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We begin to read this evening from the book of Judges in chapter four. Chapter four of the book of Judges. And the children of Israel again did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, when Ehud was dead. And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, that reigned in Haththot, the captain of whose host was Sisera, which dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, for he had nine hundred chariots of iron, and twenty years he mightily oppressed the children of Israel.
Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Na- she judged Israel at that time. And she dwelt under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. And she sent and called Barak, the son of Abinoam, out of Kadesh Nachdeli, and said unto him, Hath not the Lord, the God of Israel, commanded, saying, Go and draw unto Mount Table, and take with thee ten thousand men of the children of Nachdeli and of the children of Zebulun? And I will draw unto thee to the river Kishon, Sisera, the captain of Jabin's army, with his chariots and with his multitude.
And I will deliver him into thine hand. And Balak said unto her, If thou wilt go with me, then I will go, but if thou wilt not go with me, I will not go. And she said, I will surely go with thee. Notwithstanding, the journey that thou takest shall not be for thine honor, for the Lord shall tell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And Tabora arose and went to Barak, with Barak to Kedesh. And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali together to Kedesh, and there went up ten thousand men at his feet. And Deborah went up with him. Now Rehoboam severed himself from the Kenites, even from the children of Hobab, the brother-in-law of Moses, and had pitched his tent as far as the oak in Taananim, which is by Kedesh.
And they told Sisera that Badak, the son of Abinoam, was gone up to Mount Sabor. And Sisera gathered together all his chariots, even nine hundred chariots of iron, and all the people that were with him from Harosheth of the Gentiles unto the river Kishon. Deborah said unto Badak, Up, for this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Sisera into thine hand. Is not the Lord gone out before thee? Barak went down from the Mount Tabor, and ten thousand men after him. And the Lord discomfited Sisera, and all his chariots and all his host with the edge of the sword before Barak.
And Sisera lighted down from his chariot and fled away on his feet. And Balak pursued after the chariots and after the host unto Harosheth of the Gentiles. And all the host of Sisera fell by the edge of the storm. There was not a man left. How be it, Sisera fled away on his feet to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, for there was peace between Jabin, the king of Hazor, and the house of Heber the Kenite. Jael went out to meet Sisera and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me, fear not. And he turned in unto her into the tent, and she covered him with a rug.
And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink, for I am thirsty. A bottle of milk and gave him to drink and covered him. He said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and inquire of thee and say, Is there any man here, that thou shalt say, No. Jael Heber's wife took a tent pin, and took a hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the pin into his temple, and pierced, and it pierced through into the ground, for he was in a deep sleep. So he swooned and died.
And behold, as Barak pursued Sisera, Jael came out to meet him and said unto him, Come, and I will show thee the man whom thou seekest. And he came unto him. And behold, Sisera lay dead, and the tin pin was in his temples. So God subdued on that day Jabin, the king of Canaan, before the children of Israel, and the hand of the children of Israel prevailed more and more against Jabin, the king of Canaan, until they had destroyed the king of Canaan. Then sang Deborah and Barak, the son of Abinurom, on that day, saying, for that the leaders took the lead in Israel, for that the people offered themselves willingly, bless ye.
Verse twelve of that poem, awake, awake, Deborah, awake, awake, utter a song, arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Abinla. Then came down a remnant of the nobles and the people. The Lord came down for me against the mighty. Out of Ephraim came down they whose root is in Amalek, after thee, Benjamin, among thy peoples. Out of Machir came down governors, and out of Zebulun they that handle the marshal's stuff. And the princes of Issachar were with Deborah.
As was Iss- Issachar, so was Balak. Into the valley they rushed forth at his feet. By the water courses of Reuben, there were great resolves of heart. Why satest thou among the sheepfold to hear the pipings for the flock? At the water courses of Reuben there were great searchings of hearts. Gilead abode beyond Jordan. And Dan, why did he remain in ships?
The Lord give us good understanding of his holy word. We begin tonight the study of the third major captivity recorded in the book of Judges. And if possible, to begin also the study of the brighter side of that story, the deliverance of Israel from that captivity. So without further ado, let us give ourselves to the primary task, that of reconnoitering the enemy. We find at once that the enemy that subdued Israel on this third occasion was a vastly different enemy from Moab, responsible for the second captivity.
We must try to disabuse our minds if by any chance we have ideas that these Canaanites were semi-savages. We must try to disabuse our minds of all such ideas. Some of you, it may be, have been able at some time or other to go out to Israel and to see the cities, what still remains of them, built by some of these Canaanites. One of them is here mentioned, Hazor. Another would be Megiddo. There were, in fact, a circuit of cities in those parts, center of civilization over many, many centuries.
