Gooding, David: 6 - Q and A

Now the present session was always going to be a short one, but now it's going to be a very short one. An excellent time for you, if you will, uh, to make further contributions to the study of Judges, if it is so in your mind. Anyone Any one. bursting just at the moment to add any? Yeah. Mine is more of a question. I'm wondering, I noticed that the first two chapters you mentioned were two introductions at the end of the book. There's, uh, also two stories that conclude the book, but I'm wondering why were these stories chosen as an introduction? Why is it, why are they used out of the book of Joshua repeated? And how does it flow with the literary form of the book? Oh yes, uh, thank you very much, uh, for the observation. As I have indicated, not all would agree, there are two introductions to the book. One is begun with the words, came to pass after the death of Joshua, that's chapter one verse one, and then the second one begins with chapter two verse six, now when Joshua had sent the people away. First one, uh, uh, indicates the initial stages. So it has the Israelites asking, uh, who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And that is not now as the united armies, but as individual tribes. And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. Uh, you may have remembered that in the book of Joshua, it is Judah that is first given its inheritance, you'll see. Uh, then the other tribes went up. You've got Judah going up, and Simeon his brother went with Judah in verse three and they have a, a account given of a king Adoni-bezek and so forth, and what happened to him, and so forth and so on, and some of the other tribes. Repeated is the story of Caleb. You get it in Joshua, uh, and now you get it again in the book of Judges. I is that, I think that is one of the things you're asking about, why it is a repeated. I think that it is like, if you, uh, compare broad comparisons, only a broad comparison, but the gospel, uh, uh, uh, uh, of Matthew has a lot of stories that the gospel of Luke has. Why does Luke bother to tell them if Matthew's already told them? Because now Luke is taking those same stories, but the context in which he puts them is different. And stories have meaning according to their context. I wonder if I could illustrate that from, uh, uh, an English story. And this is absolutely true because I made it up. This story concerns a certain Mr. Jones. Now, Mr. Jones was an office manager, you'll see. And it came to pass in the office where Mr. Jones worked, there was Mr. Jones himself, the office manager, there was a secretary, and there was an office boy. The works doctor examined all three and advised them that they must take up physical exercise for the sake of their health. The office boy took up football. The secretary took up tennis. And Mr. Jones was to be seen every weekend riding his bicycle around the leafy suburbs of London. Now there's the little story. Every weekend, Mr. Jones was to be seen riding his bicycle around the leafy suburbs of London. You got that story? I'm going to tell you that story again, you see. I shall keep the same words, but perhaps then you'll see the point of the story changes. In the first story, the fact that Mr. Jones was to be seen every weekend riding his bicycle around the leafy suburbs of London gives it as his answer to the question of the need for physical exercise, yes? Second story. In the bicycle club to which Mr. Jones belonged, there was a cabinet that had all the silverware of the prizes and the awards that had been offered to members of the club over the years, you'll see. If you look more closely at the name inscribed on this silverware as those to whom it had been presented, you would have seen that on the majority of cases, the name was that of Miss. Jones. And if you only asked why that was so, the answer could be that Mr. Jones, every weekend, Mr. Jones was to be seen riding his bicycle around the leafy suburbs of London. Which the story, the same story, exact same words, now gives you the reason why he captured most of the prizes in the cycling club. Of course, it doesn't contradict the meaning that the story had at the first instance, was the need that Mr. Jones had for physical exercise. Same story in a different context tells you how he came to win so many prizes. I'm going to put the same story in a different context. Mrs. Jones repeatedly asked her husband would he at least spend one weekend a month with her and the children. But every weekend, Mr. Jones was to be seen riding his bicycle around the leafy suburbs of London. Mrs. Jones sued for divorce. It's the same story, gentlemen. I didn't alter it. I've not cooked the books. This is the same story. But you see, the sheer fact is, little man though Mr. Jones was, his behavior had significance at more than one level. His little doings were multi-significant. If that, if that is true about Mr. Jones, of course it is infinitely more true about the sayings and doings of our blessed Lord. Matthew will take one incident and put it in one context, and context will bring to light some of the meaning and significance of it. Luke or or or Mark will put it in a slightly different context, if need be. They're not cooking the books any more than I was with Mr. Jones, but they bring out context, brings out meaning. So part of the answer, sir, why does the story of Caleb appear twice, once in Joshua and once here? Because of the context will give it its special meaning in this particular part, yes? So that might help a little bit in, uh, what, uh, why you have the same story repeated. As to the, uh, uh, thought of the, the, what I would call the thought flow through the passage, what goes with what, and the subject that begins, where does it end for the time being? I would argue that the