Gooding, David: 3 - Othniel - Part 1

We begin to read this evening in the book of Judges and chapter one. Book of Judges and chapter one, Taking up the story at verse ten. And Judah went against the Canaanites that dwelt in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron before was Kiriath Arba, and they smote Sheshai and Ahiram and Talmai. And from thence he went against the inhabitants of Debir. Now the name of Debir before time was Kiriath Sepher. And Caleb said, He that smiteth Kiriath Sepher and taketh it, to him will I give Axar, my daughter, to wife. And Ozniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it, and he gave him Axar, his daughter, to wife. And it came to pass, when she came unto him, that she moved him to ask of her father a fee. And she lighted down from off her ass, and Caleb said unto her, What wouldest thou? And she said unto him, Give me a blessing, for that thou hast set me in the land of the south. Give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the nether spring. And then in chapter three, beginning in verse five. And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. They took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. The children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baalim and the Asheroth. Therefore, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushan Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. And the children of Israel served Cushan Rishathaim eight years. When the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a savior to the children of Israel, who saved them, even Othniel, the son of Genes, Caleb's younger brother. And the spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel. And he went out to war, and the Lord delivered Cushan Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. And his hand prevailed against Cushan Rishathaim. And the land had rest forty years, and Othniel the son of Kenaz died. May God's Holy Spirit himself instruct us from his word. So far in our study of the book of Judges, we have been considering broad general principles. How that Israel, in order to enter into the enjoyment of their inheritance, had to cooperate with God in judging the sin and evil of the Canaanite nations and fighting against both it and them. And we have been considering their success in these matters, sometimes one hundred percent, and at other times, for various reasons, less than one hundred percent. m Sometimes, because of the sheer difficulty of the task, they failed even though they tried. And sometimes their success was mingled with failure because of an initial compromise. Sometimes, alas, they fail to succeed because they didn't even try. And when it was thus, and they fell into the hand of their enemy and behaving like the Canaanites behaved, God himself, so we are told, used these Canaanite nations and their sinful doings as a thorn in the side of Israel to chastise his people, and thus to bring them to repentance, to see that after all, sin is sin. There can be no enjoyment of the inheritance if it is deliberately permitted. Now, from these general principles, we are to proceed to the heart of the book, which contains various examples of the way God dealt with his people in compassion and mercy. For often and again, even though through their sin and disobedience they had fallen under the power of the enemy, God in his compassion visited them and raised them up deliverers who judged Israel, brought them to godly fear and repentance, and then led them in their battles and fightings until they were delivered from their enemies. Judges, like many books of scripture, shall we not say like almost all the books of scripture, has its gospel message. It tells of a God who is ever compassionate with his people, and is always giving us opportunities to start again, to come back, to repent, to take up the fight once more. We should get that lesson immediately this evening. If perchance we are feeling in our hearts tonight, and God knows our hearts, that we have been slipping maybe for many years. We've not been really fighting as we should, and we've got ourselves in all sorts of impossible entanglements. Yet still there is hope. God is a God of new beginnings and deliverances, even for his people. If we on our part are prepared to repent, he will come running to deliver. That isn't to say that if we repent, things are going to be necessarily easy. God always starts with us where we are, but he will help us in our repenting and help us in all fighting that is thereafter necessary to get ourselves back into the enjoyment of that liberty of the children of God that God has designed for all his people. Now, as we consider these captivities, and then the deliverers and the deliverances that God wrought for his people, we shall on each occasion consider certain main features. We shall consider, first of all, the enemies, for the enemies were all different. And it stands to reason, does it not, that if you have enemies and you would overcome them, then you must know your enemy. So that then you may apply the right spiritual tactics to overcome him. So we should give ourselves to a good deal of reconnoitering of enemies. And then we shall say to ourselves, how did the Israelites ever come into bondage to such and such an enemy? And sometimes the text will tell us in detail how it was. They came into bondage to this particular enemy. Sometimes it will merely tell us it was because they did wrong. Then we shall ask with even more interest about the men and the women that God used to accomplish deliverance for his people. Was God's choice arbitrary? Or was it because these men and women were somehow specially qualified, or indeed had qualified themselves? What