Gooding, David: 2 - Heroes and Heroines of Faith

To join me in thanking the ladies for the glorious provision they made for us and all the hard work to feed the ravening wolves that have assembled here today. Now, when we were considering the table of contents of the Book of Judges, we found that the central pa- part of the Book of Judges is made up of the story of seven captivities that the Israelites suffered, and of the deliverers that God raised up for them to save them from those captivities. We noticed that in each of the captivities, the main enemy was different, and therefore called for different tactics and strategies to deal with each particular enemy. But the captivities and the enemies have all this same effect. They were fundamentally serious because each one of them, in its own way, denied a basic principle of the nation's experience of God and of redemption. So let us look at a list of them to point out what I mean when I speak in those terms. In general, the introductions have reminded us that Israel, brought into the land by God according to his oath and never to be broken covenant, nonetheless enter covenants with the Canaanites and go after their gods. A denial, of course, of the very first term in the covenant, thou shalt have no other gods but me. They provoked the Lord to jealousy, as being, in the terms that the prophet, uh, for instance, Jeremiah would use, in the terms that God had come down to meet Israel in the wilderness in the day of his espousal. And like a man courting his bride to be, God had come down to court Israel and win her heart for himself and entered into a marriage covenant with Israel. Therefore, when they turned aside and joined themselves to this God or that God or Baal or whoever, they provoked the Lord to jealousy. But jealousy, true jealousy, is the other side of true love. Lest we should think that we Christians are in no danger of doing similarly, let us all remember the words of the Holy Apostle in one Corinthians ten. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? He demands absolute loyalty. Compromise our loyalty to him is to provoke his jealousy. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We better not, for he is stronger than we. So let us look now at the various captivities. The first captivity was to the Me- Mesopotamians, to the king of Mesopotamia. But then, Mesopotamia, upper Mesopotamia, was the very country that Abram left to begin the life of pilgrimage and to form and father the Hebrew nation. When Israel so sinned, they were overcome by the king of Mesopotamia, the denial, so to speak, of the principle involved in Abram's leaving Mesopotamia at the call of God. The second captivity, we read that Moab was allowed to come and take Jericho. What a curious situation. Jericho was the first city that Israel had conquered when they crossed the Jordan to enter into their promised land. And a mighty victory God had wrought through his people on that occasion. After then, Israel had gone on to find victories here and victories there and victories somewhere else, all through the land. What's the point of going on to further victories? If sin allows old Moab to come in the back door and take Jericho all over again. Hm. In the third captivity, the conqueror was Jabin, king of the Canaanites, and a little phrase is used of him. He mightily oppressed Israel. Hm. How unfortunate and odd and disturbing. For that is what the Pharaoh did for Israel when they were in Egypt. He mightily oppressed them and turned them into slaves in his slave labor camps. But Moses had delivered them, surely, and God had delivered them and made them free. Let my people go that they may worship me. And free they had come out of Egypt into the land. What's the point of being out of the oppression of Egypt? If they're going to fall again under a king who mightily oppresses them, just as Pharaoh had done. And then there was the fourth captivity. Israel had been promised an inheritance flowing with milk and honey, and eventually they got into their inheritance, and there was the grass, and there were the flowers, and there were the bees, and there were the mo- the cows, and there was the milk, and there was the honey. What gorgeous they were. Wait a minute. At this stage, the Midianites came up with their horses and their camels, devoured the harvest just as they were coming ripe. S- nearly starved Israel out. What's the point of being in the promised land flowing with milk and honey if sin has delivered us into the hands of the pressure who starves us out? Hm. And then there was Abimelech. You know, God raised up, uh, various, uh, saviors. Judges, they're called. Not judges sitting with big wigs on to condemn people, but judges to take the word of God and apply it to the lives of his people and bring them back to repentance and instruct them in the things of the Lord. And then judges who are saviors to fight their battles and defeat their enemies and make them free. Whole list of judges that did that, and then this is Abimelech. And he was meant to be a judge, meant to be a savior. Things have come to a pretty pass, haven't they, when the man that's supposed to be the judge and the savior turns out to be an unmitigated tyrant. A veritable Diotrephes. An ecclesiastical tyrant. And then there was Jephthah, good old Jephthah. The enemy in his day were Ammonites, and one of the features of Ammonites was this, that they were for everlasting coming up and trying to filch, steal bits and pieces of Israel's inheritance and claim