The Land of Confusion

Because for fifty years, you've been telling me the secret. For fifty years, you would steal into my bedroom at night and whisper it softly over my sleeping head. It's the same message over and over, and you don't vary it one bit. God loves you. He's on your side. He's coming after you. He's relentless. Relentless.

There's one message I want you to take from this fall over and over, week in, week out. God loves you. He's on your side. He's coming after you. He's relentless.

CTK Sermons is a ministry of Christ the King Presbyterian Church. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel.

Church Membership and Ministry Updates

I want to add a couple of words to a couple of things that Kevin said just a moment ago and John said. We have a lot of opportunity for people to join this fall. A lot of Sundays set aside for that. If you're not a member of our church, if you've not taken vows at CTK, there's no such category. Our elders really do want to care for our congregation well, and we even have shepherding set up by elders who have specific groups. We would love to include you in that. If you're not a member of our church yet, we want to encourage you to follow through the steps. You can go to our website and take the steps toward that. It is not scary. If we need to help you write something, if that's the barrier for you, we'll help make this work for you.

The other thing too is I know Matt mentioned he would want to have a table up in the lobby. If you want to hear more about RUFI, this new ministry to international students, you can find out more after the service.

Scripture Reading

So we're going to turn our attention to God's word, and today's passage is really long and it's filled with Hebrew names. Rather than asking you to stumble through that, I'm going to stumble through that on your behalf. If you'll turn your attention to the screen, we're going to begin in Judges chapter one. Judges 1:1-7, 1:27-36, and 2:1-2.

After the death of Joshua, the Israelites inquired of the Lord, "Who will be the first to fight for us against the Canaanites?" The Lord answered, "Judah is to go. I've handed the land over to him." Judah said to his brother Simeon, "Come with me to my allotted territory. Let's fight against the Canaanites. I will also go with you to your allotted territory." So Simeon went with him. When Judah attacked, the Lord handed the Canaanites and Perizzites over to them. They struck down 10,000 men in Bezek. They found Adoni-Bezek in Bezek and fought against him and struck down the Canaanites and Perizzites. When Adoni-Bezek fled, they pursued him, caught him, cut off his thumbs and big toes. Adoni-Bezek said, "Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. Now God has repaid me for what I have done." They brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. — Judges 1:1-7

I'm skipping down to verse 27.

At that time, Manasseh failed to take possession of Beth Shan and Taanach and their surrounding villages, or the residents of Dor, Ibleam and Megiddo and their surrounding villages. The Canaanites were determined to stay in this land. When Israel became stronger, they made the Canaanites serve as forced labor, but never drove them out completely. At that time, Ephraim failed to drive out the Canaanites who were living in Gezer, so that the Canaanites have lived among them in Gezer. Zebulun failed to drive out the residents of Kittron or the residents of Nahalol, and the Canaanites lived among them and served as forced labor. Asher failed to drive out the residents of Akko or Sidon or Ahlab or Aphek or Rehob. The Ashurites lived among the Canaanites who were living in the land because they failed to drive them out. Naphtali did not drive out the residents of Beth Shemesh or the residents of Beth Anath. They lived among the Canaanites who were living in the land, but the residents of Beth Shemesh and Beth Anath served them as forced labor. The Amorites forced the Danites into the hill country and did not allow them to go down into the valley. The Amorites were determined to stay in Har Heres, Aijalon and Shaalbim. When the house of Joseph got the upper hand, the Amorites were made to serve as forced labor. The territory of the Amorites extended from the Scorpion's Ascent, that is from Sela, upward. — Judges 1:27-36

The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, "I brought you out of Egypt and led you into the land I promised to your ancestors. I also said, 'I will never break my covenant with you. You are not to make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You are to tear down their altars,' but you have not obeyed me. What have you done?" — Judges 2:1-2

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Introduction to New Series

We've been in a series in the book of Hebrews all spring and summer. We'll pick that up again next March. But for now, we're starting a new series today in the book of Judges.

And Judges is maybe one of the most bizarre and challenging and insane and graphically violent books of the Bible. And if you read it tonight, you might have trouble going to bed and going to sleep. It is filled with accounts of things like a woman who drives a tent stake through the temple with a hammer of a man's head and kills him that way. There is a story about a king that's so fat that when the assassin kills him, his sword disappears into the man's fat, and he's unable to get it out again. There's a scene in which a whole bunch of people are in a temple, and the leader locks the doors on them and sets fire to it. This is Game of Thrones meets Quentin Tarantino. This is really, really disturbing material.