were their qualifications to be deliverers? And I fancy, as we think of it, it'll stir certain spiritual ambitions within our own hearts. Not just to be passengers ourselves, but to be vehicles in God's hands of helping to deliver our friend, if our friend should need deliverance. And then we shall ask, in all these battles and wars and fightings against different enemies by different deliverers, what tactics did they use? And did they use the same tactics each time? Or did they vary their tactics according to the enemy and his particular strength? And if they varied the tactics, what may we learn about our need to adopt appropriate tactics against suitable enemies? But perhaps I read the thoughts of some of you, and you say, look here, Mr. Preacher, before you go any further, you're not going to say, are you, that these Old Testament enemies represent this, that, and the other. We've heard that before, you know, the Cushan Rishifayim represents the world or something, and somebody else represents the flesh, and the third, of course, who he couldn't help it, could he? He'd have to represent the devil. You're not going to say that, are you? Because isn't that exceedingly fanciful? Well, I should be saying something like that, and I hope it won't be fanciful. So I ask you to think first for a moment in general terms about the ancient world. And let's not try to be too proud as modern we- men we- men and women living in a modern city in a modern nation in nineteen seventy five. Let's try to remember that every generation always thought itself modern. And of course, these Canaanite nations of which we read in their day had it in their head that they were the most modern nations that ever had existed. They were, weren't they? Moreover, if one of these days you can persuade your grandmother to, to pay for your fare to go out to Israel and have a look, you may then learn that these Canaanites against whom the Israelites fought weren't cannibals that painted their naked bodies with woad and knew not how to do much else, but engineers of remarkable powers, whose feats of engineering have survived down these many, many, many centuries, right down to this very present time, and still evoke our marvel how they, with their so-called primitive tools, could have constructed such feats of civil engineering. And like any other nation, even in this modern time, they had their national characteristics. Now we have to be careful when we talk about national characteristics, for no two people within one nation are exactly alike, are they? And we mustn't fall into the habit of branding this man or that woman by saying, oh, she's a German, as though that accounted for everything, or even she's an English woman. On the other hand, if I ask you, or if I happen to say in your presence that so and so was a typical Englishman, if I said it in the right tone of voice, would you know what I meant? Would you reply to me, don't be so fanciful, I do- I think that's being very fanciful. You wouldn't, would you? You have your idea, even if you don't confess it, what a typical Englishman is. I have mine as what a typical Irishman is too. What we should be trying to ascertain is, what, uh, would you understand and what should I understand if somebody said that so and so was a typical Moabite? No, I'm not going to typify anything. I'm just going to ask you to consider the national characteristics of some of these ancient nations, and what their attitudes were and what their ideologies were. For in their little way, they had their ideologies and outlooks. You would have no difficulty of knowing, would you, if I talked about Moscow's ideology. You wouldn't think I would fancy them. If I talked of Paris, particularly at the end of the last century and the beginning of this, and what Paris stands for. Alas, London has overtaken Paris in those particulars. You would expect a different attitude to things in general in the north of Scotland, wouldn't you? Than you would perhaps in New York. So was it in the ancient world, these nations had their ideologies, their outlooks, they had their gods. And in as much as idolatry very often is the shaping of gods according to your own imagination, the ancients tell us a great deal of themselves by the gods they worshipped. I shall therefore be saying that these sundry nations stood for certain things, broadly speaking. I hope you will see that I am not using typology. I'm just asking you to indulge in a little bit of social anthropology. To help us in our task, we shall, as we consider these sundry nations that were enemies to Israel, look through Holy Scripture and see how the Holy Spirit has characterized them in the sundry places in which they appear. And incidentally, if you would like to do a little bit of minor research to help you in your understanding of these studies. Get out your concordance and look at the occurrence of some of these nations in the Old Testament and see what God says of them. Let me then detain you with one more general principle. As we think of Israel being overcome by these nations, we shall find that very often the thing in which the nation was strong that overcame them was the very thing in which Israel had been sinning. And that's nothing very much to be wondered at, is it? Consider, for instance, Britain in the days when Britain was ruled by an unshakable Tory party. There wasn't much danger of communism then, was there? But if Britain progressively goes to the left and comes to be ruled by extreme left-wing socialists, they won't have to ask very much or plead very strongly before Russia will be there to help them. Thus was it with Israel. When Israel began to do certain things that were evil, such as the Moabites did, they found