In fact, if you will go to Megiddo, the archaeologists will show you different levels of civilization, one on top of the other in the remains of that city, and they will number well over twenty different levels of civilization. These were men who, for their day, performed wonderful feats of civil engineering. In Megiddo, for instance, and likewise in the more recently excavated Hazor. And they had quite a remarkable system for water. Most cities in those ancient times would be built for safety's sake on a rising hill, and they would be encircled for protection with a wall.
But of course, there were always difficulties with that. If you built the wall too high up the mountain, the nearest spring of water would be outside the wall. And then if the enemy came and besieged you, it wasn't much use getting behind your big wall, because if you hadn't any water, in the end you had to give in. But if, in order to enclose the water spring within the city, you built the wall too far down the mountain, the enemy just stood down or got on the opposite hill and shot his cannonballs over the top. So there was a problem to be solved.
And the way these Canaanites solved it was to build their wall farther up the mountain than the spring was, so that the spring was actually outside their fortifications. But then inside their city, they opened up an enormous shaft, the size of this hall perhaps, or even bigger, and dug it right down until the bottom of it was on a level with the spring outside the wall. And then they tunneled through the mountain underneath their own walls till the tunnel came out at the spring outside.
And, uh, then they caught, they cut a stairway on the inner side of the shaft all the way round until it got to the bottom, so that they could walk down the stairs, through the shaft at the bottom, out under the wall to the spring and get the water, and bring the water back through the tunnel up the stairs once more. Having studied time and motion works things and all that kind, you know, like they do, they got the ladies to do the carrying of the water. And then, of course, craftily enough, when the enemy was inside, they covered up the spring so no one could find where it was. And that's why then they're able to survive a very long siege.
I point out to you that the engineering work necessary to sink shafts of that sort, and then to tunnel under the mountain and come out exactly where the spring was, the engineering work indicates an intelligence and a skill quite remarkable for those early centuries. And then did you notice that twice over we are told that Sisera, the captain of the forces, he had nine hundred chariots of iron. And you're meant to be impressed by the number of them and by the material of them.
Nowadays we think nothing of iron, but there were days in this world when iron was of the very latest invention, and to have iron indicated quite an advanced technology, and to have such an abundant supply of iron as to make nine hundred chariots of iron was to be the kind of Birmingham or South Wales or something of the ancient world, the Ruhr perhaps. And of course, to harness the winds as they came down through the mountains in their blow furnaces that they had, that also required quite a bit of technology, and therefore intelligence.
A third, uh, feature is open at once to our observation. These are called the Canaanites. We read of Jabin, king of Canaan. It so happens that the Hebrew word for Canaan also means merchantman. For instance, in the book of Zechariah, chapter fourteen and verse twenty one, Zechariah gives it as one feature of the glorious reign of Christ that shall be, that in those days every part in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holy unto the Lord, and there shall be no more a...
And then the translators have a problem. Should you translate it, there shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of the Lord? Or should you translate it, there shall no longer be a merchantman, a trafficker in the house of the Lord? But then it is not mysterious how that the word came to mean the two things. We have other examples of this in the ancient languages of the world, how that certain nations became so marked by one profession or another that they gave their name to that trade or that profession. In the Latin language, for instance, the name Chaldean is the Latin for a soothsayer, because the Chaldeans at one stage were so marked by this feature of being soothsayers and prognosticators and readers of the stars and inspectors of the livers of unfortunate animals, and predicting the future thereby, that Chaldean became a synonym for a soothsayer.
And the Canaanites were so marked as being merchant men, that in Hebrew at least, Canaanite became a synonym for a merchant. And of course, there have been merchants, haven't there, for many centuries. But when you get a complex as you had in these northern cities, with advanced technology and invention and production of chariots and all the subsidiary trades that that means, and the fortifications of the cities necessary, of course you're going to find a big advance in merchandise.
What on earth is Harold Wilson talking about, let alone Wedgie Ben, if he isn't telling us all that we must get our technology going to be able to compete in the world markets so that there'll be a merchant that may go out and have enough pound notes to buy the food that will eventually get into our pockets. We are therefore to think tonight of a, a, a nation or nations marked by considerable intellectual ability, and using their intellectual ability in technology and in the development of a very strong economic base.
And you say, well, that's all marvelous. Good for them. But what on earth was wrong, and whatever made them enemies of the people of God? And anyway, what lesson has it got for us today? Could those things bring us into bondage? Here we shall have to do some very careful thinking. We should do that by next noticing another, uh, description that is given of these people, but when you first read it, might, or at least should, strike you as a little odd.
We read that these men, uh, Sisera, captain of the host, he dwelt in Harosheth of the Gentiles. Would you say, weren't all people outside Israel Gentiles? Well, yes, they were. Then why, um, why call on this particular feature at this time, Paroshet, of the Gentiles? The answer to that is, of course, in part, that these cities, Megiddo, Hazor, lie in the northern part of Israel, in the part that in our Savior's day was Galilee, and was still even then called Galilee of the Gentiles.
