Judges Talk 2 - Ch 3 Othniel

BI: God is the faithful covenant Lord who sees, hates and opposes sin by his sovereign hand through Israel’s enemies to test his people. But he is also the faithful covenant Lord who acts compassionately and sovereignly by raising up a deliverer to save His people.
God alone is the saving Lord.

AP: God’s people need to repent from the sin of idolatry (of willful self-determination) and turn to the saving Lord and follow the deliverer he has raised up to bring us victory. We are to be the faithful people God calls for (and deserves) for all of our lives.

Introduction:
They say that a mind is a terrible thing to waste, and there is truth in that isn’t there? There is something profoundly disappointing in this life about seeing unfulfilled potential. About seeing people who had it all laid out in front of them, with great opportunity and reward, and they wasted it, usually through neglect, or sometimes through wanton and flagrant stupidity, but they had a moment, and they let it slip through their fingers.

Well if a mind is a terrible thing to waste, it is an even worse thing to lose!!
As sad as unfulfilled potential is, seeing a person who has lost their capacity to determine, (and be in contact with), reality - is even worse, isn’t it?

I mean if you never wound up being a neurosurgeon because you wasted you time, that is one thing, but when you go to the neurosurgeon and they say there is nothing we can do for you because the damage from your extensive drug use is permanent, well that is a whole different ball game all together, isn’t it?

I think people today, and even Christians today, too often think of Sin, in ourselves, in others we know and love, even in the wider society, we think sin, is a lot like wasted potential. Disappointing, but these things happen and life goes on.

But the Bible tells us the truth about this reality that we so often, and so quickly, distort. Sin is like a disease, a self induced madness, that puts us out of contact with reality, we don’t see things properly –
we create a fantasy land in which we live, we create an imaginary world with our little idols, we create our own god (which is usually ourselves!), and then we wind up a slave to our own creation. And in the process we ignore the reality, that is our creator, the Living God, and his claims upon our life as his creation.

Mankind are at their core, proud and obstinate, with an insatiable desire for self-determination. We think we have no need for the living God and we forget him. The Bible tells us that the effects of our sin of idolatry are not, like wasted potential - in being disappointing, not even diabolical, but deadly. Because God will justly judge sin.

The Bible could not be clearer, ‘You shall have no other God’s before me’. The story of ‘this generation’ – the generation of the Judges in Israel, is one of a forgetful people who reneged on the covenant that was made with their God. That he will be their God, (their only God), and they will be his people. It is A covenant with a Holy God who HATES sin and will deal with sin in His world and in His people.

The story of the Judges generation is that:
All sin is done before the eyes of a Holy God
God hates sin
God will actively oppose sin, even in, and indeed especially in His own people.
But God has provided a deliverer to save all who will turn from their sin and idolatry, and turn to worshiping the true and living God, and following His deliverer.

1. The ‘eyes’ of the Lord were upon Israel’s evil
NIB Judges 3:7 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD;
they forgot the LORD their God
and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

‘This generation’ – the generation of the judges did two key things wrong, which was the evil that was done before the ‘eyes’ of a watching and Holy God;
They forgot the Lord
And instead they served idols.

A. They forgot the Lord
‘This generation’ are almost defined as the one that forgot the Lord, the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who brought creation into being by his words, the one who said, ‘let there be light and there was!’, has been forgotten by his most treasured and prized part of his creation, his people Israel. Israel not only knew the power of this God in his creation, but they new him personally in his acts of revelation (his speaking to them), but especially in his act of salvation, his act of saving for himself a people out of this world.
NIB Judges 2:10 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. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the LORD to anger

For the Old Testament believer, they looked to God’s great salvation act of deliverance from slavery in the events of the exodus, with a profound assurance and confidence that God had powerfully and favourably, rescued ‘them’ as ‘his’ people. The deliverance of the Exodus, was to Old Testament believers, what the cross is to New Testament believers, the objective proof, that our God, the living God, is a saving God, and we are now his people.
‘This generation’ – the Judges generation, had forgotten the Lord and his saving acts. This generation, had forgotten the covenant that God had made with them, and they had confirmed with God. That he would be their God, and they would be his people.