it as their own. And so often the Israelites were too weak to resist their arguments and their stealing of their inheritance. When the Lord raised up Jephthah, he did a mighty job of work in defeating the enemy that would rob the people of God of their inheritance. What's the point of being in the inheritance if you allow enemies to come and rob you of that inheritance? Yeah, unfortunately, while he was good at dealing with enemies, he wasn't always good at distinguishing, distinguishing between enemies of the truth of God and his brothers. That's a difficulty that's afflicted many a man and a woman in the Church of God since. They're so keen on the truth and fighting enemies of the truth, they sometimes cut the heads off their brethren instead of the enemy. Hm. And then there was Samson. The enemy on this occasion was the Philistines. And the typical adjective that is used to Philistines in these ancient historical books is that they were the uncircumcised Philistines. Now, many nations in the ancient world were uncircumcised, but, uh, when the Holy Spirit of God characterizes Philistines, he points out the fact, the uncircumcised Philistines, he called them. And the significance of that? Well, we remember what circumcision was for Abraham. He was justified by faith, of course, not by circumcision. But then he received circumcision as the seal of the righteousness which he had by faith. It was the outward sign of the covenant and of the people of God from the Philistines, went and married an unconverted Philistine woman. As you see from her subsequent behavior, no convert she. And in this judge himself marrying the unconverted Philistine, daughter of the uncircumcised Philistines, he blurred the distinction, as we should say nowadays, between believer and unbeliever. And of course, that is a basically foolish thing to do, isn't it? There, there was the Danites. We saw the Danites this morning. They went up, like all the tribes had gone, to enter into their inheritance, to turn out Canaanites. So they went up to Laish, they destroyed Laish and set up their idolatry. Wow. Can't help remember what, what happened to South America, can you? When Columbus and his followers discovered the West Indies and then South America. And so-called Christendom went across and established amidst paganism, mariolatry, and all kinds of idolatry. And then finally, there was the All-Tribal Assembly, responsible for maintaining the sanctity of hospitality and sex, so as to make intertribal communications and travel safe and God-honoring. In his very attempt to discipline Benjamin for breaking the sanctities of hospitality and sex, itself breaks the sanctities of oath and innocent blood. In its attempt to discipline the others. Breaks the very sanctities which it was its responsibility to protect. These, uh, captivities, therefore, the result of Israel's sin, were not little minor things, were they, at heart. Each one of them was a denial of one of the basic principles of Israel's spiritual relationship with God. That being so, let's go at once to consider the first captivity. Uh, uh, no, this, hold on, that's, that's. The first captivity. Its record begins in chapter three. The story can be briefly told. God raised up and allowed to come to enslave them the king of Mesopotamia. Now, that very fact has caused some historians difficulty. How could the Mesopotamians, they said, have been anywhere near to Canaan for a king of theirs to come and possess Israel in the land of Canaan? So let's look at the map to see what exactly we are being told. This is what is known as modern art. It is not for sale, but it's not been looted. Now, this is where Abraham began his life. Mesopotamia, meaning between the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris. He began life down here and left Ur of Chaldees at the call of God and came up as far as Haran, which means crossroads, actually, and there lived with his papa until his papa died. And then, being instructed, uh, to, uh, with a renewed vision from God, he left Haran and came round the rest of the circle down here through Syria into Canaan. It was the king of this part of Mesopotamia that came a- and conquered the, uh, uh, uh, uh, Israelites in that far off day. So quite a geographical, uh, possibility, you'll see. But let's begin, first of all, by diagnosing the enemy. Who does he represent? Well, this one is an easy one to interpret, isn't he, from that s- very phrase, the phrase from which I- I- Abraham had been called out. And if we ponder for a moment what it was that call- brought Abraham out of Mesopotamia, both from Chaldea and then eventually from Haran. It was, says the Acts of the Apostles, that the God of glory appeared to Abram while he still dwelt in those idolatrous civilizations. Those idolatrous civilizations were beautiful indeed, but they were built on rotten foundations, built on idolatry. And the thing that moved Abram to come out and live his life as a pilgrim was not sheer prohibitions on worldliness. It was that God gave him a vision of the God of glory. In all his superlative and unique majesty, the reality of the God of glory seized Abram's heart, seized his mind, seized his imagination. The world grew strangely dim for Abraham in the light of God's glory and grace, and he left it. All its sophisticated civilization. Study, we have considered the first three captivities and reconnoited the enemy on each occasion. We found reason to think that in the first one, it was worldliness that captivated the affections of