Gooding, David: 1 - Introduction - Part 1

Thank you very much for your kindly welcome. As you have heard, we are to be together, God willing, for the, uh, next seven weeks, and I trust we shall get to know each other a little bit in that time. Uh, as you get to know me, you may indeed find courage rising in your hearts and come and fill up these front seats instead of sitting way over there, almost above the horizon. And that will make life easier for me. It might even make it easier for you, if not more comfortable. We are to spend the time together studying the Book of Judges. You have, uh, given to you at the door a little prospectus of the contents of the Book of Judges. You may wonder what it's for. Looks a trifle mysterious as it stands. Its general object is to get in front of our eyes the contents of the Book of Judges, so that having looked at it one hundred and one times, we shall almost begin to be able to remember what are the leading features of that book. If you would care just to look at that sheet now, you will find thereon nothing wonderful other than that you yourself would have observed had you studied the matter in detail. But you will see that there is, so to speak, a prologue to the book up to chapter uh three verse six, and That is in two parts. It is, first of all, what happened after the death of Joshua, and secondly, when Joshua had sent the people away. That is balanced at the end by an epilogue. Two major stories, and very sad stories they are, of the terrible goings on that took place in the days of the judges in the book, uh, before us. We shall find that the prologue and the epilogue are not unconnected. Whereas in the prologue we have certain principles observed, in the epilogue we have incidents which illustrate, with extreme examples, how these things work themselves out. Sad and sorry times they were, very often. But in the middle of the book, the message of God's constant and unwearying determination to bless and save his people. The story of nine deliverances that God worked from time to time in, uh, uh, sorry, seven deliverances that he worked from time to time among his people. From those deliverances, we shall learn something about the determination of God to save his people and to stay with them through thick and thin, and to deliver them, even in spite of the fact that it is often through their own folly, disobedience, and stupidity that they get themselves into trouble. I have on this sheet arranged those deliverances like a mountain, as you see, rising up from the left hand side through numbers three, four, five to the peak at number six, and then descending again, seven, eight, and nine. I've done that for one or two good reasons. At the story of Gideon, we shall find that the Lord's people in this time reached their high watermark. There is a sense in which they were until that time on the up and up, and regrettably enough, there is another sense in which after that they were on the down and down. We shall find it helpful too, when we come to study these things in greater detail, that there is a correspondence, sometimes a very ominous correspondence between, uh, the stories as told us on the one side of the mountain, so to speak, and the stories that are told us on the other side. There's that delightful story three, as you observe, where the secret of Othniel's success can largely be attributed to his wife. Then, if you should look across the page to number nine, and we will see that the secret of Samson's ineffectiveness and his eventual downfall is to be attributed largely to his wives. Or again, you will see in number four that amidst all the things that are there told us, one of the tactics that Ehud adopted in order to overcome his enemy was to station himself at the fords of Jordan and slay the enemy. And doubtless Jephthah, on the right hand side there, number eight, thought he was doing a marvelous thing too in adopting a similar tactic. Unfortunate man, he wasn't able to think- distinguish between those that were his brethren and those that were the enemy, and he slaughtered not the enemy, but his brethren, and he's had his heirs and successors since that. And you will see in, uh, numbers five and seven a certain correspondence, won't you? In the tactics adopted. The enemy under number five was killed by a woman who drove a tent peg through his skull. And the enemy in number seven was killed by a woman who heaved a millstone onto his skull and cracked it, and that was the end of his nonsense, mercifully. There are, as you see, certain obvious correspondences, and you may care in your readings of this book, and I hope you will be reading it, for if you can manage to read it before, some of it at least, before you come to the studies here, you will find that you gain more from it. In fact, I suspect that what the Lord shows you in your own studies, you'll find far more profitable than what he shows you through me. But nonetheless, if you're in your own reading, you may care not only to read the stories, but to start comparing them one with another, and the very effort of comparing them you may find very rewarding. For this is a book of warfare. In Israel's day, literal warfare, but speaking to us