Answers in Genesis--Spring 2017--Lesson 6, God Remains Faithful

Let's go ahead and pray. And We're gonna take a look at the wonderful world of judges. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for your kindness and good to, goodness to us this day.

Allowing us to breathe your air, to live in a wonderful country where we still have the freedom of speech, freedom of religion. We thank you that we can gather together in this place and open up your word without fear of our government, and fear of, those that may want to come. Keep us from reading your word or proclaiming it. We pray for our brothers and sisters around the world in many different countries that do not have the same freedoms.

We ask you to be with them on this day. we pray, Father, you guide us as we take a look. At this book that is inspired and given to us and to your people, we just ask God that you would Guide us as we study together in Christ's name. Amen.

All righty. We're gonna be answering one of the questions we're gonna answer is why does God remain faithful. And this is a section of the Bible. Where?

After a while, you just start wondering. What, what is going on here? I won't name names, but. Oh, how things go with your children, as they're growing up, you tell them not to touch something when they're a little toddler.

And then they touch it, and then you have to lovingly discipline them, and then they do it again, and then they do it again, and then they do it again. And I think all of us have probably experienced times where with your own children, you're like, Are you ever going to learn this. But eventually they get through that toddler stage. And you're starting to feel pretty good about life perhaps and maybe you're starting to feel pretty good about your parenting.

And then they hit around 1213, 14 years old. I, I did not grow up in a Christian home. And I remember I was around 13. And my dad on a few different occasions, said to me, Michael Scott.

You have your head hitting in the Netherlands. So much that you cannot see straight, but he didn't quite say it like that as an unbeliever. And I just remember thinking that is so cruel and mean. I will never even think such a thought towards any of my children.

That is just one of the meanest things I can ever imagine. And then one of my children that will remain unnamed, who is 17 When he hit about 13, did some things on a regular basis where it didn't quite come out of my mouth, but the words did come to my mind, son. Where is your head? And you can fill in the rest.

And So then I called my dad one day and I said, Dad, do you remember when I was at such and such an age and you would say this periodically and he says, oh yes. And I said, Dad, I now understand and I completely forgive you. And he just laughed one of the biggest laughs, and he said, don't worry, they grow out of it. but you see that relationship between a father and a child, and it, it's just, even though you do get frustrated, you do get exasperated, the bottom line is they're still your children.

And you still love them, right? And as much as they may, even as they walk, some of us have seen our children walk away from the Lord and it just tears you to shreds inside and. Or even kids that, haven't necessarily walked away from the Lord, you find them questioning and doing things and you're just like. And, and so when we look at the book of Judges, I think part of what we see is a father.

Who has done all this stuff to go out and get a people that are that he's gonna bring into his fold for this for his own name's sake and he's going to demonstrate his faithfulness to the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's made this covenant, a unilateral covenant as Pastor Milton has taught us. And, and yet we see these people doing these things over and over and over again and you're just after a while, why does, why does God continue to put up with this? And that's part of what we're gonna be talking about this morning is, is the book of Judges is in the Bible for a reason.

when you first start reading the book of Judges, you're like, what in the world is this book doing in the Bible? But when you put it in the larger context of the Abrahamic covenant, And what God is doing in the whole history of redemption. Now things start to dawn on you of what God the Father is doing. So let's, let's set the, the context here.

We're talking about God remains faithful. Next week, we'll finish up the book of Judges as, everything's right, right? So we'll be talking about ethics and, how that works in the book of Judges. And after that, we'll be getting into Ruth and moving down into Samuel Kings and finally David, when we get to the end of this particular quarter.

so we'll do some review. Let's start off with this. what stands out to you about last week's Lesson. And when teachers ask this question, what they're, yeah, you're your hero, when a teacher asks this question, they're trying to see if they did anything right the previous week.

So please do not remain entirely silent. What stands out to you about last week's lesson? And Larry said, His hero. Who's your hero?

Gideon Gideon. All right. Awesome. What else?

Yeah, Joe. Yeah, the story of the fleece. The what? Right So Yeah, so Gideon, sincerity, just Lord, I want to be on the right page with you.

I want to do your will. Can you, can you direct me and guide me? It's good. What else, what else stands out to you guys about last week?

Yeah, God choosing people that you wouldn't expect accomplish his purpose. Yeah, that, that really, yeah, that's, that jumps out to me, about Gideon and Even his family background, it's not like he came from generations of preachers, his dad is a bale worshiper and has probably this maybe one of the larger altars on his property. Yeah, good. Yeah, Dan.

OK. Yeah, so God's patience in developing a leader, invest a lot into Gideon, bringing Gideon along step by step. Yes. So Melanie is saying the heroes in the Bible are very human that this isn't just, some, some tale.

it's interesting when we're doing apologetics about the doctrine of the Bible, one of the things that I'll point out is that a lot of ancient stories that surround other religions and other cultures, they always paint their heroes in the best light. So when you're looking at various analogs of ancient kings, it'll always say, and this king did this, and he came in with his mighty warriors and he destroyed these enemies and he was the best guy on the planet and But what's interesting about Jewish history is you just, you don't walk away all that impressed.