God's people. Worldliness in the sense of the attractiveness of worldliness. In the second one, it became evident that the enemy, the underlying principle, was the flesh. Both in its self-indulgent sense and in its religious sense. Moving on to the third captivity, we found the basic principle to be the Gentile way of thinking, the Gentile mindset, with all its intellectual power, but not subject to God, making an idol of its very intellect, being alienated from God and the life that is in him through its ignorance. Now the clock dictates that we cannot spend as much time on the other captivities. We must, in most cases, content ourselves with just noticing the enemy and then passing by. These, after all, are seminars in which my aim has been to share with you some approaches to the study of these Old Testament books that I have found helpful, in the hope that you will be find some of it make sense and be able to put it into the pool of your own thinking and adding it to the great resources that you have yourself, be able therefore yourselves to study these same books. The next captivity then is the Midianite captivity. And if we, uh, forthwith try to reconnoiter the enemy, we should notice what is said about them. They were Ishmaelites, so the book of, uh, Judges tells us at a certain point. And if you want to know what Ishmaelites were like, well, go back to their father, Genesis sixteen twelve, where Sarah, uh, was told, a wild ass among men shall he be, ev- his hand against every man, and every man's hand against him. Truth to tell, I have the impression that now and again I've come across an Ishmaelite. They even have been known to infiltrate the Christian church. Anyway, uh, you'll see, uh, certain it is, uh, that this particular characteristic worked dire results when, because of Israel's sin, God allowed the Midianites to come up and chastise them. They were nomads themselves. They waited till harvest was nearly ripe. They came up in their thousands. Asses, camels, and dromedaries, and goodness knows what. They came like the very locusts for number, an absolute plague, and settling down on the land. They left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep nor ox nor ass. It was a sorry state of affairs, no food left. Israel had to be taught to rule the day. They compromised with idolatry. This is one result, inevitable result, in departing from the word of God and the service of the one true God, that in the end it will lead to this kind of strife. And the worst effect of that kind of strife is that it impoverishes the Lord's people. And instead of church experience being a place up next door to heaven, when we enjoy the milk and honey of our inheritance, it can make church attendance an absolute misery, barren as concrete. Should strife every man's hand be against every other man's hand, invade the church. That will be the inevitable starvation result. Who has not known it? Israel's plight, I brought you up, says God, I delivered you, I drove them out, I gave you their land, I said I am. Well, he'd a right to say it, hadn't he? You have not listened to my voice. Had to be taught, therefore. My dear friends, it is perilous not to listen to God's voice and think we know better than his word. Israel's reaction, I called it defeatist, though I understand them. They went up to the mountains and made themselves dens, caves, and strongholds in the mountains. They weren't going to get overrun, crushed, hurt by staying down in the plains. Well, you understand it. It's difficult to carry on the old agriculture, though, wasn't it? You're afraid to come out of your cave in case you got hurt. And that's no answer to the problem, is it? What was happening is they were being starved out. Well, you get protection in the cave, but if you starve, you'll die just as well. Look at Gideon's fundamental strategy, what it was. The first thing he gave himself to is to maintain the food supply of his family. Wise strategist. It's a good thing to bear in mind. If strife has impoverished the church and the people are half starved, the temptation is to try and put the strife right first. The first thing you ought to do is keep the food supply going. Yes, it is imperative God's people be fed. And one's own food supply. Not only did he, uh, uh, uh, uh, keep the food supply, it proved in the end key to the battle. It was just on the eve of the battle when Gideon's old knees were unknocking together enough to make music. You'll see. God said, all right, Gideon, you go down with your servant to the outskirts of the camp, the enemy's camp tonight, and just listen. And when he went down and listened in the dark, there was an old Midianite soldier that was telling his pal a dream he'd had. He said, there came a great barley cake, and it rolled into the middle of the Midianite camp, and it hit this tent, and that went over, and then that went over, and it went over like dominoes, he said. And his friend who was a knowall said, you know what that is? That's Gideon. He spoke more than he knew. Old barley cake Gibian, Gideon. Made it his first tactic to keep the food supply going. It defeated the enemy. It is so in the church of God. Whatever you do, my teaching brethren, my dear Sunday school teachers, strife or no strife, keep the food supply going. When God's people are properly nourished, they'll have the strength to correct their mistakes that have given rise to the strife. And what is more, he made enough, maintained enough provision to entertain the, to entertain the angel of