Gooding, David: 10 - Contending for the Faith

I'm doing my honest best to get back on track and to come somewhere near the timetable that was advertised to you. If you have been seriously disconcerted and un discon- uh, uh, inconvenienced by the disruption of the timetable, then see the colonel in chief and his commander and ask for some of your money back. If you would care for the moment to turn to two Samuel chapter eleven and verse twenty. While you are turning to it, let me observe that in my attempt to get back on track, we shall have a shortest session to begin with tonight so that you may proceed with your e- prayer e- exercises without any undue shortening of that period. Then we shall have a final session that might be a trifle longer than usual, who knows? But now, in two Samuel eleven twenty comes the story of you, of Joab's letter, which he sent to a mess- through a messenger to David from the battlefront. The message conveyed was to tell King David that Uriah, his servant, one of his bodyguards, had been killed at the front. He had, uh, been killed by the enemy from the wall of the city that the Israelites were attacking. And Joab says in verse twenty, "It shall be that if the king's wrath arise and he say unto thee, wherefore went you so nigh unto the city to fight? Knew you not that they would shoot from the wall? Who smote Abimelech the son of Jerubbesheth? Did not a woman cast an upper millstone upon him from the wall that he died at Thebes. Why went you so nigh the wall? Then thou shalt say, thy servant Uriah the Hittite is dead also. From which you'll see that one at least of the stories that we have recorded for us in the book of Judges was kept alive in the memory, not of the people in general only, but in the minds of the military academies of the day, where they learned from past experience and sought to profit from it and taught it to the young cadets in the military academies, the tactics in war that were to be adopted and those that were to be avoided. And here Joab is afraid that the king might disapprove of the tactics he used because some of his men had gone too near the to the wall in their zeal to besiege the city, and the archers from the wall had shot and killed them. A mistaken tactic, you might think, on Joab's part, and he should have known better from what he had read in the military manuals based on past experience. And says Joab, if the king reminds you of that and gets angry and says, why did you go so near the wall? Weren't you, didn't you remember what the books say about, uh, what happened to Abimelech when he was trying to besiege Thebes? How he went too near the wall and a woman cracked his skull by throwing a millstone over it. Then you shall pacify the king's rage by saying, yes, but your majesty, Uriah the Hittite is dead as well. And the king at that point said, oh, well, you know, let's not make a fuss. The sword devoureth one another. Which shows us, of course, doesn't it, as I say, that one at least of the stories in the Book of Judges was preserved in the memory of the military men of later ages. They profited from the lessons it had to teach on the tactics of military warfare. And for all I know, many of the stories in the Book of Judges could have been preserved in the memory of the military men, because they show an astonishing variety of tactics that were used in dealing with the various enemies that afflicted Israel. Now, I was suggesting at the end of our last session that as we come to read of these military activities, how God raised up deliverers to deliver his people from the enemy, there are four major areas that might from time to time occupy our, our, our attention. One is the need to reconnoiter the enemy. The second is to observe the seriousness of the various captivities, that they contradicted the basic principles of the nation's existence. Thirdly, the need to match suitable tactics to defeat a particular enemy, and fourth, uh, fourthly, they need to have qualifications to be a deliverer of God's people. We shall not see all those four features in every one of the stories, but we shall meet enough of them frequently enough that I think it's worthwhile now to spend a little time thinking of those four things in general before we finally proceed to the particulars. Reconnoitering the enemy. It is evident upon even a shallow reading of these stories that not all the enemies were the same. The Moabites, after all, were a different, very different people from the hard-headed Canaanites who lived in the northern fortified cities and had nine hundred chariots of iron. The northerners were in the forefront of the technological revolution that was going on at the time. The Moabites were hardly that advanced. On the other hand, when we come to the Midianites, we shall find that they were nomads. They did not settle in any city. They were nomads. And when you get hordes of nomads suddenly invading a land that is settled with cities, they can cause a fearful disruption. They are a pest and a nuisance to people that are organized in cities, when nomads come