They just show you, the good and the bad and the ugly, and to me that's actually a, a, a stroke in the Bible's favor for its validity, of just, just sharing what really happened in history. Good, excellent.

I think Jerubabal is a cool name that that comes out to me. How would you like to be named? today we have the rise of paganism in our culture, and if the Lord were to raise one of our children up to really do damage against paganism and cause the Third Great Awakening in the United States. And suddenly they took on the name of the anti-pagan.

What's your name? Well, my name used to be Scott, but now everybody calls me anti-pagan. That'd be cool. Sounds like a superhero or something.

Cool. Anything else? what question, any, any questions you guys have about last week's lesson? That stand out Yeah, Joe, Oh yeah.

So, so you were gonna try to do some more research on the, on the lappers and the Yeah, other than what I shared last week, it's, it's, it is just a It just, it seems like there's just a lot of difference of opinion because the text is clear as far as like the Hebrew, but it's what the Hebrew means is difficult and it's like we like we said last week, some interpreters have thought that that those that lapped up the water, it meant that they were very incredible soldiers because they're keeping their heads up.

Other people say it's because they're cowards because they're keeping their heads up. What does it really mean that they're, do they really get down and cup their hands and then lick the water, or is that just an idiom? And you guys heard my theory last year.

I just think God picked the 300 people who had been hit on the head too many times and they were probably just village idiots and God was going to save the day with 300 people that you would never go to battle with. That's my theory, yeah. I Alert Brave guy or not necessarily the brave guys, but the alert guys that were. they keep their head up and, and look for the enemy and Not Yeah, and not get down.

Yeah, and, something, the other, the enemy could come out. Get, Yeah, yeah, that's it's, again, this is just my opinion. Oh yeah, totally. Certainly God was.

Testing Gideon. But it was the whole, the whole thing was for, for God's glory. Yeah 300 men. Work.

the world would say that you, you couldn't, you couldn't do it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so Larry's just given one of, really the two, what I can, what seems to me from the literature, Larry's given probably one of the two dominant positions which is, these guys were the Lord had given this test and the test where these guys get down and they're cup in the water, maybe licking it or it's an idiom for drinking real fast and that was because these guys were just really top dog. special ops guys that were just always on the ready and whereas those that did the push-up drink were not the special ops guys.

the other viewpoint, Josefa says no, they were putting their heads up because they're cowards and they were just scared and always keeping their heads up. so those are the two most dominant positions, and I don't know, it could be either one, like Larry was saying, the ultimate thing was, is God's wanting to get all the glory with a small group of people. like I said last week, I, when God puts out this test of push-up drinking versus cupped licking. I'm just like if it was just to find those that were brave, he had already done that.

He said anybody who doesn't want to fight, leave and they left and so now there's 10,000 people who said, yeah, we want to fight. OK, so now, there's another test. And why is it that there's only 300 that passed that test? They cup, if we take it literally, they cup the water and they lick it.

And like I said, I've only seen my, my other son do that. Probably because he's watching our pet cat and he's like, oh, I'll try that. And so why would a grown man Go lick the water. And so I'm just at, trying to figure that out.

I don't know that I've ever read anybody that has that viewpoint, so I'm probably just completely out to lunch, but why, why didn't they have canteen. Yeah, good question. Yeah, they may have, but it seems like you'll notice in the text that God doesn't even tell Gideon what the test is going to be. He says, I'm going to do a test and then I'm gonna separate them and I'm going to show you who to take.

And then it's afterwards they gather everybody up and he says, OK, go have everybody get a drink and he says, OK, go find all the people that are lapping the water like a dog out of their hands. Gideon must have been like. Say that again, Lord. Yeah, no, go get everybody that's lapping the water like a dog from their cupped hands.

OK, maybe these are the people the Lord's getting rid of. OK, there we go. Let's go get these guys. And then I just have this weird scene in my head where they're all standing with their armor is disheveled and they're just, eyes are looking different directions and, and Gideon's like, I'm really glad we're going to get rid of these guys and the Lord says, OK, you see those 300?

You mean that motley crew over there? Yeah, those are the people that are going to go into battle with you. And again, he's looking at the Lord like, come on, Lord, give us a chance here. And then he dismisses the rest, but, then again.

What do I know? Maybe, I like that. I'm gonna write that down. So Joe says maybe he needed those crack pots to crack the pots.

Can somebody write that down and email it to me? I, I'm gonna put that in a sermon. I've now figured out what I think I'll preach 9 months from now. is this passage, and that will be my sermon title, God uses crackpots to crack the pot.