A part of Israel where, over many centuries and for various and different reasons, Israel felt, more than she perhaps felt elsewhere, the difference between herself and Gentiles. It is an interesting feature that you can watch, however, with the records of the Holy Spirit of other nations. All men were sinners without exception. But it is when God comes to speak of Amalekites that he will add the description, these sinners, the Amalekites. Most, though not all, the Gentile nations outside Israel, I say most but not all, were uncircumcised.
But it is when the Holy Spirit comes to record things about Philistines that he will use that adjective and describe them as the uncircumcised Philistines. And it is when we consider these particular people that we are reminded that they were Gentile. I want to take that as a clue and attach it to two of the features that we have seen. Their merchandise, their intellect.
For you will remember that, uh, in the New Testament we find our Lord telling us that there is a Gentile attitude to economic things. And it is an attitude that we must avoid. For if we intentionally or unintentionally fall into the gentile attitude to merchandise, to things economic, it will most surely land us in bondage. Paul is on record as reminding us that there is a certain aspect of the Gentile mind that is evil and fallacious.
And he will warn us lest we slip into that Gentile attitude to the mind. So let me stress, before I go any further, that I am not now saying that business and economic affairs are bad, and by definition, unspiritual. Far from it. What is bad in this is the Gentile attitude to these things.
And I shall not be saying, please notice that I am not saying, that intellect and education are bad things. Of course I'm not saying it. And it is a most foolish thing to tell believers that education and learning and intellect are bad things. And exceedingly hypocritical to do so too. When we've all got enough education, thank God, from our hearts as to be able to read the Bible. And well, if we can't read it ourselves in the original languages in which it was written, we gratefully depend on men whom to whom God has given the ability to read those ancient languages and translate it.
It were a foolish thing to introduce a into the mind of young Christian people by giving them the idea that education and learning and science and technology are somehow unspiritual and wrong. So foolish thing. We are in fact under solemn commandment, for the whole law is summed up in this. Though we are not under law as a principle, the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.
We are under the two great commandments that we shall love the Lord our God, and we shall love our neighbor as ourselves. And loving the Lord our God means that we love him with our hearts, but not merely with our hearts. We are to love him with all our mind. And not to use our intellect to the limit of its capacity is as much a sin as failing to love the Lord our God... with all our hearts. We can't all be giants of intellect, can we?
But we all ought to use, to God's glory, every bit of intellect we've got. And if I were speaking to some Christian students, I would take leave to be grandfatherly a moment and remind them that if they want their testimony for spirituality to count for God, it won't do not to use their intellectual gifts and try to make up for it by, um, saying that they're spiritual. We are to love him with all are our mine. minds. And similarly, to give people the idea that working at producing food and clothes and the necessary business management that comes with that, and all our modern technology is somehow wicked, that too is false, isn't it?
We have seen, perhaps in the last decade, and if I think right, it's now diminishing, thank the Lord, an outburst among young Christian folks, and we may understand sympathetically some of their motivation. They watch the world go plunging on in its gentile attitude to things material and become utterly materialistic, and disillusioned by that, they have got the idea into their heads that the spiritual thing is not to work at all. They have formed groups, haven't they? Communes and goodness knows what else in which they don't work and virtually live on charity. That isn't holiness. And several times over at the end of his letters, Paul has to lay it down in the most grandfatherly fashion that an apostle is capable of.
Please tell the believers that they must work with their own hands. And let our people remember that they are to profess honorable profession. This is God's will. It is not spirituality to forsake working. So please let me make myself very clear, at the risk of being grandfatherly myself. We are to work. I can't help remembering that great figure, that mighty evangelist, pioneer of the gospel, Saint Paul himself, who penned the remarks to which I have referred.
When he stood for the last time before the elders of the church at Ephesus, he said, my dear brethren, you see these hands? I want to remind you now that I've worked hard and paid the expenses of my gospel team. And I ask you, as I leave you an example, to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, it is more blessed to give than to receive, and to be a part of your ministry to work so that you've got something to give to other folks.
Won't take me wrong there, oh, how many caveats one has to issue from a platform. You won't take me wrong there to imagine I'm saying that you oughtn't, that some men oughtn't, and no men ever ought to give their whole time to spiritual work. Far from it. If God man or woman to give his or her full time to spiritual work, then they have a right to be expected, to be support- to expect to be supported by God, but it'll have to be work. What then is the wrong attitude? If we are to use our intellects, if we are to engage in, uh, what the world calls secular work, what is the wrong attitude, and please, what is the right attitude?
