Gooding, David: 1 - Contending for the Faith

And I look forward to getting to know you as best I can in the time that is available. I look forward even more, if I may say so, to hearing your contributions on the topic of the Judges in the general discussion and contribution session. For my part, what I aim to do is to study with you the book of Joshua, uh, the book of Judges as a book of scripture, trying to ascertain its leading themes and its general message. I shall not be dealing with the many academic and historical questions that arise in this book. I have with me a very small article that once I wrote and contributed to, uh, Orlinski's Festschrift in the journal Eretz Israel. It deals to a tiny extent with academic questions. I shall put it here on the tables, and if you're interested in that kind of thing, you can look at that at your leisure. Doubtless you have brought with you books that deal with the academic problems, uh, that gather around this book. For my part, I shall not be dealing with them, except when necessary. My aim, as I say, is to study this book as a part of inspired scripture and to ask what its leading themes are, what the message of the book as a whole is, and how those leading themes are related one to the other and how they function within the totality of the book. The main theme of the book of Judges is the basis of the name of the book itself. The book is called the book of Judges, so that our first task is to understand what the book means by its term in the title, Judges. What were the judges? In modern societies, judges tend to be gentlemen who sit upon the bench of the law and hand down sentences, whether lenient or light, to unfortunate criminals. That is not the meaning of the term here in this book, or at least it is only rarely so. These judges were in the first place, primarily saviors of God's people, and that you may note, uh, note stated in chapter two and verse eighteen, which says, and when the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge and saved them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. Judges were notable men raised up by God through whom he might save his people, and particularly his people when they had fallen on very hard times through compromise of the basic principles of their faith and of their loyalty to God. The main message of this book, therefore, will be to us a message of God as Savior, who delights to save, and not only to save sinners as they wander in their sins and rebellion against God, but delights also to save his people, who from time to time, still in our day and generation, wander from the Lord, compromise with worldliness, with false doctrine, and with false practice, and in consequence get themselves into all kinds of trouble, including that trouble which God allows them to suffer under his wise chastisement. God delights then to save his people when they get into trouble. We can apply the message to individuals. And the message that can- comes straight at each one of us this afternoon from this book and in these coming days will be this, that if any of us have wandered from the Lord, for every man knows his own heart and his own sinfulness, his own wanderings. If any of us have wandered from the Lord and got ourselves into difficult and compromised circumstances where we know not how to turn, then God is able and willing and longing to save us as his people and to bring us back to himself. But it is not merely a message for the individual that comes from this book. It is a message for the people of God as a whole. God as the savior of his people, when they come into distress and bondage as a result of their waywardness. And I would like to emphasize the importance of this concept from the very start. It is, of course, a New Testament concept as well as an Old Testament concept. Listen, if you will, to Paul talking to his young fellow worker, now appointed in charge of the affairs of the church at Ephesus. One Timothy chapter four verses thirteen to sixteen: Till I come, give heed to reading, to exhortation, to teaching. Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Be diligent in these things, give thyself wholly to them, that thy progress may be manifest unto all. Take heed to yourself and to thy teaching. Continue in these things, for in doing this, thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee. Pray, notice the verb, in doing this, thou shalt save both thyself and them that hear thee. The salvation of God's people. We are so used to using the word save, save and salvation in the context of evangelistic efforts, that sometimes we forget the biblical use of the term when it is applied to people that are already Christians, or maybe have been Christians a very long while. We still need saving. Give heed to yourself, says Paul to Timothy, and give heed to your teaching, for in doing that you will save yourself. I want to pick up this emphasis right at the beginning of our study of this book and apply it to everyone present here. Gentlemen, allow me to re-echo the words of Paul to you and to myself. Take heed to yourself, to your life before God, to your fellowship with God, to your spiritual progress. Be diligent in these things, give whole- thyself wholly to them, so that in the first place your progress may be manifest to all. God's people wait to see young men who so give themselves diligently to their spiritual lives that the church at last can see the progress that they are making in the faith. It is when we are making progress ourselves and other people can see the progress that we are making, they will be the more inclined to follow us, and therefore the Lord. Just as when sheep see that the shepherd is going forward, they tend to follow the shepherd. So when people see their leaders making spiritual progress, and they can see the progress, and the people are, of course, more inclined to follow. Alas for a church that has elders that have ceased to make any spiritual progress. They haven't made any progress in the word of God this last twenty years. They're saying exactly the same things now as they said twenty years ago. Like that