Othniel
Notes
Transcript
Exegetical Point:
Homiletic Point:
Intro
Intro
Where do you turn in times of trouble? Your first port of call is probably your highest allegiance.
Do you turn to yourself? “I can only trust myself, I have to knuckle down and fix this”
Do you turn to another human, like your spouse or friend, or even an adult child? “They’ll sort it out.”
Do you turn to substances? Food, booze, narcotics? Or activities, hobbies, TV/movies, games to drown out the problems and escape the trouble we face?
Who is your deliverer of choice?
Children, when you have difficulty what do you do? Hopefully you go to your parents, God has given them to you to care and protect you! But you know what? While your parents are God’s gift to help you in your early years, as you grow older, your dependence on your parents should be replaced by a dependence on God. They will help you follow Jesus and trust him!
We serve God first, and look to him for help first. God has given us many good things to help us, like friends and parents and food and drink, we should thank God and use all the helps he has put around us, but the question is about what is your priority. What are you dedicated to above all else?
We must serve God first, and look to him for help first.
At least we should. Sadly that is not the pattern for many of us. We serve God sometimes (when it’s convenient) and we only turn to him when our own attempts at fixing things have failed.
We treat God like a “get out of jail free” card. We treat him like Santa - Yes please, give me the good stuff, but go away and leave me alone once you’re done.
This is how Israel treated God over their generations. Time after time, God provides deliverance for them, but they forget God, and get back to their own concerns. Then when trouble comes along, they will try every which way to solve it, except turning to God.
In the book of Judges, there is a perpetual cycle of God’s people forgetting God, turning away from Him, and rejecting Him. So God gives them a taste of life without his blessing, he gives them over to their chosen life, and they suffer greatly. But what is interesting is how long it takes for them to turn back to God, first it is 8, then it is 18, then 20, then 7, each time they spend years under oppression before they turn to God!
How slow we are to remember the power of our God! How slow we are to turn to God for deliverance!
Try to cover 1 Judge per week, but a couple are really short, and some a really long!
This week we’re covering the first judge Othniel, but before we get there we have to cover the introduction to the pattern of Judges.
This section, with Othniel as the supreme example at the end, gives the overview of everything that follows.
Abandon God, get what you Seek.
Abandon God, get what you Seek.
Joshua lead early conquest. Job not finished when he died.
The generation that followed didn’t follow God. The did not know Him.
What does that look like?
They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.
They abandoned YHWH, their deliverer.
But we are natural worshipers, they turned to the Baals and Asherah
Canaanite gods.
Baal - literally “Lord” or master described a number of gods. These could be local deities over a certain area, but there was also one figure known by the name Baal a storm god pursues for rain.
Asherah, ashtoreth, Athirat, - a fertility Goddess, worshiped with a wooden pole. Often side by side with Baal altars. A little like Hera or Juno in other pantheons.
It would have felt natural. There was polytheist religion all over the place, including in Egypt. In the religions of the area there was a chief god known as El, who was connected to Baal & Asherah.
But, that would be like saying Zeus and Jupiter and the God of the Muslims is kind of like YHWH. Yes there may be some common characteristics ascribed to them but that doesn’t mean we can start mixing them together.
There are glimmers of truth in other religions, but this is because they are in a world made by God, even their false worship and doctrine will at points reflect reality.
But syncretism is never an option. It is the LORD your God you shall fear, Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear, You shall not go after other gods (Dt 6:13–14).
These false religions, and their practices (including things like child sacrifice), were meant to be driven out of the land to make a holy place for God and His people to dwell together. Instead we have the Israelites becoming more Canaanite!
Do not mix the worship of God with anything else! It may seem harmless, but it’s not. It may feel overly scrupulous that we are so guarded about worship, but it is for good reason!
Look at the way that idolatry has crept into the ancient churches with icons,
look at the way therapeutic deism has pervaded many seeker sensitive churches,
look at the way healthy nationalism - love of country can give way to idolatrous nationalism that takes over churches.
Look at the way compassion and grace have become gods in churches that will not speak on sin or of God’s judgement. They create an idol that cannot save them and then tell everybody that god just loves them and there’s nothing to worry about. They cover over the pit of hell with sticks and straw, then invite unsuspecting travelers to walk over it saying “there’s nothing down there, don’t worry about it!”.
