Gooding, David: 11 - Abimelech

We begin to read this evening in the book of Judges and chapter nine. The Book of Judges and chapter nine. And Abimelech the son of Jerubbaal went to Shechem unto his mother's brethren and spake with them, and with all the family of the house of his mother's father, saying, Speak, I pray you, in the ears of all the men of Shechem, whether is better for you that all the sons of Jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons, rule over you, or that one rule over you. Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh. And his mother's brethren spake of him in the ears of all the men of Shechem all these words, and their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech, for they said, he is our brother. And they gave him three score and ten pieces of silver out of the house of Baal Berith, wherewith Abimelech hired vain and light fellows which followed him. And he went unto his father's house at Ophrah, and slew his brethren, the sons of Jerubbaal, being threescore and ten persons upon one stone. But Jotham, the youngest son of Jerubbaal, was left, for he hid himself. And all the men of Shechem assembled themselves together, and all the house of Minlo, and went and made Abimelech king by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem. And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of Mount Gerizim and lifted up his voice and cried and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you. The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them, and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them, Should I leave my sweetness and my good fruit and go to wave to and fro over the trees. Then said all the trees unto the vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine which che- cheereth God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth you anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow. And if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Now therefore, if ye have dealt truly and uprightly, in that you have made Abimelech king, and if you have dealt well with Jerubbaal and his house, and have done unto him according to the deserving of his hand, for my father fought for you and adventured his life and delivered you out of the hand of Midian, and you are risen up against my father's house this day, and have slain his sons threescore and ten persons upon one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his maidservant, king over the men of Shechem because he is your brother. If then ye have dealt truly and uprightly with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice ye in Abimelech. Let him also rejoice in you. But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the men of Shechem and the house of Millo. And let fire come out from the men of Shechem and from the house of Millo and devour Abimelech. And Jotham ran away and fled and went to Be'er and dwelt there for fear of Abimelech, his brother. God and Abimelech was prince over Israel three years, and God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the Menashechem, and the Menashechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech. Verse fifty, please. Then went Abimelech to Thebez and encamped against Thebez and took it. But there was a strong tower within the city, and thither fled all the men and women and all they of the city, and shut themselves in and gat them up to the roof of the tower. And Abimelech came unto the tower and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. And a certain woman cast an upper middle stone upon Abimelech's head and break his skull. Then he called hastily unto the young man his armor bearer and said unto him, Draw thy sword and kill me, that men say not of me, a woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died. When the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed every man unto his place. Thus God requited the wickedness of Abimelech, which he did unto his father in slaying his seventy brethren, and all the wickedness of the men of Shechem did God requite upon their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham, the son of Jerubbaal. God help us to sense and to heed the warning that this passage of his holy word contains. Tonight we must brace ourselves to consider unpleasant things. Not all the word of God is pleasant, though all the word of God, to be sure, is profitable. And preachers by and large would prefer, how not, to concentrate in their preaching on things that rejoice our hearts and lift us up into the heavens. But if a preacher would be faithful to God's words, he will on times have to turn to those other parts of God's word that are solemn and depressing. And I can hold out no hope for you this evening, though you have come in your great courage and magnanimity. I can hold out no hope for you, but what you will go home this evening depressed and sorry of heart and sad and perhaps distressed. Bitter though it will be, pray God it will prove the bitterness of healing medicine. For we shall be reading together and thinking of an episode in the history of Israel that was sad from start to finish. And that will depress him. But worse than that, as we think together of this ancient story, some of the older ones of us here present tonight will perhaps be reminded of some incident or other in the dim and distant past that we