Moab on their doorstep ready to help them do it. Of course they did. And then, of course, Moab took over. You cannot defeat the thing that secretly you are entertaining in your own heart. We shall find then a correspondence between Israel sinning and the kind of thing that the nation that overtook them any one time was characterized by. And with those general observations, let us proceed to the first captivity. And we read of it in chapter three, how that the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord. Therefore the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushan Rusheteim, king of Mesopotamia. The first captivity then to the Mesopotamians. You say that's odd, isn't it? Wasn't it out of Mesopotamia that Abram came? Absolutely right, ten out of ten. Abram came, so the New Testament reminds us in Acts chapter seven, from Mesopotamia, Aram of the Two Rivers, as it is called in Hebrew. That had been centuries ago, hadn't it? When old Abram, the once-timed pagan idolater living in Mesopotamia, had been visited of God, converted, and had left Mesopotamia, oh, centuries ago. And that had been the beginning of the story of the nation that first had been Hebrews and then had developed into Israelites, had gone into Egypt and come up out of Egypt and were now in the land. How far they had advanced. Only to find just now that the enemy had come in the back door. Ah. You will notice one other general thing, that most of these captivities deny a basic principle of the nation's existence. Israel in the land, having made vast progress and falling into captivity to the Mesopotamians from whom God had originally delivered their forefather Abraham. What a curious contradiction. But that observation will immediately suggest to us, will it not, what vis-a-vis the Jew, the Mesopotamians stood for. They were the nation from which their forefather and the founder of their nation had been delivered. If Abraham had not left Mesopotamia, there never would have been a, a an Israel, an Israel. And it took a conversion for Abraham to leave Ur, to leave Mesopotamia. And if we're going to draw any lesson at all for ourselves, what do you think that is that we had to be converted from in order to become the people of God? You say that's easy. That's the world, of course it's easy. Well, yes. eight marks out of ten that time, because, but quite what do you mean by the world? And what, my dear Christian friend, is worldliness? Here we must do some very careful thinking, mustn't we? For it is exceedingly easy to bandy about phrases without always being exactly sure what we mean by the phrases. Worldliness? What is worldliness? In my youth, in some quarters, it was wearing, when the ladies wore those, you know, yellowy colored stockings and things. But then, it's a funny thing how fashions change, isn't it? On my youth, ladies all wore black stockings. Then there came, they're therefore wearing yellow stockings, you know, these funny, you know, modernly we call them stockings, and that was worldly. But then there came a funny, curious turn of the wheel when all ladies wore these other yellowy stocking things, and there came down to our assembly, I do vividly remember, a bright young thing from London, and she wore black stockings. They said her worldly. Doesn't really help, does it, to leave our terms so vague. What is worldliness? Let's try to use our Old Testament story to help us think. Abram came out of Mesopotamia. How? And what had made the difference? And what was it that brought him out of that, to make him into a pilgrim, journeying on to that inheritance that God would give him and to the city that hath the foundations. Who was it that made the difference? Let me read to you what Stephen said by power of the Holy Spirit. The record is in Acts chapter seven. Brethren and fathers, hearken, said he as he addressed the Sanhedrin, the God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Haran, and said, Get thee out of thy land and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee. Then he came out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Haran. That's what did it. Notice it again. The thing that brought Abraham out of Mesopotamia and made him a pilgrim journeying to the promised inheritance was a vivid and personal experience of the glory of God. The God of glory appeared to. Now you will notice that Stephen doesn't here say anything in particular about the doctrine, say, of forgiveness of sin. And the very crisis through which Abraham learned the great doctrine of justification by faith was yet to come. As far as the record tells us, then, it wasn't so much a guilty conscience, or fear of the wrath of God, and a repentance that desperately sought forgiveness, that brought Abraham out of Ur of Chaldee. Good as those things were, and a genuine part of Abraham's experience as they were. But the predominant element in the conversion experience that brought Abraham out of, uh, uh, Mesopotamia was the positive side, the appearing of a living God, a God of surpassing glory, and called him out to become a pilgrim towards a much more glorious inheritance. You must understand that Mesopotamia, from which he was called, was not a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah. Nor was it given to such cruelty so a- as was, say, Assyria of another time, or Moab in its disreputable rites and religions. Mesopotamia was an exceedingly civilized country, belonging to that part of the world that seems to have been the cradle of the civilizations of our races. Its art was stupendous. Some of it has not yet been surpassed, even in this mo- uh, modern day. Abraham lived in houses with sanitary systems. And you say, what was wrong with it? Well, in