00:28:01.039 --> 00:28:07.200 never have known oppression, where you would never have known someone sniping at you behind your back, 00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:14.160 much less going to war with you and threatening your family. That was God's intention, and that was 00:28:14.160 --> 00:28:21.759 God's design and His creation, which was ruined by sin. And the question from that point on for 00:28:21.759 --> 00:28:30.960 human beings is and remains, God, will you deliver us from evil? And so He's taken this people, 00:28:30.960 --> 00:28:38.080 if you like, He's incubating the situation where His will is to establish this people in a place 00:28:38.080 --> 00:28:42.720 that they will know His good rule and that they will worship Him and live in peace, and that the 00:28:42.720 --> 00:28:47.039 peoples who live around about them will see the way in which they live, and they will say, and you 00:28:47.039 --> 00:28:54.880 can refer to a Bible verse where it makes this clear, what an amazing God you have. Who is like, 00:28:54.880 --> 00:29:01.759 who is like your God? That is God's intention. And what He has come to the point of doing in this 00:29:01.759 --> 00:29:09.440 moment in time, if you like, His, the ethics of God, the judgment is breaking in, and He is giving 00:29:09.440 --> 00:29:15.920 a verdict of judgment on the evil that exists in this land. Now, God has the right to do that 00:29:15.920 --> 00:29:21.039 because He's a holy God, and God has the right to do that because, and this again takes us back 00:29:21.039 --> 00:29:30.799 to the early pages of Genesis, where we sin, the consequence of our sin is death. If we sin 00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:41.519 against the holy God by telling a lie, or by perpetrating great evil and horror on whole 00:29:41.519 --> 00:29:48.799 generations of people, then we don't have the right to live. And actually, in His mercy, 00:29:48.799 --> 00:29:55.519 God allows us to live, and God calls us to seek His mercy and come to know Him for who He is. 00:29:55.519 --> 00:30:01.519 And so what's happening here as God establishes His people is He is performing, if you like, 00:30:01.519 --> 00:30:08.319 a moment of judgment on this people. One writer puts it this way, when a nation has given way 00:30:08.319 --> 00:30:15.920 to such nameless and shameless wickedness that the land groans beneath the burden of its crimes, 00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:23.359 it's a mercy to the world when that wickedness is stamped out. That's a different way of looking 00:30:23.359 --> 00:30:29.199 at what's going on here. It is to say that God sees the evil that is perpetrated in the world 00:30:29.199 --> 00:30:38.079 and is grieved by it, and here He demonstrates His judgment that is to come. It's God saying, 00:30:38.079 --> 00:30:45.199 this is not good, and I will take this away. And in its place, I desire my people to be here, 00:30:45.199 --> 00:30:51.279 to know me and to worship me. Now, I'm not going to say any more about it. You'll hear more about 00:30:51.279 --> 00:30:55.839 the whole theme because these things recur throughout the whole book. But what I will do is come back 00:30:55.839 --> 00:31:04.559 to the application for us as Christians, because we're not to do this. This isn't for us. We're 00:31:04.559 --> 00:31:11.839 people who live in the light of the fact that the judgment of God that was exercised on this people 00:31:11.839 --> 00:31:22.000 in this particular way by the will of God in this time was also shown at the cross, at Calvary, 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:30.240 where Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took upon Himself the wrath of God for sin. If you still 00:31:30.240 --> 00:31:37.119 struggle with what God is doing in showing His judgment on these people, then bear in mind that 00:31:37.119 --> 00:31:45.199 Jesus Christ, who is the spotless, sinless, eternal Son of God, came with the express intention of 00:31:45.199 --> 00:31:55.039 taking upon Himself the just judgment of God, so that in the light of that, any idolater who walks the 00:31:55.039 --> 00:32:04.000 earth in our day can look to Jesus and be forgiven, and not only forgiven, but be restored from our 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:12.319 idolatry, which does us no good at all. As Corey said earlier, idolatry, we think it's good and 00:32:12.319 --> 00:32:17.440 it's rotten. It binds our hearts up in the love of all kinds of things. Maybe we don't worship 00:32:17.440 --> 00:32:23.680 literal idols, but there's plenty of things that can capture our hearts, and it poisons us, and it 00:32:23.680 --> 00:32:32.240 stops us seeing the holy goodness of God. And so we live in the days where Jesus took upon Himself 00:32:32.240 --> 00:32:40.799 the judgment that idolaters deserved, so that me and you, and we pray our friends and our neighbors 00:32:41.519 --> 00:32:48.720 can look to Him and no forgiveness and freeing. But again, I'm sure you'll get more on that theme 00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:54.079 to come. I'm going to hit one more point and then we're finished. So we've looked at the leadership 00:32:54.079 --> 00:32:58.720 theme, we've looked at war and idolatry, and I'm going to talk finally about obedience. 00:32:58.720 --> 00:33:06.640 So in the context of the chapter, God gives particular directives, of course, and one of the 00:33:06.640 --> 00:33:13.519 key things He says as you go out and as you make warfare is He says you must do it thoroughly. 