Let's take the matter of daily bread and butter and food and clothes and such like things. And we'll read our Lord's own words from the Gospel by Matthew in chapter six. Verse twenty four, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
Therefore I say unto you, be not anxious for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, your body, what you shall put on. Verse thirty one: Be not therefore anxious, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek you first his kingdom and his righteousness. And all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow, for the morrow will be anxious for itself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. And you will observe that our Lord's motive in his teaching that he gives us is to save us, his people, from bondage to mammon. To save us from the bondage of anxiety. Not to save us from the necessity of forethought, of prudence. Or if tomorrow was Sunday and your wife hadn't taught herself enough to get enough bread in, you would go hungry, wouldn't you? You do hope your wife has some forethought.
But our Lord is out to save us from bondage and undue worry. How will he do it then? Well, he says, don't you go to work driven by those motives that drive the Gentiles. Oh? Why does the Gentile go to work? And what is he seeking when he goes to work? After all, these things do the Gentiles seek. They seek. What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Or wherewith shall we be clothed? They go to work to get food and drink and clothes.
But you say, goodness me, isn't that why everybody goes to work? Who would work if you didn't have to to earn your food and drink and clothes, I mean to say? I mean, isn't that the reason why you do? Well, here apparently our Lord is saying no. And this is what we've got to get hold of, for that's what the Gentiles do. And if you are going to work simply to get your food, drink, and clothes, you are doing it for precisely the reasons that the Gentiles have for doing it. And those reasons will bring you into bondage. When you say, now that's right, I, I always thought there was something wrong with that.
Now, what you want to do is go and be a missionary and cobble shoes just to make expenses. Oh, oh, is that all? So the likes of poor us who haven't got the gift to be missionaries, what are we supposed to be doing? Wasting eight hours a day or something in the factory, and it all goes down the drain? Because it ain't much significance because it ain't preaching. Now let's listen to the law. He says, now please, I'm not being unrealistic, nor is your heavenly Father either. Food, drink, and clothes? Well, of course, he knows that you have need of these things.
He hasn't forgotten that you need these things and that you must have them. And indeed, it is he that has d- d- ordained that we get them by working. So much is that so that the normal rule is this, that if any man refuses to work, neither shall he eat. It is the divine ordination that we get our food and clothes and drink by working. Then you say, I thought you said we... we weren't to go to work for that reason. Ah, now here we come to the rub, isn't it? It's a question of what you primarily are seeking when you go to work.
There are some men in this province, they are so rich that they wouldn't need to work ever again all their lives. To get food, clothes, and drink, they've got enough money to buy it for the next two hundred years. They still go to work. Why? They do it to get power. When you go to work, seek first. In other words, let it be the first motivation, and let the first income, the first dividend be the rule of God, the kingdom of God.
When we come across the word kingdom, so very often we think in terms of a territory like the United Kingdom, Scotland, uh, Wales. Oh, I'm not quite sure whether they're still there. Well, anyway, England anyway. When the Bible uses the word kingdom, it is much more frequently thinking about not a territory, but a government. The rule of God. Seek you first the rule of God. And our Lord is not again thinking primarily, look, when you go to work, first of all, stop off and give a few tracts out and try and get convert- post-converted and into our spiritual kingdom.
Though that's a jolly good thing to do if you have time to do it. He's a motive that puts you into work, why you stand at that bench all the day long? Why do you sweep the floors and make the bed? Why do you try to teach? What you do it for? What are you seeking? What is your prime motive and first dividend? Well, don't let it be clothes and drink and food. Not first. You should be seeking first the rule of God. And it means only this. I learned in my Bible that God's will for me is that I should be honest.
Well, that's very good. I read it in my study, and I, I say, well, now, Gooding, you should be honest. But just reading it doesn't make me honest. That's a theory. That's very necessary that I know that's what I'm supposed to be. But how should I become honest? Well, you'll need some practice, says God, of being honest, won't you? Right, I think I should put you at the cash at a shop. Put you in charge of accounts, put you in a bank. And the point of my putting you in a bank is not first to get you clothes, money, and drink. The first point of it is that you should have an exercise that will develop in you, by the help of God, sterling honesty of character.
God is wanting to prepare us for eternity, and he's going to make us like Christ. How else shall he do it? Don't become like Christ by simply sitting in your study reading. Gooding, he says, I want you, I want you to learn a bit of patience and get rid of that sarcasm. Well, I read it in the Bible and I said, very good, Lord. Yes, I enjoy that. I think that's a very good idea. Oh, but it doesn't stop there. Says you better go and teach. When I have some wonderful students, but I have some others. Good thing to try and do if you're thinking about developing a little Patience.
This is God, no doubt, what the thing is about. First. Oh yes, when you do your daily work, it will also bring in a secondary dividend. Food, clothes, drink. But that's only a secondary dividend, isn't it? And a very impermanent one, for the food is soon gone, and the drink will soon be gone, and the whole earth one day will be gone. But the character you have developed, patiently bringing up that family for God, honestly and truthfully and unselfishly trying to negotiate for the management with the unions, trying to act responsible for the employees that are under you, trying to do your fellow men some good by your business initiative, honestly serving the boss and not cutting the corners.
