How NOT to Elect A Thorn Bush As President

The Bible tells us that when we are captains of our own lives and try to be king of the universe, this is the most dangerous type of sin. It's pride. Putting ourselves in the place of God. And we stand rightfully under a curse for that, just like Abimelech. And yet, scripture tells us in Galatians 3 this bizarre story about Jesus, that Jesus was cursed.

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. — Galatians 3

Jesus comes and becomes the curse, takes on the curse of God for sin, for replacing ourselves with God, putting ourselves in the throne of the universe, putting ourselves up where only God deserves to be. Jesus took on that curse for us. This is the work of the cross. This is why Jesus had to die for us. The one thing that we can't control are two things: our sin and our death. Jesus comes and removes the curse from your life so you may experience God's blessing.

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We're going to be, again, continuing our series in the book of Judges, and today we're in Judges chapter 9. These passages are very long, and they're filled with Hebrew. So instead of you all stumbling over those, I'm going to be the only one who stumbles over the Hebrew names this morning. If you'll turn your attention to God's word, you can follow along on the screen behind me as I read from Judges 9:1 through 15 and then again from verse 42 through the end of the chapter. Let's turn our attention to the word of the Lord.

Abimelech, son of Jerubbaal, went to Shechem and spoke to his uncles and to his mother's whole clan saying, "Please speak in the hearing of all the citizens of Shechem. Is it better for you that 70 men, all the sons of Jerubbaal, rule over you or that one man rule over you? Remember that I am your own flesh and blood." His mother's relatives spoke all these words about him in the hearing of all the citizens of Shechem, and they were favorable to Abimelech, for they said, "He is our brother." So they gave him 70 pieces of silver from the Temple of Baal Berith. Abimelech used it to hire worthless and reckless men and they followed him. He went to his father's house in Ophrah and killed his 70 brothers, the sons of Jerubbaal, on the top of a large stone. But Jotham, the youngest son of Jerubbaal, survived because he hid.

Then all the citizens of Shechem and Beth Millo gathered together and proceeded to make Abimelech king at the oak of the pillar in Shechem. When they told Jotham, he climbed to the top of Mount Gerizim and raised his voice and called to them. "Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, and may God listen to you. The trees decided to anoint a king over themselves and they said to the olive tree, 'Reign over us.' But the olive tree said to them, 'Should I stop giving my oil that people use to honor both God and men to rule over the trees?' Then the trees said to the fig tree, 'Come and reign over us.' But the fig tree said to them, 'Should I stop giving my sweetness and my good fruit and rule over trees?' Later, the trees said to the grapevine, 'Come and rule over us.' But the grapevine said to them, 'Should I stop giving my wine that cheers both God and men and rule over the trees?' Finally, all the trees said to the bramble, 'Come and reign over us.' The bramble said to the trees, 'If you are really anointing me as king over you, come and find refuge in my shade. But if not, may fire come out from the bramble and consume the cedars of Lebanon.'"

Then verse 42 and following. The next day, when the people of Shechem went into the countryside, this was reported to Abimelech. He took the troops, divided them into three companies, and waited in ambush in the countryside. He looked and the people were coming out of the city, so he rose against them and struck them down. Then Abimelech and the units that were with him rushed forward and took their stand at the entrance to the city gate. The other two units rushed against all who were in the countryside and struck them down. So Abimelech fought against the city that entire day, capturing it and killed the people who were in it. Then he tore down the city and sewed it with salt.

When all the citizens of the Tower of Shechem heard, they entered the inner chamber of the temple at El Berith. Then it was reported to Abimelech that all the citizens of the Tower of Shechem had gathered. So Abimelech and all of the troops who were with him went to the mountain, to Mount Zalmon. Abimelech took his axe in his hand and cut a branch from the trees. He picked up the branch, put it on his shoulder, and said to the troops who were with him, "Hurry and do what you've seen me do." Each of the troops also cut his own branch and followed Abimelech. They put the branches against the inner chamber, set it on fire. About a thousand men and women died, including all the men of the Tower of Shechem. — Judges 9:1-15, 42-57

Abimelech went to Thebez, camped against it, and captured it. There was a strong tower inside that city, and all the men, women, and citizens of the city fled there. They locked themselves in and went up to the roof of the tower. When Abimelech came to attack the tower, he approached its entrance to set it on fire, but a woman threw the upper portion of a millstone on Abimelech's head and fractured his skull. He quickly called his armor bearer and said to him, "Draw your sword and kill me, or they'll say about me, 'A woman killed him.'" So his armor bearer ran through him and he died.