And so the question might naturally come up, why should we read this book? And I have a couple of answers for that. First is because we don't avoid any parts of the Bible. It's our practice to read all the parts. It's easy for people to dismiss the Bible and say, well, that was then, this is now. We know better. These were barbaric people. But all the Bible, every part of it, is both human and divine. All of it is written in particular language and culture and context. And yet we believe all of this is from the Lord. And so the hard parts ask of passages like this, books like this, that seem very disturbing or far removed from our experience: How do we understand this? That's reason number one.

So why are we reading this book now? I've chosen this book because I think that we're living in a time very much like, in some ways, the time of the judges. The tagline sort of at the end of this book is that this was a time when everybody did what was right in their own eyes. Sounds very much like my truth, your truth era that we're in today, as well as this was a people who are looking for leaders, looking for somebody to trust in, somebody to follow, and finding the people that they had in front of them not great options. They're looking for a king. Does that sound familiar to anybody?

So this morning, I'm just going to look at this passage. This is really the introduction to the book of Judges, but we're going to look at this under two headings: the main problem and the main point. And I want to give credit. I have a friend in Winston Salem. I took a couple of my sermon illustrations from that other pastor.

The Main Problem

So what's the main problem of Judges? Well, if you were paying attention, you already probably know. The main problem of the book of Judges actually starts off before Judges. Starts off back in one of the five books of the Pentateuch, the book of Deuteronomy chapter seven. This is what God's command is to his people:

When the Lord your God gives you the land, the land that you're entering to possess, and he drives out many nations before you, the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations more prosperous and powerful than you. And when the Lord your God delivers them over to you and you defeat them, you must, and here's the part, completely destroy them. Make no treaty with them. Show them no mercy. — Deuteronomy 7

This command is repeated again in Deuteronomy chapter 20 and in the chapter right before Judges. So going back to the book of Joshua chapter 24, this is repeated again. When you go into the land, wipe out the people who are there.

Now, I don't like to create problems for people when they read the Bible. But I doubt I am saying anything that's new to anybody here this morning. If you have spent any time reading the Old Testament, you got the problem. You got my problem. You got our problem. What how can a God of love endorse violence like this? How can the God of Jesus be the God of Judges? What do we do with this?

And so a lot of people are like, "I don't like this because I don't know how to read it, and I don't know what to do with it." It's one of the great ethical dilemmas of the Old Testament. This is the problem. What do we do with this? Again, how do we reconcile this? How do we think about this?

And let's listen, though. And this is what my pushback has always been to people. When you have problems with the Bible, go back to the text. Don't go back to what your cultural moment is. Go back to the text. Listen to what the text actually says. And let's go back and do that this morning because this is the same God as Jesus. This is a God of love. There is a reason behind what's happening in this passage, and we need to understand it.

So let's start with this. Let's be careful how we read the text, what we read into it. There is a myth of innocence that we take into sections like this. Don't make the mistake that the Canaanites were some kind of peace-loving, innocent or upright people. The Canaanites—this is well documented in your history books, you can go to your museums and see this—were a notoriously violent, sexually violent people.

When God promised Abraham, "I'm gonna give you this land, but not until the fourth generation when the evil of the Amorites is filled up," he's not saying that like, "I just can't wait till they're as bad as they can be." He's saying, "I am being patient with these people. I am giving them a chance." They have four generations here. And yet the ancient Near Eastern Canaanite people were known for child sacrifice, incest, temple prostitution, all kinds of torture. These were dangerous and unjust people.

Even in this passage, we understand the same thing from the mouth of a Canaanite king. Listen to verse 4: we read about the king of a place called Bezer, and the king's name is Adonai Bezer. Adonai is just the word for Lord—sometimes we use that in reference to God himself. Adonai Bezer is captured, and they do something really violent to him. They cut off his thumbs and all his toes. Six verses in, and you're already like Quentin Tarantino's got his hands all over this book. It's a bloodbath already. It's disturbing.

And yet, do you hear what he says?

70 kings used to eat the scraps under my tables. And what were they like? They were missing thumbs and toes.

In other words, he's saying, "I invented this form of mutilation, and I'm getting what I deserve. This is just for God to pay me back this way."

So you're like, okay, maybe. But why? Why is this okay? How can we condone this kind of violence? I get that these are violent people, but can we condone this?

God as Judge

One aspect of God's character that we continue to struggle with is the sense of God as a judge. Modern people do not want a God who is a judge. We want God who's a father, God who's a provider, God who's a refuge, God as a source of life, God who's kind. But we do not want God as judge.

And yet, what's fascinating is that when we read the book of Judges, the judges in this book do not seem like judges to us. None of them have a gavel or a long robe. Only one of them in the entire book is even hearing cases or deciding disputes between people. Rather, what you see in this book is that God is the judge, and God is exercising his judgment through these judges who look to us a lot more like violent tribal warlords. That's actually a better way to describe them. They are warlords of some sort. They're agents of God's judgment.

Why should God judge? Why should God judge in general? This is how God is portrayed in scripture. God is the creator of all things. Just like when you make something, when an artist makes a piece of art, they have the right to say whether they keep it or destroy it. The creator has that kind of ownership. We don't see God's name written on our backs, "Made by God," but this is one of the reasons why God has the right to judge. He's the owner of all things. He's also holy, holy, holy. He himself, in his character, is the standard of what is right and wrong in the universe.

But it's also a function of his love. God's judgment is right because it is a function of his love. It is love when a parent looks at the behavior of a child and says, "No more. You can't keep doing this"—addressing their self-destructive behavior. It is love when a spouse says, "I'm not going to let you continue to treat me or our family this way." It is love when a friend challenges another friend who is shipwrecking his life. It is love when God says, "Enough. No more."

Love is by definition exclusive as well. We are made for God. We are made by God. God loves all things that he has made. And yet when his creation lives in defiance, in rebellion, in disobedience, refuses to acknowledge him, he is right in exercising judgment over them. You may not like it, but this is the biblical warrant for why God is able to judge and right in judging.

When we rebel, it is an act of cosmic defiance—saying, "I can defy my own design, how I'm made and what I'm supposed to be about."

And of course, the Bible ends with a warning about the coming day of judgment when everyone will stand before the Lord, before his throne, and give an answer for how we've lived and what we've done and who we are. All those apart from Christ—all those for whom Jesus hasn't, for whom they haven't owned his death on the cross for their sins—will stand condemned.

What we're seeing in the book of Judges, scholars talk about this as intrusion judgment. God taking from the end of history, part of his great judgment day, and injecting that into a particular moment of history. So God is choosing to take what would normally be reserved for the end of time and do this right here with the Canaanite people. Intrusion judgment.

So what does Adonai Bezer say?

As I have done, God has repaid me. This is just.

Let me caution you, however.

We sit in a dangerous place in our society when we take something like this and apply it onto current events, or take this and say we have warrant to act in a certain way toward other people because this is part of God's intrusion judgment. No. God has not ever told us to do that. Or to identify a natural disaster and say that surely is part of God's judgment for x in our country. That is never okay in the Bible. If you do that, when you hear Christian leaders or teachers do that, they're taking out of context one part of the Bible and saying, I wanna use this how I want to use this. They've disregarded Jesus' teaching.

In Luke 18, people come to Jesus and say, "Hey, this tower fell in this town of Siloam and killed 18 people. What did they do that was so sinful? Were they worse than everybody else?" And Jesus said, "You can't draw a straight line. These people were no worse than anybody else." — Luke 18

We can't draw a straight line between natural disasters or even events in our world and say, this is God's judgment, or we are right to act in this way. There's no warrant for that. But it does help us to understand what we're reading in scripture, that this is part of an exercise of God's character. That's the problem of Judges. And we'll get into more of that over the next several weeks. But what's the main point? Surely, the main point of this book isn't about just God wiping out people who are wicked and in the way of his promised people. No.

The True Story of Judges

Judges picks up a storyline that runs throughout Scripture, and it tells us our need for a savior and the savior that God provides. Several years ago, there's a movie that came out called Saving Mr. Banks, and it's the story of Walt Disney and the author P. L. Travers and her story, Mary Poppins, and about how that movie was brought to the screen. P. L. Travers was, at this point, a broke author living in London, and Disney wanted to take her story, Mary Poppins, and make this for the screen. He flew her out to California, spent several days discussing with her the storyline, and they kept hitting this point where she was unwilling to move forward.

Now, you probably know the Mary Poppins movie. It's about flying horses that come off of the merry-go-round, and there's cartoon penguins, and there's a nanny that flies with an umbrella, and there's chimney sweeps who dance on the roof. It's in some ways a very silly movie. And she didn't want him to take this story that was about her family and her dad and do something to make it comical. She wanted to tell the truth. And here's what the problem was. Her father, who was the basis for the character Mister Banks in the movie, was a failed banker but also an alcoholic. And there's a very painful story for her from her upbringing, and she didn't want Disney to cartoonify it.

So there's a scene in the movie where they're having an argument about why she won't allow him to have the movie rights. And Travers says, "You think Mary Poppins came to save the kids? No. Mary Poppins came to save Mister Banks." And this is where Disney was like, "Exactly. There is a way to tell the truth and also tell a redemption story." And that was the movie that was made about this. It's a movie as much about rescuing the kids as it is rescuing Mister Banks, and Travers gave him the movie rights as a result.

This is really what we're seeing in the book of Judges. It's a book that both tells the truth about God's people, but also tells a story of redemption. In the section we read from 27 through 36, all we read over and over again was the failures of God's people. This tribe was commanded to go and destroy the people in their land. They didn't do it. This tribe was commanded to go destroy the people in their land. They didn't do it. What's more, they enslaved them. Over and over and over, what's cataloged for us in the book of Judges is the failure of the tribes and the failure of the leaders.

Judges spares no detail on people like Samson or Othniel or Abimelech or Gideon. We see in bright contrast the failures, the sins, the problems of the leaders. And we see the problems of the people. Here's a people who had just come out of slavery, and instead of obeying God, they do something even worse to the people. They turn around and enslave them. Again, over and over, this book tells the story. It tells the truth about God's people.

You ever heard of the name Adolf Eichmann? Adolf Eichmann was a Nazi former Nazi SS officer who oversaw much of the Jewish extermination. And after fifteen years of avoiding capture, he was captured in 1960. In 1961, he was put on trial. This was an internationally televised war tribunal that was being filmed and shown all over the world. Mike Wallace, at the time who was working for Sixty Minutes, goes and interviews a man who was part of the witnesses that brought Eichmann to justice.

So he watches the trial, and as this is being filmed, he asks the viewers this question: How is it possible for somebody like Eichmann to act, to exterminate all those people, to be so cruel and unjust. Was he a monster, a madman? Was he perhaps something even more terrifying?

So he interviews a man named Yahil Dinur who'd been in a concentration camp and came to testify against Eichmann. When he's in the courtroom waiting as Eichmann is brought in in chains, and as he comes in the room—this is all caught on tape—this man, Dinur, collapses to the ground screaming. And Wallace interviews him afterward and said, "What was going through your mind? Why did you collapse screaming when you saw this man? Was it all the things he did to you?" He says, "No." Dinur explained to Wallace, "I was afraid about myself. I saw that I am capable of doing the same things. I'm exactly like him. He is just a normal man."

This is what disturbed him. And Wallace closed the segment with this statement: "Eichmann in all of us." The man said, "I had a breakdown because I'm afraid of myself. I'm capable of everything that he's capable of."

This is what is shown for us in the book of Judges, and this is what I hope you get out of the book of Judges—a warning about yourself. It's this: I need to be saved from me. I have incredible capacity to self-sabotage my life. I have an incredible ability to destroy myself.

But it's not just that. As much as this book is notorious for showing the cycles of destruction, it's also showing us something else. If you go home today and Google "judges cycle of," all these words will pop up—cycle of apostasy, cycle of disobedience, cycle of rebellion, cycles of sin. And yet, I want us to take this book and turn it upside down as we read Judges. Because this book can be read another way.