The character it builds into you is going to last. That's why we must work. Seek you first the rule of God and his righteousness, his practical righteousness of character that is developed as day by day by the help of his spirit, by the ministry of the Savior. I work at my daily job in the fear of God. Will you remember the story of Joseph and how he was high steward in Potiphar's house?
Ah yeah, but God, as Joseph was at work at that level, was preparing him for greater tasks that lay ahead. But first the preparation, and in the course of those duties, the temptation that assailed him most bitterly. But as by God's grace he learned to stand fast and be faithful in that stewardship, it fitted him for the greater stewardship that left. We hope to reign with Christ one day. But then it's character that's needed for it. And that is built as we go around our daily tasks with this motive as our prime motive.
Well, mother, you needn't feel that because you're tied to the kitchen thing with half a dozen children and a rather demanding husband or something, you know, and it's the same old routine work always, and wouldn't you be a far better character if you had all the wonderful romance of being a missionary? And therefore you feel you're no good, and what's the good of me doing this here? God can take those circumstances equally as well as any other set of circumstances. They'll do, will do very well for the development of eternal character. There is a lovely old hymn, not much sung nowadays, that used to go like this: The common round, the daily task should furnish I need to ask, room to deny myself, a road that leads me daily nearer God.
It doesn't matter what job, so be it, it is in itself not sinful. It can form in God's hand the exercise that will train our character and prepare us for the glories that lie beyond. What happens if I neglect our Lord's advice and I make the food, the clothes, and the drink my prime motive, well, then I stand in slippery places. For if the going proves a little bit difficult and, uh, food is what I primarily went for, well, I shall say food I've got to get, and if I can't get it, uh, absolutely honestly, I shall have to fiddle the income tax or something.
And alas, if I do it, I'm losing the whole thing for which God sent me to work. He doesn't want my hot money given to his work. No, he wanted to develop my character. If I don't follow the Lord's advice, eternal character. There is a lovely old hymn, not much sung nowadays, that used to go like this: The common round, the daily task, should furnish I need to ask.
Wrong to deny myself. A road that leads me daily nearer God. It doesn't matter what God, so be it, it is in itself not sinful. It can form in God's hand the exercise that will train our character and prepare us for the glories that lie beyond. What happens if I neglect our Lord's advice and I make the food, the clothes, and the drink my prime motive?
Well, then I stand in slippery places. Or if the going proves a little bit difficult and, uh, food is what I primarily went for, well, I shall say food I've got to get, and if I can't get it, uh, absolutely honestly, I shall have to fiddle the income tax or something. And alas, if I do it, I'm losing the whole thing for which God sent me to work. He doesn't want my hot money given to his work. No, he wanted to develop my character.
If I don't follow the Lord's advice, and I make food and clothes and drink my prime objective. And when the work gets scarce, I shall get worried, can't I? What's gonna happen if my job job dries up? And then, curiously enough, if the work gets too much, I shall be an absolute slave. So fast with my work that I have very little time to give to spiritual things anyway. Oh goodness, what an old taskmaster mammon is.
You say, but can you take literally that thing about birds? You know, God feeds the birds and he'll feed me. Yes, you can take it very literally, so long as you're prepared to observe that birds do die of hunger sometimes, don't they? You've never been out on a cold morning and see birds frozen to death? Oh, my dear brother, God hasn't promised to feed you in this world eternally. One day, by one means and another, the lessons will all have been learned, and there won't be need for more food and more clothes, and if that's God's way of taking us home, then in the end, hallelujah.
But oh, God forbid that we lose the whole prime dividend that the thing was constructed for because we make food and clothes and drink the prime object of our going to work. When Israel fell to the Canaanites, we read these Canaanites, they mightily oppressed them. The hard labor of the industrial revolution in England might help us to begin to see what those words meant.
And you say, but that denies a basic principle, doesn't it, of the nation's life? Yes, you've got it right. Once more, it does. They had been in Egypt, and old Pharaoh got their noses right to the grindstone, and what a bondage it was. Let my people go that they may serve me, thundered God through Moses. Not on your life, said Pharaoh. God, I don't believe in those things. For these people, life is just working. There is no other dimension. Or a bondage. The Lord save us from it. Not to become layabouts, but become people who have perceived what is the major and prime dividend of daily work, which is under God to build righteousness of character as we seek his rule.
There's a Gentile mind. What's wrong with the Gentile mind, thus described by Paul? He tells us in Ephesians chapter forty, we are no longer to walk, he says. This I therefore say and testify in the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles also walk in the vanity of their mind. Being darkened in their understanding, alienated like of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts. None too complimentary words, those.