spiritual lessons as to our spiritual warfare. And we shall be thinking about it as a handbook of, so to speak, military science for us at the spiritual level, how to fight the battles of the law. And in that we shall have three major considerations to interest ourselves in. In any warfare, if you will be successful, you must first reconnoiter the enemy. You must know his strong points and his weak points, and where best it is to attack him. We are surrounded by enemies innumerable, and if we in our day would be those who God uses to deliver his people, we must know the enemy, so that we may be able to fight him the more efficiently. That means we should be a- must be able to reconnoiter the enemy and recognize one when we see one. And then, of course, we shall have to know what tactics to employ against the enemy. For not all enemies are the same, and different enemies have to be dealt with by different tactics. And therefore, in our reading of the main section of this book, we shall be interested, interested in observing not only who the enemy was and what were their features, but also what tactics these several deliverers used. And we shall try to understand and to see how the tactics were suited to the overcoming of the particular enemy. Ehud, for instance, in paragraph, in story four that you see on the list, he slaughtered his enemy with a sword, with a dagger through the belly. Well, that's one way of doing it. Other enemies had to be slaughtered through a tent peg, as we have heard, through the brain. And, uh, Gideon used what you might call the chopping block method and cut their heads off. Why the different tactics? And thirdly, as a major lesson from the middle part of the book, we shall be concerned with something a little bit more basic still. God raised up these deliverers, but why them? Why did he use these particular men and women? And how did he prepare those particular men and women? And we shall interest ourselves in that because we in turn will want to know. Because if we have any desire in our hearts to help our fellow Christians and ourselves in fighting the many enemies that surround us, we shall want to know what preparation can we ourselves make, with God's help, to prepare ourselves to be the kind of men and women that God is able to use to deliver his people. That, roughly speaking, then is what the course of our studies, uh, uh, the course our studies will take. And you may care to fold this up and put it into the back of your Bible and have it with you so that you can keep before you at any odd moment what the contents of the book are. And as I say, when you have looked at it one hundred and one times, you'll be able to imagine it even in the dark and think about judges just when you're going to sleep, perhaps. And when you are pe- peeling the potatoes in the morning, ah, you'll say to yourself, now what judge is it that came after Ehad? I'd just forgotten it for the moment. Well, here it is. Oh, ah yes, I know. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And uh, by the time we finish, we shall have learned the facts, we hope, of the book of Judges. One other thing, as we proceed, some night the clock will s- fight against us, and I have learned by bitter experience that there is no tactic that's possible the, possible to be evolved of mankind that can possibly defeat a clock when the clock is intent on defeating you. And therefore, I shall leave some things unexplained, and other things perhaps I shall explain very poorly. Now, when that happens, and indeed also when I completely fail to say some things, or when you perceive I am just plain wrong, please make a note of those things. And if enough of you have, so to speak, made enough notes, we might turn one of our sessions into a question time, don't you think? When you will be able to tell me where you think I'm wrong, and, uh, I shall be able to answer in self-defense when you think, uh, that I have got the wrong explanation, or listen to what your better explanation is, or to answer your questions, and thus and thus. I hope at least that we're not just going to be preacher and passive audience, that we are going to work together and pray together and wait on God together, so that God shall be able to show us together as a company of people what is the meaning of his word. Now shall we begin to read in the book of Judges. And it came to pass after the death of Joshua that the children of Israel asked of the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites, and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him, and Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they smote of them in Bezek ten thousand men. And they found Adoni Bezek in Bezek, and they fought against him, and they smote the Canaanites and the Perizzites. But Adoni Bezek fled, and they pursued after him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni Bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table, as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there. Verse sixteen. And the children of the Kenites, Moses' brother-in-law, went up out of the city of palm trees with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which is in the south of Arad, and they