the Lord when the angel of the Lord came to visit him. That's a whole topic, that isn't it, entertaining the Lord. Mary and Martha, what choice souls they were. Perhaps the home where the Lord was most frequently entertained. You know, if the Lord came home with you tonight at dinner, you'll cook him a nice dinner, wouldn't you, man? Oh, the best you could. Don't spend too much time on it because you want to talk. What would you talk about to the Lord? And you sirs... who have the honor of being able to rise in the church and entertain God with your thanksgivings. Difficult to do if you've got nothing in your heart, isn't it? If you're starved right out. And don't know his word enough to talk to God in conversation about his word. To entertain the Lord in our worship, we shall need to be well fed spiritually ourselves, shall we? And in that, as he entertained the Lord, and a- asked to be allowed to offer his offering, the angel of the Lord revealed himself to him, and Gideon had this wonderful, overwhelming experience. He called the place Jehovah Shalom, the God of peace and plenty. When you think of it, I can't help thinking of the Apostle Paul, and in particular his second let- le- letter to the Corinthians. They thought they were so wise. What a poverty-stricken lot of people they were, weren't they? Mingey in their offerings. Well, the Macedonians were poor enough, and they had contributed to the fund for the poor magnificently. In Corinth, center of all the big business and naval workshops and all the rest of it, they couldn't find a spare hateny. And full of criticism and full of strife, strife at the Lord's Supper, strife with denominational strife, criticizing Paul. Wow. Have you ever meet such a miserable crowd? There's Paul talking to them. How didn't he get fed up with them and, uh, just abandon them to their nonsense? Oh, he talks about, do you see, the wonder, the excess. Our light tribulation, which is for a moment, he says, worketh for us a... excess, a wonderful excess, superabundance of glory. Man whose heart was full of the magnificence and generosity of God. The Lord give us such experience that it might maintain us in days, difficult days, and that we might be able to be those who have enough to feed God and then his people. He got the chance to intercede and reason with God, didn't he? Jolly good stuff. Let's move on. Hm. Of course, the trouble was Baal worship. The nation had gone over to Baal. They had to be corrected, and thereby came a lot of arguments. Old Gideon got called Jerubbaal in the end because they said, let Baal strive against him. But I like his positiveness. He didn't go out and say, all you wicked curs around here worshipping Baal. No, no. He had to worship the Lord, see. So there was a altar to Baal outside his front door that the locals had set up. And being a bit like me, he was cowed, and uh, he hadn't got the courage to put it down by day. So he went and put it up, pulled it down by night, and put it altar to the Lord in the place. And the men of the town came round and began to uh, uh, be rather hostile. So say, notice how Gideon had got them on the wrong foot. The Lord said I had to build an altar to worship him. Will you tell me I mustn't? He wanted it put in the very place where your altar was. Well, I couldn't have both, so yours had to go and his came. So say. I like that. I have to be positive, you know. If the Lord says, keep my supper, well, I got to do it, haven't I? If your church doesn't allow you to, well, I'm not going to argue with you, but I got to do it because the Lord says I must. Be positive. Yes. And then there was his tactics, you see. Marvelous they were. Before he would commit the armies of Israel to the battle that must come, for he must face old Baalism in the end, and fight it. Before he would commit the troops to, to that, he sought the Lord's guidance, you know, the whole, the story of the fleece and the dew. And some people have mocked him at that and said this was all superstition. I can't bring myself to think it was. Only consider what the dew meant to Israel. In any healthy year, in that hot climate, the dew was so important for the growing of their crops. That when they talked about God blessing people, God give thee of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth, plenty of corn and wine, you see how that dew is connected? He was living in the time of famine for the nation because of their sin. Before he would commit the army to further conflict, wanted to be sure, if you'll forgive the term, that he could control the due. In answer to his prayer, God would send or withhold the due. So should it be with us. Can you be sure, my brother, my sister, that when you do what you do in the church, it shall be the accompanied by the very dew of heaven, cooling the parched hearts, preparing for the harvest. Mm. You have to learn not to put faith in numbers. You remember the test that God gave, and most of the troops were sent home. Well, in the end, truth doesn't depend on numbers, you know, does it? You don't prove a thing true because ten million people believe it and only, uh, uh, uh, believe it and two don't. It ain't numbers that prove it. Victory gained. All that famous technique. Three hundred spaced out, plenty of room, it must have been between them as they spaced them round the camp, the perimeter of the camp, and the enemy inside, but at night time. Now you see the wisdom of it. They broke the old pictures in which the lights were and stood there with the light in