had hoped we had forgotten forever, and by tonight's study will be revived with all its painfulness in our memory. And those of us who are younger may be shocked to think of such things that could occur amongst the redeemed of the Lord, and indeed, if human nature remains the same until the coming of the Lord, will occur from time to time amongst people who claim to be Christians. As I say, this is God's word. We should be less than realists if we didn't face it, and less than wise if we didn't lay it to our hearts. And indeed, in all the things that we shall consider, God grant that we may have the wisdom not to turn the lesson to the condemnation of other people, but to be warmed in our own hearts, lest we, growing old and silly, come at length to do what the great traitor Abimelech did. If we would understand the bizarre nature of the incident that now happened in the history of Israel, we should remind ourselves of the pattern that has hitherto emerged in this book of Judges. From time to time, we have seen the Israel sinned, and then from time to time, how God in his mercy and goodness raised up some prominent figure to be their leader and their judge, who judged them according to God's holy word and brought them to repentance and to implore the Lord's forgiveness. And then led God's chastened and repentant people in battle, wisely and strategically. So deliver them through God's grace from the enemy that oppressed them. So while our studies have all begun solemnly, they have all hitherto ended gloriously, with many a shout of hallelujah from every side. So in our innocence, we come to this next story, and we look around for a prominent figure that might be the judge, and therefore the deliverer. And instantly we find a prominent figure who ruled the nation. His name Abimelech. We say, well done. And then we look around for the enemy under a long time scanning the horizon to see where the enemy is. We can't find him here, and we can't find him there, we can't find him anywhere, and we say, what's gone wrong? Where is the enemy? And then it begins to dawn that the judge himself is the enemy. And there wouldn't have been any enemy apart from him. We have reached indeed a bizarre stage in history when the enemy is the very man who is purporting to be the deliverer of his people. A bizarre stage indeed, when deliverance comes, not by striking down some hostile foreigner, but getting rid of a man who claimed to be a leader of God's people became their enemy, we should do well to think back a moment into the history of Gideon's closing day. If you happen to have with you one of those simple sheets that I dished out at the beginning of these lectures, you will see that in the central panel of that sheet, I laid out the judges and the deliverers in the form of a mountain, rising on the left hand side to a peak and descending on the right hand side once more to the bottom. That was done to suggest to you that in the stories of the judges, we find progress and advance in the judges and deliverers of the early times. Little is said about Othniel, but a great man he was. More is said about Ehud and his victory more spectacular. Two chapters, no less, are devoted to the victory that Deborah, Barak, and Jael performed. And that was a marvel in its way, but none of them so marvelous as the story of that valiant man Gideon, who, with a tiny handful of three hundred followers, put to flight the vast hordes of the nomad Midianites. And in their great character, we seem to reach the climax of these stirring deliverances. And if we persist, we shall get the decided impression that from this moment onwards, the history begins to decline. True, we have yet to read of many another a deliverer. But we should find that in all those deliverances, even when they were genuine deliverances, there were unhappy elements, compromises here and wrong turnings there, that to some extent, more or less, reduce the joy and reduce the triumph of each deliverer. There is, for instance, standing at number eight, the story of Jethro. And we shall find, God willing, on another occasion, that although he wrought a great victory for God's people, he consummated that victory by slaughtering his own brethren. And we shall ask ourselves, what kind of a victory is it, and how much is it worth if, to accomplish it, a man must slaughter his brethren? We shall read the soul-stirring events of Samson's campaigns, and perhaps whoop with delight while we watch Philistines being outmatched and nonplussed. But then, as we turn to soberness and the cold light of day, we shall observe that when Samson finished all his exploits, Israel were still left as much in bondage to the Philistines as they had been when Samson started. And we shall be asking ourselves, well, well, after all that noise and fury and wonderful hand clapping and... but when we thought that so much was happening, what was happening after all? I say there will be things in these stories that, though they are joyful, yet are mixed with failure, compromise, and sorrow. The beginning of that downward trend, if I mistake not, is found in the experience of Gideon himself. We have spent two weeks, two studies, thinking about him and his marvelous victory. How that the enemy he faced had been let into the land by Israel's disobedience. How that to get rid of them, Gideon had been obliged to