00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:21.200 Don't let any of the evil remain. Now, if you think about the big theme of what we've been 00:33:21.200 --> 00:33:26.400 talking about, you can start to see maybe why that's so important, because in the chapter, 00:33:26.400 --> 00:33:32.240 what we discover is the people don't do that. It seems to start well, okay? Back into the chapter 00:33:32.240 --> 00:33:39.040 from verse 11, from there they went against the inhabitants of De Beir, the name of De Beir with 00:33:39.040 --> 00:33:47.440 formerly Kiliath Sefer, and you get a story there of the way in which the people were victorious, 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:51.519 and they moved out the people. You get some other stories of how that's the case, 00:33:51.519 --> 00:33:58.960 but the further we go on in the chapter, we start to hear stories of them failing in their mission, 00:33:59.920 --> 00:34:06.319 making pacts with some of the inhabitants, kind of cutting corners in the job that God had given 00:34:06.319 --> 00:34:12.559 them to do, and in other words, they're not fully obedient to the job that God has given to do, 00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:20.480 and why that matters is because God knows that the evil remains in the land as it starts to take 00:34:20.480 --> 00:34:25.440 root again, and as people employ different practices, different idolatries, different evil 00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:34.000 practices, it captures the heart of God's people and stops them being the people in the place 00:34:34.000 --> 00:34:40.480 under the good rule of God that he intended them to be, and therefore it has devastating consequences, 00:34:40.480 --> 00:34:46.320 and therefore we get the kind of cycle that you'll come across as you go through the book, 00:34:46.320 --> 00:34:54.080 that seems, things seem to keep disintegrating and getting worse and worse, and so what we get 00:34:54.080 --> 00:35:02.640 is this cycle of the people failing, falling into idolatry, committing sins, crying out to the Lord, 00:35:02.640 --> 00:35:09.200 deliver us from evil, and God sending a judge who comes, delivers them, you know some of the 00:35:09.199 --> 00:35:16.399 figures, Gideons, Samson's, other figures you've maybe never heard of because they're more obscure, 00:35:16.399 --> 00:35:22.799 and this becomes the pattern of the book in many ways, the cycle of the continual need of the people 00:35:22.799 --> 00:35:29.519 to be delivered from their foolishness, they make some terrible mistakes, don't we also, 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:38.879 and they fall into terrible idolatry at times, don't we sometimes as well, and so obedience is 00:35:38.880 --> 00:35:45.599 the theme, and I'm just going to not take you into chapter 2 really, but if you have a church 00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:51.920 Bible you'll notice that the heading of chapter 2 is Israel's disobedience, and their call to 00:35:51.920 --> 00:35:57.920 account immediately, God sends a messenger, an angel of the Lord who comes at the star of chapter 2 00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:05.440 and says, look, you haven't listened to me, look at what's happened, and he calls them to account 00:36:05.440 --> 00:36:10.400 for what they've done, and the terms in which he does that, he talks about the covenant that he is 00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:17.039 made with them, but that's another theme entirely, and I don't have time for that just now. This is 00:36:17.039 --> 00:36:25.280 the story of a bunch of human beings who make a bunch of mistakes, and in many ways therefore they're 00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:30.480 much like we are, and it's the story of people who lived in a very different time than us, 00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:35.679 and who maybe whose circumstances are different, and whose circumstances we struggle to grapple with, 00:36:36.320 --> 00:36:42.880 and yet the core of their experience remains the core of our experience as well. In the ruin of 00:36:42.880 --> 00:36:49.840 our hearts, where idolatry of whatever form takes hold, where we're pulled around by the different 00:36:49.840 --> 00:36:55.599 desires that call to us, the things that we think are better for us than the knowledge of God, 00:36:55.599 --> 00:37:04.799 the question remains for us, who will save us from ourselves, who will rescue us from our idolatry, 00:37:05.440 --> 00:37:09.759 and of course that's in many ways the reason why Jesus taught us his great prayer, 00:37:10.799 --> 00:37:18.000 Lord deliver us from evil. Let me finish with those words, and I'll pray, and then we'll sing 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:27.519 our concluding song together. Our Father, we pray that you would help us with your word, 00:37:29.920 --> 00:37:35.199 bless us by your Holy Spirit, so that over time we would understand it more, 00:37:36.719 --> 00:37:44.079 and you would help us to submit ourselves to it and listen to it. Help us also in the pages of 00:37:44.079 --> 00:37:50.719 the Book of Judges to encounter the one true and holy God, and we pray as well that we would see 00:37:50.719 --> 00:37:56.079 the you are the one who brings deliverance from evil, and so we pray even tonight, Lord, as we 00:37:56.079 --> 00:38:01.679 just get started in this book with all its challenges, that you would call us to yourself, 00:38:02.239 --> 00:38:10.239 and that you would help us to see that in you is true goodness. We pray this in the name of Jesus, 00:38:10.239 --> 00:38:16.239 our Rock and Redeemer. Amen.