front. Well, as you know, as you've been walking down a country lane and a big but Merdi- Mercedes-Benz comes the other way with its headlights full on, you can't see what's behind the light, can you, Otto? Doesn't matter if there's one or ten thousand. They cracked the old earthen pot, they got the torches and held them up. Poor old Midianites couldn't see who was behind and who wasn't. It's the light that mattered, as they became the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. It's a tactic, perhaps, that the apostle has in mind when he writes two Corinthians four four to fifteen. We have this treasure, he says, in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of us. The way the old earthen vessel gets cracked, broken. Well, think of dear old Paul imprisoned, shipwrecked, beaten, stoned. The earthen vessel was knocked all out of shape. What did it matter, said Paul? It allows the light to be manifest as the thing that brings the victory, not the clay vessel, that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of us. And then had the generosity to call all Israel to join in the victory, though for the most part they'd been in their caves asleep and snoring hard, but he called them to join the victory. Could we have the next slide? It is a sad thing to have to record that after that amazing success, Gideon declined, like some other retired people. He first of all turned away the unreasonable anger and criticisms of his brethren. Why didn't you call us? Well, he said, I've done very little compared with you, my brothers, haven't I now? I only did a little thing, and you're the people that did all the big things. That pacified the Ephraimites. But then, as he went on the mopping up operations to get the princes of Midian, he came to two towns and asked them to cooperate, and they wouldn't. They mocked him a little bit. They said, the princes aren't in your hand yet, are they? Well, you go and get them. We're not committing ourselves because they're, the princes are not defeated yet. He said to them, I tell you what, when I come back in peace, I will chastise you with thorns. As for you at Penuel, I'll break down your, your, your tower. And so he did. The man that had been raised up of God to drive out the Midianites and all their strife. Now in the moment of his victory, chastising his fellow Israelites with thorns, breaking down their only defense. True, he refused to be called a king himself. Nobody refused to be king. But his enemies flattered him. Those men you killed, says he, what were they like? Oh, they said everyone resembled the son of a king. They were my brothers, said Gideon. Ah. Well, he refused to be a king himself, but requested the ornaments and robes of the Midianite kings, made an ephod of them. It became an idolatrous object of reverence to the Israelites, and a stare to Gideon and his house. Pity that, isn't it? No wrong in enjoying the fruits of one's victory. Oh, let us be careful, lest we make a god of our very success. Lest the people of God idolize their preachers. Instead of worshiping God alone. He refused to be king, did he? Yes. He had a son by a far-out woman. And they called him Abimelech, which means Avi, my father. Melech is king. And it started the downward path in Israel's history. Let's have the next slide. Oh, sorry, that's not the next one. I want the Abimelech. Not worth spending time on, really. He was a son of Gideon, meant to be a savior and deliverer and judge. He wanted to promote himself and did promote himself as king. He was an ancient Diotrephes. He loved to have the preeminence. Wobertied anybody who didn't knuckle down under him. Spiritual ancestor of many ecclesiastical tyrants. Men who want power for the sake of having power. Do they? But if we set up our intellect as the final authority in the world, in the universe, so that God and his word have to be subject to our intellectual approval, as though our intellect could solve everything, and we have no need of divine revelation, that is to make an idol of our very intellect. It will prove our undoing. And the final thing that is noticed is that Sisera lived in Harosheth of the Gentiles. You say, well, that tiny, where else would he live? He came from that part of Palestine. Yes, but just look at the way scripture has of talking about these various nations. Notice the way the scripture, for instance, talks about the Amalekites, but very frequently the sinners, the Amalekites. Well, you say everybody is sinners, aren't they? Yes, so they are. But this is the adjective typically used with, uh, Amalekites, the sinners, the Amalekites. Amalekites, the people, were the people that put themselves in the way of the Israelites as they came through the wilderness and opposed the very purposes of God and put a hand on the very throne of God. The sinners, the Amalekites. The uncircumcised Philistines. Well, a lot of people were uncircumcised in those days, but this is what Philistines are called because God's spirit draws attention to the fact that they were outside the covenant of God with his people. So Galilee of the Gentiles. Well, partly it's a geographical significance. The Galilee is the nearest point in the Promised Land to the Gentiles going north. But it also came to have spiritual connotations. The further people away from Jerusalem, the more ignorant they tended to be. And the prophet Isaiah prophesied of the gloom and darkness that would descend upon the land. And then that lovely prophecy, Galilee of the Gentiles, a great light has arisen upon