engage in strife of one kind and another. Godly strife. Striving for the word of God and loyalty and obedience to the word of God. Manful strife. Spiritual strife. But now may I ask you to notice what happened when Gideon came home fresh from his battle. In chapter eight and verse one we read that the men of Ephraim said unto him, Why hast thou served us thus, that thou callest us not when thou wentest to fight with the Midian? And they did chide with him sharply, and said un- and Gideon said unto them, What have I now done in comparison of you? Is not the gleaning of the grapes of Ephraim better than the vintage of Abiezer? Then their anger was abated towards him. Small incident, but unfortunately true to life. A great victory had been wrought. A menace and a servitude that had lasted many years had been now put to an end, and Israel was free to breathe again and to feed again, and hunger a thing of the past. And you might have thought that all, without exception, would have been rejoicing and praising the Lord and shouting hallelujah from the housetop, but not the men of Ephraim. Oh, they were bitterly offended and seriously put out, and their dark, gloomy faces threatened dire trouble. And what was wrong with them? You didn't call us. You didn't ask us to join in. You left us out. You forgot to announce our names. You say, but surely not grown men with beards on, not acting petty like little children on a nursery floor? I'm sorry, but so. Grown men and the elders of Ephraim, no less. Acting like silly, spoiled children. And it would be ludicrous, wouldn't it, if our own hearts didn't, uh, at this very moment prick us with some painful memories. Oh, how many quarrels amongst God's people have been caused by things that are tiny and petty beyond description. Oh, this brother is going to leave. There's a tremendous тормozel on. Oh, why was that? Well, he wasn't asked to open the meeting. But you say, my brother, what's that got to do with it? Soul's got saved, my good man. Oh, but that's nothing to him. He wasn't asked to open the meeting. Oh, there's a fuss over here now. What's wrong here? Oh, well, sister, whatnot's in a pretty tough. Oh? Well, at the conference, the man got up and he thanked the sisters who supplied the teacups, but he forgot to to praise the sister who provided the forces. You say, what's that got to do with it? The Lord's people are blessed by the ministry of his word. That matters nothing. How but you laugh and grin? I am telling you solemn facts, as you know. And who would like to put a proportion on it, how many of our troubles are caused by pickling petty little things that would disgrace four-year-olds in In the the creche? crash. How Gideon, in the greatness of his heart, managed to overcome that one. He said, you are marvelous men, aren't you? What could I ever do compared with you? They said, that's right, Gideon. Well, we accept that apology. But in that kind of atmosphere, even saints tend to go astray, don't they? And Gideon was tired and he was hungry. And he came, so we read, to a place called Succoth, and he said, give, I pray you, loaves of bread unto the people that follow me, for they be faint, and I am pursuing after Ziba and Zalmanah, the kings of Midian. And the princes of Succoth said, are the hands of Ziba and Zalmanah now in thy hand, that we should give bread unto thine army? For these were what you might call sitters up on the fence. They weren't quite sure that Gideon was going to succeed. They felt it more prudent, therefore, to sit on the fence so that they could be sure of coming down on the side of the victor when they know who the victor was. And in that moment of tiredness and hunger and weakness and doubtless fear, when everything was on the razor edge, Gideon took it as the extremist disloyalty. And in consequence, he said, my, when I come back here, I'll teach you. I'll tear your flesh with thorns of the wilderness and with briers. And so he did. The ensuing verses tell u- tell us that when he came back victorious, he did precisely that. You say, how could Gideon manage to store up such revenge so long in his heart? Well, he did. And in the very moment of the victory that God gave him, the passion of spiteful revenge came out, and he took those ugly products of the curse and used them to tear his brethren with. Some of us are very good at that, aren't we? We don't have to look far for thorns and thistles that come of a fallen nature, and we can use them to great effect to lacerate and tear our fellow Christians. Because they weren't as brave as we were. Because in their cowardice they sat on the fence. How sarcastic and cutting and positively spiteful we can become. Gideon came to another. Its name was Penuel, which means the face of God. I don't know who gave it its name. Perhaps it went back to some hallowed experience that the local people had had. Some memory of an experience when, as it were, they looked upon the very face of God himself and set up their tower there. Memory of some great spiritual experience. But they perhaps had grown cold of heart. They too wanted to sit on the fence, and when he came back, he fulfilled his threat, and he beat down their tower. You say they jolly well deserved it. Well, perhaps they did. What good did he do? Beating down their tower? Beating down, suppose it was only a memorial of some great spiritual