went and dwelt with the people. And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they smote the Canaanites that inhab- inhabited Zephath, Zephath, and utterly destroyed it, and the name of the city was called Hormah. Also Judah took Gaza with the border thereof, and Ashkelon with the border thereof, and Ekron with the border thereof. And the Lord was with Judah, and he drove out the inhabitants of the hill country, for he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had chariots of iron. And they gave Hebron unto Caleb, as Moses had spoken, and he drove out thence the three sons of Anak, and the children of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites that inhabited Jerusalem, but the Jebusites dwelt with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem until this day. Chapter two, verse one, please. And the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bohem, and he said, I said, I made you to go up out of Egypt and have brought you into the land which I swear unto your fathers, and I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall break down their altars, but you have not hearkened unto my voice. Why have you done this? Wherefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you. And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there unto the Lord. And may God give us true understanding of his word. The book that we begin to study this evening is not a very popular Old Testament book. It is not much read, and perhaps it is even less preached on. Nevertheless, one Corinthians chapter ten in the New Testament assures us that this book was written for our learning. Therefore, at once we may take courage and know that God has a message for us, even in our day and generation, from the reading of this book. We shall best understand its lessons, nevertheless, if first of all we take some time and try and understand what these events that are here recorded meant for the Israelites themselves in their own day. Having understood what they meant to those people, we shall then be able the more safely to interpret the lesson that they contain for us. To put this then in its historical context, let's go back to the history of the Israelites and think again of where this comes in their history. We start with them, if you care, down in Egypt, when they were slaves to Pharaoh and his taskmasters, in bondage, their nose to the grindstone, slaving to make Pharaoh his treasure city. In the story, we know how God intervened to deliver his people and break that bondage and deliver them from that yoke and set them free to walk upright through life as free men and women. And of course, we find it not difficult to see a parallel between that and our own experience. We too once were slaves in the grip of the prince of this world, who kept us in darkness and in ignorance, and represented it to us that God was against us, that God was a God who delighted to kill our joy, and that if we would enjoy life, we had better keep as far away from God as we possibly could. And Satan was in process of making us slaves and keeping us there forever, had it not been for the intervention of God, who sent his son into our world as the Lamb of God to make possible our redemption. So that just as the Israelites were redeemed out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb, have saved them from the wrath of God against that ungodly country. So we too have been redeemed, not with the blood of an ordinary lamb, but with the precious blood of Christ. That much is easy, isn't it? But then, of course, when God delivered the Israelites out of Egypt, we remember how that was but the beginning of a long experience of God. They were asked, when they were redeemed, to leave Egypt and to become pilgrims, journeying across the Sinai Peninsula towards an inheritance that God assured them lay the other side. They'd never seen it, but they dared to believe God that it was there, and that they were stepping out towards it, assured that one day they would arrive. And again, it's easy to interpret, isn't it? For we've had that kind of thing in our own experience too, not only redeemed from the power of Satan, but we understand that for us too there is an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not a word. And we've got it well into our hearts that to be redeemed by Christ is the beginning of an ongoing experience in which we daily progress towards an inheritance. And therefore Peter will talk to us in these terms. He'll say, well, now you've been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. Jolly good. Well, now gird up the loins of your mind and pass the time of your journeying, your sojourning here in fear, because you have an inheritance to go to. Now is the time to make progress. Now is the time to journey. Now is the time for change and improvement that will fit us to enjoy our inheritance all the more. Thus far, so good. Then there comes the third piece of the story for Israel, comes then on. We're having journeyed across the Sinai Peninsula, they did one day come to their inheritance in Canaan. And through the miracles of God's power that were wrought through Joshua, their savior, they entered into their inheritance and