Plan for the Readings
Since we’re now done with Acts, let me
explain the next course of reading.
We’re going back into the Hebrew Scriptures. We left the Hebrew people having taken the
Promised Land – although not completely – under Joshua. We’re now going to tackle the Judges, pick up
Ruth to establish David’s line, then move into 1,2 Samuel and 1,2 Kings and
read through the period of the Kings of Israel.
That’ll take us into 2012 when we’ll jump back into the New Testament. But there’s the lay of the land and what we’ll
be studying for the next 4 months or so.
On to the judges!
Hebrew Backstory
In case anyone doesn’t have a
background in the judges, let me take a brief moment and explain this. When Joshua died, the tribes largely managed
themselves and would only come together against large imminent threats that
would have to be handled on a national level.
God would raise up a leader to temporarily unify the tribes of Israel,
and these people were called judges.
This book is the story of these judges.
They aren’t judges as we think of judges (legally speaking). They were judges in terms of unifying the
people and judging what God needed to be done to protect the land and call the
people back to the Lord.
In this first chapter of judges we hear
that there is no king in the land. Most
people take this repeated expression to indicate that this book was written
during the period of the kings – perhaps by Samuel as he watched Israel prosper
under Saul and even more under the hopefulness of having David as king.
(Samuel’s death is recorded in 1 Samuel 25:1)
Others think that someone after Samuel wrote it knowing the glory that
David brings to the Promised Land. In
any case, this opening expression is often read as a testimony to the lack of
spiritual fruit produced in a people who have no continual spiritual leader.
Certainly this is a true
statement. The Hebrew people of this
period are fairly fruitless by their own choice. On the other hand, this is the way of government
that God desires. We know that when
Israel requests a king from God that God is not in favor of the idea. God wants to be the spiritual leader of the
people, but the people are unable to accept that. The people think they need a fallen human
figure to follow.
So the Hebrew people struggle because
rather than following God directly – and every person being responsible for
their own relationship with God – they wait for someone to come to them and
initiate spirituality. Sure, there was
no king in Israel; but neither was there much desire for knowing God personally,
either! That’s where the real problem
lies. That’s the problem that the entire
rest of the Hebrew Scriptures are written about! For the record, that’s still the problem that
plagues us today.
Inability to Drive Out the Canaanites
We
do see Judah and Simeon go up and make an effort to follow God. And we have the story of Othniel repeated
here (We first read it in Joshua 15).
But the overarching theme of this chapter is that the Hebrew people
could not drive out the Canaanites.
Sure, they put them into submission.
But the Hebrew people could not drive out the Canaanites. And as we shall see all throughout this book
(and much of the Hebrew Scriptures) while the Canaanites are said to serve the
Hebrew people, it is really the Hebrew people who fall under Canaanite influence. Servitude (or forced submission) is not the
same as eradication.
So
it is also with us as Christians. How
many things in our life do we “put under submission” rather than expelling them
– only to find that we end up being influenced by that which we thought was going
to serve us?
Let
me give a few examples. I’m a huge fan
of music. I love music. I love to listen, to play, the tap my feet,
to figure out a song on the guitar, whatever.
I love it. There was a time in my
life when I listened to all the popular secular music. I was a child of the 80s and early 90s so I
cut my musical teeth on groups like Beastie Boys, Huey Lewis and the News,
Queen, Metallica, etc. I took my faith
seriously, and I thought I was able to make the music submit to my ability to
control it. But the truth is, the music
was proclaiming a contra-Christian message.
It may not have been overtly non-Christian (although most of Queen – and
even popular groups like the Beatles actually are quite anti-Christian). But the music was all “self-mongerism.” The
music taught me to be me-centered. It
taught me to focus on myself and not others and especially not God. I had the feeling of being in control. I could choose what tape I wanted to play
(yes, I said tape). I could choose when
I listened and how loud I listened. But
in reality my mind was the one in submission to the music. My mind was being poisoned to believe that I
was at the center of the universe.
Can
I say the same thing about television?
Absolutely. Internet? Absolutely.
Video games? Amen, that one was true
for me! I’m still weeding out those
influences. I have completely quit
listening to secular music (and found a love for Christian rock/metal). I have almost entirely rooted out television
– although I still have a few vices that are hard to root out. I haven’t quit using the internet, but I have
begun to use it for Christian means (blogging, Facebook-posting some snipets of
my blog, e-mailing Christian support to friends, etc) – but certainly I have
room to grow there, too. I have largely
given up video games, but I still have 2 or 3 old ones that I like to
re-immerse myself into when I need to “escape” the world.
I’m
certainly not “there.” Like the Hebrew
people, I still have Canaanite influences in my life. I’d like to think I’m in control of them, but
the reality is that I’m not. I think it
is important that we learn from this chapter the lesson whish says ‘when we
allow Canaanite influences in our life they will end up influencing us.’ It is the nature of humanity. It is the struggle of the Hebrew people, and
it is the struggle of the Christian. We
have not rooted out all of Canaan in our own spirituality. And so long as that is true, we shall
struggle to be God’s people they way we desire in our hearts.
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