Can I quote you on that? OK, all right. Anyway, but the big idea like we all agreed last week is this is just ultimately about God getting the glory for delivering his people, in such a way to where they, he, he says to Gideon, I don't want them to take credit for this. I want to get all the glory for myself, which, which God is allowed to do because of the creator-creature distinction.

He's the only one that's really allowed to do that because he has the right to get the glory. If you or I try to do that, people think, well, what makes you so high and mighty? You're a creature. But what makes God so high and mighty.

He's God, right? And he deserves praise. All right, so let's study the word together. What we're gonna do is, did any of you guys get, or do you guys remember getting my email earlier, earlier in the week?

Did you guys get it? OK. So you can either pull out the cycle of sin handout that you got on the back or if you have it with you and you were able to fill it out. We're gonna move through that.

And so in your guys' packet, well, it's not in your packet, it was a side handout. Called cycles of sin, and we're gonna, we're gonna go through this together. Some of them we're gonna run through quickly. with the time that we have, I'd like to spend a good deal of time on Jeffha.

Is that OK? Jeff does a Interesting tale. And, but let's start with Judges chapter 3. And so we want to see what's, what's the Lord up to with these various cycles that we see that is about, anybody remember from your studies, how long of a period are we talking about when we're talking about judges?

Pretty, pretty close, yeah, it's about 300, but maybe Larry read a different commentary for me, but Yeah, about 3300 years. And let's, so let's start with Judges 3 starting in verse 7. And as you look on your, on your handout, we're going to look at Israel's action, the oppressor. Israel's reaction, God's response, and then who was that judge?

So let's look at verse 7 and we'll read down to 11. So the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baal and Asheras. can anybody remember, remind me what is Baal normally look like in the Canaanite religion when they're picturing him or making an idol.

What's the figure of bail? Say it again. A bull, right? And then you've got the shera.

This is normally the divine fit or the feminine divine, and we don't always get a picture. Sometimes we do, but definitely there's normally a pole on a high place and when it says that the children of Israel did evil on the side of the Lord, does, does this mean that they just stopped having their personal devotions in the morning? What are we talking about when they did evil in the sight of the Lord? Say it again.

OK, what sin? Yeah. Yeah Baal is not a friendly God, right? This is like they've returned back to pagan Canaanite worship like burning their children in fire.

So when it says The children of evil, evil did, the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals. It's easy for us to read right by that and then to see verse 8, therefore, the angel of the Lord was hot against Israel and be like, what's he so hot and bothered about? No, this is evil, evil, right?

so therefore, like the works of the devil, therefore, the angel of the Lord was hot against Israel and he sold them into the hand of Kusan Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, and the children of Israel served Kusan Rishathaim 8 years. So they did evil. They went back to serve the Baal. The oppressor, you can write that in if you haven't already.

then verse 9, when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord. How long, how long went by before they cried out to the Lord? 8 years. OK, so this would be like 2 terms of a president.

It could be Bush, right? It could be Clinton, Obama, and then they cry out when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel who delivered them. A Neil, the son of Knaz, Caleb's younger brother. And the spirit of the Lord came upon him.

So this raising up, so, so we see God not just the way the language is being is being used here. It's not just God just allows, somebody to come in and oppress them. He doesn't just allow a deliverer. He's bringing in, in his sovereignty an oppressor and then bringing in a deliverer.

And it's the spirit of the Lord that comes upon us Neil. And he judged Israel And he went out to war and the Lord delivered Kusan Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and his hand prevailed over Kusan Rishathaim. So the land had rest for 40 years, and then Othniel, the son of Knez died. So we're talking about approximately at least a 48 year period.

We don't know how long the battles went, but we do know that it was 8 years of oppression, 4 years of 40 years of peace, and then however long the warfare lasted. Warfares don't normally go super fast in ancient times. If you guys remember the first Desert Storm, all, there was all these missiles and stuff that were delivered and then it seemed like within a fairly short period of time. That war was at least in control.

It takes a long time to mount an army, to go build sieges against towns and so on. So who knows, perhaps a year of warfare, we're not really sure. And so, but you do see this, so this sets up the pattern that we're going to see over and over again is that people do evil. God in His sovereignty brings in an oppressor.

They cry out to Him. He brings in a deliverer, and then we find out something about the deliverer. Let me ask a question. If God's the one that brought in Kusan Risha Thaim.

And then he's the one who rises, raises up and brings in off Neil. What What fault is it of Kusan Rishai Thaim if God's the one that brought them in? To do the oppressing. Why should they be punished?

If God is the one that brought them in. OK, because he's God Ultimately, OK. Doesn't that seem a little bit unfair? I remember when I was, a younger, let me see, I don't know how old I was.

7. Melissa was probably, she probably didn't remember. But she was 3. And Michelle was probably about 5.

And we were home with our stepdad and, and we had plants around the apartment and for some reason there was hamburger meat in the soil of all of the plants in the apartment. And so our stepfather came out and said, who put the hamburger meat? In the plants and we're like, oh, we didn't do it, we don't know. You guys all go to your room.

