The Round Church

at St Andrew the Great

Cambridge

A Sermon Preached

on Sunday 12th January 2003

by Mark Ashton

Judges 1:1-2:5 A Snare to the People

It’s a new book and a new series today, so we need a quick reminder of the Bible story so far. We’re going to do this visually and pretty quickly.

The Bible, as you know, starts with Creation, (Genesis chapter 1, Adam in the Garden, and so on), and then in Genesis chapter 12 we get to Abraham who had these great promises made to him by God – including the promise of Canaan, the land where God’s people will dwell under God’s rule. Abraham is followed by the Patriarchs; and then, eventually, a famine (at the end of Genesis) which causes them to move to Egypt, where they eventually find themselves in slavery. After some four centuries there, Moses is born, the Exodus takes place (second book of the Bible) and after 40 years in the wilderness (covered in the books of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy) they reach the Promised Land. That is followed by the conquest of it, under Joshua, the previous book before Judges. Then we get the Judges, and in due course we come on to the Kings. So that’s the Bible story so far.

If you knew that already, you probably then also know that Judges is an earthy, violent and fairly puzzling book. As we read it we need to keep reminding ourselves that the Bible is God speaking about God. It is not primarily cautionary tales about human behaviour. It would be hard to use Samson, for example, with his obsession with sex, violence and hair length, as a model for Christian behaviour. It clearly isn’t that. Although his story will have plenty to teach us about God. And we’ll get there in a few weeks.

So, as we read these historical narratives we will need to keep asking ourselves What is this story from Israel’s history teaching me about the Creator God and how He has saved men and women?

I’ve picked three points to guide us through today’s passage. The first of them may sound a little odd – the sort of topic you would expect from a Dalek in a Dr Who episode.

1) The Importance of Extermination

At the beginning of the book of Judges we find the people of Israel in the middle of a campaign to exterminate the inhabitants of the promised land: ‘After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites [the portmanteau name for all the tribes living in the promised land, the land of Canaan]?” ’ (Judges 1:1). Now this had been planned long before. Back in Deuteronomy chapter 7 it says: ‘When the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your sons away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God’ (Deuteronomy 7:2-6a).

We need to remember that these Canaanites were not innocent. Long, long before, in Canaan, when God was making those first promises to Abraham (back in Genesis 15), He had said to Abraham “ … your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16). The Amorites were one of the tribal groupings within Canaan. So now their sin had reached its full measure. God had waited over centuries for this moment. The book of Leviticus lists some of their detestable practices, including child sacrifice (burning their children in the fire to the god Molech), and sexual intercourse with animals. The book of Leviticus predicted that the land itself would vomit out its inhabitants when they reached that level of depravity (Leviticus 18:24-25); it would throw them up and vomit them out. So, in one sense, this conquest was an act of Judgment on those Canaanite inhabitants, just as much as it was the fulfilment of a gracious promise to the Israelites, the people of God. To quote from Deuteronomy again: “After the Lord your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’ No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is going to drive them out before you” (Deut. 9:4).

Let’s consider (here in Judges chapter 1) this chap Adoni-Bezek:

‘It was there that they found Adoni-Bezek and fought against him, putting to rout the Canaanites and Perizzites. Adoni-Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and big toes. Then Adoni-Bezek said, “Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off have picked up scraps under my table. Now God has paid me back for what I did to them.” They brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there” (Judges 1:5-7).

While that Canaanite ruler accepted the justice of the treatment he received from the Israelites, we may miss the full extent of his own depravity and cruelty, until we consider more carefully the scene at his dinner table. Look again at verse 7. If you cut off a man’s thumbs, you don’t just stop him holding a weapon of war: a sword, a spear, a bow. It means he cannot even feed himself with dignity (think of Sunday lunch, with no thumbs) particularly if he is competing for scraps under your table with 69 other similarly crippled men. Adoni-Bezek had made his captives look like monkeys in the zoo at feeding time. It must have been a degrading and revolting sight – which may have entertained Adoni-Bezek and his court. But it angered God!

This civilisation was not innocent and it now faced God’s judgment. We are here (in Judges 1) concerned with the second stage of that operation, because in the book of Joshua we can read how the land was initially taken in a sort of Blitzkrieg campaign by Joshua himself. We are now concerned with the possessing of the territory, the settlement following the Blitzkrieg, as they move in and occupy what they’ve already conquered. And it was at this stage that the Israelites’ obedience to God’s instructions came unstuck. In an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease, it is one thing to isolate and quarantine an infected farm; but it is quite another thing to kill and burn every cow, sheep and pig on that farm. But that you have to do, if the disease is to be contained and the countryside is to be freed from it. I am no biologist or medic, but if you’re sterilising a surgical instrument I know there is all the difference in the world between the proper process of sterilisation and a quick wipe with a J Cloth. God knew what measures were necessary for His special people to occupy this land safely. It had to be sterilised. So dangerous was its spiritual infection that every former inhabitant was to be exterminated. Ultimately we see just how evil, evil is; and just how far God will go to exterminate evil – not in these Old Testament stories, but in the death of His own Son, Jesus, on the cross. And if we think it strange that God should wipe out the Canaanites, we need to think more about what He did to Jesus at Calvary. That is where we can fully understand God’s response to human evil. But Israel thought they knew better about what should be done to these corrupt Canaanites.

