Month: June 2023

Judges 6:13 And Gideon said unto him, Oh, my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? And where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.

The Midianites came against Israel, oppressed them, and ravaged the land. In their misery and oppression, the people cried unto the Lord in a prayer of distress. The Lord responded by sending the angel of the Lord to Gideon, calling him to be the next Deliverer. The Angel of the Lord was probably the pre-incarnate Son of God. The first response of Gideon to the Lord’s appearance was to complain instead of trusting and being thankful. Why did God let this happen? Where is the God of miracles when you need Him?

Gideon, like all sinners, should have been overcome and overjoyed at the Presence of God, but instead reacted with complaints about God. Complaining comes from unbelief, not that God isn’t real, but that God is not good. We are like Gideon and like Job, asking, Why do bad things happen to good people? Truth is, we are deflecting blame and putting it in God. We don’t want to hear the true answer: it is Sin. It’s my fault: “I repent in dust and ashes.” God asks Job in Job 40:8: “Will you condemn me that you may be in the right?” Job was convicted and penitent.

Though we ask “Why?” We don’t honestly want to hear the answer. Our proper response to “bad things” is: repent and believe the gospel. In Gideon’s case, the Lord convinced him that He was really a good God, and He would use him to deliver His people. So also, in spite of our natural unbelief, God sends His Son to be our Deliverer.

Judges 5:11 They that are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water there they shall rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, even the righteous acts toward the inhabitants of his villages in Israel: then the people of the Lord go down to the gates. Awake, awake, Deborah: awake, awake utter a song: arise, Barack, and lead thy captivity captive, thou son of Ahinoam.

This is a part of Deborah’s Song of praise to God for deliverance: those who have been delivered from the enemy by the Lord are to respond by rehearsing the righteous acts of the Lord. To rehearse is to remember and go over something in your mind. Rehearsing in this case also reminds the people that victory did not come by their own efforts, but it was a righteous act of the Lord.

The various worship rituals and festivals of OT believers were done to rehearse the salvation and victorious acts of God, which were righteous. The Enemy is defeated; the people are saved; and God did it all. The people of God rehearse that through ritual worship, through teaching, and through song, like the song of Moses and the song of Deborah.

Rehearse: retell the story, remind one another, and remember what great things God has done for you. Rehearsing is exactly what Sunday morning divine service is all about. We tell the Gospel again, receive forgiveness, are reminded of God’s grace, and take Communion in remembrance of Jesus. Rehearsing is beneficial for us as a regular, daily response, always finding ways to remember the Cross.

Judges 5:1-3 Then sang Deborah and Barack….Praise ye the Lord…. I will sing unto the Lord; I will sing praise to the Lord God of Israel..

Chapter 5 is known as Deborah’s Song, one of the oldest poetic songs in literature. The Lord had just given them victory over the enemy. The response of Deborah was to praise the Lord by singing and playing music with instruments. The victory song was accompanied by joyous celebration. It proclaimed God’s greatness by giving God credit for the victory.

Ideally, Sunday worship could be structured like this: we sing hymns and songs of praise and thanks to God after we have heard the Gospel message. Praise is a most helpful response to hearing the Good News of Victory in Christ. This order would be instructive for how we live our daily lives: begin the day in the Word with prayer, repent and believe the gospel, and then spend the rest of the day in an attitude of praise and thanksgiving, making melody in your heart to the Lord. Think about how much more blessed the days will be. The spirit of praise and song accompanies our daily work and play, and we are reminded of what great things the Lord has done for us. Songs of praise are continuous responses to the never-ending blessings of God’s presence, victory, forgiveness, and life.

Joshua 4:1-3 And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord….And the Lord sold them into the hand of Jabin, king of Canaan….And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord.

Sin – Misery – Prayer – Deliverance. The people’s pattern of behavior repeats itself again after Judge Ehud died. They did evil in the sight of the Lord; though not specified, the evil was probably idolatry and seeking after pagan gods (demons). Sin against the First Commandment leads to evil against all the Commandments. And once again the sin caused misery: the Lord sold them into the hand of the Canaanites and they were oppressed by the enemy.

