After an amazing victory under leaders named Deborah and Barak, the people of Israel enjoy forty years of peace. But after that, it doesn't take long for them to turn back to doing evil again. Forty years is like a whole generation. Was this another example of the people's failure to raise the next generation in the knowledge and ways of God?
As we begin reading in chapter 6 of Judges, we find a people that are crushed and intimidated. Seven years of oppression by their enemies the Midianites have reduced them to starvation - because the enemy hordes kept sweeping in, destroying their crops and stealing their livestock. And not only are the Israelites hungry, they are also hiding: they are so afraid of the next attack, that they start to hide away in caves in the mountains.
Hungry and hiding! That can also be a description of believers in today's society. When we forego making intimacy with God a priority in our lives, not only do we become spiritually undernourished, we're also less likely to take a stand for our faith. We simply "blend in" and are not noticeably different from the non-believers around us. Whether we realise it or not, we are hungry and we are hiding.
The key to change comes when we recognise that God is calling us out of hiding, and that we're called as believers to be salt and light in our world. But first, we need to recognise our spiritual emaciation and allow God to kindle a hunger within us - a hunger for His presence and for His Word. As we begin to be nourished by the Bible and prayer, we will see our strength and our courage increase. We'll start to come out of hiding and to see that our lives can make a difference - in our family, in our town, in our nation or in our world.
As we read further in Judges chapters 6 and 7, we discover one example of how God turned the hungry and hiding into heroes.
The sixth chapter of Judges begins to tell us the story of a man called Gideon. When we first meet him, Gideon is, like the rest of the Israelites, hungry and hiding. (See post above.) The story begins at night time: Gideon is hiding in a winepress, secretly threshing a little bit of wheat that was left over after the most recent Midianite invasion... when suddenly an angel appears and announces: "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior."
I wonder if Gideon began to freak out. I wonder if he spun around in a panic, thinking that a mighty Midianite warrior had crept up behind him. It certainly seemed in those days that God was with the Midianites and not with the Israelites. After all, Gideon was hiding in a winepress for fear of the invading troops, and fully aware that his/their lives didn't bear the hallmark of a people whose God was with them.
Once he realises that the angel is actually speaking to him and not to someone else, Gideon asks the why question: "If the Lord is really with us, why have all these things happened to us? Where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about?"
Now, the Lord had already answered this question. At the beginning of the chapter we read about an unnamed prophet that God used to speak to the people, making sure they understood the reasons for their difficult circumstances: it was because they had ignored the Lord and turned to worshipping foreign and false gods. Perhaps Gideon hadn't heard about the words of the prophet, or perhaps he just wanted to check for himself: why are things so hard?
Whether our difficult situations are our own fault or whether we're the innocent victims of circumstances, our tendency too is often to ask why? We want answers and understanding. But sometimes there are no answers. Sometimes hard things happen, not because we caused them, but simply because we live in a fallen and sinful world.
We're not told whether God gave Gideon any further understanding about the why. Instead, we read that God drew his attention to the what, and began to tell Gideon what he needed to do in order to see the situation changed.
The rest of the story is well known and you can read the chapter for yourself: Gideon spends considerable time lamenting his inadequacy and helplessness, instead of paying attention to what God is telling him about the solution.
It can be so easy for us to do the same thing today when we find ourselves in hard times: we wallow in the "why," focusing on the pain, injustice or hopelessness of our situation, instead of listening to "what" God wants us to do to have the victory. Often this is because we just want to see the circumstances changed and we're not open or willing to see ourselves changed. We put all the onus back on God to do something, and completely reject the wonderful reality that He is asking us to do something.
So we get hung up on the fact that we're not seeing healing (of ourself or another family member) and ignore the fact that God is asking us to keep trusting Him and believing He is good. Or we complain about the fact that our circumstances are too hard or too much for us, and don't pay any attention at all to the fact that God wants to increase our strength and faith and endurance. We put all our attention on the things that we lack, instead of listening to what God wants us to do and discovering the ways that He wants to provide a solution for us.
That's what Gideon did. Even when God was promising him victory, he was moaning that there was no hope. Even when God was doing miracles for him, he was wailing, "I am doomed!" Despite all the promises that God gave him about a good future, Gideon kept choosing instead to face the future with pessimism and worry about all the bad things he imagined could possibly happen to him.
All that fleece stuff... It's not the story of a man of faith or a model for how we should seek God's will. It's an example of an insecure man, struggling with unbelief and still saying, "If.... this is true" - questioning the things God had been telling him over and over again.