2) The Danger of Cohabitation/Contamination

Notice the warning bells ringing in verse 19: ‘The Lord was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.’ And again in verse 21: ‘The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem.’ And then the repeated pattern in verses 27-32: ‘ … did not drive out …’ and notice the escalating result: at first it is Canaanites being permitted to live on among Israelites (e.g. verse 29). But then it is expressed as Israelites living among Canaanites (v. 33). And eventually Israelites being confined by Canaanites (v. 34).

Now, the Israelites had been given clear instructions as to how they should proceed: it was to be a complete extermination – let me again quote from what God had already said to them: “My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. Do not bow down before their gods or worship them or follow their practices. You must demolish them and break their sacred stones to piece” (Exodus 23:23-24). Those are clear instructions; but notice what follows: “But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land” (Ex. 23:29, 30). It would take time. They were to expect it to be gradual. But they must not compromise: “Do not make a covenant with them or with their gods. Do not let them live in your land, or they will cause you to sin against me, because the worship of their gods will certainly be a snare to you” (Ex. 23:33).

It was compromise, not military failure that was Israel’s undoing. Look at Judges 1:28, ‘When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labour but never drove them out completely.’ Eventually they were able to subjugate these indigenous people, but they settled for forced labour (you’ll see that comes in verses 30, 33, 35 as well), rather than what God had said (i.e. extermination or expulsion). They came to an agreement with them. It was more convenient to have a cheap labour force available: very conducive, no doubt, to a pleasant, luxurious standard of living for the average Israelite household. No need for any Israelite to hew wood or carry water. Cheap Canaanite labour was available for that.

If they had maintained their original policy, the Israelites would, in time, have achieved God’s purpose for them. It was a matter of persevering in obedience. Instead they decided to shift the goalposts. It was not military defeat that forced this on them: it was deliberate spiritual compromise. Notice the verdict of the angel of the Lord in the next chapter: ‘The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. I said I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars. Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this?” ’ (Judges 2:1, 2). They had disobeyed God by doing things their own way instead of His way. As far as they were concerned, God’s judgment on the Canaanites was too harsh. The Israelites were wiser, they were more balanced, more tolerant than that. As far as they were concerned there was a perfectly viable middle way: to subjugate, yes, but not eliminate; to enslave, yes, but not to expel. They preferred negotiation and compromise to broker up a win/win deal for both sides, rather than the stark absolutism of the will of God. We hear the same ‘wise’ voices today – telling us, for example, that faith in the one God can be expressed in a multi-faith service; that it is quite possible to worship the gods of Hinduism and the God of Islam and the one Creator God in the same service. Well, such activities must present a distorted and false picture of God. They are what the Bible calls idolatry.

The Israelites had no idea what they were dealing with. They were like a surgeon who decides, in the middle of a cancer operation, that he’ll only remove a part of the cancer, because even cancer has a right to grow and find fulfilment. There was a far greater threat here to the wellbeing of God’s people than any military risk from these continuing enclaves of Canaanite people. It was the threat of spiritual disease, of idolatry, of the worship of other gods, that would attack their relationship with God – and so the very wellspring of their national life. But they did not see this. We human beings never can. We can see the iron chariots arrayed against us, but we cannot see what Paul calls the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. To know about them we have to hear about them in God’s word and to believe what He is telling us and to act upon it. He alone can defend us from them; and woe betide us if we seek in our own strength to negotiate with them.

See where Israel ended up: “Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you” (2:3). Since they did not want to get rid of the Canaanites, God let them have the Canaanites. Notice that their actions had changed the context of their lives: from a Canaanite-free environment to a Canaanite-infested environment. And living with Canaanites would become worshipping with Canaanites. If we don’t want to be rid of our enemies, God will leave us with our enemies and they will prey on us. So we need to ask ourselves whether faith in the living and true God is what shapes our lives and our thinking; or has our approach, for example, to education (our own or our children’s), to our physical health and to medicine, to our possessions and our money, actually been dictated by ideas culled from all sorts of other sources – including our own selfishness and rank paganism? If we don’t want to be rid of ideas that are enemies of God, then God will leave us with them and they will prey upon us.

But the words of the angel in chapter 2, you will have noticed, did not fall on deaf ears. So we are going to consider the last two verses of our passage: chapter 2, verses 4 and 5.

3) Weeping over Sin, or Rejoicing in God?