When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they all went home. In this way, God brought back Abimelech's evil—the evil that Abimelech had done to his father when he killed his seventy brothers. God also brought back to the men of Shechem all their evil. So the curse of Jotham, son of Jerubbaal, came upon them.

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

I know these are dark stories, y'all. I had an option to do this book going into the spring, and I'm like, "There's only so much we can take of the book of Judges." We're doing this fall and moving through it quickly. Today's passage makes me think of a particular phrase that's probably familiar to many of you: "inside job."

The phrase "inside job" usually refers to when someone who's considered an ally or an employee or a friend on the inside of a company or an organization does something to bring down the organization. For example, the death of Julius Caesar was famously plotted by some of the people closest to him. There's a movie about the 2008 banking collapse in the United States called "An Inside Job"—a documentary about those who benefited from the proceeds of that banking collapse. There's a conspiracy theory around the attacks on 9/11 called "an inside job" that somehow the government did this against its own citizens. You get the idea.

But this passage could very much be subtitled "an inside job." And here's why: for the first time in the book of Judges, there's not an outside oppressor. Throughout this book so far, we've seen these other forces that come against Israel—the Midianites, the Hazarites, the Ammonites, the Moabites. We're gonna see more as we go through this book. But here, there's no outside oppressor. The enemy in this chapter of Judges is on the inside. The enemy is Abimelech himself, who is not a judge but makes himself king in this passage.

In many ways, this is the center point of the book of Judges. There's a thing in Hebrew, a construction called a chiasm, that's used in lots of Hebrew literature that helps—in a time when there were no bold or italics or underlines or ways to hyperlink or highlight a text—to say "this is really important." This is the center point of the book of Judges, which means this passage is sort of what the whole book of Judges is about.

There is no king. Everybody wants a king. And yet this is what happens when God's people rule themselves. Everyone does what's right in their own eyes.

In many ways, this whole book is looking forward to the coming of a king after God's own heart, David, and ultimately King Jesus, who would come and be the ultimate head, the ultimate judge, the ultimate king.

The Enemy Within

So today, I want to look at this question: What is the enemy on the inside? We have this story of Abimelech, and he is this incredible force for destruction within Israel. It's an inside job. But in many ways, this passage highlights the inside job going on inside this inside job. What's inside? What's behind the curtain inside of Abimelech?

I want to put this forward for you this morning: I think that what's inside of Abimelech, what we see over and over in this passage, is a hunger for control.

True confessions this morning: I am a controlaholic. I love control. I love controlling situations and people and outcomes and my future. I love being in control. I hate being controlled.

This past spring, my family went to visit one of our sons studying abroad in Wales. We rented a van that was a stick shift. Only one person in the family can drive a stick shift, so I got to drive. I love to drive because I love being in control. And my mom was on this trip. You can see where this is going. My mom still, even though I'm 53 years old, gives me directions like I've never done this before, and I'm just seething the whole time. I've had a backseat driver telling me what to do, and it drives me nuts because I hate to be controlled, but I love to control.

This fall I've been teaching Asher, our youngest, to drive. Number six. I've been doing this a long time, y'all. I'm pretty good at it. And I find myself stamping the floor while I'm doing this. You know, like there's gotta be a brake on my side when I'm feeling very out of control. And that's fine and should be, but it's not so great when I do that with my wife, who's a really good driver. And I'm giving her directions, and I'm stamping the floor because I need and love to be in control.

Now why can I publicly admit that in front of you? Because I'm surrounded by the same type. I've been pastor long enough. I know you. So if you don't believe me this morning, let me ask this Jeff Foxworthy style to see if you might be a control freak. Are you ready?

If you check your bank balance more than one time a week, you might be a control freak. If you use Find My app on your phone to look at where other people are whom you're not meeting with anytime soon, you might be a control freak. If you plan your day and week and nobody follows the script that you have planned for them, you might be a control freak. If you wish your husband, wife, kids, friends, boss, coworkers came with a remote control device, you might be a control freak. If you had to do to-do lists about your to-do lists, you might be a control freak. If you wouldn't have to be such a control freak if other people would just do what you said, you might be a control freak. If you hate control freaks, you might be the control freak. So anybody? Okay. Maybe two of us here this morning. Right. Good.