Gideon's journey is an illustration of the principle that often we need to deal with our inner obstacles before we can ever see change in our outward circumstances; we need to win the internal victory before we can ever hope to win the external battle. Gideon wasn't ready to destroy the Midianites until he had first destroyed the idols and the wrong beliefs within his own life and family. And it's telling that, when he finally takes a hesitant step of faith, he does it secretly at night because he is still so afraid of the opinions and reactions of others.
When life throws challenges at us, it could be helpful to focus on:
- what does God want to do in me?
- what internal victory do I need to win before the external victory can become possible?
So, I mentioned yesterday that I'm beginning to read daily in the book of Judges, and this morning I launched forth with chapter one. The first half of the chapter starts off on a positive note as, even after the death of Joshua, some of the tribes continue to gain territory in the Promised Land. (See one example in the post below.) But the second half of chapter one is not nearly as encouraging: it's simply a big list of territories that the Israelites failed to conquer - and we know from reading the rest of the Bible that this failure was what tripped them up and led them into idolatry, all throughout their history.
In some cases, they tolerated a compromise: instead of driving out the Canaanites or the Amorites, they allowed them to remain in the land and they turned them into their slaves, probably rationalising that this was an okay thing to do. We can do the same thing nowadays, coming up with "good reasons" for not getting rid of the things in our lives that are stumbling blocks for us and that prevent us from having complete victory.
We live as if life is a game of chance and that conquering is like winning that game: it may or may not happen, and we behave as if that's out of our control. When we don't have victory over something - like worry, anger, criticism or unbelief - we excuse it by saying, "That's just the way I am" - as if our disobedience somehow "couldn't be helped." That's what the tribes of Israel did and the whole book of Judges tells us of the consequences of that defeatist attitude.
Our modern society tries to brainwash us into thinking that tolerance is a virtue; if we don't champion a whole range of "alternative" lifestyles, we risk being accused of a hate crime. (But the Bible calls us to love people, not to tolerate them or their destructive lifestyles.)
And yet, at the same time, our society knows that tolerance can be a dangerous quality. When it comes to eradicating knife crime or violence against women, many police departments adopt a slogan of zero tolerance. They know that putting up with wrong behaviours is a recipe for disaster.
The same is true in our own lives. God hasn't called us to tolerance. When it comes to our bad habits, addictions and negative behaviour patterns, He is calling us, in contrast to the tribes of Israel, to be more than conquerors. (Romans 8: 37)
It's our choice.
In Judges 1: 14 - 15, we read the short account of a woman called Acsah, who was the daughter of Caleb. When the people of Israel were dividing up the territory in the promised land, it happened that Acsah and her husband were given land in the Negev, which was a dry, desert region.
So Acsah went directly to her father, one of the leaders of Israel, and made a special request: "As our land is in a dry place, please also give us springs of water." And her request was granted.
Sometimes in life we find ourselves going through dry and challenging seasons. It's good to remember that we can follow Acsah's example and go directly to our Father to ask for times of refreshing.
The Bible account tells us that Acsah and Othniel were given the "upper and lower springs." I don't know what that meant in their reality, but it made me think that, even in our hard times, we can trust God to refresh us in different ways: sometimes "from above," with encouragement that comes directly from Himself or from the Bible; and sometimes He will use other people to refresh and encourage us on our journey.
Are you in a dry season at the moment? Speak to your Father and ask Him to give you those springs of water.... and watch out for them, so that you don't miss them when they come.
Having filled the last page of my notebook yesterday, this morning I began writing in a new journal, and I also began reading a new book in the Bible: the Old Testament book of Judges.
I read my way through the book of Exodus earlier this year - which tells the story of how God brought one generation of Israelites out of terrible slavery in Egypt. More recently, I've been working through the book of Numbers; it tells of how that generation travelled for forty years in the wilderness and almost all of them died there. (Click here to read this blog post that I wrote last week about why they died in the desert instead of entering the Promised Land.)
The book of Joshua tells us the story of the next generation: how they conquered and settled in the land God had promised them. By the time we get to the book of Judges, we've moved on to read the life stories of a third and fourth and fifth generation.... and I was particularly struck by a one sentence description of the third generation. Judges 2: 10 says that, after Joshua's generation died, a new generation grew up who didn't acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things He had done for Israel. How sad! After all that God has done for His people, we now have another generation that is unfaithful and indifferent to Him.