You're, you're, you're restricted. And so we're back there and so Michelle and I, we go to Melissa. Melissa, go tell our stepdad that you did it. And so she's 3 years old or something like that, so she's OK, and she goes out.

I did it, I did it. He looks at her. No, you didn't go back to your room. And so then we're back there and like Michelle, come on, you gotta do it.

You got to take the fall for us. She's like, all right, so she goes out and he listens to her and he says, no, it wasn't you, go back to your room. And so then I come out and I say I'm, I'm sorry. I, I put them up to it, it was me.

No, you didn't go back to your room. None of us had done it. We, we, we had no idea what was going on. Suddenly, my mom gets home and, and our stepdad tells my mom what's going on and she says, I did that.

I read something in some magazine. If you put hamburger meat in the soil, it's gonna help the plants. And so we all come out, yay, we get out of our room. He goes, you guys all go to your room.

Y'all lied. So you guys go to bed. You're like this is not fair. This is clearly unfair, right?

The sense of injustice as a seven year old, right? And But you think about what God's doing here. if, if a human being just is manipulating things like this and moving pieces, you would call him a mafia boss. Right?

so what, why does God get off the hook? For doing these kinds of things. Yep. He's the creator.

And really I think that's the key is throughout the Bible, we see this concept all over the place that we call the creator-c creature distinction. That God by virtue of the fact that he is God, that he's all powerful, he's omniscient, and the Bible tells us that he is sovereign. He can and has the right to do things that you or I do not have the right to do and we don't have the ability to do it. God can move kings.

He can move the heart of a king the way he can move a stream, and yet the way God, our Creator can do that does not violate their responsibility at all for their actions. And what being is this that we worship who can move history around the way he wishes and yet hold everybody responsible for the choices that they make. So we human beings try to pigeonhole God into being like a man or like, a woman. Some people call God a woman.

but God is not a man. God is, is so much, so far above us, and it's actually, again, it's one of the apologetics for the Christian God is that we cannot understand everything about him. Therefore, he must be God. When your religion, in your religion, when you, if you can understand everything about your God and you can pigeonhole him and he basically looks like a man, guess what?

You probably have a man-made religion. But if there's questions that are just difficult and hard to understand, Then what, that's a good sign that you're on the right track if we're talking about an almighty God. By the way, this is the theme of the book of Habakkuk. How many of you have read Habakkuk recently or even in the last 10 years, Habakkuk?

OK. So Habakkuk in a, in a short, we'll give you the short version of Habakkuk. Habakkuk's crying out to the Lord and says, Lord, the people, the northern tribes, Israel is so wicked. Why are you allowing this wickedness?

You're supposed to be a just God. To which God responds to the prophet, well, you're right, I am a just God, and so that is why I am bringing in, the Chaldeans, to destroy Israel or to oppress them and take them up into captivity. Then Habakkuk extends back and says, wait a second, they're more wicked than us. Why are you going to bring them down to destroy Israel?

He says, well, that's all right. Once they've come in and oppressed Israel, I will bring Babylon in to beat up on them. I'm paraphrasing, of course. And so then Habakkuk stands back and he says, OK, my mind is blowing, the circuits are starting to smoke.

you are God. I am not. Even if none of the cattle in our country can give forth young anymore, even if we, our crops do not grow up from the ground anymore, even if our wives can no longer deliver babies, we will praise you, and there's a very famous poem at the end of Habakkuk. And so the big lesson is not the question really doesn't get answered other than the fact that God is God, he can do things and hold people accountable for the things.

That he even sovereignly moved in. And so we stand back and we say, you are God, we are not. And so that's part of what we see in the book of Judges is God moving situations, but yet he can and does have the right to hold them accountable. Let's look at the same chapter, look at 12 to 15.

One of my favorite sections of the Book of Judges. And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon, king of Moab, against Israel. Notice it says the Lord, what?

Strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. They didn't just put their bubble gum on the underside of the desk, they did evil in the sight of the Lord. Then he gathered to himself the people of Ammon and Amalek and went out and defeated Israel and took possession of the city of Palms. So, the children of Israel served Eglon, king of Moab, 18 years, but when the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.

By him, the children of Israel sent tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. This section of Judges has to have been written by Ehud. Because there's certain details that nobody could possibly know except for this guy, right? And anytime you see left-handed stuff in ancient literature, it's something's going on, right?

So this is a left-handed guy. Watch out for him. And so you guys know that probably know the story, but gets the dagger, puts it on his right thigh. So, OK, that's a pretty intimate detail.

And so he's the guy that's actually him and a few others are bringing tribute to Eglon, one of my favorite names of a villain in the Bible ever, Eglon. That's just awesome. And so they bring the tribute to Eglon. Then it's almost like Ehud was, he's, he's prepared to do something then he's like, well, let's just get out of here and they start walking out of town and then he looks and he sees all these idols, these stones that are built up to bail and don't think he's looking at the stones and thinking.