experience of seeing the face of God and flattening it into the dust. How did that help in the war against Midian? What did it do else but sow the seeds of strife and bitterness and coming revenge? It wasn't all mistake, was it? For Gideon, even in these moments, had a certain greatness of heart. But alas, see what happened in verse nineteen and onwards. The princes Ziba and Zalmunna were taken, and Gideon deliberated what he should do with these men. They had killed certain of Israel, and Gideon inquired what men they were that he slew. And they answered, each one of them resembled the children of a king. And he said, they were my brethren, the sons of my mother. As the Lord liveth, if you had saved them alive, I would not slay you. So he commanded his firstborn to slay them. Oh. Well, I suppose that's a motive for slaying them. But hitherto, Gideon had been slaying the enemy because they were enemies of God and of his people. Now, in this act of execution, the motives had got a bit lower, hadn't they? It was a matter of personal revenge for what they'd done on his family personally. If it hadn't have been his brethren, if it had been, uh, Zechariah Tom Monte around the corner, well, that wouldn't have mattered. But my brethren, oh, that's the deciding issue. Gideon felt it was a personal attack on him. Ah, what frail mixtures of motives we are, aren't we? At one moment, with all good altruism, solely concerned for the good and glory of God and the good of his people. And the next moment, before ever we are aware, we've slipped into personal motives of avenging ourselves, and it's not really God's truth anymore we're concerned about, but my family's name or perhaps my own personal reputation. We come next to a critical thing. In gratitude to Gidi- Gideon, the men of Israel gathered, and they said, so verse twenty two tells us, Rule thou over us, both thou and thy son, and thy son's son also, for thou hast saved us out of the hand of Midian. And Gideon said unto them, I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you, the Lord shall rule over you. And he gets ten out of ten, doesn't he? For that marvelous stand against what must have been a very subtle temptation. God's people had made a mess of things. If it hadn't have been for Gideon, they would have still been in bondage. Now Gideon has come, and God has used him to deliver the multitude, and they make Gideon the tempting offer that he be lord and king over them. And many a lesser man would have fallen for it. Would have said, yes, well, by definition nowadays, there are not very many good people around, you see, there are not many leaders, are there? So why not I do it? We must give Gideon full marks, mustn't we, for saying what he did? Never. Who am I that's an instrument in God's hand, to be raised up or put aside as he pleased? It is the Lord, my brethren, that delivered you. It shall be the Lord rule over you. For Gideon had keen eye to see that if God's people began to put their trust in the man whom God had used for their deliverance, instead of keeping that trust firmly upon God, then there would creep into their hearts that little bit of idolatry that would grow and grow and grow like leaven in a meal, and in the end bring them to weakness and disaster. And though we live as Christians thousands of years from that time, we need to be warmed and encouraged by Gideon's example. It happened in the early church, didn't it? Who are you? Here were men sunk in the captivities of sheer unregeneracy and idolatry, and God sent notable deliverers among them. There was Paul, and there was Peter, and there was Apollo. Thank God for every one of them. But presently, instead of being content to be grateful to God for them and to reverence those men as the evangelists and the for their deliverance, instead of keeping that trust firmly upon God, then there would creep into their hearts that little bit of idolatry that would grow and grow and grow like leaven in a meal, and in the end bring them to weakness and disaster. And though we live as Christians thousands of years from that time, we need to be warmed and encouraged by Gideon's example. It happened in the early church, didn't it? Why, here were men sunk in the captivities of sheer unregeneracy and idolatry, and God sent notable deliverers among them. There was Paul, and there was Peter, and there was Apollo. Thank God for every one of them. But presently, instead of being content to be grateful to God for them and to reverence those men as the evangelists and the apostles and prophets and spiritual guides that they were, little by little, the people at Corinth began to put their faith in them, the instrument, instead of in God as the source. And Paul saw the spiritual peril at once. In fact, he saw more than a peril. He saw it beginning to have its deadly effect. My brethren, says he, do you know why you are carnal? Do you not realize you're absolute babes in Christ? Do you know why? For while one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am Apollos. Are you not babes? Carnal? Putting your faith in the instruments, instead of letting your faith lodge solely in the living God. Who is Paul anyway, save the man through whom you believe? Wasn't crucified for you, was he? Learn this, that the very gospel is angled and devised and its strategy ordained. Men should not put their trust in