And a very severe criticism, in fact, as you see, of the Gentile mind. He says it's vain. He says it's darkened. Why is that? It is because of the ignorance that is in them, and because of their alienation from God. And what Paul says here, he s- has earlier said in Romans in chapter one, tracing the spring and ongoing river of man's sin, he puts it like this: Knowing God, they glorified him not as God, neither gave thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened.
Paul isn't being anti-intellectual, but he is that there is a basic flaw in the typical Gentile attitude of mind. It starts with a perverse relationship to God. Knowing God, they didn't like to retain the knowledge of God. They were not thankful. They wouldn't own their dependence on God, their utter and total dependence on God. And grasping at some kind of independence of God, because of this attitude of heart that they didn't like to feel constantly dependent on an almighty, then they began to rationalize their false attitude of heart.
And it led, of course, as it must lead, to vanity, to a making an eventual nonsense of intellect itself. That charge is still true. I would that I could get every person that has any claim to in things intellectual to see it. We are faced by a gentile pressure here nowadays, as the world has never known it in extent and power before. It is a commonly accepted theory through vast parts of a civilized world today now, that there is no God.
There is no creator. Man is asked to use his own intellect to set himself up as God. But that is an utterly false use of intellect. Is it not so? Suppose there is no God. Then how has my intellect come to be? Well, they say by evolution, all share. Oh, how pleasant. Intelu- evolution got any brains or intellect or sense of purpose? No, just a blind... Well, that isn't even a force, is it, evolution? It's a name they give to a process. There isn't any f- evolution.
Evolution is just a process of change. At the very best, that's all it could be. A change without purpose, without mind, without intellect, proceeding by accident, worked on by blind forces, having its basis in inanimate matter. And the thing that has produced what I thought was logic going on round in my head just now, was in fact mindless, accidental motions of atoms. And then my logic ain't worth that. For it is itself one colossal, great accident.
If it is true that my mind has come about that way, my blind matter being worked on by blind, purposeless, meaningless forces, then if today I use my logic to add two and two and get four, that's altogether the result of an accident. And if tomorrow I use that same thing, only because accidentally it's twizzled around somehow else, and I add two and two and they become five, well, that isn't any better than yesterday's result, nor worse. Both of them were accidents. We live in a world so far gone from God that they will propound to our young folks this stuff as though it were intellectual, when it undermines the very basis of intellect.
Try it out on your friends one of these days, won't you? You a Christian? Yes. That's it. They think you've committed intellectual suicide or something. Well, aren't you a Christian? Oh, no, no. But you see, Christianity is based on, on miracles, the resurrection, for instance, miracles. And of course, we couldn't possibly believe it because miracles don't happen. Oh, don't they? Well, how do you know? Oh, but that would contradict the laws of nature. Oh, I see. Too bad then. Mm. How do you think the world ha- happened and started? All by evolution, it just happened. From where?
We don't know. Oh. I see. Well, as we see it at the moment, so the scientists themselves tell us, the whole caboose is running down. The sun is getting less and less every day because of all the energy that's going out into space. We need go no further than poor old sun because when he's put out too much energy into space, we should go fut. Well, it's putting all this energy out. It's running down, says the scientist, according to the second law of thermodynamics and all that. I see. But who ran it up? Who wound it up in the first place? Well, they say, we don't know really, but, but give us enough time, give it multi-million years, and you can expect nature to do anything, sometimes to reverse our processes.
Oh, can you, I say, yes. Now, isn't that interesting? You couldn't possibly think of a resurrection reversing the laws of nature. You don't think it's possible. But to get your scheme of evolution going, you think it is quite possible, given enough time, that nature one day would go into reverse and wind things up instead of letting them run down. How marvelous. Why, your scientist who doesn't know God outside his laboratory, no, he can't believe in any sense of purpose. If there's no God, then the whole phenomenon of this planet and life on it is one colossal great accident going nowhere. No purpose in anything.
You watch him when he gets into his laboratory and examining a specimen. Now he says, now what's this for? What do you mean, what's it for? There isn't any purpose in the universe. There isn't any purpose in anything. The sense of talking about what is this for, and yet they will do it, these scientists in their laboratories. That's how they conduct their research, forever asking, asking, now what is this for? There were some famous would-be evolutionists, weren't there, at one stage who were to tell us that, uh, many of these things in our bodies, like vermiform appendices and things of that ilk, they weren't for anything at all. They were the results of, uh, well, the accidents of evolution on the way when we were gradually improving.
But more scientists came along, and not being content with that stupid nonsense, they said, well, suppose it were for something now, what would it do? And gradually and bit by bit, they begin to see that it, ooh, fancy that, after all, it is for something. Now, I'm not asking you to conduct any cheap anti-evolution programs in the sense that you're against science, but I ask you, Christian young men and women, in the name of science, I ask you to be good scientists. The only way you will preserve the validity of reason and intellect is to start with the axiom that there is a God and you his creature.
