In movies and TV shows, the motivating factor of a lot of heroes, begins with vengeance. Batman tells the criminals, “I AM VENGEANCE.” Patrick Jane of the Mentalist TV show, is on a vendetta against Red John, because the serial killer killed his wife and daughter. Usually heroes overcome their vengeful side and begin to work for the good, like in the case of the Arrow, where Oliver Queen begins his superhero career killing bad guys that he believed orchestrated his father’s death, to eventually changing his persona to make his city a better place.
I think the vengeful genre is something that resonates with us, because there have been times in each of our lives when someone has hurt us, and we want nothing more than to get back at them. If fact, the movies that we watch can be linked with a cultural mentality of vengeance. Back in the 1970s there was a string of riots, like there has been in the last several years; crime was becoming more rampant, like it has been in the last several years; people felt powerless, like we’ve seen in the last several years; and so movies like the Dirty Hairy series and Death Wish captured the box office money. The cultural desire for vengeance and dealing with those who hurt others, was reflected in the mediums we watched. Today it’s similar. Shows like Yellowstone and movies like the John Wick series, have at their core, a vengeful bent, and it makes sense, because again, like in the 70s, our culture is flailing and we want someone to kick in the door and fix it.
And it’s this idea of wanting vengeance that brings us back into our summer series on Judges where we’ll be picking it back up in chapter 8 verse 22, and going all the way through chapter 9 verse 57. And as we open up to Judges 8:22, let’s look at where we are so far.
So far in our summer series we have seen three majors themes in the book of Judges. First, there’s the overall theme of Scripture that is condensed into one book. That theme is that, though humanity is unfaithful, God is alway faithful. What this means is that until the final invitation of salvation is given sometime in the future, God is always willing to accept anyone back who repentfully turns to him. Though we might sin, disobey and rebel against God, when we turn back to him, asking forgiveness of that sin, he is right there to forgive us and bring us into a right relationship with him.
This leads into the second theme, which is a right relationship has at it’s core obedient living. To be in right relationship with God carries with it listening and putting into practice what he tells us to. For the Christian, the basis of this relationship is the grace of God, where we cannot be good enough to earn it. Yet in that relationship we are still called to obedience, we can’t lose salvation by faltering in obedience, but we grow from walking in it.
And it’s a lack of obedience that leads into destruction of not only our own lives, but the lives of those around us and the society at large. It’s actually this type of disobedience that perpetuated the downward spiral that we find in the book of Judges. And it’s that disobedience that effects the generations that come after those that turn back to God in this book.
It was here that we looked at Gideon last week, who’s mistrust and fear led him to test God. Even though Gideon finally came to a point of trusting God, his sin and disobedience leads into disaster for his sons and his people.
And it’s that disaster that we’ll see today. So let’s open up and read starting in verse 22 of chapter 8. Normally we would read all the way through, but today because it’s such a large section, we are going to read the first part and then pieces of the second. So let’s first read from verse 22.
“8:22 Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, ‘Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian.’ 23 Gideon said to them, ‘I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.’ 24 And Gideon said to them, ‘Let me make a request of you: every one of you give me the earrings from his spoil.’ (For they had golden earrings, because they were Ishmaelites.) 25 And they answered, ‘We will willingly give them.’ And they spread a cloak, and every man threw in it the earrings of his spoil. 26 And the weight of the golden earrings that he requested was 1,700 shekels of gold, besides the crescent ornaments and the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian, and besides the collars that were around the necks of their camels. 27 And Gideon made an ephod of it and put it in his city, in Ophrah. And all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family. 28 So Midian was subdued before the people of Israel, and they raised their heads no more. And the land had rest forty years in the days of Gideon.
“29 Jerubbaal the son of Joash went and lived in his own house. 30 Now Gideon had seventy sons, his own offspring, for he had many wives. 31 And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he called his name Abimelech. 32 And Gideon the son of Joash died in a good old age and was buried in the tomb of Joash his father, at Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
Here we pick up Gideon’s story right after all the Midianites that he was sent to get rid of are dealt with. Israel has had it’s victory and we’re seeing what happens next. We see the people come to Gideon and ask him to become a dynastic king over them. In the history of Israel, this would be the first instance of where Israel would seek a king to rule over the nation, but it won’t be the last.
Now, some people will say that God never intended to have a human king rule over Israel, in fact I thought that too, but the calling for a king hadn’t been completely rejected by God. But he had placed in the covenant, guidelines for a future king. In Deuteronomy 17:14-20, we’re given those guidelines.
Let’s read those guidelines real quick, and then we’ll see if Gideon meets them.
“14 ‘When you come to the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” 15 you may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother. 16 Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the Lord has said to you, “You shall never return that way again.” 17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold. 18 ‘And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. 19 And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, 20 that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel.’”
In asking Gideon to be their king, the people were within their covenantal right to do so, because God did choose him to be a judge.
But when asked, Gideon seems to outright reject the idea of becoming king. The problem is, though he says one thing, his actions actually reveal a different story.