men. For it is of him that you are in Christ Jesus, that no flesh should have ground of confidence in his presence. I will not be king, says, says Gideon. The Lord your God is and shall be your ruler. uh Ten marks out of ten in that examination so far. Alas, we haven't got to finals yet. There is one thing I would like, said he. I've been looking at these Midianites, and because they're Ishmaelites, of course they've got beautiful gold earrings. I would like if you would give me those earrings, you know? So they gave him the earrings, little memento. Lovely, you say. What's wrong with that? Nothing. But they took this thing, it was rather a lot of gold, and the crescents and the pendants and the purple raiment that was on the kings, oh, that was their royal robes, and beside the chains that were about their camels' necks, and Gideon made an ephod thereof and put it in his city. And all Israel went there when they were on holidays and entered the museum that was arranged in the memory of Gideon. And they worshipped his photograph. And the Bible he wrote in. And the whole thing became a little bit of man worship and idolatry. Oh, we have to be careful in our gratitude, don't we? To the servants of the Lord. Sinful it would be to be ungrateful. But we must ever see that our gratitude to a servant of God never slips into becoming a cult of personality or a bit of idolatry. Sad little thing at the end. Gideon had many wives, well, perhaps that's not the sad thing, but his concubine that was in Shechem bore him a son, and he called. Some authorities say she called. Perhaps we'd better leave it in doubt who did the calling, but somebody named that child, and they named him Abimelech. My father is king. Really? Hope it wasn't Gideon that named the boy that, don't you? I know what he said when they told him what the name was. My father is king. But hadn't Gideon, not so long ago, been heard to say, look, I will not be king. And this isn't a family affair. And I will not tolerate a dynasty formed in the family of Gideon. The Lord is your king. Well, yes, he had so said. But with the passing of the years, somebody or other named Gideon's infant son, my father is Is king. king. And from that little thing there grew a tremendous and bitter harvest for the nation of Israel. For now there was the makings of an ambition in this little boy's heart. His dad was king, that was quite false, and he was going to be king, and it should be a family affair. And not only that, but he won over the Menashechem to make him king, and then proceeded to slay seventy, even of his brothers, to do away with the potential opposition. Proved himself one of the biggest tyrants that Israel in these centuries ever knew. You say to yourself, well, there's a problem. Whatever made those stupid men of Shechem make Abimelech king. But to start with, it's just a tremendous impertinence, wasn't it? When God was king, to make somebody else king, and that without divine permission nor command. What made them do it? And then common sense would have told them that it was liable to be a terrible tyranny. Why go and make yourselves an authority over you, who's going to boss you around the place and restrict your movements when you don't need to? What man in his senses would do that? Goodness me, there are popes enough around about the place, all straining at the leash, without you going and making one. Notice, if you will, the argument that convinced them to do it. Say to these men of Shechem, says Abimelech, whether is better for you that all the sons of Jerubbaal, which are threescore and ten persons, rule over you, or that one rule over you. Yes, he wanted to make them choose. He said, now look, it's going to be either this or that. Either seventy persons rule or one man. He said, now doesn't it stand to reason, I mean to say, if you have seventy people rule over you, well, you never know where you are. It'll be any just what anybody says, and it will lead to divisions, and you won't speak with a united voice, and goodness me, all the terrible things that will come if seventy men rule over you. Isn't it logical that the other alternative is is the right one, that just one man rule over you, and you'll get united policy, then you'll get drive, then you'll know where you're going, then you'll all agree, and you'll all speak with one united voice if you just have one man doing it. And if you choose a very good and brilliant man to do it, particularly if you choose me, I mean, but a brilliant man to do it, then the result will be brilliant. So the women of Shechem, they sat down and they pondered this matter very wisely. They said, well, of course, now we must choose one of those two. Now let me see which is the best one, seventy people rule or one person rule over you. Well, uh, on on on on reflection, they decided, well, it was obvious, I mean, really they hadn't got any choice, not if they were sensible men, it would be one man rule over you. And they hadn't got the sense to see that the chap was conning them by putting in front of them what was in fact a completely false alternative. The real fact was that it wasn't a question of choosing between this or that, choosing whether one man ruled or seventy men ruled. That was quite irrelevant. The choice was, were they going to leave God ruler and let God rule, or have one man or seventy men or seven