For intellect and reason can only be valid in the ultimate sense when they are traceable back to an infinite personal creator. I'm going to keep you late tonight, so if anybody needs to go, please go. You won't upset me. If you stay, don't complain to the elders because I would fear them if they were to come after me. You must briefly consider how Israel got out of this trouble. First of all, God used, do you notice he used two women and one man?
I'd like to be very careful what I say, can't I now here? But, uh, God was still going to delude them from these technological and intellectual giants. And if I had been in the program, I should have said, well, there's more men in technology, goodness me, and there are more men mathematicians, uh, than there are women. Likelihood is it will be a man to do it. God didn't take that view. So the answer to intellect when it has been abused, and the answer to the latest modern technology when it had got away from God. First and foremost, a prophetist.
Listening to revelation from God. Do you know the context offhand of those verses we read about the Gentile mind in Ephesians four? Don't you walk like Gentiles. Remember, remember that risen Christ who came down and descended to our very world, born of a woman like we are, whose members were fashioned as to his human body in the lower parts of the earth, as the psalmist would say, descended to the womb of a virgin, but has ascended, and ascending he has led captivity captive and given gifts to men, apostles and prophets and evangelists, for whom God might make known his revelation and truth, and through whom he may apply it to the human heart and bring men into living relationship with God and the risen Christ.
That great fountainhead of all true wisdom, and the very author and creator of intellect. Rise up, said the prophetess to Barak. Rise up and lead your captivity captive, that is, turn the tables on your captives. The risen Christ has risen to do that very thing. We have no apostle here. We could have an evangelist or two in the making. Oh, what a wonderful thing that the risen Christ, greater than the hosts of hell, of course, can save here a Paul and here a Peter and here a Tertullian.
Men of great powers of intellect. And save them from the false position of their unregenerate state, and put them in touch with the living Christ, fountainhead of all wisdom and knowledge. And use their very intellects that once were used against God's call to promote his victory. Oh, thank God for it. I'm, I, I, I'm tempted sometimes to be rude, but when I hear little men denying inspiration of scripture, I'm tempted to think that their brains would scarce match the brains of Paul, any more than a molehill would match Mount Everest.
Paul was a man whose brains had changed the face of Europe over nineteen centuries. All the wonderful victory of a risen Christ that saved that man and turning the tables on his enemies gave him to the church to build up the church. Get your knowledge, get your, get your learning, get your technology and your economics, but above all, keep in touch with that risen Christ and the prophetic ministry, the living word of his spirit through Holy Scripture.
It was a very good tactic, wasn't it? Because, you see, what actually happened was, old Cicero said, we need to watch these Israelite boys. And Deborah told Barak to go up to Mount Tabor, which rises out of the big plain of Megiddo. And Sisera came out with his chariots, because the plain all around Mount Tabor is as flat as a pancake, ideal ground for chariot warfare. And then God said, Barak, old boy, lead him down the mountain side. And Sisera rubbed his hands. He said, did you ever see such idiots? Did you ever see such idiots? They'll come down that mountain, ten thousand of them, and we should just sign them down with our chariots. We should run rings around them.
As far as his intellect could possibly go, that seemed wonderful. He didn't know what God had his, God had up his sleeve. Just so happened that afternoon, God sent a cloudburst over the wadi, which normally was dry, but in a few minutes had changed the wadi to a raging torrent and flooded the ground till the old chariots got bogged down right up to their axles. You couldn't have known it, not with all the technology that existed in the world then, that the rain was only come like that just then. But God happened to know. He knew what he was doing when, by revelation, he told Deborah to tell Barak to do precisely that.
Yeah, and the humblest intellect with God is better than the brightest intellect without him. Barak is an interesting fellow, isn't it, isn't he? Came from an interesting city. He came from Kedesh Naphtali. It was a Levitical city. It was a city of refuge. Let's take the first thing first, a city of refuge. It was one of those cities where, in Israel, if a man had accidentally, as the Hebrew quaintly puts it without knowing, killed a man, he could run there. If he were chopping down wood and accidentally the axe head fell off and hit somebody and the man died, it was an accident.
The Hebrew says he does it without knowing, that is without intending to. It's an accident. Then he could run to the city of refuge and be saved. May that came from a city like that. You know, our world has been the scene of a ghastly accident. Shall we call it an accident? Well, says Peter, I wot that in ignorance you did it. If you'd have known the wisdom of God, you wouldn't have done it, would you? You didn't know. By some colossal ignorance, men have gone and murdered God's own son.
They didn't even recognize who it was. I what that you did it in ignorance. That isn't the worst thing you can say of men, but it's a pathetic thing, isn't it? Never forget it. The leaders of intellect in Jerusalem City stood round. They condemned Jesus Christ to a cross out of sheer, downright ignorance. That's what happens to intellect without God. It makes a colossal fool of itself in the end.