See, my posture here this morning is that you also have an enemy within. We have an enemy. We have an inside job going on, and there are things in us that if left to our own devices, will destroy ourselves and people around us. And so I want to look this morning under these headings we put up on the screen so you could take notes. If you take notes: the cause of control, the consequences of control, and the cure for control. And I want to give props to a guy named Matt Howe, who is a RUF pastor who very much influenced how I read this passage.

The Cause of Control

Now, why do we control? I don't think anybody wakes up in the morning and it's just like, you know, I don't have anything going on this week, and I really feel like managing the heck out of myself and everyone else around me. We don't do this for fun. Trying to control your life and the lives of the world around you is exhausting. So why do we do this?

I think there are at least two things that we see in Abimelech's story that help us look at ourselves. The first is anxiety. Fear. You know, anxiety is that feeling that something is always coming around the corner. The shoe's gonna drop. Something bad's gonna happen. You gotta be vigilant, gotta be prepared, gotta know what's going on, gotta be ready. You know, many of us have lived long enough to know that maybe anxiety is the one true constant in your life. It's the regular thing you go back to. And if anxiety is your enemy, then control—that is your friend. It's your ally.

Notice how this plays out in Abimelech's story. Abimelech is positioning himself to go to the throne. Now he's the son of Gideon, who's also called Jerobel. And Jerobel—we read in the last passage last week—had 70 sons. We only get the name of one of them: this man Abimelech. And he wants to be king. So he doesn't go to Gideon's side of the family with the 70 brothers. There's an oligarchy, you know, rule by committee, running the nation at this point. Seventy brothers are running the country. Instead, he goes to mama's side of the family and says, wouldn't it be better if one person was running the country rather than all of us? And they're like, you're right, and you're the man.

And this is exactly what he's doing. But notice what he's doing. He is going to the other side. You can tell what a broken family he's a part of. He goes to the other side to plot this, and then they have Thanksgiving dinner or something like it, show up, and he kills 68 of his brothers at one sitting. They give him money, and he hires these worthless fellows. I promise, those are not middle school boys. And he hires them, and they come along with him and destroy his family. That's how he seizes the throne.

Now why is he doing that? Fear. Anxiety. He knows he cannot just step in and put himself forward, and he is eliminating all the competition.

You seem like nice people. Probably not a lot of murderers here this morning, I hope. A lot of Abimelechs, but anxiety makes us dangerous. We don't always see it. Our control is something that we view other people as enemies. You know, I really hope this season when the Oscars are announced that Inside Out 2 gets nominated for best animated picture.

If you haven't seen it, it's a story about a little girl named Riley, and it's a cartoon animation. It's sort of like looking inside her brain at the emotions that are running her life. There are seven emotions, and they're all vying for who gets to handle the dials on the control panel of what's going on inside Riley. It's a fascinating scene where anxiety takes over. She does all this talk about protecting Riley, protecting her from all the things that could happen. As the scene continues, anxiety starts taking over the control panel, moving at a lightning pace and suddenly becomes a blur—a picture of an anxiety attack.

Anxiety is a great picture of how anxiety can take over, lead us to a frantic control, and ironically, to lose control.

Unbelief

The second thing we see in this passage about what makes us work for control so hard is unbelief. I want to characterize the difference between unbelief and doubt. I know those are probably not words that you think of in different categories, but they're very different.

Doubt is questioning a held belief. It's asking, "Do I have all the information on this? I believe in God, but I don't really know sometimes. I have doubts. I have questions." You can really only doubt something that you believe. When a Christian doubts, you fear, "Maybe this is all made up. This is not true."

Unbelief, though, involves spiritual blindness and sometimes willful spiritual blindness. It's a world in which God is not even on the radar.

This kind of unbelief is dramatically pictured for us in this passage because from chapter eight verse 34 through chapter 10 verse 17, there is something that is entirely absent in Judges: God's covenant name, Yahweh. In your Bibles, in the Old Testament, you'll read—you can tell what's being mentioned. If God is being mentioned, that's the word Elohim, the sort of general generic term for God. If it's lowercase but all caps, "the Lord," usually the Bible is doing that to say that's Yahweh—God's covenant name. That's His revealed name. That's His personal name He gives only to His people. God's personal covenant name appears nowhere in this passage because for Abimelech, God is not even on the radar. God is not even showing up.