invading and destroying the land. They were different enemies, therefore. The Philistines, whom we shall eventually meet in the time of Samson, were likewise very different, for they were not Semitic peoples. It is reckoned that they were Indo-Europeans. They came, according to some accounts, from Crete, some from other accounts from Cappadocia, they were typically, in the description of Holy Writ, the uncircumcised Philistine. Because, of course, they were Gentiles who were not normally given to the practice of circumcision. Some other Semitic nations besides Israel did practice circumcision, but for different reasons. The Philistines did not, they were Indo-European. They settled on the southwest coastline, having invaded from the coast, and they are typically referred to, as I say, as the uncircumcised Philistine. The Ammonites, again, were a different people because with them living on the east side of Jordan, as they did, Israel had long since been in combat, long before they crossed the Jordan and entered into the land. So the enemies were different. Can we go further than that? Had these different nations special characteristics? Now, I'm going to argue with you that says they did. And to understand these nations and how the e- uh, the uh, Israelite commanders overcame them, and what the issue of the battle was, you must, I shall argue, consider the different characteristics of the different nations. Now here I realize I shall be treading on disputed ground. When I say the Moabites stand for this and that and the other, many voices will be raised, uh, will rise in protest of what they call my allegorization, they'll say. They will object and say it's false for this reason. You should not stereotype people. Oh, you English, they will say, have a habit of talking about a person saying he's a typical American, as though there was one stereotype American, and all the hundred and fifty millions Americans all conform to the stereotype idea that Englishmen have of Americans, you'll see. And they say that is utterly false. People should not be stereotyped. They are all individuals, you'll see. And to say that Moab represented this or that or the other particular attitude is to fall into the trap of stereotyping Moabites. I take the point. I mean, we English do still have, I'm afraid, a very, uh, uh, clear idea in our minds as what a typical American is, nonetheless. And I suspect some of you have an idea of what a typical Englishman is, but politeness would forbid you from mentioning it in this context. To so say is valid enough, but you mustn't stereotype individuals. But then, of course, I do notice what the social anthropologists say. They talk to missionaries, for instance, and say that when they go to countries like Zaire or South America, what they must do is to respect the culture of the nations to which they go. Each nation, they says, has a national culture. Oh, really? I thought they're supposed to be all individuals, and you mustn't stereotype them. So what is this thing? A national culture that foreigners are asked to respect. That, of course, is a reality, isn't it, gentlemen? The individuals in the nation may be, in many respects, different individual personalities, but that there is something that you might describe as a national culture that, as far as I'm aware, everybody agrees. And when we are thinking of God's judgments upon the Canaanites, it wasn't God's judgments merely on particular individuals seen as individuals or a mass of individuals. It was God's judgment on those Canaanite cultures and civilizations. Of course, cultures don't exist without people, but nations do, by reason of their history, sometimes by reason of their geography, they do have certain identifiable cultures. The Russian culture is not the American culture, gentlemen. It is not only history that has made the Russian culture what the Russian culture is, but of course the development of certain ideologies in that country that have been forced upon whole generations of Russians and drilled into their brains, brainwashed as many of them have been, that have produced a certain outlook that is typical to the nation as a whole. I do not forget that within the Soviet Union there are many subcultures, so say the social anthropologists, you see. But there is an overriding Russian culture, at least in the Russian part, the Russian Republic within that union. And of course, American history, with its glorious beginnings, Jose, in her the the attempt by the early settlers to flee the repressions in Europe, are to be seen enshrined, are they not, their principle and objectives in their constitution, and the pursuit of freedom and happiness and what have you. It has given the nation a culture, certain goals to aim at, certain basic values. It would be foolish to ignore or deny them. Some of the American, let me say it as an Englishman, some of the American ideals are marvelous, aren't they? And I'm glad to see that nowadays, once a year on Independence Day, they have long ceremonies, ceremonies of contrition and repentance that they broke