His actions actually reflect how a Near Eastern king would act. Here are just three ways in which Near Eastern kings would conduct themselves.
First, they would require a tribute from their subjects, we saw this back in Ehud’s story. By taking tribute, it would show that the people submitted to a king’s rule and would provide wealth to the king’s household.
Second, the king took the religious role of a priest between the gods and man (https://www.britannica.com/topic/sacred-kingship/The-king-as-priest-and-seer). They would inquire on behalf of the people and speak on behalf of the gods and their will.
Finally, kings would take on many wives and have many sons. This is how they showed their great wealth and how they created a dynasty.
In Gideon’s story, though he states he will not be king, he asked the people for their gold earrings from the spoils of war. He is in fact asking for a tribute from the people. Gideon then takes this tribute, and creates a ephod, which is a priestly garment, and places it in his home town of Ophrah. An ephod would be what a priest would wear when communicating with God. But by creating it out of gold, instead of out of the material God instructed back in the book of Exodus (chapters 28-39), and placing that ephod in Ophrah instead of Shiloh, where God’s tabernacle was located at this time, Gideon was actually challenging God’s intention for the separation of the priests from the monarchy.
Finally Gideon takes on many wives, enough wives to produce 70 sons. Plus, as if his many wives were not enough, he had a side chick, a concubine, in another town, who was from the Canaanites. Just on these three points, though Gideon said he didn’t want to be a king, he sure acted as if he were. But that’s not all.
In addition to these acts, we can see Gideon acting as someone who did in fact want to be king because of his son Abimelech, the son from his concubine. First, because Gideon had so many wives, plus a concubine, he must have become very wealthy to support such a large family. Second, the name Abimelech means “My father is king,” pointing us towards a direct thought process of Gideon and his belief that he was indeed trying to be a king. Finally in chapter 9, it seems that after Gideon died, his sons did take up a quasi-dynastic role, because Abimelech references them ruling over the people, which is a synonym of kingly rule.
So though Gideon verbally rejected being king, he lives out his life in a way that suggests he acted as a king without the title.
So knowing that Gideon acted in the position of a king, though without the title, did Gideon fulfill the covenantal description of a proper king? Well, he was an Israelite, but he took too many wives, and did not conform to the covenant priesthood as told in the law.
We can see that Gideon begins to falter once he moves from being a scared judge called by God, to a victorious one. From a nobody, to being seen as a leader by his people. And we can see one of the moments this change happens. In the very first verse we read, the people say this, "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also, for you have saved us from the hand of Midian…” In that moment, Gideon doesn’t rebuke them and correct them that it was God who in fact saved them, he glosses over it and proceeds to give lip service to not being a king, all the while wanting that very thing.
Because Gideon took did not give God the glory he was deserving, his rule did not fulfill two major guidelines of a true covenantal king, and as a result, we see that the aftermath leads Israel into chaos. This brings us to part two, where we pick it up in verse 33.
“33 As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god. 34 And the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side, 35 and they did not show steadfast love to the family of Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) in return for all the good that he had done to Israel.
“9:1 Now Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem to his mother's relatives and said to them and to the whole clan of his mother's family, 2 ‘Say in the ears of all the leaders of Shechem, “Which is better for you, that all seventy of the sons of Jerubbaal rule over you, or that one rule over you?” Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh.'
“3 And his mother's relatives spoke all these words on his behalf in the ears of all the leaders of Shechem, and their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech, for they said, ‘He is our brother.’ 4 And they gave him seventy pieces of silver out of the house of Baal-berith with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows, who followed him. 5 And he went to his father's house at Ophrah and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, on one stone. But Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left, for he hid himself. 6 And all the leaders of Shechem came together, and all Beth-millo, and they went and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar at Shechem.”
Though Gideon did trust in the Lord, he still created an ephod that became an idol to the people. So when he died, Israel whored after it as it whored after other gods. This idea of whoring themselves, is the Scriptures way of telling us the magnitude of Israel’s sin in worshiping other deities. This would be a common theme throughout the rest of Israel’s history, and wouldn’t really be dealt with by the people until the Babylonia exile about a 1,000 years later.
Out of Gideon’s sinful ending, though God gave them peace until his death, comes strife that would become more and more common within the people of Israel
Gideon’s son Abimelech is the type of leader you get, when those who claim to be following God and the society at large are both moving away from the Lord and into their own sin.
Abimelech not only slaughters his entire family, making himself a non-covenantally qualified king, but he also finds himself at odds with his own people.
The reason for this is because at the core of sin is selfishness; my way, not anyone else’s. C.S. Lewis described hell as a place where everyone moves away from everyone else, because the selfishness of sin can’t stand being around other people; and when given fully over to sin, we become the most important thing there is and so cannot be around anyone else.
In the story that follows Gideon, because Israel has so quickly turned away from God and whored itself, there is no mention of God until we get a quasi-prophetic word from another of Gideon’s sons, Jotham.