famous lecturer who, aged sixty, complained to his wife, he said, you know, I wonder my students don't come to my lectures these days. I can't make out why it is, because I'm saying the same, exactly the same things now as I said thirty years ago when I began to lecture, and in those days they came in great hordes, but they don't come now. Alas for churches whose elders are saying exactly the same thing, not because they are adhering to the fundamentals of the faith, where they should be saying the same thing, but because they have made no progress in the Word of God. They have a few favorite verses, they have a few favorite chapters, but large areas of the Word of God go by untouched and uncultivated for years, and they've nothing new, no pioneer spirit in the Word of God, and their progress isn't manifest because it isn't there. Alas for churches that have elders and young men who are saying the same things in their prayers, the same old stock phrases that they have been using for years. There's nothing new, obviously, in their pioneer investigation of God. Very little new in their appreciation of the Lord. It's the same stock phrases as ever. Beware of it, gentlemen. Now in our youth, or in your youth at least, is the time to make progress in the knowledge of God and in the knowledge of his word, that your progress may be manifest to all. It is not that we are to be swelled head and p- swelled headed and parade ourselves, but it is a legitimate motivation that others may see the progress that I am making in spiritual things. Then take heed to yourself and to your teaching. We need, of course, to look first to ourselves, that our practice matches our teaching. But we need to take heed to our teaching, says Paul, for continue in these things, be up to your neck in these things, so that in doing this you shall save yourself. That is a very important concept, isn't it? As young men in the church of God, if God has given us in any sense a gift to teach, then in teaching we save ourselves. There are a host of things from which we as believers need to be saved. In doing this, you'll save yourself and those who hear you. And it's not a bad thing to remember whenever you have opportunity and responsibility to teach your fellow believers. It's not a bad thing to say to yourself, now, in this talk I'm about to give, how would this save my fellow believers? Our job is not merely to impart information. Our task as teachers is to save God's people. I repeat, it's a very good thing to ask over any sermon that you are about to deliver, any teaching session. It's a good thing to ask yourself at the beginning, now, how will what I've got to say serve to save my fellow believers? That is what, of course, gives earnestness and point and power to what we have to say. So then, the judges in Israel were first and foremost saviors. And we have their counterpart in the New Testament, saviors of the people of God from the cruel slaveries and bondages they came into as they wandered away from the Lord, compromised with the world, and disobeyed God's word. But then, of course, the judges were judges, both in a religious and in a civil sense. For you see, if they were to save God's people, it was not mere necessary, uh, not merely necessary that they should lead the armies of the Lord's people and conquer the enemy that were oppressing them. There were battles to be fought, as we shall see, but it would have been pretty useless fighting battles for the Lord's people and giving them back their freedom if that were all. Useless giving their them their freedom unless you induce them to repent of their sinning that got them into the bondage in the first place. Useless if by inducing them to repentance of their idolatries and delivering them from the enemy, you had given them their liberty, if you allowed them in the consequent years to go back to their compromise, to their idolatry, to their marriages with the Gentile world around them. And therefore the judges were not merely military commanders who led the armies of Israel in order to save them from their enemies. They were judges that called upon the people in the name of the Lord to get rid of their idolatry, to return to the Lord, to obey his word. Men that had to take courage into both hands sometimes and destroy the old idols that stood about their village or their town, and rebuke the Lord's people, and bring change of heart, and bring them back to obeying the Lord, and thereafter to shepherd them and watch them, and to get them into the habit of disciplining themselves, and if need be, to get into the habit of discipline- disciplining their families and their tribes, if again idolatry and compromise raise their ugly heads. And so it is, of course, for leaders, for teachers, for elders in the churches of God. We are to be saviors, but at the same time, in a very real sense, to be judges. Not hard and critical and unloving men, but we are to be judges, and like Gideon, we are to start with ourselves, to judge ourselves. That, of course, as you know, is one of the practical results of that worthy habit of attendance at the Lord's Supper weekly. It is sometimes said that the Lord's Supper is the occasion when we come to worship, and of course that is so. But the Lord's Supper calls on us, each one, to take this matter of self-judgment seriously. Paul says we are to judge ourselves. That is, if we have done wrong, we are to judge ourselves and repent of it and seek the Lord's forgiveness and grace not to repeat our faults. But in addition to that, we are to discern ourselves. Any one of us might know, sitting here this afternoon, that we are not a hundred percent sound in our character, in our attitudes. There are unfortunate attitudes and features of our personalities that are still with us. Our friends can see them if we can't. And we are to take this whole matter seriously of making progress. We shall not wake up one Monday morning and say to ourselves, do you know I feel very curious this morning, rather different. Oh, what on earth has come over me? Oh, I know, I've become holy overnight. Ha. Doesn't happen that way, gentlemen. It