Oh wow, these people have a way of worshiping God in their own way. Isn't this so beautiful, the way that they express themselves to their God? No, he looks at these idols and he says, these are the people that have led my people into burning their own babies and putting their heads on pikes. Think about the Aztecs.

sometimes we, the way we get taught about the Aztecs in school these days is complete nonsense. If you go back and look at the actual history, history of the Aztecs and what they did to the for the sun god, just one little tidbit is not only would they sacrifice, do human sacrifice on top of their pyramids. but their God required them, the more tears they could get out of a child before they ripped his heart out, the more pleased that God would be. This is the type of stuff that Baal worship was, was like.

I, I think of my little son Samuel sitting there before a scary priest. The priest is trying to get tears, as many tears out of Samuel before he takes a knife and cuts through his chest and rips the heart out. That doesn't get translated so much today about the Aztecs. When you see those wonderful warrior pictures of the Aztecs and their gods.

And so Eglon's walking out of town and that's the type of stuff is probably in his mind and that Eglon over here, he's responsible. And by the way, this isn't just a deliverer that said, hey, I want something to do today. This is someone that's been raised up by God. He turns around, he goes back, says, hey, can I have a private conference with you?

I've got a message for you. so then the king figures it's some special message, sends his servants out. Ehud comes in and, the, the, this, now they're alone. There's nobody else in this room.

It could be that God revealed this by divine special revelation, very possible he does that. It could be that it's only Ehud that knows about this and so he reports it and it eventually gets written down and so he reaches in to his right thigh. He pulls out the dagger. He says, I have a message.

I have a message from God for you. And kills the guy on the spot and then it describes how the blade goes in and the fat folds in over the, the, the, what do they call it, the handle of the blade. Who else would know that except for Ehud pulls out and then he escapes out the back, then the servants come up and they're knocking on the door. Oh, Eglon, where are you?

Matthew, what's going on? And they're like, well, he must be attending to his needs and that's literally what it says, he must be attending to his needs. egglo. Finally they bust in the door and they find that Eglon has expired.

He has died. And then people are inspired by this. They rise up, they throw off their oppression, and they go back to serving the Lord. So this is again a cycle of, of delivery.

in my opinion, you guys can throw this out if you don't agree, but in my opinion, when we're reading some of these types of stories in the book of Judges and if we only read it from the perspective of those of us. That have been living in the United States in a fairly in in an environment that has been incredibly influenced by Christianity. We're still riding the waves of the 1st and 2nd Awakening and there's a reason why that even though we're moving towards paganism that we're still fairly immoral culture.

It's hard for us to quite understand some of these types of scenes that we see going on in the past or even things like this that go on in the present.

Just imagine that you are a family in northern Uganda. And Some Islamic raiders come into your village, steal your children, cut off the hands of the men, and cut off the breasts of the women. And leave town with your kids, which happens. And then you're reading stuff like this or you're reading an unprecatory Psalm where the psalmist is crying out for God to bring us justice.

God, come and deliver us from our oppressors and bring your justice upon our enemies. I'll tell you what, you would probably be very excited to hear that God had raised up some soldiers and gone out and raided the Islamic raiders and got your children back and killed them. And you would probably say God's justice has been done today. There will come a day when we are in the eternal state, you see in the book of Revelation in heaven.

So in heaven, is there any sin? Those that make it to the the heaven, no, you would agree that they're not thinking sinful thoughts, correct? And so you have these tribulation saints that have been beheaded that are standing now before the Lord crying out, how long, oh Lord, until you bring your justice on the earth. So these must be worship-filled biblical thoughts, Holy Spirit-filled thoughts for people to be crying out for God's wrath and justice to come upon those that would behead the children of God.

And so we understand that it is, it is that we need to leave wrath and justice to God. He's the one that, but when he does raise up a deliverer. And some of this gets intermixed with, state versus individual issues and stuff like that. We can talk about that another day.

When do you turn the other cheek? When do you rejoice that the state has gone and executed justice, Romans 13. there can be complexities there, but here we see God clearly raising up a deliverer, an evil, evil man, Eglon, an evil culture, and now these people have been turned back to their God. Then we've got Shamgar, not a whole lot said about him.

Verse 31 of the same chapter after him was Shamgar, the son of Anoth, who killed 600 men of the Philistines with an ox goat and he also delivered Israel. I wonder what Shamgar thinks about his press release versus EUUD. It's like, hey, I think I accomplished quite a bit. But Ox code, it does say that this guy had to be pretty, pretty mean stuff, right?

And so, then we've got Deborah. Let's go ahead and turn to chapter 4. How are we doing? We got 15 minutes.

Verse 1 of chapter 4. We see the cycle again. When Ehad was dead, so there seems to, there's some question marks about the order. Is this exact, is this being written in exact order?