began to reap its glorious harvest. Have we got something that corresponds in our experience too? Well, yes, we have. Only here we shall have to be wary of the theologians. Hmm. Because we've got two things at this level, and if you listen to some, they'll only let grant you one thing, and if you listen to others, they'll only grant you the hour, and being greedy, I like both. Yes, if you ask Peter, come on, Peter, tell us, what is the inheritance that we as believers have ourselves, as distinct from the Jews? They had a literal canyon flowing with milk and honey. Come, Peter, tell us, what is our inheritance, and when shall we get it? Oh, says Peter, it's a marvelous inheritance that we have. It's not flowing with literal milk and honey that, after all, could go bad. It's incorruptible and undefiled, and it pays not away, and it is reserved in heaven for you. And please, Peter, when shall we have it? Well, not just yet, Peter will say. Not just yet. It's being kept for you, and you are being guarded for it unto a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. There is a glorious inheritance to go to when this life, this life's pilgrimage is finished. And that remains perfectly true. But now, if you address the same kind of question to Paul, he won't disagree with Peter, of course. But he will say, yes, I know there's an inheritance to go to when this life is done, but if you will, you can begin to enjoy it now. For it is the fact, not only has God raised Christ from the dead and set Christ in those heavenly places, but in one sense, he has done the same for you, raised you up with Christ, and set you too in the heavenly places. So that you can already here on earth begin to enjoy at least the first fruits of that glorious inheritance that lies beyond. We have the first fruits of the Spirit. We have the earnest of our inheritance, says Paul. Consider, if you will, what an earnest really is. It isn't just a promise, is it? That one day you will have an inheritance. An earnest is something more than a promise. If a man buys your house from you for the round sum of fifteen thousand pounds, and you say, yes, old chap, uh, uh, that's very cheap at that price. Nevertheless, I'll let you have it for fifteen thousand. Now, please, ha, but I want, uh, an earnest from you. You wouldn't be content with a promise from him, would you? No, yes, I want more than a promise. I want a part payment of the fifteen thousand, please. I'll have five thousand here now. We'll take the other ten later on. An earnest is a down payment, more than a promise, it is part of the actual thing. Paid in advance. And when we think of our glorious inheritance, yes, it is true, as Saint Peter says, it lies beyond. It is true, as Saint Paul says, you have the earnest of it now. Part payment of it now. Part of the very joys of heaven and our glorious inheritance now. Because in spirit we're seated with Christ in the heavenly places. As we read the book of Judges, and then we begin applying it, so to speak, to ourselves as an illustration, it will be of the inheritance in that second sense that we shall be thinking, our spiritual inheritance now. And as we do that, we shall find another correspondence. Paul says that we are seated in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus, not only seated, but called upon to engage in spiritual warfare. In chapter six of his epistle, he tells us that we fight and wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, spiritual wickedness in heavenly places. And there is an obvious correspondence, isn't there? For when Israel got into Canaan, led by Joshua, they found that while the grapes were good and the barley harvest marvelous, nevertheless, to enjoy their heritance, they had to be prepared to fight. And the fact is, if we will enjoy our spiritual inheritance now, we too must be prepared to fight. Oh, you say, that's disappointing news. I thought we got given it as a gift. Well, so you do. Oh, it's a gift. But there are a lot of forces arrayed against you that are determined to keep you from enjoying this gift. While you get the gift free, you'll have to fight these forces. It is as though someone gave you a beautiful big house along the knock road, and you say, how lovely. What do I have to pay? Nothing. Ooh, you say, house, fifteen bedrooms, goodness me. Well, that's glorious inheritance to come, so I'll go and get my possession, you say, all free as a gift. And when you get there, you find the squatters are squatted inside. Well, you say, this is a curious going on. I want to enjoy this house. Please, will you get out? And they say, no, we're not going to get out. Well, you say you'll have to. Huh, and that would, that would start a big old shindy, wouldn't it? For while the house is a gift, so long as the squatters are in it, you can't be in it, and you'll have to turn them out. So Israel found, when they came to the land, the land was a gift. There were squatters in it, who weren't for getting out if they could help it. And Israel found they had to fight to get them out. So now we're beginning to see, I trust, where this ancient book of the Old Testament can speak to us. If we've had the experience of being redeemed, like