happens as we take God seriously and his word seriously, and we take the Holy Spirit seriously, and we examine ourselves from time to time and judge ourselves and say, Lord, show me now the next thing that has got to change in my life. We are to judge ourselves, and we are to judge, uh, in that sense, help our fellow believers to judge our fellow Christians, surely. So John the Apostle was the instrument of the Lord Jesus to write seven letters to seven different churches, as our Lord Jesus appeared to him and dictated the letters which John conveyed. And our Lord appeared in that vision robed as a judge and approached each of his churches, judging them, estimating them, praising what he could praise and commend, criticizing what he found amiss, and calling on his people to repent. It is not for nothing that those first three chapters stand at the beginning of the book of the Revelation. The rest of the book will tell you of the judgments of God that are to fall upon this world. But in that well-known principle of divine justice, it is said that judgment must first begin at the house of God. And therefore, in that book that tells us so much about the judgments of God that are going to fall upon this world, in that book, three chapters are first devoted to the topic of the Lord's judging of his people. This too is judgment, not in the sense of bringing people to condemnation, not even if they have to be disciplined by the church in its severest discipline. The aim of it still is, of course, to save God's people and to restore them to fellowship with the Lord and to healthy and godly behavior. So then the book of the Judges brings before us men who were primarily saviors of the people of God. And because they were saviors, they also had to be judges. And then again, if they would be saviors and judges, they had to be warriors. They were fighters that led their little armies, very often they were small, though sometimes larger, led their armies to face the enemy that were oppressing God's people and to fight the battle and to deliver God's people. In fighting these enemies, they were not mere, they were not going for territorial aggrandizement. That wasn't the object. They were fighting the evil forces of Canaan with which the Israelites had compromised. They were fighting for the truth of God, to reestablish in the hearts of Israel's people their belief in the truth of the one true God against the attractiveness and allurements of Canaanite idolatry. They were fighting for righteousness and holiness against the allurements of evil immorality, such as was found among the Canaanites, and which tempted Israel to compromise their law. Fighting, therefore, for God and his people, for truth and for righteousness. And once we observe that, the book will immediately speak its message to us in our Christian day, surely. Our warfare is, of course, of necessity on a very different plane from the warfare, uh, that Israel fought. They fought with physical weapons. They fought with swords and spears in the cause of God's truth, in the cause of justice. Our blessed Lord Jesus explicitly forbade us to use the sword, either in the defense or in the propagation of his kingdom. We need at once to remember that as we begin the study of this book. What disasters fell upon the world when Christendom forgot the difference between Christianity and the ancient Hebrew religion. In the Hebrew religion, they were commanded by God, and we read it all through Old Testament, to go out and fight the enemies of the Lord with literal sword. Moreover, if a city in Israel heard that a nearby town had gone over to idolatry, they were to warn them, and if the town didn't repent and give up its idolatry, then the rest of the nation was to take to arms and to go to that city and to destroy it by physical weapon. For Israel was a sacral state. At this time, it was a direct theocracy, and God thus commanded them to use physical weapons in the cause of God and his truth and his justice. What terrors, what scandals filled Europe when medieval Christendom got it into its head that the nations in which they lived were also sacral states, and thought that England was a Christian country, just like Israel was a country of believers, and therefore that the European governments had the right to raise armies in the name of God and his Messiah to go and fight unbelieving Turks and recover the city of Jerusalem for Christendom. Here came blood and tears in the name of the Lord Jesus. Just you imagine it. It is important that we disabuse our- our- ourselves of the notion that there is on the earth's surface this present day any state that is a sacral state, any state that is God's people, any state that knows anything at all about a direct theocracy, and the use of the civil power of a state nowadays in order to promote the gospel or defend the Christian faith is not only an anachronism, a grievous anachronism, but of course it leads still today to endless scandals in the name of the Lord Jesus. It was likewise, wasn't it, surely a serious and grievous error when in the Middle A- Ages the reformers still felt that the countries in which they lived were sacral states, and therefore, if there arose people, fellow Christians, that in their estimation were heretics, they too felt they had a right to call upon the civil power, to use its civil power to punish religious heresy. So it was, of course, that when some believers saw that the baptism of infants was not biblical, that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration was an old, hoary old superstition, and that the teaching of the New Testament is the baptism of believers. When they saw that and in consequence refused to have their children, their infants baptized, but practiced believer's baptism, then many of the leading reformers took them and handed them over to the civil power, who tied them in knots and weighted with them, wa- weighted them with stones and cast them into the rivers to drown, or burned them at the stake, or flayed them alive. Thinking that they did God honor by using physical material weapons to fight for God and for his truth. I need