itself, nothing. Say certain things we shall presently mention. It was simply that when God appeared to Abraham, Abraham received such a vision of glory that outshone Mesopotamia by far. In the sheer glory of the person of God. When the God of glory appeared to Abraham, he put before Abraham certain promises that to Abraham appeared so glorious, and it made Ur of Chaldees look far less than it had hitherto looked. Moreover, Abraham had eyes to see that though Ur of Chaldees in which he lived was glorious at that time, like all human things, its glories could so easily fade. And in the vision that God gave him, and in the call that came with it, he found a glory that was unfadable. But they that say such things as Abraham said, declare themselves pilgrims and strangers. Why? Not that they have concluded that this world is a lot of sour grapes. Abraham could have gone back if he had cared. Now he sought a fatherland more glorious, because eternal. If you then ask, in what sense does Mesopotamia stand for the world? You should begin to think that it doesn't stand for the world in all its sin and vice, so much as it stands for just this world, as distinct from the next. This world, set over against the inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away. And this world, with all those desperate perils that attend it, when instead of leading us nearer to God, it comes between us and God, and draws us from God. Let's think of the world for a moment in relation to ourselves. Well, what's wrong with you? Why should that term, I mean the word world began life, didn't it, describing the world that God has made full of lovely things? How has it become a sort of a bad term in the Bible? Well, let the Apostle John tell us two things about it. First of all, he says, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. For the world passes away. It's only a temporary thing. And you know, young folks, it's not merely the Bible says that. But you ask your physics master, or an astronomer, if you are so fortunate to have one in the school, or any cosmologist you can get your hands on, ask him. And he will tell you, yes, my dear, well, of course that is true. The world, the planet we live on, is a temporary phenomenon. It had a beginning. It will have an end. I don't care whether you measure the, the in between bits in millions of light years, it still remains true that the world is a temporary phenomenon. And human life on this planet as we know it is a temporary phenomenon. We need to remember it, don't we? If you could be standing at that very moment, and it will... would you ask your physics master, or an astronomer, if you are so fortunate to have one in the school, or any cosmologist you can get your hands on, ask him. And he will tell you, yes, my dear, well, of course that is true. The world, the planet we live on, is a temporary phenomenon. It had a beginning. It will have an end. I don't care whether you measure the, the in between bit in millions of light years, it still remains true that the world is a temporary phenomenon. And human life on this planet as we know it is a temporary phenomenon. We need to remember it, don't we? If you could be standing at that very moment, and it will come one day, when God allows the atoms of this world to blow the whole thing up, and this world ceases to be, and then as you stood there, you said, hmm, big bang, eh? So what? So what? What's it all been about? What would the answer be? Well, that was just a big firework that happened, that happened to go off bang. Poor old atheist, that's all he knows, you know. That's all the meaning in the end he can get from it. One vast accident, ultimately signifying nothing. Or a tragedy. To be a worldling whose whole outlook is bounded by this little temporary phenomenon called Earth. And has nothing beyond it. No goal, no inheritance. Nothing to journey to. Nothing but this world. Yes, indeed, this world is a marvelous place and full of fantastic interest. I hope you find it so, and color and glorious music. But even if it weren't stained and broken by sin, it would still only be temporary. And to treat this present age, this present world, as though it were all there were, that is to be worldly, and that is to be very sad. How will you get a man out of that kind of thing? Oh, merely by playing on his guilt feelings, as he doesn't even believe there is a law that there is a God. You'll have to do what the God of Abram did. What brought Abram out of, uh, of Mesopotamia? Because he discovered that God was real. And there was another world. There was an inheritance. And it made Abram a pilgrim who left earth and moved out in search of that greater inheritance. If that's conversion, I ask, have we been converted? We got that hope. This little world made of God as a necessary but temporary first stage. That humans might be born into it as God's creatures. The necessary preliminary stage to the next great move, that being born creatures of God, we become children of God. Oh friend, don't rest with the first stage, will you? All of us creatures of God. But to miss the next stage of becoming children of God, that would be unqualified disaster. What then shall be our attitude to the world? Don't love it, says John. Don't love it. Now mark the term. He doesn't say don't use it. He doesn't even say don't admire it. Just don't love it. And he means the term in all the fullness of that po- of that word. Some folks talk about loving strawberries, don't they? They say, oh, I love strawberries. Well, what they really mean is I like strawberries. And nothing wrong in liking strawberries, at least I hope there isn't, because I do. Hum. But we must make a distinction in our minds between liking things, admiring