‘When the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, and they called that place Bokim [which means ‘weepers’]. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord’ (2:4, 5). There was a tearful response. But I’m afraid the rest of the book of Judges is going to suggest that there was not much more to it than that (as we shall see in following Sundays). They wept aloud, they offered sacrifices, but they didn’t drive out the Canaanites. They may have revived their religion with these sacrifices, but they did not revise their lives. Hearts often melt in religious gatherings, but sadly they often harden again very quickly. I sometimes wonder if it happens to us on the walk between this building and where we’ve parked our cars, or back to the Porter’s Lodge. Great thoughts come, sometimes, while we’re sitting under the word of God: great thoughts that would change our lives. But they don’t last through the streets on either side of this building. Resolutions made at a church service often last only a few minutes. Martyn Lloyd Jones, the great preacher of the last century, used to say of his first congregations in Wales: “It is very easy to make a Welshman cry, but it needs an earthquake to make him change his mind!”

But, let’s face it, if a gathering like this doesn’t change us, surely we are wasting our time in this building now, aren’t we? If it doesn’t have any effect on us, what are we doing here now? Would we not all agree that the feelings we have while we are together in this building (whether they are painful because we’re challenged, or pleasurable because we’re comforted) are less important than what happens in our lives once we have left this building? And so what in these verses can change our lives this week?

The Israelites wept, but did not change. I can’t see any of us weeping here at the moment, but that doesn’t make me despair of the fact that some of us may still change as we let God’s word loose in our lives.

I want to speculate a little, as we finish, on how the Israelites reached this point of tearful disobedience. They were weeping … but they weren’t going to drive out the Canaanites – tearful disobedience. And I guess it was because they had come to focus more on the Canaanites than on God. It’s not difficult to imagine. From being a nomadic people in the desert, they’ve just moved into this wonderful land that God has promised is theirs. New surroundings, new agriculture, new culture and new tasks faced them. And these must have demanded their attention. And the God they had come to know so well in the wilderness faded from their attention. So when they wanted to know how to treat these Canaanites, who they were now face to face with, eyeball to eyeball with, living alongside, they looked not to God but at the Canaanites themselves. And that is never the way to sort out our problems in the spiritual life. The solution never lies in the problems themselves. It lies with God. To keep a marriage healthy, it is no good getting obsessed with the potential threats to the marriage: career, busyness, an alternative partner . . . You have to work at the marriage itself: at loving your wife as she should be loved. Husbands and wives, we need to remember that! The issue for us is never primarily, How can I cope with my own sin? How can I cope with temptation? The issue is How do I love and obey God? It is a positive and not a negative issue. There is a place for tears and repentance; but that must not be the end of the story. There must also be a rejoicing in God’s redemptive purposes for us. These Israelites certainly were meant to be very distressed at the Canaanite people, but they were also meant to seize the purposes of God and occupy the land as He had told them to, keeping their eyes on Him.

We may look back on our lives with sadness at our sin, and I think we all should certainly do that. But we also look on with joy to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. One lesson that is going to emerge clearly from this Book of Judges, as we study it, will be the people’s need for a leader if they are to thrive spiritually. And if we in church this morning are believers (and I accept that what I have been saying this morning is primarily for those of us who already know and love Jesus) then we have just the leader that we need – in Jesus Christ. The way forward in the Christian life is always a positive way: looking at what He is calling us to do, and doing it – not being obsessed with the problems, the difficulties and the sins.

It is true that from now on the Canaanites would always be a fact of life for the Israelites. They will always be close at hand from now on. But ultimately, Israel’s safety had never depended on the absence of the Canaanites, on the absence of any stress. It had depended on the presence of God. You and I have evil forces present at the deepest levels of our personality, let alone out there in the culture and in society preying and pressing upon us. But our safety does not lie in identifying and eradicating them. Our safety lies in God, who alone can do that.

Forgive me one more medical analogy as I close (I have checked this one out with an ex-doctor): I believe there are certain harmful organisms like streptococci bacteria that are always present in the human body. They are probably in all our mouths at this moment. There are dangerous organisms permanently present in the human body. We cannot eradicate them from our systems – however long we gargle with Listerine. But while we are in good health they will not harm us. And the way to guard ourselves against them is to protect our health, to keep healthy and strong: sleep, exercise, eat healthily. But that’s how we keep streptococci at bay, apparently.

Well, sin will always harm us to some degree, but the way to protect ourselves against it is to rejoice in God and in His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. That’s why I’ve called this final point Rejoicing in God, more than just Weeping over Sin. It’s going a little bit beyond where today’s passage takes us, but I hope if you stay with us as we work our way through Judges, you will learn great things about God from it. If you’ve been particularly puzzled by today (maybe you’ve come as a guest or a visitor, and this is pretty new to you and you think, ‘I don’t think what Mark is saying is the least bit relevant to me really. It sounds interesting, but I can’t relate to it in my own experience’), can I encourage you to come at least one more time? Next Sunday morning our preacher will be Jonathan Fletcher, who 34 years ago led me to Christ. And he’s going to be explaining the gospel very simply, from the next passage of Judges. I’d love you to come back and hear him then, at the Guest Service next Sunday morning at 11.30am, and if you want to bring a friend with you, please do so.

(All scripture quoted is from the New International Version of the Bible unless otherwise stated.)