It is sometimes easy to see the connection between our sin and its consequences, but it needs to be explicitly revealed that the suffering caused by sin is the Lord’s doing (“the Lord sold them…”). Our spiritual enemies have permission to afflict the soul during times of unfaithfulness. Luther calls Satan God’s devil. The Lord will discipline us for our good. And it worked: Israel turned to God in prayer and cried unto the Lord. Then God raised up Deborah and Barack, He discomfited the enemy, and He had another woman, Jael, kill Sisera the captain of the enemy army. And they were delivered from evil, from both their own evil and from their enemies’ evil.

And our God promises to do the same for us when we experience hardship and oppression. But our response to the misery is to repent of sin, remember mercy, cry unto the Lord in prayer, and receive deliverance from our Deliverer. Whatever the difficulty we find ourself in we may pray: “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me [Psalm 50:15].” This is how a Christian spends the days of his life: sinning and suffering, calling and crying, thanking and praising. Praise God!

Judges 3:15 But when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised them up a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded.

Here the Spirit describes the typical pattern of the cycle recorded in Judges: Sin, Misery, Prayer, Deliverer. This time, when the people of God cried out, the Lord raised up Ehud as their deliverer. At other times, the same pattern repeats with a different enemy and a different judge.

A similar cycle repeats itself in our own lives as well: we sin and drift away from God, spiritual enemies attack in a wide variety of ways, we pray for forgiveness, help, and relief, and God raises up Jesus, the Great Deliverer. Pride and unbelief prevent us from seeing our sin as the cause of our problems until things get so bad that we cry to the Lord. Then the Lord responds to save. We need the Lord to reveal to us that I am the problem and Jesus is the solution. Sinful deception reverses that truth.

Prayer is the key response. Crying out includes: repentance, seeing our sin and taking responsibility; faith, turning to the Lord and trusting Him; and prayer, presenting requests for a very present help in time of need. But we don’t have to wait until things get bad before turning to the Lord in prayer. Our response can be to pray without ceasing, and Jesus breaks the cycle so that life can be enjoyed on a more even keel. Forgiveness is instant and constant and Jesus is always present to deliver us from evil.

Judges 3:7 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forget the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.

The. Response of the people to Moses’ Commandments and Joshua’s charge was to forget the Lord who loved and delivered them and go serve the Canaanite gods and goddesses. The Lord considered this to be evil. We may consider our sins to be minor, little mistakes, and no big deal, but God sees them as worse than bad: it is evil. They would forget God and serve the demon gods of the world. The Baal idols and Asherah poles were everywhere, in every grove and high place.

The convenience and availability of selfish idolatry is ever present to us as long as we are in the world, living in the sinful flesh, and open to the devil’s prowling. Every sin, large or little, is an ignoring, a forgetting, and a spurning of the love of God. With the Spirit’s eyes we see sin as idolatry. For instance, Samuel says to Saul: “Covetousness is as the sin of idolatry.” Sin serves the god of this world. Jesus says: “Everyone who practices sin is a slave to (serves) sin.”

We certainly don’t want to be seen as loving and serving the devil, and we could never admit to that, but what does Sin do? When the Word reveals to us the holy thoughts of God toward our sin, we repent in dust and ashes. Then the Word reveals to us the loving thoughts of God toward us in Christ, we believe and are saved. It is not easy nor natural for us to see our lives the way God sees them. The Spirit must reveal God’s thoughts about us in the Word of Law and Gospel. Thank God! He does!

Joshua 3:4 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.

Chapter 3:1 says, “These are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them.” Here in verse 4, a reason is given why some of the pagan peoples were not driven out of the land. God left them there as thorns in the side to prove (test) His people, to find out whether they would hearken (listen and obey) the Lord, or not. Their response under pressure would reveal the faithfulness or unbelief of the people.

The finding out was not for God to know the heart (He already knows), but to reveal to the people whether they would hearken. They would see themselves. Jesus has forgiven us and delivered us from evil, but God has allowed the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh to remain in order to prove our faith.

In this way we can view the trials, tribulations, tests, and temptations in our own lives. God uses them to strengthen our faith. We see what is in our heart during hard times, miseries, difficulties, oppressions, and such. In the depths we cry out to the Lord and He delivers. In peaceful times we can become complacent and forgetful. Through the pains and problems of living on earth the Lord is asking: Are you still trusting Me? We turn and return to the Lord every day.

Judges 2:19-20 And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them, they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and he said, Because that this people hath transgressed my covenant which I commanded their fathers, and have not hearkened unto my voice.

The gods of this world are demons. When Israel turns to the world and follows after their gods, they corrupt themselves. They do not realize how filthy and corrupt they really are when they fear, love, and trust any other god but the One True God.

Filth and corruption is what God sees, and the Law reveals it to us. We become dirty when we break the covenant (the Ten Commandments). We sin when we do not hearken to Him (listen, believe, and obey the Word of God). Think about how serious this is: every sin, even if it seems small, breaks the bond between us and God. This makes us dirty, foul, stinky, and corrupt. This is the result of not stopping from our own doing and our stubborn way.

When convicted, we cry out to God in godly sorrow, repentance, and faith. He is faithful to forgive us, and the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. We are clean, pure, fresh, and fragrant once again. That’s the gospel of deliverance from our own selfish way. For sin is selfish and Self is the false god we serve. We listen to the “Judge,” the Deliverer, and we are restored to righteousness and cleanliness before God. Rinse, repeat. The cycle never stops.

Judges 2:17 And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after gods, and bowed themselves unto them; they turned quickly out of the way which their walked in, obeying the commandments of the Lord, but they did not do so.

Why would the people turn so quickly from their faith in God? The Canaanite religion appealed to their sinful nature and offered short range benefits. One could act selfishly and still fulfill religious requirements; they could do what they wanted and still obey a god.

One reason for their whoring was that they did not listen. By not listening to the judge, to Moses, or to the fathers they ended up not believing or obeying God. They selfishly turned away to follow the gods (demons) of the world. The consequence was that trouble would come from enemies. Then they turned back to the Lord by crying out for help, and God raised up a Deliverer.

Every time we sin we are turning away from the God who loves and saves us. We don’t see it that way, but the Lord is revealing to us what is really going on in our lives: Sin gets us in trouble; Jesus delivers from evil. We don’t have to wait until we are in the foxhole to repent; we don’t let the troubles mount until we turn to the Lord and pray. The Lord promises: “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver you.” But also, we prevent the day of trouble by praying without ceasing. We respond to trouble by daily and weekly listening to Law and Gospel, praying often, and by regular repentance and remembrance. We don’t have to experience the up and down pattern of Judges. “Deliver us from evil.” Turn quickly!

Judges 2:11-13 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Baalim. And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the Lord to anger. And the forsook the Lord, and served Baal and Ashteroth.

The response of the people to the God who delivered them and brought them out of Egypt (the world) was horrific: they did evil by leaving the Lord to connect to Baal and the gods of the inhabitants in the land. This belief and activity was evil in the eyes of the Lord, breaking the First Commandment. This leads to the breaking of all the Commandments. The Law is given as a gift to please God and make life pleasant for humans. Sin produces two problems: a diminished enjoyment of life and the just anger of the Lord. The specific result was that various enemies would come against Israel. When they turned back to the Lord He raised up judges to deliver them from their enemies.

The Lord reveals for us in the book of Judges what is the real cause and effect of our troubles and peaceful times. The true spiritual cause of life’s issues is Sin or Repentance, forsaking God or forsaking the world, doing evil or crying out to the Lord. This cycle repeats itself every day as we sin, suffer, repent, and are forgiven, delivered, and restored. We turn away from the Lord and we turn back to Him over and over, and the pattern never ends until we die and go to heaven.

Do not neglect your daily response!