things, using things, enjoying things, and in the biblical sense of the term, loving them. There is a love. There is a thing called love that must be reserved solely for persons, and in particular for the person, God himself. Use the world as not abusing it. Yes, enjoy it. Admire it. Not its sin, but it. Can't you admire the robin red breast with his colors and the sunset? And daffodils and tulips, and paintings and embroideries, and, uh, electrical gadgets that go buzz and do wonderful things, and all the marvels of science and technology. Yes, marvelous indeed. And I think the God who made it is, it is absolutely fantastically marvelous. Yes, admire it. Don't you love it? That's a thing we reserve for God. Why shouldn't I love it, John? Is it because, John, don't mind my saying it, but have you got a little bit old and decrepit, you know, and thin on the top, and you know, you're ninety four and a half, well, John. Yeah, of course you don't love the world, but we're young and full of warm blood. Uh, John, is it because you got a little old and decrepit that you say don't love the world? No, no, no, no, no. Why shouldn't I? Because the world passes away. You love it, and the love you've spent will in the end be wasted, for one day the world goes. All spend your love, says John, on something, rather someone who is eternal. If I'm going to do that, that eternal one, the Father, must become a reality to me, mustn't it? Not just a doctrine on a page in the Bible, but a living person. So that without wearing my heart on my cuff sleeve, my, uh, the sleeve, uh, the cuff of my sleeve, I can honestly say that I find God fantastically marvelous. Marvelous. Well, there's another side to the world as well, isn't there? It isn't only temporary. But alas. I tell you how you may see it. Come back to the illustration a minute. Did you notice that when we are told about Othniel's warfare and how the Mesopotamians overcame the Israelites, that four or five times over, the Holy Spirit repeats the name of the king, and it's a terrible old name to have to read in public, but there it is, Cusham Rishiteim, no less. And every time, and many times over, Cusham Rishiteim, king of Mesopotamia. Now, there's not everybody that rejoices in a name like that, and one thing I'm certain, he wasn't christened Cusham Rishathaim, because Cusham Rishathaim means king of double wickedness. Rishathaim is a Hebrew word in the dual, which means double wickedness. I'm sure his mum didn't christen him that. I think it must have been an Israelite, perhaps, or perhaps the Holy Spirit who gave him the name in scripture. This lovely, cultured, beautifully civilized country, whose art still delights us, ruled by a king of double wickedness. And then I must ask you to remember that this world, originally created very beautiful by God, has somehow come under the power, hasn't it, of a figure that the New Testament calls the prince of this world. A prince of almost infinite evil. The prince of this world comes, says our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the word world takes on a bit more sinister meaning, doesn't it? How has he become its prince? So the story is this, that in his great strategy to get men from God, Satan has not used things vicious in themselves merely. That would have been a very crude tactic, wouldn't it? Satan's genius has been in that he has taken the lovely things and the good things, things good in themselves, and used them to draw man's heart away from God. He did it with Eve, didn't he? Oh, where did sin began- begin, you say? Well, it wasn't that A- A- A- Adam suddenly took a fit and took to beating wife, uh, Eve before breakfast every morning. Nothing like that. It was when Satan concentrated Eve's, uh, attention for a moment on a bit of creation, and it was a charming bit of creation. Used it to get her away from God. Tragedy. Here is a wealthy father. He's got more millions than cents. And his boy comes to the age of twenty one, or should I say eighteen, and he says, my boy, I want to give you a coming of age present. You know, I love you. We'll give you a, a private airplane. And there she sits, what a beautiful bird she is. You say, what's wrong with it? Nothing wrong with it. Lovely thing. Well, the boy gets in it. Thank you very much, Poppy says. Woof, here we go. Away he flies. Never comes back again. Flees off to South America or somewhere else, and never comes or cares, toughens about father anymore. Father would curse the day he gave that boy the airplane, wouldn't he? What did the prodigal of the parable say? Give me all the horrible things you could think of, Dad. Of course not. Give me the portion that falls to me from the father's own inheritance. Instead of its leading him near the father, it took him way out into the far country. And the tragedy of life is that it is not simply the nasty things that keeps people from God. If ever you perish, my good friend, it will probably be the nice things that have kept you from God. This girl hasn't time for God because she's so interested in music, and this boy, he hasn't time for God because he's so interested in his engineering. And what's wrong with the music, and what's wrong with the engineering? Nothing at all. But used by the prince of this world to take a human's heart from God and keep it from God. It becomes the fundamental disaster. Well, how will you deliver folks? We may take a lesson both from Old and New Testament. Let's go back to the phrase, Abram came out- came out of Mesopotamia when the God of glory appeared to him. So glorious that Abram began to see where true interest lay and chose God. Oh, he didn't cease to be a wealthy man, did he? He had I don't know how many sheep, oxen, and goodness