Which leads us to the second aspect of their evil picked up in V7.
B. They instead served idols.
God had saved Israel out of the world to be his people in covenant and faithful relationship with him. They were to be His agents into a watching world.
What did God send ‘this generation’ – the Judges generation to do?
(this is not a rhetorical question!!)
TO conquer the land, to defeat the inhabitants of the land and completely wipe out them and all their people, because of their sin before God.
What do ‘this generation’ wind up doing?
The exact opposite!!!
They don’t wipe the people out, no they know better than their God, (that and it is all just a bit too hard), so instead of wiping them out, what do we read in V5&6?
NIB Judges 3:5 The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 6 They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

Instead of wiping these people out, they intermarried with them, and in fact made them more fruitful. They increased the number of their offspring, and then they in effect brought their offspring into the covenant blessing’s of Abraham by becoming in a strange way his own offspring. Abraham’s offspring were to be a blessing or a curse to the world on behalf of God, and his offspring, ‘this generation’ have called the cursed, blessed, and not in that cool grace kinda way God does, but in that stupid way mankind does when they try and proclaim their own reality under the effects of their own sin, while ignoring God’s truth.

And here is the kicker, they not only married them, and blessed what should be cursed, but then they served their god’s. They unfaithfully prostituted themselves to wooden idols, rather than serve living, creating, saving and faithful covenant God who had brought them out of slavery to be his people. ‘This generation’ preferred the slavery.

‘This generation’ of Israel could not have got it more wrong if they had of tried, they could not have done more damage if they were a North Korean despot with a $1.7 trillion dollar stimulus package!!

‘This generation’ were as far from God and his purposes as they could put themselves. They forgot the Lord, and instead they served idols.

AP: Here’s where we need to pay attention, all of life, every part, even the bits in the little secret compartments of your mind, that you hide from everyone else, all of our life is lived before the eyes of a Holy God. And God HATES sin!

All of you mind, your feelings, even your internet connection are laid out as plain as day before your God!
That should fill you with fear, shouldn’t it? – if it doesn’t you need to think harder.
NIB Psalm 94:7

They say,
"The LORD does not see; the God of Jacob pays no heed."
8 Take heed, you senseless ones among the people;
you fools,
when will you become wise?
9 Does he who implanted the ear not hear?
Does he who formed the eye not see?
10 Does he who disciplines nations not punish?
Does he who teaches man lack knowledge?
11 The LORD knows the thoughts of man;
he knows that they are futile.

God sees and God hates all sin, especially in his people.

2. The ‘hand’ of the Lord was against Israel
All sin is done in the sight of a Holy God. God HATES sin and God will actively oppose it.
a. God HATES Sin
In V8 We read
NIB Judges 3:8 The anger of the LORD burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.

God’s anger burned against his people Israel because of their sin against him. Again, just like last week we have this image in the text of God’s anger burning, is like his nose glowed red with anger, steam is coming out, he is furious with his people.
And it is because he has been provoked we learn back in 2:12, because his people have forsaken him. The God who created and save them has been provoked.
God HATES Sin

b. God actively opposes Sin
God’s hand has intervened in the life of his people, he has actively opposed his people in their sin. And as we learned last week, this is both a just and a good thing that God has done.

It is pretty obvious that God is just when he opposes sin, all sin, even his own people’s sin, but it is hard to imagine being opposed by God as being a good thing! And yet it is a good thing, Israel being opposed by God in the midst of their sin, is God’s sharp pointy stick to Israel, to bring them back from their madness of sin. To bring them back from the un-reality of worship idols, to true reality of this world, of knowing and serving the living God.
A spiritual intervention to turn them back from their sin induced haze, so they may repent and live.
Now why would God use a pagan nation to achieve his purposes with his people, rather than something, well a little more kosher (if you’ll pardon the expression), why not an angel, or a prophet to declare the direct will of God?

Well it seems to me, that God is clearly demonstrating to Israel, (and the world at the same time!), that he is the undisputed God. He and He alone is the sovereign Lord, and the pagan nations and their idols are nothing compared to him, in fact they must do his bidding if that is what he decree’s. These pagan’s hands were God’s hands to Israel. The God of Israel is the sovereign and saving Lord, and to worship another god is not only foolish, it is dangerous, because the sovereign Lord always wins in the end.

We see here that God is sovereign over all of his creation, and his creation, (even though it is fallen and affected by sin) still exists for his purposes and Glory.

Even in the midst of this worlds, what at times can feel like turmoil and chaos - the Lord still reigns supreme. Even in the midst of injustice, even in the midst of death, the Lord still reigns supreme. Even in the midst of persecution, even in the midst of a cruel death, even a death on a cross, our Lord still reigns supreme. God’s creation is fallen, but it has not failed, because the saving Lord who is the creator, is sovereign over its events, and he will use it for his purposes to bring him glory, even in the midst of our turmoil and chaos.

All life is lived in the sight of the sovereign Lord, which means all sin is done in the sight of the sovereign Lord. And God HATES sin, and God actively opposes that sin and those who carry it out, even, (and in fact especially!), if it is by his own people.

OF all the privileges that come with belonging to God and being called one of his people, the freedom to sin is not one of them!