Israel were redeemed, but we at the spiritual level, and if we know what it is to be crossing a wilderness, to be on a spiritual journey and pilgrimage, trying to make progress in the things of God, journeying towards an inheritance that lies before, like Israel were journeying to their inheritance, then we shall find it easy to say, ah yes, well now this is the next step, entering into the inheritance, not merely when I get home to heaven, but now beginning to enter into it. But at this stage, entering into my spiritual inheritance will involve me in spiritual warfare. Good. Righto, let's begin to look then at the detail of it. As I say, when Israel got to the inheritance, the promised land, they found it occupied by the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites. These were nations that, without exaggeration, could be described as exceedingly vicious. I want you to understand that, and in particular, I want the young folks here to understand it. For sometimes, perhaps in your personal work, or perhaps even if you are reading religious knowledge at school, some learned person will say to you, ah, but I don't believe that Old Testament. How could I possibly believe that Old Testament? Look what they did to the poor Canaanites. When the Israelites went in and slaughtered them, man, woman, and child, how can you believe that that's a God? How can you believe that the very God of heaven, the God of love, would ever command the Israelites to go in and... Good. Righto, let's begin to look then at the detail of it. As I say, when Israel got to the inheritance, the promised land, they found it occupied by the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites. These were nations that, without exaggeration, could be described as exceedingly vicious. I want you to understand that. And in particular, I want the young folks here to understand it. For sometimes, perhaps in your personal work, or perhaps even if you are reading religious knowledge at school, some learned person will say to you, ah, but I don't believe that Old Testament. How could I possibly believe that Old Testament? Look what they did to the poor Canaanites. When the Israelites went in and slaughtered them, man, woman, and child, how can you believe that that's of God? How can you believe that the great God of heaven, the God of love, would ever command the Israelites to go in and slaughter those poor Canaanites? And so, folks, I know I couldn't possibly believe the Old Testament. Well, wait a minute, what do you mean by poor Canaanites? You mean horribly vicious, immoral, cruel Canaanites, don't you? God, says Holy Scripture, had been watching these nations for some centuries. And way back in the time of Abraham, God had told Abraham, four hundred years and more before this, Abraham, one day your, your, your descendants are going into a, a country, and they shall be slaves for a hundred years. That was Egypt. And after those four hundred years, I shall visit them and bring them out of their slavery, and I shall bring them into the land of Canaan. But I'm not going to do that now, Abraham. Why not? Because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full. They were already eating. God waited in his mercy with that nation four hundred years and more. And instead of repentance, he found but increasing crime. Instead of repentance, he found but increasing cruelty and increasing vice. And the archaeologist Spade has shown us how rotten with vice even their religious systems were, with their foul fertility cults and their cruel sacrifice of infants, often killing their babes in sacrifice to their gods, and so po- impossibly immoral in the name of religion, that left they would have infected generations of generations with horrible physical diseases. It was not some war of aggression that greedy Israelites were waging just to seize other folks' property. When Israel entered into Canaan, it was a long delayed judgment of God upon those indescribably evil people. You say, what about the babies? Oh, you should never forget in things like that, should you? That a physical judgment doesn't in and of itself imply an eternal judgment, does it? Innocent babes, yes. Born innocently into a world. Born of this fallen Adam's race, but covered, God be praised, by the great work of Christ. That God took them by the edge of the sword out of that ghastly nation where they might have grown up and fallen to the temptations of their environment and become just as vicious as their parents, that he took them in innocency away. And because in their innocency covered by the work of Christ to some happier eternity is perhaps a matter to give God thanks for, not to blame him for it. But that, by the way, when God executed this judgment, he used the Israelites to do it. And indeed, he did that deliberately, because now it meant this. God was putting out the wicked Amorite and Canaanite and then giving the land to Israel. I trust you can see what that would imply. If God had to get rid of the Amorites in order to give it to Israel, that carried with it at once the implication. Now look here, Israel. It is impossible, isn't it, that you should think that I'm going to allow you to do the same thing for