"The Liberty of the People of God”
Judges 3

March 5, 2006
by C.W. Powell

First of all, let us spend a few minutes on the historical details—not too much time, because I am more concerned with the meaning of these events for the church of Jesus Christ than I am for the details.

1. The general outline of chapter two is illustrated in this chapter. After Joshua died and the generation following Joshua died, the people went after idols, and God gave them over to bondage. They worshipped Baalim, the gods of the people of the land; they intermarried with them. As Matthew Henry says, their distinctiveness as the people of God was obscured, for God’s people are called to be separate from the world; not in terms of their prejudices and preferences, but in terms of God’s holiness.

2. This happened twice in this chapter and both times God gave them over to bondage to the heathen: first of all to the king of Mesopotamia; the second to the Moabites.

3. When they cried unto the Lord in their distress, the Lord raised up Othniel, the nephew of Caleb. Othniel must have been an old man at this time, but God used him in a wonderful way. We do not know the details, but he went to war and defeated the Mesopotamians and were restored to the liberty of their service to God and the use of their land and economic liberty.

4. After that generation passed, the children again fell into idolatry and wickedness, and God brought the evil Moabite Eglon, who was allied with the Amalekites and Ammorites. If you remember your history of Genesis, you will know that these were relatives of Israel, for Moab was descended from Lot; Ammon was the son of Abraham by his second wife, Keturah, and Amalek was descended from Esau. The children of flesh can be as enslaving to the people of God as the children of the heathen.

5. When the people cried to the Lord, God raised up Ehud, a Benjamite. It was a gory story. Ehud was left handed. A left handed man was considered sneaky for he struck at you from the wrong side. We get the word sinister through the Latin for “left.” Under a pretense of bringing a gift, he stabbed Eglon with his left hand and escaped. There was a slaughter of the Moabites at that time by Israel. An additional juicy detail that always intrigues school children is that Eglon was a very fat man, and when the dagger went into his stomach, Ehud was not able to retrieve his dagger, but had to leave without it. This dagger was a cubit in length, from 18 to 22 inches or so. Ehud gathered an army and won a great victory for Israel, resulting in the destruction of ten thousand sturdy warriors of Moab.

6. There is third judge mentioned here, perhaps an associate of Ehud who judged after Ehud. He was Shamgar and slew six hundred with an ox-goad.

a. What a wonderful bit of history! The word translated “ox-goad” is not clear; it could mean plow-share, as Matthew Henry points out. It might be another tool or farm implement.
b. Shamgar used what he had. “What is that in thine hand.” What an inspiration for those who wonder what use they can be in the Lord’s work! “What is that in thine hand.” Use what you have.

As I have said throughout this series on Joshua and Judges, the purpose for the recording of these events was not so much for that generation, or even for the generations of the nations of Israel that followed, although it certainly was informative and instructive to them. All things in the Bible are about the coming of Christ and His redemption, as Paul was careful to tell us in I Corinthians 10:

“11 Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. 12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. 13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. 14 Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.” (1Co 10:11-14 AV)

1. What concern are the events of these ancient judges to us?

2. Did God need Israel to bring judgment upon the wicked; There are many examples in the Bible about His direct action on the wicked: Herod eaten of worms; the great flood of Noah’s Day; The fall of Jericho; the deaths of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and so forth.

3. We might look on the pages of these histories as kindergarten text books for the people of God. They are picture books and counting objects for the beginning age of the church.

“12 For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. 13 For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14 But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” (Heb 5:12-14 AV)

a. We must not remain children in our understanding of our service for Christ.

b. Senses exercised: the moral and spiritual faculties. Grow up. Be mature. Don’t be unskillful in the word of righteousness. A babe who uses milk. Nothing wrong with babies; nothing wrong with milk, but people are born so they can learn and be adults, not so they can remain babies forever.

c. By reason of use: the faculties must be used and exercised. The mind and spiritual sensibilities must be trained and disciplined.

d. The discerning of right and wrong is not easy, according to this text, but come as a result of exercise and strengthening.

e. You will pay a dear price for the things you don’t know, if you ought to know them. You cannot know everything, but if you resist knowing what God designs to teach you, you will pay a heavy price for that ignorance.

f. It is a dangerous thing to read the Bible only once, to come to church once in awhile, or not to listen and learn while you are here, to go away thinking you know something when you just know a piece of this or a piece of that.
g. What we think we know when we don’t know it is more dangerous than what we don’t know.

“1 Now these are the nations which the LORD left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan; 2 Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof; 3 Namely, five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath. 4 And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the LORD, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. “

1. Once again, ignorance of the Scriptures might lead you astray. God said when Israel was still in the wilderness that he was not going to drive the people out all at once, but little by little, so that the land would not be desolate and consumed by wild beasts and the cities fall to ruin.

2. Then He said that Israel was to blame for not driving them out, for making treaties with them.

3. Then He said that the reason he didn’t drive them out in the days of Joshua was because He knew that they wouldn’t drive them out.