It can be read over and over as demonstrating our need for a savior, demonstrating the patience of God. These are stories of redemption. You could rewrite the book of Judges with an outline like this: Judges—cycle of God's faithfulness. Judges—cycle of God's patience. Judges—cycle of God's grace. Judges—cycle of redemption. That's why if you look at the graphic for this series, we have a clothes washer, like you see in a laundromat, and it says "redemption cycle." That's what cycle we're operating on this fall.

Two Wings of Faith

You know, every airplane I've ever flown on has two wings. If you can envision this with regard to the Christian faith, this is what's offered up to us over and over again in the book of Judges. On the one side, we have this picture of our need for a savior. We have a picture of the depth of our depravity, our capacity for destroying our own lives, our sin. You have a great need for a savior.

But on the other wing of this plane is this: you have a great savior for your need. You have a God who is this patient, this faithful, this long-suffering. Every time his people cry out to him, he answers them. Then and now.

And your life is not going to make sense unless your life has both of those wings really clearly defined. I find that in Christian circles, some people are more prone to really understand their sin, to really be in touch with their own failures and brokenness, and have a very small view of Jesus. Others have a really big view of Jesus, but don't really have a sense of why you need him. And so your hearts are hardened in either direction.

And Judges invites us to look on the inside and to say, "I do have a great need for a savior, and I have an incredible savior for my need. This is who God is." If we just read the failures, this would be such a depressing book, but this is given to God's people, yes, as a warning, but as an encouragement. God is not done with you.

This is finally what we read in this passage. In the last two verses we read there, God comes to him and says, "Look, you failed. You failed." But what does God say about what he's going to do?

"What have you done? But I brought you out of Egypt and led you into the land I promised your ancestors. I will never break my covenant with you. You haven't worn me out. You haven't exhausted my love. You're not done with my grace. I'm not sick of you. I'm still here. I'm still here."

The Message of Encouragement

Let me conclude this way. In 2018, Eugene Peterson, a famous Bible scholar and writer, went to be with the Lord. He is the guy who wrote the paraphrase of the Bible called the Message. Many of you enjoy the Message, the way it kind of reframes some of the things that we read in our Bible in modern English. He wrote tons of books and commentaries and was a longtime pastor.

But at his funeral service, his son, Leif Peterson, gave a eulogy of his dad. He says, "Dad, it's almost laughable how you fooled them."

How for thirty years every week, you made your church think you were saying something new. They thought you were a magician in your long black robe, hiding so much up your ample sleeves, always pulling out something fresh, making them think it was just for them. And that's just the beginning.

There's more casual conversations at church picnics, unmemorable chats at the local Denny's over eggs and toast, counseling sessions that saved people's marriages, maybe even lives, and they never knew what a fraud you were. They didn't know how simple it all was. They were blind to your secret, only saw the magic, how you performed, how you made the mysterious and the ominous and the holy into a cup of coffee, how you made a cup of coffee into an act of grace, how you could make God into something that worked for them. It's funny they didn't know this.

So many times I wanted to expose you. Tell them what you've been up to. Tell them all that you've been up to, and now you're doing it again. You got this new group fooled into thinking you're worth millions. They're printing it on t-shirts and coffee mugs and message pads, every version, a new version every week for some new flock. But I may say this, of course, they've widened your audience. Now you're fooling them all over the world, churches, schools, homes and prisons. It's so funny.

Only my inheritance keeps me from giving you away because I know, I alone know your secret. I alone know what you've been doing all these years, how you fooled them all, taking something so simple, something a child could understand, and making it into a career, a vocation. I know. Because for fifty years, you've been telling me the secret. For fifty years, you would steal into my bedroom at night and whisper it softly over my sleeping head.

It's the same message over and over, and you don't vary it one bit: God loves you. He's on your side. He's coming after you. He's relentless.

There's one message I want you to take from this fall, over and over, week in, week out: God loves you. He's on your side. He's coming after you. He's relentless.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. At times, it is really hard for us to get our heads and hearts around this book. And yet we pray, Father, that you would clear away the things that distract us, even the hard questions that we have. Help us to understand what you're doing, the story that you're writing in human history and the story that you're writing in our lives. Lord, we thank you that you love us, that you're on our side, that you're coming after us, and that you are relentless. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Let's stand and respond to God's word together.

Thank you for listening to our CTK Raleigh sermons podcast. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. If you have questions about our sermon content or about our church in general, please visit our website at ctkraleigh.org.