which I just had to throw out the Amorites? Yeah? Oh yes, Israel began to see at once what redemption implied. Marvelous is redemption when it saves us from the wrath of God in Egypt. Yes. But that doesn't mean that now we're free to do as we like. Redemption will mean that, uh, we agree with God that sin is sin and must be judged. And that if we try to do the things that sinners do, it will certainly impede, if it doesn't make altogether impossible, our present enjoyment of our inheritance. So I say, when the Israelites went into Canaan, in order to enjoy their inheritance, they had to agree with God over this question of the Canaanites. Agree with God that the sins of the Canaanites were sins, and that they must be dealt with. And of course, if you condemn sin in somebody else, you condemn it in yourself, don't you? You would be a terrible hypocrite if you didn't. But there comes the rub of the story. There were days, there were months, there were years, in fact, when Israel went about their job seriously and solemnly, and in an attitude of true repentance and faith, and they said, yes, God. This indescribable immorality must be put an end to. This cruelty to children, it must be put an end to. This fearful idolatry, it must be put an end to. And they killed the enemy. How but alas. There came times when they faltered. Hm. You know, young Isaac came home, age twenty and a half, I should think, just been enlisted in the army, and came home and he said, you know, Dad, I, you know, I think you old folks are a bit fusty musty. I mean, what's wrong with those nice Canaanites over there? I was at the tea party with them today. Oh, what's wrong with them? Mm. And when they began to think like that, then they weren't quite so sure whether they ought to boot them out. And they ended up by letting them stay. And then? five months after that, they began to do the same things as the Canaanites did. Yes. And you know, perhaps it was from the very start that that is really what was happening anyway. When God said, destroy that Canaanite because of this long list of evil things that he's doing, Jonathan said to himself, I don't know about that, so I want to do them myself. Or at least some of them. And they began to disagree with God as on this question of sin and the attitude one must take to sin. And in the end, got themselves all horribly mixed up. Indeed, sometimes intermarried. With the very folks that God had commanded them to destroy. How did God deliver them from that? You say by sending great generals and beating up the enemy. Well, that's partly true. But do you notice the word that this book uses for the army generals and the other great deliverers that God used to set the people free when they got themselves into these impossible muddles? Do you notice the word that he uses? It doesn't actually say generals or captains or colonels. He calls them judges. Oh, sure, they weren't high court judges with long woolly things, curls that our high court judges wear. Do you know, we keep our judges, uh, distinct from the army, don't we, mercifully enough? But, uh, they were judges and generals, many of them. But some of them were judges and housewives. Because in it all, the most important thing was not the general side of it, but the, the judge side of it. Here's a group of Israelites, and they've got themselves all mixed up with Canaanites, and some of them have married, and they're all in the thick, and they've got all muddled up with idolatry, and now these Canaanites have got the upper hand of them, and they're really putting the screw on the old Israelites and, uh, and grinding their nose into dust and making slaves of them again. And the Israelites say, this won't do. You nasty Canaanite. Now, I didn't, wasn't expecting that. You've gone and pinched my bullets, and you've gone and taken my fields. Now, that is nasty of you. You want to set them free, what do you do? You just call in a big general with the big guns and say, here, shoot that Canaanite for me. No, you don't. I'll tell you why you don't. Because when you shot the cany night and set the man free, he'd go down the road and and and join up with the next cany night. If you're going to set him free, you'll have to take him by his beard and say, come here, old chap. Now perhaps you'll see that God knew what he was talking about when he told you not to compromise with that kind of thing. When he told you that that kind of thing and the way they carried on was evil. And he told you to destroy it out of your life. Now, if you want to be free, this will have to be the first step. You'll have to learn to judge yourself. And you'll have to let God's word judge you. And you'll have to come round to looking at things as God looks at them and agreeing with God that sin is sin. In other words, first of all, you must repent. And if you do really repent, then says God righto, then I'm prepared to come in and deliver you. It's no good delivering you unless you repent. So it is with us. We shall learn from this book what you might call the gospel of self-judgment. If I would enjoy my inheritance, if I would be delivered from my spiritual enemies, I shall have to learn to judge myself in the light of God's word. You