4. This can be very confusing if you do not understand a basic principle about God’s dealings in the world and the relationship between His actions and our actions.

a. God is sovereign and knows the future from the beginning. But there is no past, present, and future in God, for He dwells in eternity, where there is no time. All things are open and plain to Him.

b. God has more than one purpose in that which He does: the Bible speaks of the “manifold wisdom of God.” [Eph. 3:10] These purposes are not contradictory, but some of them may not be immediately revealed to us. This does not mean that God makes up His mind because of what He knows will come to pass, for that would separate His will from His knowledge.

c. It is not contradictory that God would intend all of this: chastening of Israel for unbelief; leave Canaanites in the land for this purpose; arrange these events in terms of purposes many hundreds of years in the future for the edification of the church in Jesus Christ, and many other purposes that may yet be hidden.

d. So God said He wouldn’t drive them out because He intended to gradually redeem the land; that He wouldn’t drive them out because He would use them to educate future generation; that He wouldn’t drive them out because they were disobedience and he would use the inhabitants for disciplinary purposes; and that He would use these events to teach the church after Christ had come. All of these purposes were realized by God.

e. We see the wonderful activity of God through this all; man is held responsible for what he does and is chastened for disobedience, but in no way can man’s disobedience do anything against the overarching purpose and plan of God.

5. It is the purpose of God to teach you and me how to war.

a. War is necessary for liberty. The mandate of God in the Bible to go to war is not repealed by the coming of Christ. There are two legitimate reason for a nation to go to war. First of all, a nation is not a church, but is after the order of nature, family, and tribes rather than by the calling of the Holy Spirit. This distinction is very important. The church is not called to arms and to civil government and is not given a sword to take men’s lives. But the state, the natural order, is required to go to war on two occasions.

b. The first of these occasions is self defense. This is a natural right. Life is a precious gift from God and even a mouse will try to defend itself. If you have no great strength, then you can hide among the rocks as the conies of Israel did. The very weak shelter under the strong, and strong leaders attract people to them for defense. This is right and proper. It is a cowardly and contemptible people who will not raise their hands to defend their families and churches and property from evil and violent men, especially when the means for self-defense are there. I am a strong believer in the right of citizens to bear arms, and that Christian men and women be trained in their use.

i. Israel was a nation after the flesh, with all the rights of nationhood to defend their lives and their property from the ungodly. It was the Spirit of the Lord that came upon Othniel and Ehud and Shamgar, the Spirit of Jehovah who is a Man of War.; The Reformed Faith is a robust and manly faith that will not shrink from blood if God so ordains.

ii. It is not contradictory to say that Christians can both war and preach the gospel. The danger comes when people do not know the difference. You go to war for one purpose; you preach the gospel for another. Who go to war with people who have forfeited their right to life; you preach to those who are dying so that they might be saved if they believe the Gospel.

c. The second occasion is to repress overwhelming evil. After the flood God promised that He would never again destroy the world with a flood. He put His rainbow in the sky as a sign of His promise. But this did not mean that God was indifferent to the spread of evil and rot in the world. No, He said, “Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Man was given responsibility to govern and discipline himself, and to removed murderers and gangsters from their society. It is all right for laws to be enforced strictly with the death penalty, to keep the rot of corrupt men from spoiling everything; it is also right for nations, singly or in community, to removed regimes and nations that threaten the peace of the world, as the nations destroyed the evil governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan, Turkey, and others in World War II.

d. You ask why there is evil in the world: this is one of the reason right here: to make men out of the people of God. We have to be taught how to war.

i. We have to learn to war by the Spirit against the deeds of the flesh. Gal. 5. Until you learn to walk in the Spirit and not in the flesh, you will be no use to the people of God. The first evil you must declare war against is the evil that dwells in your own heart and mind. “Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.” (1Co 16:13 AV)

ii. We have to learn who the enemy is. Christians spend too much time fighting each other and make themselves so weak they become irrelevant in the Kingdom of God.

iii. Parents need how to learn to war with the evil in their children; their unbelief. Parents are sissies too often nowadays. They don’t want to make the child cry or be unhappy. But sometimes parents are bullies. They don’t know how to war. In either case, liberty is lost as ungodliness rules the home. Dad doesn’t know how to fight the fight of faith; Mom doesn’t know and longs for peace and quiet; and kids become resentful and bitter.

iv. Christians should be for rigorous law enforcement in neighbors, for people have a right to live at peace and liberty in their homes and neighborhoods. We have to learn how to war within our borders against those who would overthrow Christianity and morality and faith. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:” (1Pe 5:8 AV)

v. Christians should know that war against wickedness is honorable and good. There is not a word anywhere in the Bible that gives support for pacifism and cowardice.

vi. It is also certain that success in any war depends upon faithfulness to God and repentance from sins. It depends upon the blessing of God. Israel was not delievered until they turned unto the Lord, renewed their pledge of obedience to Him, and God raised up a delieverer. It was God who brought the greatness at the time it was needed.

vii. Fundamental to all our warfare, then, is faithfulness to God, and the blessing to God. We are not to go to war in the flesh, or trust in the sword,. Nor are we to enter rashly or for wickedness, but in the fear of God and trust in righteousness and law.

viii. Using all the imagery of the past, Paul wrote to the young minister, Timothy:

“3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 4 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 5 And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully.” (2Ti 2:3-5 AV)

“12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses. 13 I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession;” (1Ti 6:12-13 AV)

“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith:” (2Ti 4:7 AV)

ix. Our struggle on the earth is part of a cosmic struggle whose outcome is certain, and we therefore can enter into the conflict with joy and gladness:

“7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.” (Re 12:7-8 AV)

Amen and Amen. May God bless you.