from England and didn't enrich us too with their further insights, do you see? For that, by the by, I shall be suggesting that when we come to these nations in the book of Judges that became enemies to the people of God, they have recognizable characteristics according to their different cultures. And we shall have to learn to reconnoit of them and what they stood for. Because while certainly we are not engaged as Christians in fighting literal Moabites or Midianites nowadays, we might well be called upon to fight the kind of values and principles that informed those ancient cultures. And hence this book will have a permanent message for us. Now let us run over the stories in, in Judges to see how these captivities managed to contradict and undermine the basic principles of Israel's experience, indeed the basic principles of parts of their very redemption and their existence. The first enemy that overcame them, according to Judges, was Cushan Rishathaim, king of Mesopotamia. King of an area of northern Mesopotamia where the two great rivers turn west. That part of Mesopotamia that c- contained Haran, where Abram and his father came to rest for some years, before Abram proceeded on his journey into the land of promise. But gentlemen, now generations has passed, and Israel are no longer pilgrims like Abram was in the land of promise, not owning a foothold in it. They've now been in the promised land, possessing it as owners of the promised land. Surely you say they are at the very goal of their national pilgrimage. They've arrived, and what use arriving? If the king of Mesopotamia, the very country that Abraham left to come into the Promised Land, has come up behind and taken possession of the Israelites and of their land. That's a denial of a first principle, isn't it? Uh, secondly, the second captivity was to Moab, who came across Jordan and captured Jericho. Well, come, gentlemen. Jericho was the first si- city west of Jordan that Israel had to capture when they came into the Promised Land. And Jericho being destroyed, Joshua straightly pronounced a curse on anybody who should rebuild Jericho. The Israelites had destroyed it then, and from that great victory they moved on to others, conquering many other cities throughout the length and breadth of the land. Marvelous progress. Uh, but... What is happening to the progress? While you're making progress in capturing other cities, the enemy has come in behind and recaptured Jericho. It's a denial of a first principle too, isn't it? Not only captured it, but rebuilt it. In the third oppression that we read of at the beginning of chapter four, we are told that the Lord saved them, uh, sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan, that reigned in Hazor, 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. Sad. You know, once upon a time, the Israelites had been slaves in Egypt, and what old Pharaoh did to them was mightily oppress them. But shortly since then, there had come the Passover and the miracle of the Red Sea, and Israel were brought out and were free, and came into the land of Canaan as freeborn children of Israel to occupy their inheritance and to enjoy their freedom, and pray what's happened now? That another oppression has come upon them. You say they might as well be back in Egypt then. What benefit to be in the land of promise if you have come under an oppression so severe that it borders on the oppression that they had experienced at the first in Egypt. The third oppression was, according to chapter six, when the Midianites came up, they came like the sand on the seashore for multitude with all their camels and et cetera, and it was so, we're told, that when Israel had sown and the harvest was nearly ready, up came the Midianites, you'll see, and destroyed the increase of the earth, chapter six verse four. till thou come unto Gaza and left no sustenance in Israel, neither sheep nor ox or ass. And what a sad thing that was too. For the Israelites had come into this promised land encouraged by the promise that it was a land flowing with milk and honey. Here they were. But not much milk and honey nowadays, gentlemen. They were faced with famine and starvation because of the multitudes of these nomads that came in and destroyed every bit of sustenance throughout the whole land. That made the promise of milk and honey look a little bit sick, didn't it? And it's good if we can honestly sing that now we've been saved, none but Christ can satisfy. We're HAPPY all the day long. But I have known churches to get into such trouble that the spiritual famine was severe and seemed to give the lie to the promise that in Christ salvation, you'll say, you'll be perfectly satisfied every day of the week. Then came Abimelech. The less said of him, the better. Ostensibly, he is a deliverer. But what a pseudo deliverer he is. If he's a deliverer, you'd be better off with the bondage. Nominally a deliverer. He proves a worse and as destructive a tyrant as any Gentile that ever oppressed the people of God. Jephthah was faced with a threat from the king of Ammon, who with great hostility demanded that Israel cede back to Ammon the territory east of Jordan. And Jephthah had to rise up and dispute it, because to have ceded the claim that Ammon made at this moment would have been to surrender the very territory that the Lord himself had given to Israel on the east side of Jordan. And it is good to see valiant Jephthah prepared first to engage in diplomat- diplomacy and then in warfare, so that he shall not give up a piece of territory that the Lord himself had given them. The earliest piece of territory that God gave them. A piece of territory that God gave Israel, that their fathers fought for, and God gave them before they ever crossed Jordan. What's the good of going across Jordan and conquering all that God gives you in Jordan, if presently you see the territory that God gave you east of Jordan. And if you start seeding territory that God has given you east of Jordan, it won't be long, gentlemen, before you'll be seeding territory that God gives you west of Jordan. Then comes Samson. He too was meant to be a deliverer. But at the time, the Israelites were under the domination of the Philistines, the uncircumcised Philistines. Far from delivering the people of God from the Philistines, Samson himself succumbed to them through marrying their daughters. When he died, Israel were much as much in bondage to the Philistines as ever they had been. And that's an interesting matter, you know. The land that we call Palestine gets its name Palestine from the Philistines. Palestine means the country where the Philistines live. And it got that name amongst the other nations because, from the point of view of other nations, as far as they knew, it was the land belonged to the Pal- uh, the Philistines, and it was inhabited by Philistines. Of course, the Israelites were absolutely different from Philistines. It was a pity that to the outside world there came this mistaken identity. The Philistines were not in God's covenant with Abraham. They were uncircumcised Philistines. The land should have belonged to Israel. But in the time of Samson, who had identified himself with Philistine girl, died in bondage to the Philistines, it looked as if the whole land belonged to the Philistines. Micah, we are told in the first epilogue, together with his Levite, set up an idolatrous shrine and were followed by the Danites who did the very same thing. And thus reverse the basic principle lying behind Israel's invasion. They were to destroy the Gentile cities, root out and destroy their idols, set up the worship of the one true God in the land. But by this time, the very basic purpose of the conquest of the country was being forgotten. The Danites, as a result of their further expansion and conquest, used their conquest to establish, if you please, idolatry. When at last we watch the sorry antics of the all-tribal assembly, trying to impose discipline upon the country and to maintain the sanctity of life under God throughout the whole nation. We shall find that in the very attempt to maintain the sanctities of God, they overturn and disregard and foul the very sanctities they were meant to uphold. It is a sorry book. And I have only rehearsed these one after the other in your ears, to try and show the seriousness of the, of the various captivities and what the sin of Israel brought them to. These were not minor matters, like the color of women's stockings that someone was talking about here this morning. These were the very basic principles of God's gospel and redemption to Israel. It was these very basic principles of the gospel that the national apostasies challenged and overturned and corrupted and went on their way to destroy. Hence Hence the the Z. zeal of God in chastising his people till they came to their senses. Hence the necessity to stand fast and to fight the good fight of the faith, to recover the basic principles of the gospel and of the inheritance that God had given to Israel. It's not narrow-minded party strife in fighting these enemies, the deliverers were fighting for the very basic tenets, tenets of their faith, and so must we. And then, of course, we shall need to give heed to, uh, tactics, shall we not? I do say, if the enemies were different, the tactics had to be. It stands on the very surface of the record that whereas Ehud killed the king of Midian through his belly, God had Sisera, commander in chief of the Canaanites of the north, killed through his brain. Gentlemen, I hope you think I'm not allegorizing, because I want to say a stark reality. There's nothing essentially wrong either with the human belly or the human brain, God be thanks for both. It is possible for both of them to be perverted, and for the belly to become an enemy of God, and for unsanctified, unregenerate brains to become enemies of God. And we shall need to know our enemies so that we might adopt the proper tactics that are appropriate to each one. And finally, the matter of qualifications. This I may say briefly by appealing to the story of the first captivity and the first deliverance. And I have already spoken on it, so now a passing reference will suffice. Othniel was raised up to deliver Israel from their first bondage. We'll say Abraham, as I had said, came from Ur of Chaldees originally, drawn from idolatry by the surpassing glory of the revelation of God to him. As Stephen later put it, the God of glory appeared to Abraham when he dwelt in Ur of Chaldees and in Mesopotamia. Though he lived in his far off days amongst those splendid civilizations of southern Mesopotamia, Ur of Chaldees in particular, brilliant civilizations. We admire them still as we look at their remains in the big, uh, uh, museums of the world. Brilliant civilizations. But Abram was drawn out of them, not for some puritanical motive that he didn't like modern progress, art, culture, or literature. It was, he was drawn out of them because they were at root idolatrous. And secondly, the true living God of heaven, the God of glory, appeared to him and won his very heart and won his mind and brought him out of Ur of Chaldees on his journey to the promised land. For a while they stayed halfway house in Haran in northern Mesopotamia, but when his father died, God appeared to him. The overriding consideration and motivation in Abram's life, the living Lord appeared to him and held out the glorious promises of an inheritance and a seed and much more beside. So glorious that in the end, Abram was content to be a pilgrim and stranger even in the Promised Land, for he looked for the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and the exceeding glory of the eternal world, catching his imagination, kept Abram a pilgrim and kept him in the promised land that his descendants were to inherit for an inheritance. Glorious vision. And what happened? Israel got settled in the land, heir to this vision of the glory of the transcendent Lord, the real living God, as distinct from the miserable idols. Little by little, the younger folks, not having had Abram's experience, let their hearts be attracted to the lipstick and paint and the gaudy dress of the Moabite girls and the Mesopotamian girls. And they said, what's wrong with it? And wasn't Moses excessively narrow-minded? After all, this is the modern world, you know. These girls are perfectly decent girls. Of course, they do have a slightly different way of worshiping, but what's wrong with them? I mean, shouldn't we pool all religious insights and, uh, worship together? And I mean, I know they get up to a little fornication in some of their rituals, but you know, God made our bodies, didn't we? And who are we to be judgmental? And they lost their hearts. That's where the trouble starts, doesn't it? Listen again to the exhortation. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Oh, gentlemen, if we're to be kept on a right course, we shall have to choose between the glory of God, the glory of eternity, the glory of his inheritance, and the glories of this world. There's no denying that the Canaanite girls had a certain attractiveness. Who would deny it? But underneath lay all their idolatry. It was a question of where your heart would lie. How was Othniel fitted? Where did he get his qualifications from? To be a deliverer to the people who had fallen into bondage by falling in love with the girls of the pagan nations around. Why, as we said in an earlier session, he got his qualifications when good old Caleb, who fully followed the law, held up his daughter as a prize to be gained for going on to develop the inheritance, to slay the Canaanite, and to enter into the glories that God had for his people. And Othniel had a look at the old giants, and then he had a look at the girl. And the giants paled to insignificance. But his heart was one. That proved the key to his success. Gentlemen, if we are to deliver God's people from that type of worldliness, our qualifications will have to start with our own hearts, with the burning love of the Lord, not because we're especially pious, but because the God of glory has appeared to us with such surpassing wonder and glory that we, like Abram, can no longer be content with anything that comes below the glory of the living God. Hm? And from such heights, if I were a married man, I would now preach a sermon to all my younger brethren who are not yet married. But I'm not a married man, so I'm not going to preach it. But I was just saying, if I were, what I would have said was. Gentlemen, be very careful whom you marry. God give you a wife, and there are many such, that where you lag behind will be your motivation, and through your love of them will draw you on to love the Lord and prod and poke and push because they have ambitions for you. That you shall not be a run-of-the-mill Christian, content to paddle in the riches of God's grace, but want to see you develop into a very giant for God, godly women that will stand with you and push you on. God give you wives like that. Gentlemen, there are other wives. Superficially, they can look very attractive, but they could be your stumbling block, if not your veritable undoing. So let us there take a break in our studies.