Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 08 Jan. 12
By Captain Michael Ramsay
There was a show on Television late last century called Dinosaurs; it was about an anthropomorphic family of dinosaurs. There was a mom, a dad, a brother, a sister and a baby. Here is a clip about a running exchange between the dad and the baby. The dad loves the baby and will do anything to just try to get the baby to call him ‘Daddy’ but instead the baby just keeps referring to him as ‘Not the Mama’.
This, I think in some sense, is God’s relationship to Israel in the book of Judges. God just wants Israel to love Him and show that they love Him. He wants them to call him Father but they just refuse to and instead they just do whatever they see as fit in their own eyes. This is the tragedy of the book of Judges. It really is a love story that has all of the sorrow of Romeo and Juliet or some other Shakespearian tragedy.
God in the opening scene of Judges offers Israel the place of rest that she had been promised. It is before her. God uses Joshua, a conquering hero, to bring His people into this promised land and this is good as, Judges 1:7, “ the people served the LORD throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the LORD had done for Israel” (cf. Joshua 1:14, 10:7; compare Judges 1:10–15, 20 and Joshua 15:13–19; Judges 1:21 and Joshus 15:63; Judges 1:27, 28 and Joshua 17:11–13; Judges 1:29 and Joshua 16:10).[2] But, Verse 10, “after that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what He had done for Israel.” And, Verse 11, “Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals.” This is the sad, sad story of the story of Judges that is repeated again and again and again (Judges 2:11, 3:7, 3:12. 4:1, 6:11, 10:6, 13:1, 20:13). God loves His people and, like the Daddy Dinosaur, He just wants them to call on Him, their Father, but again and again and again the people refuse to this and instead they serve other gods or -possibly even worse- just like today; Judges 21:25, instead of serving God, everyone just does as he sees fit; the Authorized Version reads, “…every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” God loves them but instead –like Baby Dinosaur- they just serve themselves.
Our story today opens up with, “Again Israel did evil in the eyes of the LORD and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites” (Judges 6:1; cf. Genesis 25:2; Numbers 22:7, 25:6, 31:8). Israel did evil in the eyes of the LORD and they suffered the natural consequences of this.[3] They decline God’s offered love and protection so they do not have it; they reject the Lord and so they do not have Him. I don’t know how many of you know Stephen; he has been our janitor here since Alvin moved. Stephen is from England and he worked in a street mission in one of the larger cities over there. Sometimes when we chat, we compare the Lord’s blessings through Stephen’s serving the Lord in urban missions in Birmingham, England with Susan and my experiences on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Winnipeg’s North End. We were talking the other day. Stephen was mentioning the really high unemployment in England, the crime in the large urban centres, the people that he had known who were pedophiles, addicted to drugs, involved in violence. He relayed to us one story where he needed to rely on the Lord’s strength in order to evict a man from the shelter who was, in turns out, carrying a loaded gun. I then relayed similar stories from our experiences living and working alongside prostituted peoples, people enslaved by addiction, and other horrors that do occur in a society where people are beginning to walk away from the Lord and so there is poverty in the midst of abundance.
The Lord has provided more than enough for everyone in our country – for everyone in our world really. The problem is now that we in this country are quickly moving away from the Lord; we are failing to share these resources with our neighbours, with society. Now – societally speaking– at the same time as we in the English-speaking world are refusing to share our material resources, we seem have no problem in eagerly sharing a secular sense of entitlement with everyone we meet. We deserve everything in our own eyes but we are unwilling to be reconciled with God and with our neighbour. We want everything for ourselves. We just want to do what is right in our own eyes (Judges 25:21); more and more in this country we choose to do evil in the eyes of the Lord (Judges 6:1). We continue to focus on ourselves, instead of on God and our society (our neighbour), and then we are somehow surprised and even complain that– even though it is us that has left God and our neighbour - when we need God and when we need our society, we complain that they are not there. You cannot keep your cake on a shelf forever and eat it all at the same time. You cannot turn down a job and still expect to collect the paycheque.
In our country as we have more and more resources and finances we seem to be more and more readily committing the sin of Judges and we seem to be more and more moving away from the Lord as we more and more are doing what is right in our own eyes instead of loving God and loving our neighbours. We leave God and we leave our neighbour behind and then are offended and surprised when God and society, whom we left behind, are not right there with us when we need them. We leave God behind and then our surprised when more and more of us are struggling with sin, poverty, addiction, rejection, and isolation. We leave God behind and then we are surprised when more and more people in this country are more and more oppressed as they feel the effects our actions.
There is even more than this though – lest you think that somehow in our discussion so far that I am promoting the prosperity heresy, which states that if you love God, you will be healthy, wealthy and wise but if you don’t you won’t be. This is certainly not true. (The opposite may even be true to some extent.) Judges 6:1:“Again Israel did evil in the eyes of the LORD and for seven years He gave them into the hands of the Midianites.” God loves His people. God, like the daddy dinosaur in our opening clip, God wants his people to love Him. He really wants his children to show and experience the same love for Him that He has for them. God knows that His people will be so much better off -even if they have nothing else- so long as they have Him. God never promises that if we turn to Him there will be no hardship; God however does promise that with God we can rejoice even in our suffering because God will see us through it (2 Corinthians 12:9) God really wants us to experience all the joys of loving Him which are so abundant, so plentiful, so good that even in the midst of our very real suffering in this life we can boast and we can be joyful (cf. Genesis 39; Romans 5:3-4; Philippians 2:17, 3:1, 4:4; 2 Timothy 1:8-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:18 1 Peter 4:6, 4:13).
God also knows that many of our problems tend to happen when things are apparently going quite well. When societies are wealthy, we tend to do what is right in our own eyes and what is evil in the eyes of the Lord (Judges 6:1, 25:21; Proverbs 3:5). God, in His love for the Israelites, finally gives them into the hands of the Midianites. This is the action is a Father who is willing to do whatever is necessary for the salvation of His children. The picture here is of a people who have rejected God and are so trapped in their sin like someone with a limb caught in an active piece of farm machinery. In pulling them out they may lose a toe, finger, a foot, or even worse but if you don’t pull them out they will die. This is the pain that God is suffering through. God is the Father extricating His child from the machinery. The Israelites are so steeped in their sin that the way to pull them out now is through the seven years in the hands of the Midianties and even though it hurts God so much to see His children suffer in this way, He knows that this is the way He can save them from their sin, from themselves, and from even eternal separation from the paradise of His love so -even though it pains them and even though it pains Him- the LORD is willing to do even this to save His children (cf. TSA docs. 6,10,11).
I think that we in Canada in the 21st Century are just like the Israelites of the twelfth and eleventh centuries BCE when it comes to turning our back on God and beginning to feel the consequences of that.[4] I mentioned last week how I recently read comments on news sites where people feel free to blame God for every difficulty that they encounter. At the same time, however, they are completely unwilling to turn to Him for the support that He offers us when we suffer the consequences of our own actions.
In and through and maybe even because of our affluence, things are starting to get bad here. The income disparity is higher than even before, drug addiction is more prevalent than ever before, sexual perversion is more known and accepted than every before. There are many things to which Canada and Canadians are becoming enslaved as we leave the safety and security of our Lord. God doesn’t want us to walk in this direction but we are and as we are, people in our society are suffering.
Here is the real tragedy: God wants us to be saved from all of this (TSA docs. 6,10). God does not want us to be trapped in our sin or enslaved by the Midianites and God will do whatever is necessary to extradite us from the machinery of our sin that has got a hold of us and is pulling us to our death. God will do what is ever necessary and we know that He has already provided for our salvation at a great cost to himself. Looking back from our text today to the story of Abraham where God promises salvation to the whole world -Genesis 12:3- and even promises that He will die if necessary to save us from our sins –Genesis 15:7-21.[5] Looking forward in our text to where God does indeed send His Son who is Himself, God Incarnate; we see that this is true. God is faithful even when we are faithless (cf. Romans 3:3,4; see Deuteronomy 31:6,Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5). God has provided for the salvation of Gideon; God has provided for the salvation of the Israelites; God has provided for the salvation of the Canadians, and God has provided for the salvation of the whole world (cf. TSA doc. 6). John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” This plays out in a number of different ways.