story that, uh, comes in chapter two, verses one to five, the coming of the angel of the Lord up from Gilgal to Bochim, with the Lord's protest about their unsatisfactory progress in entering into their inheritance, that is the comment, the climactic comment upon what has gone before in chapter one. That is what the angel of the Lord is commenting upon. And there, of course, it, uh, the, in the comment, it ends in tears, as you see. Now, the second introduction from verse six onward, now when Joshua had sent the people away, they went every man into his inheritance. Uh, now you get, uh, are going to get not the succession of tribes so much, uh, and what they did in their individual attempts to go into their inheritance, but rather the difference in the generations after Joshua. This is concerned with those start with the elders and people that knew Joshua, lived in his day, and had seen all the great works, you'll see. But when Joshua died and they buried him, then the generation followed, uh, do you see, the same contemporaries of Joshua died and were gathered to their fathers. There rose another generation after them that didn't know the Lord by personal experience, nor yet the work which he had wrought for Israel. You'll see. Now this is going to, uh, say what happened in the succeeding generations, which is rather a different topic from the one that the first introduction deals with. Do you see the, at least the point, uh, or I'm try beginning to make at any rate. Does that make sense to you? Hello? You just mentioned in the chapter two verse one, the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Boq. Mm-hmm. Uh, I've always wondered about that verse, why he came from Gilgal. Mm-hmm. Significance, does that say he came from heaven? He was in Gilgal the last time when we saw the angel of the Lord, uh, with his sword drawn was twenty six years ago, Yes. roughly. Do you have an answer to that? Oh, I think, uh, you see, Gilgal was the base camp from which they set- set out, you see, and hence for some time a lot of the people would still be in Gilgal, but anyway, the angel of the Lord comes from where they'd started out and follows them now as to, uh, and complains against, uh, how poorly they have carried out what their commission was. They would have started out from there to go into their territories. At least the Judahites would and the Josephites would. According to Joshua, their distribution was done at Gilgal, whereas for the seven tribes remained, their distribution was later done at Shiloh, when the, uh, tent of meeting was set up in Shiloh, and their, uh, distribution was done from there. It didn't all happen at once. Mm-hmm. Yes. So have I answered, uh, this good man here? Just let me make sure I've answered his question. You had a second part to your questions, sir? No. No? Okay. Righto. Yes. I was gonna say in relation, in relation to the gentleman's question about the, uh, why the angel came up from one place to the other, it's a reminder perhaps of where Israel had come from as well. Well, surely is. A place of where they cut the flesh off, in a sense, Mm. to a place called Bochim, which means Yes. Yes. Well, gentlemen, if you, uh, uh, uh, uh, knew a little bit more about me, you see. After the sessions, you could come in very kindly fashion, put your hand on my shoulder and say, Gooding, you remember where you started out? And with all your intentions and motivations and ambitions spiritually. What happened to this ambition, goodie? You don't seem to have made a lot of progress along that line in all these years. And what happened to this other? Taking you back to the point where you started can sometimes be a healthy thing. One mustn't dwell upon it too much to become, uh, unhealthy, but it can be a healthy thing to think of what we aimed at and what we felt were sound principles. Did you, did we find out they weren't sound principles and abandoned them? Or is it that they were sound principles, but we have lost our grip on them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You, sir, in a red shirt there somewhere. Sir, do you see a, um, the blessings from Jacob to his, uh, sons and then from Moses to his tribes, to the tribes, do you see that being played out in the book of Jos- uh, Judges in what way? Oh, I think that's a very useful question, uh, you'll see. How, if at all, those blessings, uh, relate to what happened in the book of Joshua and then in the book of Judges? I haven't myself made a detailed study of it, but I think it would be a very worthwhile study to do, you see. If you were inclined to to s- make suggestions, I would be very interested to hear it, you see. As far as I can see, the uh, the address of Jacob on his deathbed to his twelve sons was a rather different thing from the, uh, blessings of Moses. You'll see that Moses uttered before he left the people. The address of Jacob to his sons tells, uh, talks to some of those sons in very blunt language. You'll see. And Jacob is perhaps conscious, as he blesses them, that in front of them is a God-given destiny, but they had come very near in the last chapters of Genesis to ruining that thing completely. Because... in Abram, Abram had two sons, and God chose Isaac and not Ishmael, and Ishmael had to be sent away. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. God chose one of them, Jacob, and Esau had to be sent away. Jacob had twelve sons, and now comes the difference. On the question of choosing one and sending the other eleven away. The problem was the very opposite. How did you get these twelve sons to live together as the beginning of an extended family, and therefore as the beginning of a nation? Unless those sons could be got to live together, there never would be a nation. And that was presumably what exercised Jacob on his deathbed, because in these last few years they had ha- acted with hideous deception of their father. Their treatment of Joseph, out of jealousy, uh, uh, for Joseph, doubtless, but was a sin against the father, Jacob. And they brought, uh, Joseph's coat, stained it with the blood of an animal, and in their deceit said to his dad, I think you better examine this coat. Uh, what, what, what do you think this coat is? Jacob sees that it's his son's coat, Joseph's coat. A wild beast has bedard him. I often wonder whether Jacob really believed that bit. In the end, because of their misbehavior and the providences of God in preserving Joseph and making him ruler in Egypt, poor old Jacob had to let go of three of his sons. Joseph, he said, thinking it were true, is no longer alive. Simeon is away in this prison in Egypt. That's two sons gone, and now you're going to take Benjamin from me. That's three sons gone. That's a quarter of his family. And all through the hideous jealousies and, uh, uh, and uh, uh, uh, strife of the twelve boys. Of course, it was resolved. Joseph wasn't dead. And the nation, uh, the family, the extended family was preserved, and Jacob lived to see it, and to see the glory of his son Joseph, and his own glory. Because Jacob was brought introduced to Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and without contradiction, the less is blessed by the greater. But what of the future? Would those boys now settle down and agree together, be reconciled, and become a nation. Would they carry on their disputes and destroy the nation before it had time to get going? So I think it is that perhaps that accounts for some of Jacob's language to those boys. They were destined to glory, but some of them needed to be licked into shape before that time came. Whereas Moses' address on the verge of, uh, on the verge of Jordan, the entrance into the land, seems to me to begin to talk about the various districts where those tribes would be placed and the benefits that would accrue to them in that part of their inheritance. But that's only vague surmising on my part. Thank you for the stimulus to do some more thinking. Someone down here? Sir, uh, uh, there's one behind you, sir, and then you in the green shirt next. Um, in the detail this, I noticed Ehud made this dagger. He did, yes. It was a two-edged Yeah. dagger. Yes. And in, in dealing with warfare, as you suggested, the Moabite, that we have to first deal with it in ourselves. And then I was wondering if there was a link with the word of God, living and operative, sharper than any two-edged sword, and the fine distinction between bone and marrow and soul and spirit. Yes. That we meet, uh, more today in persons that need help. Oh, well, thank you very much for the observation, yes, the two, a two-edged sword is a metaphor frequent in the, uh, in the scripture, isn't it? And you find it with our Lord, a two-edged sword going out of his mouth in his judgment. A two-edged sword, of course, is is, as far as I understand, very important in practical things. If you're going to, uh, push a sword through, uh, Aegon's belly, for instance, one side is sharp and the other isn't sharp, it's going to be difficult. They both need to be sharp. But we do, as you say, need a balance. The Word of God is sharp, it's two-edged sword, and can divide between this, that, and the other. It's its sharpness, uh, uh, and ability to detect truth from error and so forth and so on, and good motives from bad motives, uh, that is the point of the metaphor. I think the metaphor is quite extensive. Yes. And you, sir, in the green shirt? Yes, I just wanted to come in on the analogy you brought in in the very beginning of the conference, or is that how the vicious circle keeps repeating itself, or it comes back around full circle. Mm-hmm. And that analogy about the sons of, of uh, Jacob and how he finally deals with his own son is another illustration of the cycle of man. Mm-hmm. How the differences. Mm-hmm. And all the, uh, different things creep in when we do not have faith and worship one God in unity. Mm-hmm. And strength. Mm-hmm. Through the spirit. Mm-hmm. How that leads man to worship idols. It does indeed. And that vicious circle just keeps going and going, so, um, the value of these, uh, chapters in the Old Testament is just the history of what do we do with our present generations and our future generations. Mm-hmm. What do we pass on? Mm-hmm. We pass on the same analogy of, well, you're gonna have a downfall, you're gonna have the, uh, you know, theologies, uh, creep in that are gonna break apart the true faith in God. Mm-hmm. And then fall into worshiping false gods, making compromise. I think the analogy of the day is compromise. Mm-hmm. When it comes to the word of God, in the truth, there is no compromise. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So another brother brought up the fact that how so many churches today are falling away from the truth and allowing all kinds of idolatry and different practices to creep in. It's the same vicious circle coming back to fold again. Mm-hmm. And why we need to be strong. Mm-hmm. For not only ourselves, but our families and our future generations. Yes. What legacy are we going to pass on? Yes. This is fruit for the heart and the years for us to feed upon, and it always has been when we fall upon or lay upon the word of God. That is very true, sir, very, very true. That is very, very true, and is one of the lessons of this particular part of Just- Judges, isn't it? Uh, it is the fact, if one looks at history, that God has not always done big revivals perpetually. There were great interventions in Egypt. I- uh, Israel was in Egypt for, uh, uh, uh, s- m- more than one century, of course. Some think he was there, they were there for four. It's not recorded that there were