hundred and seventy men rule. The alternative was quite false. Though I suspect that we have heard it from time to time, re-echoing down the centuries. We've heard it at the level of church organization, haven't we? And unless you get all the churches and unite them under one head and one authority, there'll be confusion, and you won't speak with a united voice. So you must have one central headquarters. And you would have thought that people were old enough in the tooth and read widely enough in history to know that that argument is absolutely specious. Yes, there have been organizations galore that have tried to get unity by setting themselves up one central headquarters, but not even the Church of Rome has succeeded. And they are this day in a thousand and one different pieces. The alternative is false. And the question, shall one rule or many rule? One man ministry or anybody's ministry. The question is, does God rule? Or man. But they fell for his false alternative, and they made him king, and they slaughtered seventy of the princes of Israel, who for the rest of their lives were as dead as doornails, while one man did it all. One man escaped from the slaughter, his name was Jotham, and he preached a parable. One of the only fables to be found in the whole of scripture, Old Testament or New. But it is a fable, isn't it? For in real life, trees don't speak. But in this parable they do. And very effectively. The parable, as we can see, the fable serves to preach an exceedingly important lesson. Consider now this matter of ruling. But what is its purpose, and what is its function? You've chosen a Bimelek to rule you, he said. Well, now listen. The trees went on a day to make themselves a king. And the olive tree, they went to the olive tree, and the olive tree says, nonsense, shall I leave, uh, my fatness and come to wave to and fro over the trees? He was being a little sarcastic, was this olive tree, wasn't he? He was describing Abimelech's concept of ruling as waving up and down over the trees. That does nobody very much good. My job is to produce oil, to enrich people. Not to just stand there waving and controlling and ordering and bossing. It is to enrich folks. I'm not leaving that. They asked the vine, and they asked the fig tree and got similar answers. Nonsense. Shall I leave my wine, producer of joy for garden men, said the vine? Shall I leave my figs with which I feed? These are life's vital ministries. These are the important things, not sitting in the saddle and controlling. Oh, what a voice to all who would assume guiding, shepherding rule in the people of God, among the people of God. Am I doing it the more effectively to feed and nourish and make glad the hearts of God's people? Oh yes, let us come to it realistically, that they who rule in God's name as elders in the church will sometimes have duties to perform that will win them anything but the smiles of the congregation at large. Difficult tasks. But in those moments, they will be fortified and effective the more, as in times past they have been men whose ministry has fed and enriched and gladdened the hearts of their fellow believers. What it's all about, brethren, isn't it? God doesn't have a church so that certain men m- might be able to rule over it and control it and control everybody else. The church exists so that folks may enjoy their spiritual inheritance, their oil and wine and fig, and bless God and love him. Rule amongst God's people is no tyranny, for God himself is no tyrant. He wins us to his obedience by filling our hearts with gladness and wealth and joy. And they who would be used of him in the task need to be able to do likewise in their humble measure. Enrich a man's heart and fill him with joy and peace in believing, and feed him with the good word of God. You have gone a long way to bringing that man to bow gladly to the authority of the Christ you represent. The trees went to the bramble. Now I'll tell you something about the bramble. Brambles, if you should ever come across one, do remember it, they suffer from an inferiority complex. They have a way in their lowly station in life of looking up to the great cedars of Lebanon. Will Gray had concealed envy. Now listen to what the bramble said. Yes, he said, I feel cut out for the job. Now, if you do really put your trust in me and anoint me king, well, I'll do that. But if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Got to imagine it. Can you picture it? Bramble at the best about six feet high, full of spikes. And his concept of ruling is to drag down that mighty cedar. At this moment, he can't get his hands on him. Scratch how he will, he can't get down this great, mighty, glorious, majestic cedar. But he will never be content until he does get it down. What unholy ambition. I can't stand by and rejoice because there is a bigger plant on God's earth than I am. A more successful preacher. A man with greater influence and blessing than I have, and my unholy heart can't stand by until I've got him scratched with my slander right down to the bottom and trampled underfoot. An Old Testament fable becomes darker still when it is turned into prophecy by Jesus Christ, our Lord. In Luke's Gospel chapter twelve we find him solemnly reminding his people that there will come days when there will be in the professing church wicked servants that will begin to beat