you. It was in Galilee, and that not by accident, that our Lord began his public ministry. Gentiles then. The interface between Israel and the Gentile world, with the constant danger that Israel would come to think and behave like Gentiles. So that we might immediately step over from to from that to the New Testament and listen to what the New Testament has to say to us about Gentile ideas, Gentile outlooks. Our blessed Lord himself, uh, is on record as teaching us, when you pray, don't you pray like Gentiles? Oh, how do Gentiles pray? Well, they think that they shall be heard for their much asking. Prayer with them is a way of manipulating God, twisting his arm. The more you pray, the more you twist it, to do what he had any intention of doing anyway, but forcing him into doing it. Prayer that is delivered on that basis, you see, is utterly pervert, really, isn't it? Because it has misconceived of God. Yes. Surely God allows us sometimes in his mercy to take initiative and come to him with our requests, and if they are according to his will, he will do them. But we must never let ourselves get into the thought of mind that we have to twist God's arm, for if we don't, God will be mean and won't give us things, and if we twist his arm powerfully enough, he will. But having said that, you should listen to me praying sometimes, oh dear. Oh dear. We are to banish from our minds, therefore, as we pray, false Gentile concepts of God. You just imagine a God who would save you if you walked up a large flight of stone stairs on your bare knees. What concept people have of God. Or climb Kirkpatrick in their s- their naked feet, as though God would be pleased with it. What a God he would be if you could persuade him by things like that. Don't pray like the Gentiles, and don't please have the same objectives of Gentiles, says our Lord. Well, what is that then? Well, he says, now, when you come to go to work, do you see, to get your food and clothes, then, uh, seek you first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Don't you make your first quest food and clothes, for that's what the Gentiles do. Difficult scripture to face sometimes, isn't it? For we say go to work for half a minute, quite prepared to think that we should put the Lord's work first and give out a few tracts before we clock in at nine o'clock in business on a Monday morning. Uh, put the Lord's interest first. But what are you saying now? Is there something beyond that? There is indeed. Nothing to say against giving out tracts before or after you go to work. But when we come go to work, what is our chief motive? Chief motive to get food and clothes? You say, come, come, come, lecturer, be realistic for once in the day. What do you think we go to work for? Not to get food and clothes, anyway. If you didn't have to get food and clothes, you wouldn't go to w- oh, you wouldn't? So work is simply to get food and clothes, and that's all. And the clothes wear out, and you won't need them when you go to heaven, and all those hours you've spent in getting them has gone down the drain, has it? Don't you be like that, says Christ. That's the Gentile way of looking at life. What should our way be of looking at life? Well, when you go to work, your first goal, your primary goal is what? The rule of God in your life. Seek you first. The kingdom, the rule, the kingly rule of God in your life. For work is God's ordained method by which I am trained to seek his rule in my life and live accordingly. If in my daily life I am seeking first his kingdom and living according to his rules, it will produce in me a practical righteousness, won't it? Because there's no good me looking at the Bible and learning it from the Bible. Gooding, you shouldn't be lazy. Marvelous. Oh, I enjoyed that truth today. Now bring me out the the footrest and supply me with a cup of coffee, for I do enjoy this thing. You shouldn't be lazy. What use is that? Just learning that I shouldn't be lazy, that's good, but I haven't learnt not to be lazy until I have been put to work. Yes? What's the good of me being told, uh, uh, to tell the truth? Oh, I believe that. I always tell the truth. But of course I don't get up until ten o'clock in the morning and go to bed at eight, you see. Well, you don't get much time to tell the truth, do you? You get sent out into this modern world, or any world of business, and see how you get on when the principles of the firm want you to lie. And if you don't, it could cost you your job. Now, if you are going to work and your first motivation is to get food and clothes, you might well be tempted to tell the lie so as to get the food and clothes. You say, I must have food and clothes. But if we do it, we've lost the very reason for which God sent us to work in the first place. Sends us to work to teach us and give us training and practice in being honest and truthful. Yes. The eight hours a day we spend at work is not things gone down the drain. The food and clothes will perish, but the character is that it is building if we go to work seeking God's rule in our life first. The character will last eternity. There's no such thing as business morality on the one hand and church morality on the other, my brothers. And our Lord calls upon us in daily life and our daily work, amidst all the sophistication of engineering and civil engineering and techniques and technologies, yet in our work to seek first his kingly rule and the righteousness that builds up as a result. And don't you develop, says Paul, a gentile mind. You listen