We are not immune brothers and sisters! I do not point the finger to all of the stuff out there as if we sit aloof from it all. If we are better off, it is only by the grace of God! And we must take care to root out idolatry among us. We live like the Israelites, people of God surrounded by false worship. There is an ever present temptation to take the society that we live in, and marry it to the ageless faith. And the sign that that is happening is that the popular trends of society start to be acceptable among God’s people. Let’s ask God to show us where we have syncretised, when we have mixed the One True faith in Jesus Christ with worldly rubbish. Be careful where you look for spiritual guidance.
Calvin famously said that the heart is an idol factory - though we throw down every idol around us, our own heart can deceive us. We need God to sanctify us and teach us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth!
Coming back to Judges, They Gave up God, so God gave them a taste of what is like to be without him. Though he never left them!
In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.
God’s anger - yes we’ve spoken about it three times in three weeks, but that’s because it is a concept we need to get our head around. It is all through the scriptures!
The love of God and the grace of God only make sense in light of his anger toward sin.
In God’s anger, HE gave them. God is the one in control, who hands the people over for a time. God is not absent, but he seems distant.
Like a stubborn child, who doesn’t want to leave home. (tells story, my mum leaving me behind, child leaving home to hide under the stairs). We got a taste, so when the realty of the situation hit home, we turned back.
God disciplines his people because he loves them. He lets them experience some trials and sufferings for our good.
Our distress reveals our need.
God hands his people over, its as through he says “here, you wish to cut yourself off from me, have a taste”. It is oppression, not freedom to reject God (counter to what the word says!). It is oppression and slavery under Satan, Sin & Death.
Sin is enslavement - God gives people over to their sin, but he saves his people!
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
God provides Deliverance, quickly forgotten.
God provides Deliverance, quickly forgotten.
So although the people are handed over for a time, God delivers them! He provides judges for them.
When you hear “Judge” think chieftain. They’re local folks who rise up and win military victories, and will decide local disputes. Not like a court judge over the whole country.
Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
God is kind! Although he has anger toward the sin of his people, and although he brings judgment, he is kind and will not chide them forever. He hears the cries of the broken and distressed and he acts. He delivers!
Yet this is quickly forgotten. A generation later and they are worse off that before. They do experience deliverance from their enemies, but they are not delivered from their own wayward hearts! They and we need salvation not merely from external danger, but from the trouble that come from our own sinful heart!
God provides deliverance in Jesus, and his spirit changes hearts!
But do not depart from this truth!
Galatians 1:6–8 (ESV)
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— … even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
Be faithful to the Gospel, no syctrtistic gospel - with Jesus + Jewish tradition, Jesus + culture, jesus + sabbath keeping, Jesus + another prophet.
Don’t forget the Deliverance of God through Jesus Christ, like the seed who had the news snatched away, or the seed that withered, or the seed that grew up and was choked out by worldly cares.
God tests for Obedience.
God tests for Obedience.
The handing over of Israel was not only disciplinary consequences, it was for testing and building resilience.
These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience):
They needed opportunities to learn war (spiritual war).
God gives them tests to build them and prepare them.
God uses even the worst trials to shape us for future good.
Even now we are tested-
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.
(but no entrapment - God doesn’t tempt)
Othniel: The Good Template
Othniel: The Good Template
Othniel the template. All that follow will be compared to him. Great bloke.
Verse by verse
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.
Familiar, we covered this before!
Sold them. God’s doing.
Cushan-rishathaim = Cushan the Doubly Evil, Cushan of the Two Crimes. Mesopotamia, north-east.
Subject - who knows, forced taxes, tribute, labour, etc.
But when they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, who saved them.
Turned to God for help. They knew they couldn’t do it!
The Spirit of the Lord came on him, so that he became Israel’s judge and went to war. The Lord gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel, who overpowered him.
The result?
So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.
God raised up a deliverer for us, the strength of God.
We can’t save ourselves!
Jesus is our deliverer! He gives us rest. And not just in eternity, he is able to deliver from our present problems too (but still not a sugar daddy).
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
Where have you set your hope for deliverance?
So What?
So What?
Drive home conclusion
When we abandon God, we get what we seek.
Don’t mix in other religious stuff with GOd.
God provides deliverance, and Don’t forget it!
God tests our faith, for our good!
Ou deliver who gives us rest is Jesus Christ!
Sad, dark book. It gives a sense of hopelessness because of the continual rebellion of God’s people. But, it shows time and time again that God will deliver his people, and this book gives us a hunger for a deliverer who will never die and give us eternal rest.