not spend long, gentlemen, reminding you what a sad misconception that was and has been, still is. But if the plane of battle on which we fight is a different plane, it still is a battle, isn't it? Our Lord warned us that they that take the physical sword shall perish with the sword. He forbade Peter to use the sword to protect him in the garden. And two Corinthians tells us explicitly that the weapons of our warfare are not material weapons, literal swords, or cannon, or missiles. Nonetheless, we are exhorted to fight the good fight of the faith. Ephesians chapter six reminds us that we wrestle, if not against flesh and blood, yet against principalities and powers, the spiritual wickednesses in high places. And we do ourselves a disservice if we forget that God's service is ultimately a battle. Does from time to time, nevertheless, still surprise me. When you might think a church has every reason for going along harmoniously, what could be more delightful than the work of the Lord, and engaging in it and disseminating his word from shore to shore? What could possibly be more delightful? Presently, what you thought was going to be such a marvelous, glorious summer holiday of working for the Lord all the days of your life, is disrupted by all kinds of absurd things. Mrs. So-and-so was asked to do the flowers, and it's my job to do the flowers. Before long, the church is divided. Mr. So-and-so was playing the organ with four fingers most of the time, though sometimes with one. That's the best organist they had. When along came another brother, he was a brilliant organist, and they asked him to play the organ. Well, the first organist, he went off, eh, in a hump, he did really. The multitude of things over which churches divide, gentlemen, in my experience around these worlds, are ten thousand, and half of them are ab- such absurdities as you've never heard. Why do otherwise sensible people act like it? Because the work to which we set our hands, gentlemen, is a battle against principalities and powers. And if the work is going ahead, you must expect the other side to fight back, and the other side isn't choosy about the people they use. If they can use fellow believers to disturb the work of God, they will. It is a fight. It is a fight, of course, at academic level. Every now and again you will observe that the church has to be saved from its theologians, I don't know what by why what occupational hazard, tend to go liberal. And then men and women rise up to fight the battles of the Lord and to fight for the authority of his word, to fight for its inspiration and its truth. And wonderful battles are fought, and a generation of scholars has been ra- uh, is raised up, who adhere no less scholarly than the others, but adhere to the authority of God's inspired word. And you think now at last, after this thirty years, the battle has finally been won. Be careful, gentlemen. Lest when you look forward, you think the battle has been won and the tide of old unbelief is coming in at the back door. The war will not be over until we land on heaven's fair shore. Till then, it is a fight. And let us not deceive ourselves if we are given to the teaching of the word of God. You'll have to fight for your time, gentlemen. You'll have to fight for your ministry. Ten thousand and one things will come in your way, all of them legitimate, that will stop you from God's word as young men. If you and your generation are going to be valiant teachers of God's word and servants of the Lord and capable elders in your church, you will have to fight almost for every inch of territory that you are to gain. It was not to some, to a man who was still pioneering evangelist in the darkest fields of Africa that Paul said, fight the good fight of faith. It was to the young Timothy, but he's surely a middle-aged man now, veteran of many pioneer evangelistic efforts in Europe, but now stationed in Ephesus, concerned with the whole burden of shepherding that church and guiding its elders and ordering its affairs and teaching his fellow believers. It was to him Paul said, fight the good fight of faith. It was to him that Paul subsequently remarked, I have fought the good fight. The book of Judges reminds us of this necessary exhortation, it shall already have done us a very good service. More of that on another occasion. But now let us begin to think of the place of, uh, the book of Judges in its immediate context in the Old Testament. Last week, some of us were studying the book of Joshua that comes before Judges in the Old Testament canon. We found the book of Joshua to be divided into two parts, answering to the two phases of the conquest of Canaan. The first phase, let me briefly repeat, was when Joshua took the united armies of Israel across Jordan and kept them together as one integrated fighting unit until they had smashed all the main opposition throughout the cities of Canaan. When they had thus smashed the opposition, then, according to the second half of Joshua, the second phase of the conquest of Canaan began, as the individual tribes peeled off and went each to the part of the land that had been given to it as its particular inheritance. And there they measured it out among themselves, and there individual families, individual tribes had to mop up what resistance remained, what enemies had reestablished themselves, so that they might individually enter into the inheritance given them by God, that second part of the inheritance. When we come to Judges, we shall find that its first chapter and part of its second briefly recurs to that second phase of the conquest. It begins by noticing the tribes while Joshua, uh, when Joshua had died, asking, who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up, behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. So it was Judah that first peeled off from the main army and went to, uh, now to get a hold of the part of the land that had been given to that tribe for an inheritance. And therefore, the first chapter of Judges tells you some of the things that happened in the course of that second phase of the conquest. But when you come to chapter