to what he says in Ephesians chapter uh four as he explicitly calls upon us to put a tent peg through any old Canaanite skull we come across. I therefore say unto you and testify in the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart. So we're not to be as Gentiles. Hence the immediate practical implication of this story to our lives as believers. Strategies and tactics. They are too long for me to go into detail, and you probably know the stories well. But one was this unique thing here, the whole thing led by the prophetic insight that God gave to Deborah into the significance of the enemy they were fighting, the purposes of God in history, and the battles of the Lord. In her poetry in chapter five, she remembers how God came from Sinai before the very armies of Israel, and Jabin of heart's sword built a confederacy against the Lord. And as we read Je- Deborah's insight in the purposes of God and the battles that ensued, we can't help thinking of that other great confederacy that the people of God made mention of in Acts chapter four. truly in this city, where the kings of the Gentiles with Pontius Pilate and the priests of Israel gather together against the Lord and against his anointed. It's not just the immorality of this world that is an enemy. Underneath this world, it's an enemy of God and the purposes of God. That is a thing to be grasped. The world sometimes put on his attractiveness. Don't love it. But don't you be surprised also if underneath you find this world is hostile to God, and therefore the world, in that sense, will hate you. Hm. So, uh, Christ's victory over the principalities and powers, you don't need to en- me- need me to enlarge on it, but there was Barak's tactics that was considering, aren't they? Ha. Said Deborah, up Barak, and lead the armies up north. So Barak led his ten thousand troops up. And the reason why I brought these picture books for you is, uh, just to remind you, if you've not been there, to see what kind of a mountain Mount Tabor is. Great sympathy with Barak. He got ten thousand troops. Gotta go up to the big plains, the Australian plain there, which was beautiful territory for chariots. That's a pancake. If Barak had been caught with ten thousand infantry, scarce a spear and a shield between them, amidst nine hundred chariots of iron, they'd have run circles round him and minced him up to mince meat. So his tactics, of course, he got them up to Mount Tabor as fast as he could and led them up the mountain. Wise tactician, wasn't he? You see, uh, the idea was, you see, now old Cicero couldn't ride his chariots up the mountain, could he, follow? He had to get out and walk up. And as they walked up, the Israelites, being higher up, could roll down the boulders on top of their Achaeanite heads, you see, and have a chance to defeat them. I should have felt very safe up there on that. When Deborah, because she wasn't the military general, was she? Dear me, to rise up, uh, Beorak and go down the mountain, go down the mountain to face those chariots? Wow. Suicide, you say. Is not the Lord gone out before you? It was the battle of the Lord coming to meet his arch-old enemies that brought them down the mountain. Now, instead of it turning to a disaster, the fact that the Lord was with them was seen in the fact they came this sudden onslaught of rain that turned the little innocent wadi into a raging torrent, soaked the land all around, the plain all around, and made it a muddy quagmire. And the Canaanite charities sunk down to their axles, and now instead of being an advantage, were decided disadvantage, and Israel subdued them and, and cut them to pieces. The Lord had gone out before them. Rise up, said, uh, Deborah to Barak, rise up and lead captivity captive. Well, that's what he did. He turned the tables on his captors, and those that once were his enemies and captors, he may turn them into his captives and gave the spoil to his friends. That was such a victory that in Psalm sixty eight, the psalmist later on, uh, makes up poetry about it, how the Lord came from Sinai. And the poet eventually gets round, Psalm sixty eight, notice the reference, the poet eventually gets round to saying, rise up, O Lord, send up, and lead captivity captive. It's a bit of poetry. Centuries later, Paul the Apostle was inspired to write the Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter four, and the rest of it, of course. And it is evident from what he says in that chapter four that he had had occasion to scratch his apostolic head more than once over whatever could that Psalm sixty eight mean. Rise up, O Lord, send up and lead captivity captive. How could God ascend anywhere? I mean, God is at the top of the universe, isn't he? He is supreme. God can't get any higher. How could God ever go up? A puzzle to the apostle, it ought to be to us. Well, how would you square it then? And then he saw it. Why had he seen it before? I don't know if he kicked himself, but he well might have done, then he saw it. I know, says he. That's talking of God, yes, but that's talking of God incarnate. Listen to Paul arguing with himself. For God couldn't ascend unless he first descended. Good old Paul, he's seen through it. Ah, how could God ascend unless it were first in the incarnate Christ he descended first to the lower parts of the earth, not down to hell, ladies and gentlemen. He was born of a virgin, the virgin's womb. The lower parts of the earth is a synonym for it. Came down to our world. Oh, what a descent it was. What for? To meet