So it seems we all have a problem don’t we, and certainly ‘this generation’ – the generation of the Judges have a problem. They have sinned, God opposes that Sin and them, how can this impasse turn out for good, for Israel, and well, for us?

3. The ‘ears’ of the Lord heard the cry of his people, and because of his compassionate ‘heart’, his ‘hand’ raised up a deliverer to ‘save’ them.

It seems that God hears and remembers much better than his people!!
God hears and remembers his covenant promise to Israel.

Now the book of Judges has a pattern of how God and his people of ‘this generation’ related, and the pattern is spelt out back in 2:10-19, but our scene today with the deliverer Othniel, follows the pattern perfectly so we can just read from Judges 3:7-11 and see the pattern in action, there are 5 main parts to the pattern.
NIB Judges 3:7
1. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD;
they forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.

8 2. The anger of the LORD burned against Israel
so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim,
to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.

9 3. But when they cried out to the LORD,

4. he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz,
Caleb's younger brother, who saved them.
10 The Spirit of the LORD came upon him,
so that he became Israel's judge and went to war.
The LORD gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel,
who overpowered him.

11 5. So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.

Israel do evil, God sees the sin, God HATES the sin, God opposes the Sin and oppresses his people by the hands of their pagan enemies. And now we see that God’s actions through the foreign King are not only Just, but they are also good, because they have the desired effect. Israel realizes its sin, in not driving out the nations as they were supposed to, and now they realize that they are literally slaves to their sin. There is no option left, but to turn to the living God, the saving God, and to call on him to be God, to be the faithful covenant God for his people, despite their unfaithfulness.

And in response God shows himself to be that faithful and covenant saving God, the God who delights to save, the God who delights in restoring relationship with his creation, his people.
The only thing the people contribute to their salvation is their sin, and their recognition that it is God alone who can save them. And God shows that he truly is the gracious and compassionate Lord, who abounds in faithful love.

And that is the consistent testimony of the whole Bible, God is a God who seeks out the lost sheep, who gives sight to the blind and enables the deaf to hear, he is the God who reinstates the ashamed apostle, who in a moment of fear and terror, denied the Lord three times. God’s desire is that people would turn to him and be saved.
And God would save ‘this generation’ the Judges generation. God would ‘Yeshua’ Save ‘this generation’ by raising up a military leader who was like the last ‘Yeshua’ the Joshua who had been faithful. This new saviour, this new deliverer was called Othniel.

Now just briefly it is worth noting a couple of things about Othniel:
Firstly, His story is incredibly succinct. Particularly when you compare it to Gideon or Samson. So why so succinct?
Well it seems that in contrast to those two in particular, Othniel is seen as the archetypal Judge. He Just gets the job done and doesn’t stuff around, so in a literary sense it seems in judges the good guy finishes last in terms of column space.
But the effect of this, is that it emphasizes and reinforces the five part pattern that had been established in chapter 2. God establishes clearly how he would relate to his people in ‘this generation’ through Othniel, and now Othniel is the bench mark for all who follow.

Secondly, breeding is important. Othniel is from the tribe of Judah within Israel, a favoured tribe with the Lord, the tribe from which two other great deliverers would come, King David who would defeat the Philistines, but also the Lord Jesus himself – the great Yeshua or Joshua to which all the judges point. The one who would truly deliver all of God’s people.

Not only is Othniel from the tribe of Judah, he is also the nephew of Caleb, one of two faithful men in Moses generation, the two faithful men of Joshua and Caleb. So Othniel comes from impeccable Israel stock.

Quickly, while speaking about breeding, what is the deal in chapter one with Othniel marrying his cousin?
I’m mean we all know it is important to marry one of God’s people but that is a little close to home isn’t it? (and we live in the mountains!).Well times were different then, and believe it or not, it seems to me that the story is put in as a commendation of Othniel’s faithfulness to God, he was not like his fellow Israelites, and did not marry from those pagan’s who lived around him – those marriages are supposed to be the shocking ones for us as readers!
Thirdly, Othniel was anointed with the Spirit of God, to fulfill the task the Lord had given him to do, he was set apart for God’s service. Just like the Spirit of God would come to rest on those two other great deliverers of King David and the Lord Jesus himself.
And as this pattern of the cycle of Judges comes to end, we can see the result of Othniel’s faithfulness to God, the land had peace for 40 years. God provided deliverance and peace for his people, through his anointed servant and saviour, the deliverer and judge Othniel.

4. The ‘eyes’ of the people were upon??
NIB Judges 3:11 So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died. 12 Once again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, and because they did this evil the LORD gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel.

And the people followed God’s Spirit appointed leader while he lived, and as soon as he was dead, they turned back to their idols – like naughty school kids when the teacher leaves the room, they revert to their true selves as soon as the opportunity arises. And you know what, in the book of Judges, things are about to get worse for ‘this generation’, so stay tuned.