We're not really sure because you have the Shamgar thing and then it's back to Ehud. Did Shamgar deliver a different section of Israel during the same time period? we do know like in, in Hebrew literature, they don't always feel the same obligation to put everything in historical order the way we do, in Western stories, although we have examples, right, in Western history and stories that sometimes when you see a, a, a, a movie or a historical story, they'll start with their, their hook or maybe they might start at the end of the story at the beginning, right?

You ever go to a movie and then It's really the, the end of the story that they start off with that gets you very interested and then they say 15 years later and so they're trying to build up the anticipation that happens a ton in Hebrew, Hebrew literature.

So, verse one of, so we got Ehud was dead, the children of Israel did evil inside of the Lord. So the Lord sold them, again, this is active verb, sold them into the hand of Jaban, king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazar, Hazar. The commander of his army was Casira, who dwelt in Has Hereheth Haggoim. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, for Jabban had 900 chariots of iron, and for 20 years, he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel.

So, they cry out to the Lord and it seems like one of the reasons they're crying out to the Lord is he's got 900 chariots of iron. So just imagine living in Poland during World War II and just everywhere you turn, you've just got tanks and soldiers and you're just like, there ain't any way we're getting out of this mess. So verse 4, now Deborah, a prophetess, what does that mean that she's a prophetess? perhaps, normally the prophet word group when it's in Hebrew literature means that she's getting direct divine revelation from God herself.

God Himself, sorry. so normally if, if they're gonna say, medium, they would say medium or soothsayer, but if it, if it is prophecy coming from Yahweh, they would normally use the prophet word group. And so, so when they call Deborah a prophetess, she probably is. Getting direct mind revelation from God Himself.

she's the wife of, Lapidoth. I was, judging Israel at the time. So not only is she a, a prophetess, but she's carrying out some of these judging deliverance duties. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim.

This is what we call an anachronism. She's sitting underneath the palm tree of what? Deborah, was it called the Palm Tree of Deborah when she first started sitting there? Probably not, but throughout her lifetime, that's where she sat and at some point, hey, where are you going?

I'm going to the palm tree of Deborah, right? And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. Then she sent out and called for Barak, the son of Abinoam from Kaddish to Naftali and said to him, Has not the Lord of God of Israel commanded, go and deploy troops at Mount Tabor. Take with you 10,000 men of the Son of Naphtalai and the sons of Zebulon, and against you, I will deploy Casarah.

The commander of Jan's army with his chariots and his multitude at the river of Kshaw, and I will deliver him into your hands. So we've seen this type of prophet situation happen in the past in the book of Judges already. Does anybody remember where actually it's gonna happen forward from this. We're in chapter back in chapter 4, but if you fast forward to chapter 6, we saw a prophet speak and to whom did that prophet speak?

Israel and they spoke right before which deliverer was raised. Yes, Gideon. So in chapter 6, we are going to see this prophet, actually in chapter 6, it goes prophet, angel of the Lord, Gideon. In this case, we have prophetess who receives divine revelation and now she delivers that divine revelation to Barak and says, here's what's gonna happen.

You're gonna, you need to get some armies together and the Lord is gonna send Sas Sarah against you and then he's gonna deliver them into your hands. And Barre said to her, here's his reaction in verse 8. Yeah, I want to keep going. We, we're gonna, let's keep going with this.

And so Berrick said to her, If you will go with me, then I will go out, but if you will not go with me, I will not go. So she said, I will surely go with you, you little wuss. Nevertheless, there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking, for the Lord will sell Cesarra into the hand of a woman. Then Deborah rose and went with Barra to Kadish, and I imagine her getting up and throwing a robe and, the Lord has commanded you to go take care of this, and now you want me to go with you.

My job is to sit underneath the tree, the palm of Deborah. Why are you asking me to move away from the palm of Deborah? Yeah, we don't, it's hard to detect. Well, I don't know.

She's a prophetess, but, is, is the shame here cultural? Maybe, but I think at the very least, the divine revelation came to Deborah and it was delivered to Barrick, so God wanted Barrick to take care of this. He makes a request. We've seen other requests delivered that the Lord, he goes, he goes ahead and he says, yes, OK, we'll do the, the fleece thing and, and so he listens to Gideon.

Here, it doesn't seem like the Lord is all that crazy about the request, but he grants it. And Deborah goes, but then forever and ever recorded in holy scripture for 3000 years is the story that the Lord delivered Cicera into the hands of a woman rather than to the soldier Barra. And So we will, we'll talk about JL later. Pretty impressive cow if the story.

And and then there's a whole song. It's ironic to me that here Barrick is the one that's supposed to deliver. You've got like back in 331, you've got Shamgar that gets one verse, right? Barrick is supposed to go do the deliverance.

He says, could you come with me, please? OK. Now JL is gonna be the delivery and then we have a whole chapter sung to JL. It almost feels a little bit like irony or not irony, what's the other word?