the mass nights, the principalities and powers, the confederacy of this world gathered around Calvary. The Lord came down, blessed be his name. He first descended and made a show of them openly. Took the handwriting that was against us, signed by our very conscience, nailed it to his cross, and has now ascended. He that descended is the same as he that ascended far above all things, that he might fill all things. And he has given gifts to men, the spoil of his victory. You say, what gifts? And doesn't the Psalm say he received gifts? It does this. Well, why does Paul say res- he gave them then? Well, that's easy enough, isn't it? Old Barak defeated the Gentiles, the Canaanites, got their tribute, so he received the gifts. Then he distributed to his friends, he gave the gifts. How else? So did our blessed Lord. He defeated his enemies, he took captivity captive and gave gifts to men. What kind of gifts? Well, Paul goes on to tell, there were apostles and prophets and teachers, evangelists, pastors. Gifts at his people, given by the risen Christ to the church. We say, but wait a minute, what's that got to do with the battle? Oh, don't you remember that Paul, who wrote Ephesians, was one of the arch enemies of our blessed Lord? Tortured believers, stood over them to make them blaspheme. Tried to wipe out the name of Jesus from the face of the world. What an enemy he was, who was before a blasphemer and injurious. Instead of God taking a thunderbolt and dismissing him through his skull, the blessed God incarnate came down the mountain and at Calvary met the foe and eventually brought Saul to his knees, did he not? And conquered him by his glory, by his grace, his love and salvation. And Saul, the enemy and persecutor, became Paul, the humble apostle. Christ took the erstwhile enemy and gave him to the church. I'm looking around on your fair faces. You may not have been such elaborate enemies as Paul Saul of Tarsus, but we all once time were enemies, weren't we? Reconciled to God by the death of his son, by that magnificent story how he came down from the mountain and met our foe for us and vanquished the foe and set us free. The story has not ended there. It is as the risen Christ will take his once-time enemies, you and you and you and you and me, and give us to his church, each of us to do that part, that role, that thing to gain which our blessed Lord died and won the battle at Calvary. Is it not so? Don't you go on living like Gentiles, praying like Gentiles. All see to it that as you go to your daily work, you put first his rule and his kingdom. That's what he died to win. Yes. Don't let the Gentile way of looking at things fill your mind. I testify in the Lord to it, says Paul, to no longer think like the Gentiles think. Well, it may not seem like it now, but these sessions will w- come to an end. Yes. And you'll say to yourself, is it really over? Cool, it seemed a long while while it lasted. Has it really come to an end? Well, it will do, yes. And you'll have to go home. I tell you what, be careful when you get home, just have a look around the door and under the carpet, maybe. In case, like jail, you suddenly find you've got an old Canianite asleep on the floor. Oh. What would you do? I tell you what to do if you find any old Gentile thinking around your part of the world. You take a tin peg tomb and put it right through that way of thinking. Yes? Not a bad idea. The question of institutionalizing idolatry. So old Micah made an idol, put it in his house of gods, if you please, and got a passing Levite who was looking for a bigger wage, uh, to be his priest. And he said, now I'm well set up now, ooh, tremendous. I got a Levite to my priest. Who? Well, obviously the man and his mother had completely lost any notion of what Exodus and the Ten Commandments were about. Worse than that, presently the Danites came by. The Danites are what you call them. They hadn't been content with their little bit of territory in the south. They were determined to go up north and conquer a bigger bit of inheritance. So they went right up to the north, came across a Canaanite city called Laish. There's a picture here of the main gate of that city, recent- not so long ago, twenty years ago, discovered. They conquered that city and established in it, what do you suppose? Idolatry. Set up an idolatrous shrine, and if you please, Moses' grandson and his sons, uh, thereafter served as priests in the day night system of institutionalized idolatry. It's enough to take a breath away, isn't it, Bob? How could, goodness me, some Hottentot, but Moses' grandson going as a priest, installed in the institutionalized idolatry up in Dan. Became a very serious weakness among the Ten Tribes, center of idolatry for centuries. When Jeroboam came to the throne, he established his high place in, um, Dan, used to be called Laish, was then after called Dan. And Ahab, in his idolatry, he enlarged that high place. It became a sin from which Israel never recovered. Now, if you go on your tours to Israel and they let you go up that far north, it's getting pretty dangerous near the border, of course, but if they let you go up that far, well, have a go. It'll burn into your heart a bit more than some of the pseudo-Christian relics. For there they have encouraged, uh, uncovered the high place. What a sad thing it is to stand there and look at it. Institutionalized idolatry among the so-called people of God. Mm. That's serious, isn't it? So serious, perhaps we ought to stop there and, uh, just take five minutes.