any great interpossessions, interpositions of God to deliver them all at once. Then there came the spectacular deliverance under Moses, you'll see, and he led them out of the land. Yeah, but when they refused to go into Kadesh Barnea, then they had to live as nomads in the desert for forty years, getting nowhere. That took a lot of faith on the part of the younger generation. I, uh, uh, in spite of my age, I feel sympathy with young people sometimes. I remember my youth. My parents talked of the great revivals that they had seen in the gospel, uh, around the country and so forth, and beforehand, they weren't happening in my youth. And therefore it was difficult for younger folks who had not seen those stirring events that our parents had witnessed. Very difficult, uh, or more difficult for them to carry on in faith and true to God's word, when, if you pardon the phrase, nothing seemed to be happening. And that is, to me, the lesson of Judges here, and our consideration for the younger folks coming after us. How do we keep them? How do we get across to them the glory of God and the wonder of God, and stimulate their faith against the time when perhaps, who knows, that God may do another great revival amongst the people of God. You see. So, yes, I have great sympathy and agree with you that there is enormous need for us older ones to come alongside the young ones and not merely say, oh, but in our day it was much better, and you've all gone to the dogs. Yes, but you'll see, but to help them in our day and generation, you'll see, by, uh, uh, getting them into the glories of God's word and the realities of God's spirit. I would say another, just one other thing about the idolatry side of it, because I think it's important. Idolatry is, of course, what you love instead of loving God. But a lot of ancient people never loved their idols. Hideous things they were anyway. The trouble was they trusted their idols instead of trusting God. And there is a danger with the people of God. We use all kinds of methods, and we've got to be practical and use methods, and use methods suitable to our day and generation. But if that were to decline into trusting methods, instead of trusting the living God, we would be in peril of becoming very worldly and thinking by organizing the church according to the principles of the Harvard School of Economics and Business Studies, we could guarantee spiritual success. That is not the way, is it? There's a need to get back to faith in the living God, whatever methods he then instructs us and guides us to use. Hello, there's another hand up at the back. Oh, good. There, there's, along with this area that you've been talking about and, uh, commenting also on the discouragement of the young to believe in the reality and not lose the sense of the glory and the wealth of the living God, even when it seems that nothing's happened. Mm-hmm. That track that you went on, and I, I, I think that, that portion in the first introduction of judgment, and that distinction between fighting the enemy or settling into the inheritance, getting the best, yet some could not. Some could not. Ultimately, some wouldn't. Mm. They gave up all hope of doing it and made the allegiance and just settled down with the enemy, as it were. Yeah. My, my point is that I think, number one, that just because we cannot get that complete victory over a certain issue does not mean that we're not pleasing the Lord. Well, that's a very practical thing, sir, and I'm glad you emphasize it, because sometimes preachers throw their congregations into despair and preach as though the preacher himself had attained perfection or near to it, with constant victory. Do you see? That is very often not true anyway. And the Lord knows our weaknesses, and we have a high priest that, that can be touched with the feeling of our infirmity. We need the honesty to say with Paul, not that I have already attained. You see, it wasn't for a ab- a lack of Paul's effort, if you see, that he has to confess, not that I have already attained, but he follows after. That seems to me to sum up the, the, the secret of what you're saying that, uh, you see, the fact that sometimes, strive as we will, we cannot overcome this or that or t other doesn't mean that God has abandoned us. Perhaps it is part of his discipline anyway, Amen. to teach us a greater dependence upon the Lord. Or that we don't please the Lord, or that we are second rate Christians. That's right, yes. Yes, we must do like Paul says, not that I have already attained, but I follow after. Amen. I have found it myself as a youth, when I first began to take God seriously in his word, that I didn't mean that God illuminated every passage I happened to turn to of a Friday afternoon. Sometimes God made me wait a year or two to show me what certain passages of scripture really meant. And among the things that God had to do was to intervene in my circumstances. I was but a youth anyway. Because in circumstances and experiences of life, God brings us to a point where we can see things that we couldn't have seen without that experience. And I have found that an encouraging thing, looking back, if I will persist with God and his word and reading it and the various parts thereof, and be pleased with whatever God shows me, and be willing to persist, even if I find sometimes it's hard going and I don't get anything out of it, well, turn to another passage and work there, but persist in following after the Lord. And the Lord doesn't, uh, is doesn't play false. He will order our circumstances and our conditions so that we are in a position where we can begin to be shown some of the things he has to teach us. But now the time is at ten to six and I'm in grave danger of falling into the hands of some irate manager maybe, and supper was at five forty five.