I'm forgetting it, my Alzheimer's. It's just, it's almost like a rubin. It feels like a rubin. I could be exaggerating, but.

Why would you just have this huge song now sung to the Lord but also in praise of jail and Barrick, when these songs are written, this wasn't just written down so it could go into the Bible. This song was written, why? Because the people were singing it. So after the deliverance, everybody's gathered together for a worship service and they're thanking JL.

If you, I don't know if you've ever been at some conference or something where they're thanking everybody and maybe you were hoping to play a significant role, but something happened and you couldn't play as big of a role as possible and so there, there, there they are thanking everybody and you're just sitting there like the stoos like. Oh boy, I'm not, I'm not gonna mention at all. And here's Barre that maybe the song theoretically would have been sung about his participation, but instead it goes the praise goes to somebody else.

But ultimately, what do we see throughout this whole section, it is God that gets the ultimate glory.

and we see the pattern again is that people are unfaithful. Then God raises up a deliverer. He brings them back to Himself, and so we see His faithfulness. We have time for one more.

Let's turn to chapter 10. We won't get to Samson today. If you want a good review of Samson though. You could listen to a song.

What's that Christian comedian? Tim Hawkins. Yeah, go listen to the Tim Hawkins song about Delilah and Samson. They'll give you a nice little review.

Of that section of scripture. It's a great song. Chapter 10 of Judges is the Jeff the. deliverance and incident.

Let's start in verse 6. Then the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. We've seen this, but remember we're talking about 300 years. So, time has passed.

Did evil on the sight of the Lord and served the Baal and the Astras, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, the gods of the Philistines, and they forsook the Lord and did not serve him. Do you get the impression that things are maybe getting worse and worse each time they fall into this pattern? it was the gods of Baal and the Astropoles. Now it's like Syria and Sinai.

This is a multi-religious people. so the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines, into the hands of the people of Ammon. From that year, they harassed and oppressed the children of Israel for how long? 18 years.

That's longer than my son has been alive, my oldest son. All the children of Israel who were on the other side of the Jordan of the land of Amorites in Gilead. Moreover, the people of Ammon crossed over the Jordan to fight against Judah also. Against Benjamin and against the house of Ephraim so that Israel was severely distressed.

So remember you got to keep in mind, when you're seeing all these names, we basically got Israel as the big name and then you have all these like 12 tribes of Israel. So they're describing the attacks on various tribes which is still Israel, right? So you've got the North and the South. Verse 10, the children of Israel cried out to the Lord saying, we have sinned.

Against you because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baal. And so what would you expect to see based upon the pattern up to this point? What do you expect the Lord to say now? Don't look down.

Just tell me what you would expect. OK, I'm, you're crying out to me. I'm gonna send you a deliverer. The delivery is gonna come in, take care of business, and then they're back to business and then 40 years of peace or something like that, right?

But what does the Lord say in verse 11? So the Lord said to the children of Israel, Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians, from the Amorites, from the people of Ammon, and from the Philistines? Also, the Sedonians, the Amalekites, the Moanites oppressed you and you cried out to me and I delivered you from their hand. Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods.

Therefore, I will deliver you no more. That's one of the scariest verses in the whole Bible. It's like I've, I have delivered you time and time and time again. And guess what?

The game is up. I will deliver you no more. And if you were just to stop right there, this would be a real spooky nightmare. And so how do the people respond to that?

Verse 14. Well, let's, well, let's finish up what the Lord says. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen. Let them deliver you in your time of distress.

Go cry out to Baal. He wants you to burn your babies. Go ahead and cry out to him, see what he does. Yep.

Yeah, so the Book of Judges, they did. This is post, Mosaic covenant. This is after the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So yes, the people of Israel historically did have the 10 Commandments not to worship any other gods, to worship only the Lord of God, not to make a graven image.

but they have completely moved away from that. They are, they've fallen headlong into idolatry. So verse 15 The children of Israel said to the Lord, we have sinned. Do to us whatever seems best to you.

Only deliver us this day we pray. So they put away the foreign gods among them and serve the Lord. And his soul could. No longer endure the misery of Israel.

That's one of the sweetest verses in the Bible. And you ask yourself what was the Lord doing here? Well, we see the Lord frequently entering in, getting down on the level of his people and, and making statements that are, are meant to move them in a certain direction. He said, I'm gonna deliver you no more.

Go to your own gods. and they they cry out to him and then they, they repent. This is a beautiful picture of what it really means to repent. They cried out and then they got rid of their false gods.

What does this mean for them to get rid of their false gods? Just think what is what happened with Gideon. They went around and destroyed almost certainly the altars, the false worship, they got rid of the very stones. if there were in all likelihood, if there were people in the country that decided they were not going to follow the Lord, they probably took care of business in a very serious manner to make sure that they had gotten back to worshiping Yahweh.