their fellow servants. And oh, what bucketfuls of tears and sorrows there are for any who dare read the course of Christendom. Not only from the outside infidels, but from men professing the name of Christ, there came tyrannies indescribable and persecutions, beatings, imprisonments, and And death. death. We should not be surprised. Our Lord warned us of it. Now we should be remember, we should remember it in case there should arise just a fraction of that spirit within any one of our hearts. We should remember what our Lord's attitude to such an one is. He will come in a moment when he thinks not and cut him asunder. Our blessed Lord, whose yoke is easy, whose burden is light, has a face that is set as a flint against all spiritual tyrannies. What is according to him, the way of greatness? On that very solemn moment of the Last Supper, when weak and foolish apostles were arguing who should be first in the kingdom, he showed them what being first means. Being first is not the reward of serving. Being first means serving. Who is the bigger? The pig in the sty, who without working for his liv- living gobbles up everything that is given him? Or the farmer who comes with straw and water and food every day and feeds the old pig. You say, well, the farmer is the bigger. Yes, says he serves the pig. Therein you see his bigness, don't you? And his superiority. And God Supreme serves all, doesn't he? He it is that has maintained us this day and all the other multi-millions and goodness knows how many other worlds, and he has maintained it and serves us, each one, by name. Two small matters, and I've done. How not to get rid of such people. There was a man called Gal, so chapter nine informs us, Gal the son of Ebid, and he got heartily sick and tired of Abimelech. Who wouldn't? And he thought time had come to do some straight speaking with some fellow folks and get rid, uh, and start a movement for the getting rid of Abimelech. So they went down to the pub and started drinking. They held a festival of wine, and uh, they ate and they drank, and they were feeling very courageous after that, and they proposed a scheme for getting rid of Abimelech. And the courage was false. And the wisdom was scarcely heavenly. And Abimelech came with his evil craftiness, a nasty cunning, and he destroyed them still further. It is easy to see in the Abimelechs of life, carnal men, but sometimes they're very clever. And naturally we feel indignant against them. Uh, we need to guard our reactions. Mere human dislike, mere human irritation is liable to make things worse rather than better. What, in the end, gave them deliverance? Well, they came to Steves. And Abimelech was going on his merry way. He didn't mind how many places he beat down, how many doors he shut, how many people he killed, what food he destroyed, what agriculture he made impossible. He would sow his salt over the cities that he had destroyed and lead to a barrenness even if by that means he might retain his control. And he came to Thebes, to the tower, to do the same and leave the people defenseless. And when the men scooted up to the top of the tower to save their skins, there was one, dare I call her ordinary, housewife. She didn't know much about politics and what all the dispute was about, but she knew she had to get the dinner, and she knew if folks weren't fed, they became ill and eventually died. And goodness me, she said, when will they stop this nonsense? Why don't they let me get on with the work of feeding my family and the people at large? Oh, she said, I'm sick of it. Uh, she happened to be grinding the meal out. And when the grinding was done, she got the, the, the old top of the millstone, heaved it over the wall. It came down crack on his skull, and that ended his nonsense. You can't scarce resist shouting hallelujah, can you? Amen. There are some things in life that are basic, and they must go on. And one of them is feeding the flock of God. Oh, I can't help what you say, my brother, what wonderful theories you've got. And in the end, we can't help who you are or what your prestige is. If you are exercising a tyranny that shuts off the food of God from his people, somebody needs one of these days will have to crack your skull and let out the nonsense. You cannot afford to stand by, why people starve for spiritual food. Not a question of petty squabbles or personal enmities. It is a question of the very basics of life. God save us. As we have read and listened to this lurid lesson, too true to life to be comfortable. God save us from merely using Abimelech and his story as a mirror in which to see other people. God give us the grace to use it as a mirror with which to look into our own heart. In the home, in the business, in the church. And if we s- discern in our hearts that naughty, selfish spirit of tyranny that loves to boss and control. God, give us the grace to purge it away before it grows into a troublemaker among the people of God. Shall we pray? Lord, this is an unhappy portion of thy holy word. And we thank thee for thy fatherly kindness and wisdom that has had it recorded for us. We simply pray now that thou would help us to take this warning to our hearts, to avoid the evils that it describes, and each one, by thy grace, to use those gifts that thou has given us to the nurture and edification of one and all through Jesus Christ our Lord.