knows what else, camels and things, and enough servants to be a young army to take on five kings at once and defeat them. But now, life's material things were the basis that step by step and step by step were bringing him in fellowship with God to the great inheritance that God had reserved for him. God on the word, along with this material world, and giving life even now that added an infinite dimension that is eternal life begun even here. Leading on to when these material things are done, God and his eternity and his eternal city. Save, my brother. It's a lovely thing to know that our sins are forgiven. Let none ever speak despisingly of it. To know oneself delivered from the terrors of the lake of fire. An inestimable and incalculable blessing brought for us by the sufferings of Christ our Lord. Good as it is, we need also this positive side, don't we? Not just escape from hell, but entrancement with the glory of God. Where shall I see it? You say that's all right to talk about Abram, but Father Abram, goodness me, he was such a saint. He had visions of rapture burst on his sight, why, every day of the week. So not quite. Well, then you say, well, well, big visions, you know, big lights and thing. Well, that's he did. For Abraham was far more important than ever any of us should be, singly or put together. Beginning of a new race. Textbook example for all those that afterwards should believe on God. The vision of God is available to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. You say, what brought Peter to conversion? Let Peter himself tell you. In his second letter in chapter one, he says, God who called us by dint of his glory. Not merely called us to his glory, but by his glory and virtue. Peter caught sight of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, and as he daily worked to move with him, saw in him such rapturous interest and lovely character. He got hold of Peter's manly heart and made him a follower of Jesus. If you will ask Saint John what is the secret of overcoming the world, he will say this. Who is he that overcomes the world, save he that has been justified by faith? No, that's not what he says. Who is he that overcomes the world, save he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Of course. You see, if Jesus Christ is God's Son, then he's the author of the world. He is its creator. He is the one that even now sustains it. He is destined to be its heir, the heir of all things. If Jesus Christ is God's son, and I have Christ as mine, I have all things. And then, if temporarily and for his sake I were called to give up this or that, or the world and all that's in it, and my life as well, yet having Christ, what have I lost? But if Jesus Christ isn't the Son of God, you are a fool to follow him, because if he isn't the Son of God, you haven't got forgiveness of sins anyway. Because if he wasn't the Son of God, his death is unavailing, and there's nothing in Christianity whatsoever. Oh, make sure. Is he really the Son of God. And the heart that says, yes, I know it. I know it. By God's revelation to my heart, I know it on the evidence of Holy Writ. He is the Son of God. That heart has found the secret of overcoming the world. We haven't got tonight as far as we ought to have got. Our warfare in these subsequent weeks is going to be very ragged. We shall be polishing off Moabites one night and starting on Philistines the second night, you know, and leaving the battle in the middle, but you'll have to forgive that, for the book of Judges wasn't written in order to be contained in neat parcels of one hour each. But we've, uh, perhaps heard enough from God, haven't we? To raise within our hearts this very big thing. Am I a conqueror? Here? I really believe Jesus is the Son of God. He got hold of my heart. Or is salvation up to now merely a matter of texts in the Bible? Or merely a matter of knowing that my sins are forgiven? Tell me, why do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Do you know why? Somebody asked you why as you went out of the hall tonight, what reasons would you give him? We'll get to know them. It could be, couldn't it, that someone sitting here tonight will one day be in a communist cell? And then the issue will be, is Jesus or isn't, isn't he the Son of God. It'll be good, my brother, if you ever get there, that you know why you believe... that he is God's son. Since I saw that point, I have tried going through life to tuck up under my little cap all the evidences I could lay my hands on, that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. It is the key to overcoming the world. Shall we pray? Lord then, we thank thee for thy word. Praise thee for thy Holy Spirit who takes it and speaks it to our hearts. And we pray that through thy word tonight and in these coming days, thou will continue to reveal thyself to us and make up to us thyself a reality. We thank thee for his word who said, I will not leave you orphans. I come to you. And if any man love me and keep my word, my father will love him. We will come to him. And I will manifest myself to him. Blessed Lord Jesus, as thou seest us here, thy believing people and pilgrims too, let us understand the temptations of the world around us, how our hearts so easily settle down as though this world were everything. Graciously fulfill that promise of thine we beseech thee, and from time to time manifest thyself to us. And as our eyes are opened and our hearts burn within us, we may say one to another, as Peter to John of old, it is the Lord. Knowing thy touch upon our spirits, we may be strengthened and transformed, and our love for thee grow, and we become conquerors through thy name, for thy greater glory and our blessing we ask it.