After Jotham escaped from Abimelech, he surfaces and gives a parable and a quasi-prophetic word of judgment in verses 7-21. This prophetic word is summarized in verses 19-20 where it reads, “if you then have acted in good faith and integrity with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you. 20 But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the leaders of Shechem and Beth-millo; and let fire come out from the leaders of Shechem and from Beth-millo and devour Abimelech.”
This is a quasi-prophetic word of judgment, because we’re not told that he receives it from God, but God still fulfills it. This fulfillment begins in verse 23 where we read, “And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem, and the leaders of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech…”
By the Scripture revealing that it was God who sent the evil spirit, it shows God’s direct involvement in the the downfall of these people who have caused so much destruction. The evil spirit, could mean an actual spirit, but in the context probably means strife between the parties, because the word used can mean a spirit in the spiritual sense or a desire of the will. And because of Jotham’s quasi-prophetic judgement, it seems more likely God is giving them over to their sinful desired will, which is strife and violence.
What immediately follows is that both the leaders, who bowed to Abimelech, and Abimelech himself, are mutually destroyed.
The leaders die at Abimelech’s hand. Whereas Abimelech’s death comes in part when a woman throws a part of the millstone down on him. This is reminiscent of the fact that it was a woman, Jael, who killed Sisera, for Barak a few chapters earlier. The idea here is that Abimelech led a sinful life and would then be killed in an undignified and shameful way, at the hands of a woman.
And it’s here that God is mentioned again in verses 56-57, "56 Thus God returned the evil of Abimelech, which he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers. 57 And God also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.”
This shows us that it’s God who deals with sin and brings judgment to those who do evil. This is a really hard lesson to learn. The lesson is, vengeance, reprisal, repayment for evil is God’s realm. The believer in Jesus is told in Romans 12:17-19, “17 Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 18 If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”
One of the lessons that Abimelech’s story teaches us, is that when sin is compounded with sin, death and destruction follow. When people perpetuate evil, God takes the role of a judge, because he judges not based on emotional reaction, but on a true understanding of the situation; something that is hard for us to do.
Our judgments are usually skewed through the lens of personal hurt and both emotional and physical pain. So our judgments must be taken with a grain of salt. In fact Jesus tell us in Matthew 7:1-5, we must check the massive problems we have before we can hope to deal with even the slightest infractions in other people’s lives.
The reason for this is because we tend to make mountains out of mole hills, where God sees the whole scope of the story and can truly judge in a way that is both correct and eternal.
So we as believers are called to do what we can in situations where all we can control is ourselves. We are to do good instead of repaying evil with evil. That means we are not to respond with venomous attacks on Facebook, or spread gossip when someone attacks us, or speak lies in our anger. Instead we are to show that we honor Christ, and sometimes that means we just shut our mouths and move on.
One of the ways that Pastor Jeff would disarm people is, when they would accuse him of something, he would say, “You don’t know the half of it,” implying that if they only knew the things that he had done, they wouldn’t have anything to do with him. By him embracing their attacks it disarmed them, frustrated them, and gave them no more ammo against him.
Our job as believers is to live as peacefully as possible in a world where all it wants to do is go to war. Does that mean we back down when injustices happen? No, but we don’t combat evil with evil. Jesus didn’t combat sin, by adding onto sin, that’s what the leaders of Shechem and Abimelech did. No Jesus dealt with sin, through sacrificial love and dying on a cross.
His disciples are to do the same. So when gossip, slander, and all evil is said or done against us, we fall on our knees in front of the throne of God and let the Judge deal with it. Being honorable in front of people, and faithful to God’s word. It is God who will repay evil with righteous consequences, both in this life and in the next.
God has a plan and brings purpose out of humanity’s sin. That’s why Paul writes in Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
God brings about good even when evil people do evil things. Their judgment is in the hands of our righteous and impartial Judge who gives judgement in both the present and eternally. So his people need to trust in him and seek to love him and work in his purposes that they are called to. That means for us as believers, we must love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and love our neighbor as ourselves. Leaving the hurts we experience in his hands, trusting our Good Judge to make good judgments. And at that, there might be a thought that crosses our minds, “but I can’t, I can’t forgive that person for what they did, I can’t love that person because of what they did, how can God ask me to, when they have hurt me so much?”
To that the Scriptures say Romans 5:8, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Even when we were whoring ourselves after our own sin, Jesus died while we were still in a state that seemed unforgivable. God calls us to nothing less that what he has already done for us.
My challenge for you this week is three-fold: First, read from Judges 8:21-9:57 to see the full scope of Abimelech’s story. Then read Matthew 7:1-5 asking God to remove those things that blind you from making correct judgments. Finally, make Romans 12:17-19 your prayer this week; that you would seek honorable things, not repaying evil with evil, but with good instead, and allowing God to bring judgment as he sees fit.
If we seek the things of God, we will see good worked out in times of evil, and we will know that our God is working for the good of those who love him. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment