Gooding, David: 4 - Survey of Judges

We must soon be getting down to the actual text of the Book of Judges, but we can afford just a little time to survey the whole contents. On the slide in front of you, which you may not be able to read very well, but you will be getting a copy of it, so that let me warn you in advance what it is. Here down this side, we have the two introductions to the book. After the death of Joshua, and the question who shall go out first against the Ca- Canaanites. And the story of the various tribes, how well or poorly they behaved in the task of, uh, driving the Canaanites out and, uh, possessing their possessions. Scripture is very kind. Sometimes it says they could not. They did their very best. We should have hearts of compassion with people, remembering ourselves. Perhaps all of you, my brothers, have known it that when you felt you had a, a, a besetting weakness or a sin, you asked the Lord's help, and he delivered you forthwith there are, and you never gave way to it again, ever, but you know. Some of us, you should remember, have tried and tried and tried again, not always been able completely to overcome our shortcomings. Of course, even you more successful ones have got a long way to go. The scripture distinguishes between those who tried and couldn't, and those who didn't bother to try, who just didn't drive out the enemy. And therefore, uh, the warning is sent to them at the end of that first introduction. Uh, they've broken God's covenant. It le- the rebuke leads to bokim, to people weeping. Let's notice that sheer effect. We haven't time to stop with it. The second introduction, when Joshua had sent the people away. The intermittent idolatry that followed from time to time. There is the main body then of the work of the major deliverers and mention of the minor deliverers. They come to an end with Samson, and after that there are two epilogues. There is the epilogue of Micah's idolatry, and then the, uh, Benjamin's immorality. What we were saying earlier, however, prompted by scripture, is the middle bit. There are cycles. People do evil in the sight of the Lord. They compromise with idolatry. He hands them over and allows their enemies to oppress them. They cry to the Lord, and the Lord in mercy raises up a deliverer. He judges them, wins their battles, sets them free, continues to judge them and keep them straight with God's revealed will. And when he dies, all too often, the cycle repeats itself, and then, says scripture, often enough, every time the cycle goes round, it gets worse. So let's have a look at the, uh, story that is given us to see. Here we come. We've had one, we've had two. Here is the... up it a bit, if you could. Uh, here is the, uh, first, uh, enemy. Can you push it up a bit? Oh, good. Marvel. Here is the first enemy. Uh, Osnio, uh, uh, the king of Mesopotamia, actually. And Osnio is the judge who delivers the people. How did they come into that dire strait? Well, because, says the text, among other things, they married fo- foreign women, and that was the cause of their downfall. Now, if you ask why did God choose Othniel to be the deliverer of the people from that state of affairs, the answer comes in the little piece of history that is given as to how he got his wife. She was Caleb's daughter, and Caleb, uh, said on one occasion, whosoever goes up and seizes this city that lay in his territory, it's, uh, Gilead Sepher, to him will I give my daughter Aksa to wife. And Othniel was attracted to the good lady, apparently, daughter of Caleb, and very much a chip off the old block, and, uh, he, uh, enamored with her and motivated by her, he went up and fought the giants and captured the city and got the girl to wife. And afterwards, when her father came, Othniel's now father-in-law, it was the daughter that urged her father to give her some extra territory, the Upper and Nether Springs, so that we say the secret of Othniel's success was his wife. The last judge, nine, Samson, the enemy of the Philistines. I cannot avoid the comment that in many things he failed, failed very seriously. He was raised up to deliver the people from the Philistines. When he died, they were still in bondage to the Philistines, as they always had been. You can't deliver people from the tyrant if you go and marry the tyrant's daughter. The secret of Samson's failure. His wives, of course. But you see how things have gone. That by the time you come here, the judge himself is guilty of the offense that brought the people originally into bondage anyway. When he proposed to his parents that they take him a Philistine girl to wife, they said, tut, tut, tut, tut, tut. The tut tuts didn't do much. And, uh, he married a good girl. Yes, the history says it was of the Lord, in a sense, because it gave, uh, Samson occasion to do various exploits against the Philistines. But it was of the Lord in the sense that the Lord overrules these things, even when we go astray and are imperfect in our obedience. But in the end, through disaster, I repeat, the last judge is guilty, the judge himself is guilty of a practice that originally had got the people into trouble in the first captivity. There's the cycle going round and getting worse. Let's take the second deliverer, Ehud. This is paracant simply story four in the book. The enemy Mo- Moabites. Among the tactics he used, having killed the king by a dagger through his belly, Ehud summoned the people, the Israelites in his locality, that is, and they went down to the fords of Jordan, for the Moabites came from the east of Jordan. And of course, there were fords at various parts along the river where you could come across where the water was comparatively shallow. And therefore, having killed the king, they ran down to the fords of, uh, uh, of Jordan and took the fords, so that all the servants of the king that were on the west of Jordan, when they discovered their royal master was dead, um, they would run to go back to their country across to the east and would have to come across the fords. And like the famous old Horatio who took the bridge, you know, that will, as they don't teach that these days, sorry about that. Uh, uh, uh, anyway, uh, because the fords were very narrow, the Israelites could stand by the fords, and as the Moabites came across and had to come across more or less one by one, they dispatched them. They took the fords and killed the enemy at the fort. Go to the opposite story. In the symmetry, the deliverer is Jephthah. The Ammon- the enemy are Ammonites, national brother to the Moabites, of course. And one of the tactics that Jephthah used was to take the fjords of Jordan. An undeniable similarity, of course. And when the people came across, he had a little test for them to decide whether they should be allowed to live or whether he must execute them. And he said, say the certain Hebrew word. And some said sybileth, and some said shibboleth. It was a dialect, you know. It's uh, uh, how it is. It's like an Englishman trying to see it Scots. The best will in the world, he often falls down. And uh, uh, you'll see. It meant the same whether you pronounce it shibboleth or sybileth. But the way they pronounced it exposed what tribe they belong to. And those that didn't pronounce it the right way, he killed at the fords. Mother lass. When Ehud killed the people at the fords, it was the enemy he killed. When Jephthah killed the people at the fords, it was his brother Israelites he killed. Things have deteriorated, haven't they? When a great deliverer can't distinguish between the enemy and his brethren. My dear brothers, it has happened amongst God's people, where Christians have cut off, dealt hardly, harshly with their brethren, as if they were unbelievers. Oh, take the, um, the next deliverer, where there were three involved. There was Deborah, a prophetess, who directed some of the major strategies of the campaign and encouraged the deliverer, whose name was Beirak and was commander of the, of the forces. And, uh, he led the, the, the troops in battle, took the troops up the mountain, Mount Tabor, and then came down and fought the enemy. The enemy had chariots of iron, but there came a tempest of a rain that turned the plain into a quagmire, so that the chariots weren't much use. And the enemy commander, and that man named Sisera, got down off his chariot and, uh, ran to take refuge and came across the tent of a certain jail, a Kenite, and forced his way in. She couldn't oppose him, of course. She took him into the woman's quarters, gave him some milk. He lay down to sleep, and when he slept, she took a tent peg and hammered it through his brain. Now, there are Christians who doubt the morality of doing a thing like that, and we c- you can discuss it when we come to it. My point simply is to, uh, to point out that the brain through which he put the tent peg was the brain of an enemy commander. What about this woman of Thebes? She stopped an end to the siege of her city by hostile forces that were intent on destroying her city. And so she heaved a millstone over the wall onto the head of the commander of the army that was besieging her city and put an end to his nonsense. But the head she smashed with her millstone was the head of a judge, or supposed judge, in Israel, the son, no less, of Gideon, who purported to be a judge, and was intent on destroying Israel so that he might be in control. Things have gone to the worst, haven't they? As you go through the book, can we put it down? So we are left with Gideon as the central one of the major judges. We shall see how Gideon's life is in two parts. In one sense, he is the crowning peak of the deliverers. We shall see, unfortunately, in the second half of his life, he became, he took the first few steps downward that led his people down into idolatry. So let us sum that bit up. If you could have that one on, that one on. Thank you, yes, I have it. There are the major judges, just for convenience. Othniel fought the Mesopotamians. The secret of his success, his wife. Ehud fought the Moabites, the Ammonites, and Amalek, brought a message to the enemy, took fords of Jordan, and killed the enemy. Deborah, Barak, Jael fought the Canaanites. A woman kills the army commander through his skull. Gideon fought the Midianites and took his stand early on as a younger man in his family and in his village, his stand against idolatry, taking courage in both hands, and because he dared do it in the mor- uh, in the daylight, he did it at night, but he did it anyway. Amen. That prepared him to lead the fight, you'll say, against the enemy. And he refused to be king. After the victory, when some of the Israelites were less than polite, he turned and fought his fellow Israelites, knocked down their tower and disciplined them with thorns, and himself lapsed into idolatry. He is a watershed in the book. Here then come the others. Abimelech, he fought not the enemy, he fought the Israelites. Like a Diotrephes, expending his energies and efforts not in fighting for the gospel's sake, but in suppressing his believers and eliminating all other el- elders so he could be elder and rule and dictate. A woman killed him through his skull. Just like a woman up there, Jael had killed the enemy commander through his skull. This woman kills this man through his skull, but he happens to be the judge in Israel. Who needed to be, to be stopped from destroying a city in Israel. Jephthah fought the Ammonites. He sent messengers to the enemy. In other words, part of his tactics were first of all diplomacy with the enemy, trying to settle the matter by diplomacy, and so sent messengers, therefore, to the enemy. And when they wouldn't listen to to diplomacy, he had to fight them. In the end, he took the folds of Jordan and killed. Not the enemy, but his fellow Israelites, with whom he had a little dispute. Finally, there's Samson, who certainly irritated the Philistines somewhat by all his goings on, and had a lot of bright sparks going off and fireworks and goodness what else, marvelous shows of so-called spiritual power. When he died, the Israelites were as much under the Philistines as they were when he started. The secret of his downfall? His wives, if that's what you can call them. So we're getting the main skeleton of the book, aren't we? You'll see the cycles are going round, but they're getting worse. And now I want us to notice another thing about these captivities. Thank you very much. I made the point that in order to profit from these lessons, though our warfare is a spiritual warfare, the Book of Judges gives us good exercise, not just theoretical, but good practical exercise in diagnosing the enemy, because the enemies are different, all of them different. And therefore, thinking about what caused Israelite to fall under the oppression of this or that enemy. Diagnosing the enemy, therefore. The enemies are all different in Judges. Some of them have confederacy, including, uh, similar enemies, but the leaders are all different. And then seeing the tactics that are necessary to deal with each particular enemy. And the qualifications, uh, that need, that are needed, uh, to be a deliverer. Here is a list of the, uh, uh, the oppressions, and I have suggested that each of those oppressions denies one basic principle of Israel's existence. Take the first captivity. To the, it was to the king of Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers, and refers in the context to that bit of Mesopotamia that lies in the north, where the rivers take a big curve to the west. Haran, where Abram, uh, came and for a while lived with his father Terah in that northern part of Mesopotamia, from which A- A- A- Abraham eventually came out to begin his great pilgrimage with and for God. The God of glory appeared to him increasingly and started with Abraham, the father of the faithful. Huh? When Israel sinned against God, the first captivity was to the king of the country from which Abram came out. Fancy that now. What's the point of coming out then? If having come out under Abram, his successors fall under the king of the very country from which Abram came out. A denial of a first principle. The second captivity. Moab comes across Jordan and takes Jericho, the city which Israel had destroyed. Of course, you will remember that in the ancient East, when a city was destroyed and it came to be rebuilt, they didn't normally rebuild, didn't always rebuild on top of the city that was been destroyed. They sometimes moved a little to the south or west or north or wherever, and and began another city a bit away from it. They weren't very large when all was said and done, and then perhaps later on they built on the mound and so forth and so on. They called it the city of the palm trees, did the Moabites. That was, that sounded better than Jericho. Um, you see? Moab, therefore came across and oppressed Israel and made their headquarters west of Jordan in Jericho. But Jericho was the first city that Israel had destroyed when they came across Jordan, which they had to destroy in order to proceed further into the land of Israel. And now they had proceeded all over the country. What's the point of that? The Moabites have come in in the rear and taken Jericho all over again. The denial of first principle. The third captivity, led by Jabin, king of the Canaanites. The northern Canaanites were far more rigorous people than the Moabites ever knew how to be. They had developed smelting of iron and so forth, chariots of iron, hard-headed men they were, fit to run Cape Canaveral. And, uh, when Israel sinned, they came under their domination. The word that is used of them, and when we read scripture, we have to listen to every word and pick up its connotations. The word that is used of them is they mightily oppressed the people of Israel. Yeah, well, Pharaoh had done that when they were in Egypt, mightily oppressed the Israelites with their enforced enslavery and making of bricks without straw. But now they've been freed, haven't they, from that, uh, oppression. And Pharaoh no longer oppressed them, and they sang their hymns, we have been delivered from Egypt. And now they were in the land. But another king was mightily oppressing them. What's the point of being out of Egypt then? And escape from his oppression, if now you've come under the oppression of the king of Hatzor and his colleagues in the northern confederacy. And then there came the fourth captivity. That was to the Midianites. The Midianites came in from the east. They were desert people. They came in on camels, not chariots of iron like the northern Canaanites had. They came on camels, you'll see. Came like locusts for number, and they would wait until the harvest was nearly ready in Israel, you see. And then when it was all ready to be reaped, and Israel were going to store it up in their granaries and say, soul, take thy knees and be merry, thou hast much goods laid up for the needs. Yeah, in came the miniamites like locusts in number and gobbled the whole thing up. And left Israel to starve. What is the use of being in the land full of milk and honey by God's own deliverance and redemption, only to have the milk and the honey, the corn and the wine robbed from you by the oppressor, and you le- you are left in virtual famine conditions. God forbid it ever happened to your assembly. I've known assemblies where it has happened, where instead of the assembly being a place of milk and honey, where people can come and be refreshed and fed, it has by internal strife become an absolute wilderness of famine. Oh, then there came Abimelech, and he should have been a judge and deliverer. Denied by his behavior the very first principle of what a judge and deliverer was meant to be. Tyrannized over his brothers and slaughtered a little good many of them so that he should be the sole boss left. A denial of a first principle, of course. So it was with Jethro. We've already talked about him. Let's not, uh, expand too much on these sobby things. Great deliverer, man of faith, but in the end he treats his brother Israelites as though they were enemies and slaughters his brothers. God help us to distinguish between our brothers and sisters in Christ and enemies. Then there came Samson. The Philistines, now appearing in the history, prominently, they also appear earlier a little bit in Genesis, but now they appear prominently along the southern coastal strip, sea peoples. They are constantly referred to in scripture, the Old Testament narratives, as the uncircumcised Philistines. Now, a lot of folks, nations were uncircumcised, but the Holy Spirit's, uh, sobriquet, the uncircumcised Philistines, calls attention to the fact that they were not part of the covenant people of God. They were in the land. The land eventually became known to other powers, like the Romans, as the land of the Philistines, Philistia, and in our modern sense, Palestine, which means the land of the Philistines. Of course, the Philistines were not part of the covenant people of God, to whom God had covenanted to give that land. They were the uncircumcised Philistines. A similar phenomenon occurs with the Amalekites. When you read of the Amalekites in Old Testament from time to time, it is to be said they are the sinners, the Amalekites. Well, all men are sinners, of course. But the Amalekites in such form and fashion that they are named as the sinners, the Amalekites. And God commanded they be wiped out. The Philistines then were uncircumcised. They were not members of the covenant between God and Abram's seed. And Samson was raised up against them to deliver the people of God from the Philistines. When he died, the Philistines were still in charge of that part of the country, and the people had not been delivered. Let's come down just for a moment to the two, uh, epilogues, because they show the same principle, or at least they show the same tendency to deny a first principle. The Danites originally received their inheritance in the southeast and southwest of the country, but they found it uncongenial and too small, and they journeyed north, right to the north of present Israel, to a Canaanite city called Laish. And this was a city far from anybody, and they were a peaceable crowd. Canaanite city, of course. And the Danites went, and with their army they attacked and conquered Laish. Well, Joshua had done that kind of thing many times over, so here were the Canaanites going up to get themselves an extra territory, and they conquered Laish, you see, destroyed it, and rebuilt the thing as Dan. And the city became known as Dan. And having rebuilt it and called it Dan, they then installed idolatry there. Easy to see how that denied a first principle. The cities that Joshua and company destroyed, they were, they they they destroyed them because of their idolatrous practices. The Danites destroyed the city and installed idolatry. Things are not good in the epilogues of the book of Just- uh, Judges. It was Dan, of course, that city where Jeroboam, when he took over the ten tribes, built one of his illicit tribes at Dan. And when A- Ahab took over in his reign, he enlarged the high place at Dan. If you care to, you can go and stand there if you want to, and think about the sorry history associated with Dan. Denial of first principle, of course. And then there is the all-tribal assembly. The task of an all-tribal assembly was to deal with those things that couldn't easily be dealt with by the individual elders of individual, uh, parts of the land. It had to do, for instance, with the sanctities of life, and in particular with the guarding of those sanctities of life when Israelites moved around in the country. The Greeks had a similar system, of course. They had a god called Zeus, Xenos, who was the patron god of, uh, travelers and guests. And if a guest came into your house and tampered with your wife or ran off with her, the Greeks thought that this god, Zeus, Zenos, would deal with the transgressor. You remember the famous story of, of the Menelaus and Helen, won't you? How that Paris from Troy came and stayed with Menelaus and ran off with his wife Helen and took her to Troy. It's the ancient story, and that was supposed to be the concern of Zeus Zenos to deal with such a breach of the sanctities of hospitality and the sanctities of life. And of course, the Hebrews no less had that concept of the need to protect the sanctities of life, particularly into in intertribal relationships and on the behalf of travelers. And the story here of a Benjamite, Benjamin, a man of Benjamin, uh, sorry, a Levite who came with his concubine, and he was going back home up north, but uh, night overtook him, and as the servant suggested, they put up in a, in a, a pagan city. Because in that city there was still, uh, the pagan Canaanites not driven out. And the Levite wouldn't do that, didn't feel safe. So he pushed on till he came to a city of Benjamin, thinking he would be there safe. Sad, sorry behavior of the men of the city polluted all the sanctities of life you could think of. And they were Benjamites. Behaving worse than the pagan Gentiles would have done in many a city. So the all-tribal assembly was called in to deal with them. And to cut a very long story short, made a sorry hash of the whole business. And in process of trying to deal with the broken sentities of that city, broke other sanctities that were fundamental to the intertribal life of Israel. Which would prompt a preacher, if he weren't careful. So, and I'm sometimes I'm not careful. To say you have to be very careful when you exercise church bliss discipline, it must be done in the fear of God, mustn't it? And it can be a sorry thing when wrong motives and unspiritual methods and disregard of sanctity ruins what otherwise was a necessary act of church discipline. Let alone acts of cha- church discipline that never were founded on scripture anyway. Well, this is a melancholy story, isn't it? And I can't begin to think just for the moment of an excuse for inviting you to come all the way from wherever you have come to study such a melancholy history. But of course, the melancholy side, uh, is not the only side of the, uh, story. There is the other side. God's mercy on his people, his listening to their cries of repentance and the deliverers he raised up for them. Wonderful men and women of faith that still are able to inspire us to become like them and deliverers among the people of God. So let us now just, uh, rehearse that will not take us very long. Let us rehearse some of the details given us shortly of the first captivity, which was to the king of Mesopotamia. Now, a word at this point on the interpretation of these various nations. For I shall be doing what some of you may initially feel is something very fanciful. And saying that Moabites represent this, and Midianites represent that, and um, convenient uh, things will come along like the world, the flesh, and the devil. And I shall be charged with serious offense at exposition, and certainly at, uh, at the earliest stage of exegesis, and saying this is absolutely typology round right, you see, fanciful in the extreme, and not taking note of the actual historical nations and things and so. Very good. We need warnings against fanciful interpretation, don't we? Then I shall be told that it's not fair to denigrate a whole nation or tribe because of the supposed behavior of a me- one of their, uh, members. It is wrong thus to, uh, stigmatize a whole nation or tribe because of the supposed behavior of a me- one of their, uh, members. It is wrong thus to, uh, stigmatize a whole nation and stereotype a nation. And that warns you not to say he's a typical Englishman. Because a typical Englishman is a stereotype, they say. And if you think I'm a ster- a a a typical Englishman, pray bear in mind that up to seventy million other Englishmen are not like me. So we mustn't stereotype these people. So what should we say about them? Well, I can't help thinking that in some missionary schools, um, Bible schools and things like that, that prepare Christians for the mission field. There will be special courses for the would-be missionaries, in which they are told very carefully and in practical terms that they must be aware of the cultural differences between America and the people to whom they go. And that's not only true when American missionaries go to Africa or somewhere like that, it's also true when American missionaries come to Europe, I might say. Because there are very big cultural differences and differences of attitude and ways of treating people and what their va- basic values are and what they stand for and all this kind of thing. And so it's very easily to step, it's easy to step on people's toes in Europe, and the more you go east in Europe, the easier it is to step on their toes. If we don't regard the cultural differences and the history that lies behind them. Now, where is that going to lead us? Is this cultural difference real? Well, of course it's real. And what is real in the modern world was real in the ancient world, of course. If we may use the term a typical Moabite. Was a very different kettle of fish from a typical northern Canaanite. And the Midianite people roaming the desert on their camels, and occasionally event, uh, uh, uh, uh, attacking Israel, were a very different cultural group. From the northern Canaanites, who were masters of civil engineering. Go and look at the pool, so-called pool at Gibeon. All the engineering works at uh Megiddo, or even more at Hazor. Ancient Canaanites, but masterful civil engineers. And they came against Israel not on camels, but in chariots. So there were cultural differences even then. There were different lot of people, or people, shall I say. I shall attempt to sum up some of the characteristics of these enemies, but then I shall use another thing. You may disagree with me in my use of it. I shall consider what the Holy Spirit says of these sundry nations in different places in the Old Testament, and point out on times how that the Holy Spirit's record and description of them is notably consistent down the centuries. Righto, and we come back, therefore, to this first captivity. We have already considered it in part, um, so we can go through it quite quickly. Reconnoitering the enemy. The enemy was the king of Mesopotamia, Cushan Rishathaim. Which in Hebrew means a Kushan of double wickedness. I don't think he was christened that by his mama or by his papa. You'll see. What- whatever his name was, it may have sounded a little bit like the Hebrew, but Hebrew, like other nations, are liable to deliberately take a person's name and give it a little twist that brings out what they feel is his character, you'll see. Anyway, this is what he's called in the text, a king of double wickedness. King of Mesopotamia in that part of, uh, of the land which is Haran, the place from which Abram had been called out. We may ponder in our hearts what it was that had called Abram out right at the beginning when he dwelt in the south beyond the river, as Stephen points out in Acts chapter seven and Joshua points out in Joshua twenty four. On that whole incident of Abram's being called out, Stephen comments, the God of glory appeared to Abram and called him out. That is a highly significant and moving phrase, isn't it? What drew Abram out of all the idolatry of those surrounding nations, in spite of their advanced culture down in Ur of Chaldees? What called him out was not just a lot of rules and regulations. The living God, the Lord of glory appeared to him. Such was the spectacular glory of the living God. It got hold of his heart and his mag- imagination and his will and his understanding, and drew him out to be a servant of the Most High God, whose glory had been revealed to him. The God of glory appeared to Abram and called him out. And along with that, the vision of the inheritance, the promise of the inheritance that God gave to him. For at that time, there was no, uh, eh, eh, Hebrew nation. The Hebrew nation was a very late comer among the nations. For centuries it just didn't exist. Abraham was its forefather and founder. This new nation amongst all the other nations of the earth, whose founding principle and what they stood for was the uniqueness of the true God and the glory of the true God. And Peter, in his second epistle, seems to me to echo the phraseology. He has called us as Christ, not merely to his glory, but to translate Peter exactly, he has called us by His glory. My brothers, is it true of you? We're just following a tradition. Or is it true that our hearts have been got hold of, our imaginations fired, our will subdued, because in Jesus Christ, God's son, the very God of glory has appeared to us. And called us out of an atheistic, worldly society. The God of glory appeared to Abram and made him a pilgrim, as he was now for many years, and so were his descendants for three or four centuries, before again, uh, uh, eventually they were brought into the land. The God of glory appeared to them, made of them pilgrims. In the Acts of the Apostles, and I can't resist the temptation to tell you, um, in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke, very soon thereafter, having made that observation through Stephen, the God of glory appeared to Abraham and made of a, made of him a pilgrim, tells us how a light from heaven above the brightness of the sun shone on Saul of Tarsus and made him a missionary. The God of glory appeared to Abraham, and he called him out of the Gentiles to become a pilgrim. The light from heaven shone upon Saul and sent him back to the Gentiles to be a missionary. We need both, don't we? You'll hardly be an effective missionary to this godless world unless the God of glory has appeared to you and called you out of it. And made of us pilgrims. And when he's made of us pilgrims, and we see the empty tinsel of a world without God, then the light from heaven, the light of our blessed, risen, and adorable Savior will send us back into the world as missionaries. Anyway, excuse that diversion. I do get tempted like that from time to time. And, and, uh, so Abraham came out of, uh, Haran, not knowing whether he went, following God's guidance, and was brought to Canaan, you'll see, and promised there an inheritance. What was the cause of Israel's downfall? False loves. They fell in love with the women of the land, married them, and before they knew where they were, they had fa- fallen to idolatry. Notice how falling to idolatry in the Old Testament is not so much a matter of doctrine being bad, that is true, doctrine is involved. It's a matter of the heart, gentlemen, a matter of love in the sense of loyalty. Not love in the sense of mere emotion, but a question of love in the sense of loyalty. And Joshua, warning his elders about the danger of falling into idolatry, prescribes to them the preventative that they must follow. See to it that you love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. And we need to pray constantly, don't we? That by God's gracious Holy Spirit, he may give us true spiritual vision of the glory of God and the wealth of it, and the wealth of God's inheritance in the saints, lest it lose its sense of wealth and glory and become little more than the equivalent of the highway code, a rules and regulations that you have to follow in order to negotiate your path through life successfully. Azriel's fitness to be a deliverer. Well, we've gone through that. His true love for Caleb's daughter, for the typical character of her father, his incentive to go for the full enjoyment of his inheritance and to develop and enlarge his inheritance. And so we come to the practical application, do we not? If we are to be saved from this kind of oppression, then we must follow John's advice. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. According to John, the world has very, uh, several different aspects. There is the world as hostile to a believer, the hatred of the world. There is a world so organized that it becomes a very heavy obstacle for a believer who wants to live and be true to God and his commandments, but has to live in a world which isn't organized to help him keep the commandments of God, but in business and elsewhere is often organized to the very opposite effect. So that the believer has to struggle against the big burden of the world that places on him and the, the, uh, influence to go against his Christian principle. But there is the other side of the world that John mentions in one John chapter two: Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life is not of the Father. Now we have to be very careful, do we not, in denouncing worldliness, that we get it truly in our focus what worldliness is. It's not as some of our dear fellow citizens here in, in America and Canada think, maintaining the dress of the, uh, Reformation centuries in Europe, and just maintaining that and refusing all modern inventions and dress. It's not that type of thing, is it? It's not despising modern science and modern progress. It's not pretending not to enjoy the bounties of God's creation. It remains God's universe, and to examine it as sons of a father, even to its remotest bounds and everything involved in it, is glorifying to God who made it. Worldliness means succumbing to the old temptation of the devil, proposed first in Eden. He came to Eve, as you may remember, and said, my dear, I hear you mustn't eat of any of these trees in this garden, deliberately exaggerating it, of course. Oh no, that's not true, said Eve. We can eat of any tree except this one tree. Yes, well, just like God, said Satan, you know. Just like God. It puts lovely things in front of your nose and then says you can't have them. Loves tantalizing people, you'll see. I shouldn't listen to him, woman. Eat it. No, no, she said, God has said we mustn't. The day we eat thereof, we shall die. Oh, nonsense, woman. Look at the tree, woman. Beautiful. And she looked at the tree, and it was good for food. You know, that's physical satisfaction. Mm. And it was good to look at. That was aesthetic satisfaction. It was desirable to make you wise. That's moral and intellectual satisfaction. Go on, woman, take it, he said, woman. This is life, woman. No, she said, we mustn't take it. God says the day we take it, we shall die. Oh, nonsense, nobody around here believes that these days. You can have life, woman. You don't need to bother about what God says, God's word, and all those kind of fable things. Enjoy life, woman. That's what it is. Physical satisfaction, aesthetic satisfaction, moral and spiritual satisfaction. Only God and his word. That's worldliness. You think you can enjoy little things of life in this kind of context without God and without his word. It's a m- m- a- a- an enormous temptation, not only to our contemporaries, but to sometimes to us as believers. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Let us enjoy all the benefits and good things that God gives us, enjoy them with good conscience. But God save us from the good things taking up so much time in life, so much energy, that we haven't time left for God's word. And if you will allow a crabbed old man to say it, to produce people brilliant in their economics and physics, for whom the stories of scripture are very little more than the Red Riding Hood stories of their childhood. We do desperately need men and women who, yes, are good in their disciplines, but are as grown up in their knowledge of God's word as they are in their computers and their physics and their chemistry and their economics. As parents being so keen and rightly keen to foster their children's careers, downplay the role of serious Bible study in the church and in private, lest we lose the sense of the glory of God, enwrapping not only our emotions, but our intellects, that we might serve him faithfully in our day and generation, and if need be, be used of God to present again to our fellow believers the glories of God and the glories of his word, such as would save them from that kind of worldliness that takes their heart from God through the good things of life. We have at least two and a half minutes left for questions. I promise to behave much better on further occasions. Any immediate questions or correction? Not any that I can see at the moment. Well, save them up, gentlemen. I seriously will, in future, uh, uh, lectures, give further more time for questions.