1) As far as Gideon and Israel are concerned in our story today, the Lord answers Israel’s cries and Gideon’s doubts with, Judges 6:16, “…I will be with you, and you will strike down the Midianties together.”
2) As far as Canada is concerned, if indeed we cry out to the Lord, He has already provided for our salvation from those things with which the devil is presently enslaving our society. He will answer our cries and doubts with, “I will be with you, and we will strike down the oppressor together.”
3) As far as each one of us in this room today is concerned, God – like the daddy dinosaur from our introduction –loves us and just wants us to love Him. Whatever challenges there are in our lives, whatever difficulties there are in our lives, He does not want us to perish under their weight. God does not promise us that there will be no suffering in this life. What God does promise us however is the opportunity, as the Apostle Paul repeatedly tells us in his letters, to learn how to suffer and even to experience joy in the midst of our suffering (Romans 5:3-4; Philippians 2:17, 3:1, 4:4; 2 Timothy 1:8-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:18 1 Peter 4:6, 4:13). And the story of Joseph in Genesis tells us how to prosper in our imprisonment, in our slavery, in our troubles, and in our life (Genesis 39). God can save us for now and forever.
So today then, I know that some of us are feeling the weight of being crushed by our world around us; some of us are feeling deep oppression. Some of us are struggling with sin. Some of us may be suffering under the oppression of circumstance, the oppression of unemployment, the oppression of crisis or the slavery of stress, the slavery of disabilities, the slavery to struggle. Some of us may be suffering from real emotional, intellectual, or physical pain. Some of us may be suffering alone, as instead of casting our burdens upon the Lord, we like the sin of the judges, continue to do what is right in our own eyes (Psalm 55:22, 1 Peter 5:7). We don’t need to suffer alone; with the Lord we can rejoice in every circumstance: Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose again, fulfilling the promise to Abraham and fulfilling the promise to the whole world that indeed the whole world can be saved (Genesis 12:1-3, 15:7-21; John 3:16). We can prosper in our troubles. We can delivered in our suffering to the point that we can even rejoice in whatever circumstances we face in this life (Philippians 2:17, 3:1, 4:4; 2 Timothy 1:8-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:18 1 Peter 4:6, 4:13). Jesus is there for us; he is offering this salvation to the whole world so that whosoever may will be saved (John 3:16; TSA doc.6). So I encourage all of us today, if there are any here who have not fully grasped hold of His salvation and if there are any of us here today who are not experiencing the joy of the Lord even in the midst of our very real suffering, please come up to the altar, to the mercy seat here and we will gladly pray with you as you accept this salvation which the Lord offers freely to each and everyone of us here.
Let us pray.
[2] Arthur E. Cundall in Morris, Leon: Judges and Ruth: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1968 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 7), S. 21: There are close parallels between the two accounts [Joshua & Judges…The minor points of difference will be dealt with in the commentary on the text. But what appears to be a major difference is that in Judges attention is given to the individual participating tribes, particularly Judah, whereas in Joshua the Conquest is viewed as the work of the united tribes under one leader.
[3]Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, Praise The Lord For Covenants: Old Testament wisdom for our world today. Vancouver, BC: Credo Press, 2010. (c) The Salvation Army
[4] Dennis T. Olsen, The Book of Judges (NIB II; Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 724
[5] Cf. Captain Michael Ramsay, 'When God is Bound… a look at Genesis 15:7-21’ in Journal of Aggressive Christianity, (Issue 52: December 2007 – January 2008), pp. 5-10
Posts