Jill, what did she do? Well, that was an embarrassing moment, and the critics have been hard on the dear woman. They said that the terrible temptress and the wicked traitor and the horrible deceiver, when that poor man came to her tent and she welcomed him in and gave him a cup of milk and then bashed his brains. What a wicked woman for doing that. I don't find it so easy to condemn the woman. Old Cicero, surprised out of his life by the sudden rainstorm that bogged down his chariot, was obliged to get off his latest technological invention and run on his old two feet for dear life, and he came at last to the tent. But he still had a bit of intellect, did old old Cicero, you know, his brain worked fast.
He didn't go to the men's tent, did he? Went to a woman's tent, which was a highly unethical thing for him to do. What could Jarl do, faced with a warrior, spear and all, standing there? What would you do if someone came to your front door with a gun, I wonder? For her husband to have come back and found the man there without any protest from jail, would have been so serious that she could have lost her life. It was not in collusion, but to rid herself of this vast danger that she invited him, laid him down on the ground, and she took a tent peg when he went to sleep and smote it to his brain.
To his where? Ah, this man wasn't killed by a dagger through his belly like that old lazy flesh pot that was the king of Moab. This was a commander in chief of the forces of his advanced technological and mercantile nation. Intellect without God that has become an enemy of God. Must receive its death blow in God's judgment. He was killed with a tent peg, fully brain. You got a tent peg? Tent pegs in the ancient East were very important affairs.
You see, you lived in tents, and you had tent pegs so that when the wind blew, your tent stayed up. It represented a great, presented a great deal of your security, tent pegs. And because they were such common and such important things, you will find the poets using tent pegs to illustrate all sorts of things. The words of the wise are like pegs, you know, you can hang things on them. Indeed, there is a great and mysterious character that Isaiah talks about, of whom God says, I will fasten him as a tent peg in a sure place. It is he that has the key of David. The New Testament tells us exactly who that person is.
That nail fastened in a sure place. Who has the key of David? It is none less than Jesus Christ, our Lord. Say, my brother, have you got any security in this little life? Come on, when it comes right down to things of bread and butter and clothes and drink, any security? What is your security? Young man, young woman, battling with the mysteries of the universe and life itself. Come, have you got any stake that can stop you from wobbling all around the intellectual world and ending up and finding no meaning, no nothing, an arid existentialist.
Any security? There is one. And for us pilgrims through this temporary world, will provide that security that will never let us down. He is the tent peg, the nail fastened in a sure place. To get the security, you'll have to stake everything you have on him. It will mean daring to trust his word. In the things that we have read from Matthew six and from Ephesians four.
It will mean staking our everything on him that his word is true. And that it will pay the dividends that he says it will pay, both for now and for eternity. That was a mighty battle. Wow. The thugs went hither and thither as they hacked the old enemy about, and in the end they defeated him. Phew. But when they got up, all sweat and blood, I had a look around, there's one of the band kept the count of folks. Who's here? Oh, there's him. Oh, thank you, my brother, for coming. And you? Oh, that was nice of you to come all that way down from there. And there was the chaps who were the secretaries and held the ruler's staffs and the ink staff and the recorders, engineers and all the rest of them.
They came from all over the place to join in this campaign. God bless every one of them, they said, and wrote a poem to express their thanks. Praise the Lord that the people offered themselves willingly. Yes, for old Barak had lived in the Levitical city. He was brought up to it, wasn't he? To live like a Levite. God first, my neighbor next, and myself last. Somebody said, where's Reuben? And somebody said, Dan. No, can't see anybody. Nobody here from Dan.
So they began to inquire, why didn't anybody come from Dan? Then they found out Dan stayed in the ships. Hm. That's odd. When folks were fighting for their very lives against this enemy, why did Dan stay in the ship? Well, I can't tell you for certain, can you? Why do you think he stayed in the ship? I got a funny feeling that he said, well, you know, business is difficult.
You can't always, can you? I mean... But Dan, old boy. This is an absolute vital. If you lose this battle, you lose everything that life is worth living for, Dan, old boy. What's the good of your ships and all you make from them if you lose this battle and we're left slaves? Uh, Dan. That was his idea of life values, and where the prime dividend lay, Dan abode in the ships.
God give us the grace to see that there's a battle on, and so to live, we may be ourselves preserved from bondage and be those who help to deliver any who should by any means fall into it. Shall we pray? Lord, we thank thee for thy word, and we pray just simply now that thou will take it and make it meaningful to us, each one, in his and her particular experience in life. Encourage us, Lord, in the supreme worthwhileness of our daily work. Encourage us all in the use of hand and eye and brain and intellect, that we may use these sacred gifts for thee and in thy fear.
That they may not only incidentally produce our daily necessities, but may yield that eternal dividend of character conformed to the image of thy Son. Let him bless thy word, we beseech thee, and take us home in peace through Jesus Christ our Lord.