And so the Lord, his soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel. I think, those of us as parents, you understand what that means. You see, you, you, you discipline your children. You want them to grow and learn.

but there, there's this time, I, I just with all of my children, I've, there's, there's times where they disobey and you discipline them. And you go in to talk to them and they're they're, this little guy is still. just after you've had to discipline them and your heart just cries out, right, for your child, that you had to discipline them, but there's a part of your soul that just says I can endure this no longer, let's Let's sit down and talk about this. Let's talk about what we've learned, and especially when you see the Lord soften the heart of your child and they, and they come with a softness and a, and, and a real desire to repent and to be back in, in good standing with mom and dad.

It's a beautiful thing. And so we see the heart of God here for his people. Then the people of Ammon gathered together and encamped in Gilead and the children of Israel assembled together and encamped at Mizpah. And the people, the leaders of Gilead said to one another, who is the man who will begin the fight against the people of Ammon, and he shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead?

And so you have It ends this way. You, you end the chapter, and of course, there's no chapters back then, but you can end this section with the Lord saying his soul could deliver it no longer. And then the people, normally, you see what normally follows right after this part of the cycle is it'll say something like the Lord then sent them a deliverer, right? Now you have this very interesting tale and we'll, I'll have to do this in 2 minutes then we'll, we'll, we'll close.

They have this interesting tale where you go to a completely different backstory now of Jeffha. And so Jeff is born and the Gileadite. A man of valor, he's born, to Gilead. And, but there's a problem.

He's born to a prostitute. Probably means this is, this isn't too much of a stretch. It probably means that his father was participating in temple prostitution to bail or Ashra and had had a child out of wedlock in his participation in Canaanite worship. And so Jephtha is quite literally a bastard child from Canaanite worship.

And so the other children are like, you aren't getting any of our father's inheritance and they mistreat him. Jeffha almost like a Jimmy Dean or something story, takes off on his motorcycle and says, I'm gonna go be a rebel. And he goes out and he gathers a gang of people and it says quite literally, they went out and just caused havoc around Canaan. And so you can, so you've got the story of Jeffha and his crew just going around just messing with people.

And so then the people are trying to figure out, OK, who are we're going to get to deliver us against these really bad dudes and everybody says, huh. I kinda remember back in the day us mistreating one of our brothers and we hear stories everywhere about how bad he is. So just, this is, this has gotta be made into a movie. This is, has Arnold Schwarzenegger all over it.

They go get him and they say, hey, could you please come and deliver us? So it's very interesting in this case, you don't see the Lord directly saying and just the Lord rose up a deliverer. Now, there's this whole story of this guy who's gone through this tough life and background and the Lord is using circumstances clearly because it says later that he was filled with the Spirit and so they say, come and deliver us, and he says basically, who are you and what's in it for me?

And they said, Well, come on back and we will make you the ruler over us if you can deliver us.

He says, OK, that's a deal. And so then instead of him just grabbing his machine gun and going Rambo kamikaze right away, he actually enters into these negotiations that sound almost exactly like what's going on in Israel today with the Palestinians. he sends a letter, says, I want you to give back these lands. The king sends back letters and says, no, these are our lands.

You took them from us. Here's the documentation. He sends his letter and says, no, here's really what happened in the history, and there's all this lengthy negotiation stuff and then finally the, the other king says no deal and so then he says, OK, it's on. And so then they go to to battle and, and Jephtha does what he's been doing his whole life as he goes in and he takes care of business in a military way and delivers.

He delivers. There's a whole another scene that we won't talk about right now that we'll get into next week, but just an amazing tale of God, his soul could bear it no longer and his sovereignty. He raises up a guy who just nobody would have thought that this would be a deliverer of the Lord. He's mentioned in the book of Hebrews, so he's one of the, quote unquote bad guys, the Bible that the Lord reaches out and just takes them and says, I'm gonna use you.

And and isn't that just the way the Lord works so many times is you go around this church and you start talking to people about their testimony. And and you'll be amazed sometimes to hear some of the stories of people in our church, things that they've done in their past or that were done to them, ways that they used to persecute Christians and make fun of them. and yet the Lord has reached out and grabbed these rebels, which all of us really are in our hearts, right? And he takes them and turns them and then uses them for His glory's sake.

Just what an amazing God. God is faithful to his people. let's pray and, and thank the Lord for His faithfulness. Lord, we, we thank you so much for the book of Judges.

What an amazing book it is. we thank you for people like Jephtha that demonstrate your heart to reach out, to the lowest of the low and use them for their, your glory. Thank you, Lord, that you are such a God that when we cry out to you that you are willing to turn and have compassion upon us, we just pray that you would grant us true repentance, that we would truly put away our false gods and false idols and cry out and seek you, recognizing that you really have the best of what there is to offer in this life because we were made, made as creatures to worship and find our ultimate satisfaction in you, our Creator.

We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Amen.