It seems to me, that what ‘this generation’ of the Judges needed was a Judge who lived forever, and then they wouldn’t have turned away and followed idols would they? I mean ‘my generation’, ‘our generation’ wouldn’t fall away from following a deliverer that the Lord has so graciously provided, one who lived & reigned and brought peace forever, would they? I mean we wouldn’t ever ignore, or trivialize, slight or mislay such a great salvation if it came to us, would we?

Or would we? Or should I say, Have we? Have we forgotten the Lord and the great and precious deliverer he sent, his only Son Jesus Christ, to die alone and shamed upon that cross, ‘my God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’. Are we - ‘Our Generation’ standing by with the rest of the crowd questioning, ‘why indeed?’.

There is absolutely no doubt that we live amongst a generation in Australia today that has forgotten the Lord, and it seems to me that is because we live amongst a generation of the Church who have forgotten who they are, and what they have been called to. Not everyone obviously, but by and large the Church, which is to say God and His Christ and His people, have become an irrelevance for our generation today. And it is because for Christians today, Christ and His gospel have become like an heirloom, say like a of a silver teapot. Nice to hold onto, and show off occasionally, every now and then it gets a clean, but of no practical use in the modern world.
IS that what our generations Christian faith looks like, a family heirloom that is nice to have around, but of no real relevance to today’s world?

My suspicion is that ‘My Generation’ and I do mean that in a more normal sense of the word, those people around my age (being a bit generous in each direction) seem to suffer from a lack of confidence and purpose about their Christian faith. And I don’t think it is because they have outright turned their back on God, I just think it is because they are unprepared to turn their back on the world and its expectations; and so they find it impossible to straddle the ever-growing gap between what God calls them to and what the world expects of them.

The generation of the Judges, forgot the Lord, and they compromised to live and look and be like everyone else around them. Are we not a generation in perilous danger of doing the exact same thing?

In a practical sense of this it seems to me, we are a generation that lacks focus.

Our generation is one that is bombarded by choice, we have a myriad of opportunities, information and decisions to make. When I was kid, you went to public school, and a few people who could afford private school went to that. Occasionally a Catholic went to a separate Catholic school, and that was pretty much that.

Now kids can go to private school, public school, international school, school’s without rules school’s, parent controlled school’s, and not to mention home school’s, then co-op home school’s in case mum doesn’t offer metal work. we have Muslim’s in Christian schools, Protestants in Catholic Schools, Atheists running Anglican Church schools with Jewish Students who complain to principal when someone would dare to preach a Christian sermon at the chapel service – I kid you not…. It is complex and daunting age to have to make choices isn’t it?

You can get cable television with over 100 channels, which just means it takes you, an hour and a half to figure out, there was in fact nothing worth watching in the first place.

Or you could have spent that time on the internet, with its millions of pages of information by millions of authors, who now in fact bring the lunatic fringe, not only into the main stream, but in fact in to your own home. And if you have ever tried to use the net to do research on a topic, you quickly discover that the vast majority of the net (that is not directly related to the sex or gambling industries – which seems to leave about 0.2%) is so anemic in content, and so hard to locate a reliable source on, that the whole thing feels suspiciously like flipping through a bad magazine in the doctor’s waiting room agonizingly slowly…

Too much information – Too many options!!

We are a generation, that needs to get some focus about the options we are going to take or our generation, will swallow your Christian faith alive!

It seems to me, that when you lack focus, you have no chance of being committed, do you? If you are not sure what you should do, you will not commit to any particular option, will you?
And it seems to me they are two defining marks of the Christian Faith of my generation, we lack focus, and because of that we lack commitment.

‘This generation’ the generation of the judges, were called to focus and commitment upon two things, who they were, and what they were to do. They were to be the Holy people of God in the world. They were to take seriously their stand against sin in their lives, and to be different from the pagan world around them. And then they were to remember what they had been called by God to do, they had been called to bring in the kingdom of God.

And you know what, nothing in those two aspects of the focus and commitment for God’s people have changed in the last 3000 years since God spoke to ‘this generation’ of the judges.

Our generation has been given a living deliverer, Jesus Christ, who has saved us, (the Christian people who trust in him as God’s deliverer for them) and he has called us to holiness (to hate sin in ourselves like God does) and to expand his kingdom.
We are to live as God’s light in the world, and to proclaim the good news, that will see God’s kingdom expand, one by one.

We have an eternal deliverer, do you have an eternal focus and commitment?

NIB Revelation 1:12 I turned round to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 and among the lampstands was someone "like a son of man", dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash round his chest. 14 His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance. 17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: "Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. 18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.