Back to Judges
Back to Judges
July 12, 2011
I returned to preaching on Judges on Sunday, after a hiatus of a month. I made the decision in June that the dismemberment of the end of Judges 19 and the subsequent battle scenes of Judges 20 were not particularly apposite for a baptismal service and so used that time to start a new series on 1 Timothy.
I have already outlined a number of the challenges faced by the Christian reader or preacher of the book. There are others I have not mentioned: for example, Hebrews 11, where some of the most dubious characters in the Judges narrative are set forth as paradigms of true faith. There is also the problem of where the sermon should terminate. Preaching on Judges 19, one could moralise and make the application `Do not dismember people,' but that would seem rather pointless in most congregations; alternatively, one could apply redemptive historical categories and point from the failure of the judges to Christ. But then how does one avoid preaching basically the same sermon each week? `Well, ladies and gentlemen, this judge failed; so lets spend the last 34 of our 35 sermon minutes talking about Jesus.....' No doubt that would be a true sermon, but after thirty weeks it would be unutterably boring and raise serious questions in the mind of the congregation about why they were paying their minister, when he only seemed to have the one sermon.
The general keys I have tried to use in order to overcome these two temptations are, first, a constant reflection on the fact that the book is about the decline and fall of the people of God. It is not a paradigm of how the world goes to the dogs; it is a sorry tale of how God's people go to the dogs. Second, (and for this insight I am indebted to my colleague, Greg Beale), a careful examination of the different kinds of failure exhibited by the people of God, in order to enrich our contemporary understanding of the different ways God's people can fall.
Coming to the end of Judges 19-20, then, this was my line of attack:
1. Notice the creepy ambiguity of how and when the concubine dies.
2. Notice how the dismembered body forced the tribes to see the consequences of their sin. No polite gloss on rebellion here. The wages of sin in the raw.
3. Notice how selective the Levite is in recounting the tale to the tribes. Is this not typical of how we so often talk, shifting blame from ourselves? And even when we confess sin, do we not usually knock of, say, 20% for good measure, so as not to appear quite so bad?
4. Notice the magnificent tragedy of the united tribes: magnificent, for at last they unite; tragic because there is one tribe missing and the very cause of unity is not opposition to the Canaanites but civil war.
5. Notice how the LORD uses repeated setbacks to drive the Israelites to greater dependence upon him.
This all led to the major applications:
1. Civil war at this point is necessary. So is discipline within the church. As in the times of Paul, so today much of the effort to destroy the gospel is actually exerted from within the church. The church that will not discipline the enemies within has, in effect, signed its own death warrant.
2. Civil war within ourselves is necessary. The old and the new man are pitted against each other in a perennial struggle which will only end at death. Every day the latter needs to be putting the former to death. Only once we acknowledge that we ourselves are the deadliest enemies of the gospel and of our own souls can we then prosecute the war with any effectiveness. To quote lines from the great English poet and classicist A. E. Housman, likening the ancient wars between England and Wales to his own inner conflicts:
In my heart it has not died,
The war that sleeps on Severn side;
They cease not fighting, east and west,
On the marches of my breast.
Here the truceless armies yet
Trample, rolled in blood and sweat;
They kill and kill and never die;
And I think that each is I.
The great news in all this is that, fail as we inevitably will, the proper response to such failure is to rest more and more upon the grace and mercy of God in Christ. As the Israelites eventually came weeping to the ark, so we must lay aside the sin that so easily ensnares and look to Christ, the author and finisher of our salvation, for our strength. And, interestingly enough, that is precisely the application that the author of Hebrews makes as he moves from chapter 11 to chapter 12.
I have already outlined a number of the challenges faced by the Christian reader or preacher of the book. There are others I have not mentioned: for example, Hebrews 11, where some of the most dubious characters in the Judges narrative are set forth as paradigms of true faith. There is also the problem of where the sermon should terminate. Preaching on Judges 19, one could moralise and make the application `Do not dismember people,' but that would seem rather pointless in most congregations; alternatively, one could apply redemptive historical categories and point from the failure of the judges to Christ. But then how does one avoid preaching basically the same sermon each week? `Well, ladies and gentlemen, this judge failed; so lets spend the last 34 of our 35 sermon minutes talking about Jesus.....' No doubt that would be a true sermon, but after thirty weeks it would be unutterably boring and raise serious questions in the mind of the congregation about why they were paying their minister, when he only seemed to have the one sermon.
The general keys I have tried to use in order to overcome these two temptations are, first, a constant reflection on the fact that the book is about the decline and fall of the people of God. It is not a paradigm of how the world goes to the dogs; it is a sorry tale of how God's people go to the dogs. Second, (and for this insight I am indebted to my colleague, Greg Beale), a careful examination of the different kinds of failure exhibited by the people of God, in order to enrich our contemporary understanding of the different ways God's people can fall.
Coming to the end of Judges 19-20, then, this was my line of attack:
1. Notice the creepy ambiguity of how and when the concubine dies.
2. Notice how the dismembered body forced the tribes to see the consequences of their sin. No polite gloss on rebellion here. The wages of sin in the raw.
3. Notice how selective the Levite is in recounting the tale to the tribes. Is this not typical of how we so often talk, shifting blame from ourselves? And even when we confess sin, do we not usually knock of, say, 20% for good measure, so as not to appear quite so bad?
4. Notice the magnificent tragedy of the united tribes: magnificent, for at last they unite; tragic because there is one tribe missing and the very cause of unity is not opposition to the Canaanites but civil war.
5. Notice how the LORD uses repeated setbacks to drive the Israelites to greater dependence upon him.
This all led to the major applications:
1. Civil war at this point is necessary. So is discipline within the church. As in the times of Paul, so today much of the effort to destroy the gospel is actually exerted from within the church. The church that will not discipline the enemies within has, in effect, signed its own death warrant.
2. Civil war within ourselves is necessary. The old and the new man are pitted against each other in a perennial struggle which will only end at death. Every day the latter needs to be putting the former to death. Only once we acknowledge that we ourselves are the deadliest enemies of the gospel and of our own souls can we then prosecute the war with any effectiveness. To quote lines from the great English poet and classicist A. E. Housman, likening the ancient wars between England and Wales to his own inner conflicts:
In my heart it has not died,
The war that sleeps on Severn side;
They cease not fighting, east and west,
On the marches of my breast.
Here the truceless armies yet
Trample, rolled in blood and sweat;
They kill and kill and never die;
And I think that each is I.
The great news in all this is that, fail as we inevitably will, the proper response to such failure is to rest more and more upon the grace and mercy of God in Christ. As the Israelites eventually came weeping to the ark, so we must lay aside the sin that so easily ensnares and look to Christ, the author and finisher of our salvation, for our strength. And, interestingly enough, that is precisely the application that the author of Hebrews makes as he moves from chapter 11 to chapter 12.