two and verse six, you will find that the historian has moved on, because the part of Israel's history that particularly interests him is not the first part of the conquest, nor the second phase of the conquest, but what happened in the succeeding generations. Look at two verse uh seven: And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders of Israel that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord that he had wrought for Israel. Verse ten: and also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers, and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel. It is with that third generation, children of the elders that outlived Joshua, with that third generation and beyond, that the book of Judges is particularly concerned. Let us see, therefore, the significance of this third generation in general terms, before we proceed to other things. Last week, let me remind you again, when we studied the book of Joshua, we noticed the very significant fact that God made the entrance of Israel into their inheritance in Canaan coincide with the outpourings of his judgment on that godless, immoral, and cruel civilization of Canaan. God had originally indicated to Abraham that it would be so. When he promised the inheritance to Abraham, he mapped out what the course of things would be. His descendants would not immediately inherit the land. Indeed, they would be strangers and eventually slaves in the country of Egypt. And then after four hundred years, God would bring them out and bring them to Canaan. Why not before? God explains to Abraham. Because the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full. But when the iniquity of the Amorites is full and their civilization is ripe for God's judgment, then God purposed to bring in Israel into their inheritance, that Israel's entry into the inheritance might coincide with the judgments of God upon that evil civilization. Moreover, we saw last week that God not only brought Israel in at that time, he made Israel act as his executors of that judgment. He did not leave Israel in some comfortable oasis in the desert, Kadesh Barnea, and say, gentlemen, stay here for a while. I have a job myself to do in Canaan, to rid the land of these infamous sinners and to disinfect it and fumigate it. Uh, and when I finished, uh, uh, disinfecting the place, I'll call for you and bring you in, and you'll find it all nice, neat, and tidy and healthy. No, no, no. God made the Israelites come with him and agree with him that this civilization was an evil civilization and must be judged. And if Israel wanted this inheritance, they first of all had to agree with God. Yes, God, it is evil. We agree with you it is evil and must be destroyed. The tendency, even at that stage, as we saw with the story of Achan, was this, that Israel, not liking this gruesome business of judging the Philis- uh, of the Canaanites, preferred on times to compromise with them, as though they weren't so bad after all, and it always ended in disaster. So was it in the second phase of their conquest, as we shall read in the opening chapter of Judges. Israel, when they went off in the second phase, each one to its own particular inheritance, would often find Canaanites coming back and living in the locality, or even s- living in the very cities that had been given to them, and each tribe had to decide what they were going to do. Were they going to drive them out, or weren't they going to drive them out? Would it be better to drive them out, or would it be easier and better, perhaps, and in the, in the long run, the happiest thing to do a deal with them and settle down harmoniously, you'll say, marry their daughters and then inherit the, their father's estate, you'll say. That's often a more convenient way to do it. If you're in business, gentlemen, you don't need necessarily to fight o- over a takeover bid to buy out the family firm o- o- of o- o- of Crooked and make money. You don't need to, um, uh, uh, um, have a takeover bid and all the hassle. Marry the daughter of the owner of the business, you'll say, if it's a private firm and he has no other sons, that's a, a far better technique. And then, of course, you inherit the business, don't you? What hope? And the Israelites had to, had to face the possibility. Now, now, which do we do? Do we do like old Moses said and cut their throats and enter and fight them? Mm, difficult, uh, difficult, you know. And, uh, they've got chariots of iron, some of them, and all this fighting every day of the week is a little tiring. Wouldn't it be better to intermarry with them and gradually take over the concern? And that's what a lot of them did, and it led to disaster. But worse than that, we're going to read of the stage that followed that second phase, when children had been brought up in Canaan, who had never known the battles. All they had known is comfortable log cabins in the far west, you know, and luscious, um, uh, grass and things, you'll see. They hadn't known the battles of the Lord, what their parents had to put up with, how they had to fight to get it. Everything had been plain sailing from they were little children. And in consequence, two things happened. They didn't value what they got. They didn't know how much it cost in terms of fighting. And secondly, because they were a pampered old lot, they'd had everything they asked for right from the time they were kids. So that when they were called upon to fight, they were in no mood to fight. And not valuing their inheritance, they came to be attracted by the gaudy attractiveness of the Canaanite civilization around them, compromised, and came to disaster. From which disasters, God had constantly to deliver them, and in his mercy did deliver them by raising up men who were saviors, judges, and military commanders who were able to teach the people once more in their generation that their wa- their inheritance was a something worth fighting for, and then training them and showing them how to fight. That, as I read it, is a rough sketch of the place of judges within its immediate context in the canon of scripture. At that point, let us end our first study.