If we were to ask people for a commentary on the previous generation, the contemporaries of Joshua and Caleb, many people might say that they were a generation who succeeded. In contrast to the Exodus generation, who rebelled against God and died in the wilderness, Joshua's generation were the ones who entered, conquered and settled in the promised land. That sounds a lot like success. It had been more than 450 years since a generation of their ancestors had lived in the land of Canaan.
But as the book of Judges begins, we realise that the previous generation had failed at the most basic of levels: they had failed to pass on a personal knowledge of God to the next generation, or to tell their kids about all the amazing things that God had done for them. And so in Judges 2: 10, we have a generation that not only knows nothing about what God has done in the past, they're a generation that doesn't even acknowledge Him in the present. They just do whatever seems right in their own eyes. (Judges 21: 25)
That's a very apt description of the generation we live in today, in the 21st Century. Whether we're talking about attitudes to marriage, abortion, or even gender, we have a generation who decides for themselves what is right or wrong, with no acknowledgement at all of the eternal truths of God's Word.
So, how do we measure success? In God's eyes, it's not about how many amazing exploits we did or about how famous we became. It's about whether we lived our lives in a way that showed others the reality of God and whether, after we've gone, the next generation continues loving, following and serving the Lord.
Success is measured by obedience, and failing to obey God's instructions to "pass on to the next generations" is perhaps one of the most tragic failures of all.
I just love it when God does something seemingly small and yet He shows impeccable timing.
Yesterday I was tidying up some tupperware containers in my kitchen cupboard and at the back of the cupboard I spotted one of those electric sandwich toasters. It's been there for about two years, but it's basically brand new; it's an appliance that I don't really use much, as I seldom have that kind of bread around. I decided to take it to the nearby YWAM centre, in case they would make better use of it there than I do.
As I was unpacking it in the dining room this morning, I heard a shriek of joy from a Brazilian staff member, "That's unbelievable," she said. "Yesterday I was trying to make a toasted sandwich in a frying pan and I found myself saying, "Lord, I wish I had one of those machines that I used to have back home."
It was fun to be able to say, "Take it, it's yours." Another little evidence of God's faithfulness and His sensitivity to even the smallest heart desires of His children.
Last week I wrote a couple of blog posts - from the book of Acts - about how it's possible to be born again into a new life with God... and then to live that new life without ever breaking free from your old ways of thinking. This week in my morning quiet times, I've seen a similar sort of thing happening in the Old Testament.
This morning, for example, I was reading in Numbers chapter 20, and the chapter heading in my Bible said, "A new generation." That was kind of intriguing, and reading further I discovered what prompted the Bible editors to give it that title. The chapter begins with the death of Moses' sister Miriam, and ends with the death of his brother Aaron.
Of course, this brother and sister were not the only ones to die in the wilderness. After the events of Numbers chapters 13 and 14, when the people rebelled against God and didn't believe He was big enough to give them victory in the Promised Land, God made a decision that no one over the age of 20 would enter and settle in the land; He told the people that they would wander for forty years in the desert, that most of them would die there, and that He would wait for a new generation to grow up and claim His promises of a land flowing with milk and honey.
It seems so sad. People like Moses, Miriam and Aaron had been part of the Exodus from Egypt, but they never got to the point of taking the Promised Land. That whole generation, with only a few exceptions, experienced the exhilaration of being set free, but they never really progressed to the lifestyle of living in freedom. And I suppose it's like that for many Christians today: they're "saved," but their attitudes, unbelief and old ways of thinking prevent them from entering into the fullness of what God has for them. Their whole Christian experience ends up being sort of second best, something less than what God would have wanted for them.
The case of Moses and Aaron is particularly sad. Each of them died on a mountain top in the desert (Aaron on Mount Horeb, pictured above, and Moses on Mount Nebo when they were so close to entering the Promised Land) because of what happened in Numbers chapter 20, when they disobeyed God's instructions about how to get drinking water from the rock for the people. The reason given in that chapter is that they didn't trust God enough and so they failed to demonstrate His holiness to others.
Aaron dies with dignity, on that mountain top in God's presence... and there's no doubt that those who have committed their lives to Christ will also be with the Lord when they die. But how sad if that mountain top is in the desert and they never go far enough to experience all of God's wonderful promises before they go to be with Him!
What a challenge that is to let go of our unbelief and our old ways of thinking, so that we can embrace the new life that God wants us to have.