say, what do you mean? Let me take an example. When I come to Christ, I am forgiven of my sin, yes? What a glorious thing it is. Marvelous forgiveness. As I go through my Christian experience, I find that I'm a failing creature, and I constantly need God's forgiveness. And I find God has a forgiveness that is as constant as the sunrise. Yes? Oh, that's marvelous. And while I'm enjoying this beautiful bunch of grapes that is God's forgiveness and munching them in my mouth, here comes my brother and stands on my toe. Ooh, wow. And somebody comes up to me and says, look here, fellow, yes, I know he has wronged you, but you ought to be prepared to forgive him. I mean, he says now he's sorry. You say, no, no, no, no, I never forgive him. Oh. Well, you'll never forgive him. Somebody says to me, but you, well, come, come, come, you profess to be a Christian, don't you? And doesn't the Bible say that if we don't forgive, God won't forgive us? I don't care what it says, I shall never forgive him. Oh, I see. And that's my elder gets courage in both hands and says, but now look here, old chap, I must tell you to your face, you're being very carnal. That's an enemy you've got inside your heart. That's an enemy you must judge, you must recognize that vile pride is a vile carnal thing, and you must put it to the sword. And all those ugly feelings that rise up, oh, but I never will forgive the man. Learn them for what they are. That's an enemy inside. And if you don't, uh, agree with God and seek his grace to put that thing to the sword, uh, oh, but it will enslave you. And let God tell you it will stop you enjoying your inheritance. As sure as God is in his heaven, so sure if we don't put that thing to the sword, it will stop our enjoyment of our inheritance. Yeah. Yeah. So I trust we're beginning to see that this Old Testament book is going to be not just ancient history, it is that, but it's going to be exceedingly practical, and we shall have to look a lot of old enemies in the face, and we shall find some of them outside, but we shall find an extraordinary number inside. For yes, we have enemies outside, Satan and his hosts, that will keep us, if they can, from enjoying our inheritance. But we've got an extraordinarily large number of enemies inside. And God will ask us to join him in his judgment of them. Ask us to join him in putting them down. May I then make one further point? And surely I don't need to make it, do I? And yet perhaps I do. I don't know. But if I don't need to make it, and I do, you'll forgive me, won't you? We shall be reading in this book of Israel's literal warfare with literal swords and slings and battering rams, battering down literal cities and literally killing literal people. You will please observe, won't you? But when we in the Christian church apply that lesson, we are not talking about literal carnal warfare. Weapons of our warfare, says the Apostle Paul in two Corinthians, are not carnal, that is literal weapons. You say, why tell us that? Well, simply because the lesson of history is this, that from time to time, Christendom, if not sometimes true Christian people, have forgotten Forgotten it. it. Our Lord forbade us, didn't he? Our Lord strictly forbade us to use literal carnal weapons to defend him and his cause. Telling Peter to put up his sword into his sheath. And Paul tells us in that passage that I have just quoted that we are not to use carnal weapons for the propagation of the faith. And the prohibitions are exceedingly clear. Alas, not merely unregenerate professing Christians, but sometimes genuinely converted Christians have forgotten it. In the times of the Crusades, united Christendom sent forth its warriors to slit the throat of Turks, and right happily they slipped. In the name of Christ. Sending unregenerate Turks to their eternity. In the name of Christ and his gospel. Ah, how did it happen? That professing Christians had got so muddled up with the politics of Europe that they sank so low? But let me come nearer home and remind us what the reformers did. In order to insist on their points of view, dear old Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, men whose names in some respects we honor immensely. Those very same men lifted the sword and slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands, of their fellow believers. And what a shame, and what a scandal. God keep us in our day from making that same mistake. We are not, as Christians, permitted the sword, the literal sword, either for the propagation or for the defense of the faith. And I would like us to understand that. For since the days of the book of Judges, our Lord has come. They were delivered from a literal Egypt, but we from a spiritual. There the literal pilgrimage, ours are spiritual. There's a literal land of Canaan for an inheritance, but not ours a literal land of Canaan for an inheritance. Theirs were literal wars, but ours spiritual. It had been well for our province, hadn't it? If all who profess the name of Jesus Christ had remembered that. The Lord then bless our introductory thoughts, and if the Lord par- come, uh, come not in these weeks, bring us together and instruct us further in the lessons of the book. Shall we?