Unbelief is so much the cause of my controlling behavior and your controlling behavior. Why do we seek control? Because we're all by ourselves. Nobody's going to come fix this. I got to do it. If I don't do this, no one will. It's like God doesn't exist. There's no God the Father on the throne. There's no Jesus who died for your sins. There's no Holy Spirit resident in your heart. God is just not even on the radar anymore. You identify with this? Control becomes, in that moment, your only solution. God's not here. I'm here.

The Consequences of Control

If that's why we control, what are the consequences of our control? This is pretty glaring at us in this passage. Five things.

First, irritability. The brother who escapes, Jotham, stands up on the hill in Shechem and gives this sort of parable about the trees. Who's going to be king of the trees? He tells a story. First there's an olive tree, then there's a fig, and then there's a grapevine. He keeps asking, which of these will be our king? They keep turning them down.

What you notice about each of those trees is that each produces some kind of fruit. You get olives from olive trees, figs from fig trees, grapes from grapevines—all sweet things. But in the end, there's only one tree that wants to be king. What is it? It's the bramble, the thorn bush. This is what Jotham's saying. This is the only thing you're going to get from Abimelech—briars and thorns. This is what's going to come out of his life. This is what's behind control. This is what the consequences of control look like in our lives. We are really prickly people. We are really hard to be around because being out of control, that fear that's at our heels, makes us dangerous.

What's growing up out of your life right now? Is it this sense of thorns and spikes and brambles? Are you prickly and irritable with everybody around you? It's probably a sign of something in your life of control.

Second, insecurity. Now this is the section we did not read that I skipped over in chapter nine. It's a story of a rebellion against Abimelech's leadership. There's this guy whose name is Gaal the Ebed—great name. I don't know why anybody uses that name anymore. Gaal the Ebed. He's also in Shechem, and he raises up a counterinsurgency to be king against Abimelech and his people. What's fascinating is how intensely Abimelech suddenly goes after this guy.

How intensely he rages against this man because the citizens of Shechem have shown themselves to be very fickle. In a moment, they turn away from Abimelech to this other guy, and he's got a high insecurity, Abimelech does. And I wonder if that's true of you as well. One of the ways you know that control is taking over your life is this deep sense of insecurity, comparison, being threatened, other people getting ahead. Oh, no. Something's wrong with me. I'm falling behind in my life.

Violence and Rage

Third, violence and rage. Now this is an incredibly violent passage. It's one of the two most violent in the whole book. We did a study when we were doing our sermon discussion as a staff and I shared this passage with the staff and one of our staff was like, "Let's count up how many people die in chapter 9 compared to all the John Wick movies put together." So at least 1,070 people die in this passage. At least. And all the John Wick movies combined, 429.

So if you were like, "Wow, this is crazy violent," and some of us will read passages like this and think, "Why does the Bible have to be so violent?"—that's a good question, but it's missing something because the Bible is history. It's a theological book, but it's also history. It's like asking, "Why does the news have to be so violent?" Well, because it's the news. They're telling you stories about a terrorist bombing overseas, they're going to tell you the numbers. And the Bible is telling us what actually happened. It's hard to read. But the point of this passage is that we connect control to the violence that's in Abimelech's heart. There's something about control that, if given expression, makes us dangerous. Now it may not be violent, kill people dangerous, but doesn't feeling out of control make you snippy and mean and sarcastic and rude and biting? That's the same kind of anger coming out of us when our control is threatened.

Control Doesn't Work

Number four, it doesn't work. You just can't control everything. What's fascinating is there are two passages here where first Abimelech and his forces come and just wipe out Shechem, and then they go to the town of Thebez. They're going to do the same thing—burn down the tower with everybody in it—and this bizarre circumstance happens. A woman takes a rock and throws it off the side, and it crushes his head.

Now I have so many questions. Where did the rock come from? Did she carry it up from the bottom? Was she really good at physics? This is like a question in a physics class: "How do you time this so the rock is at exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, hits him on the head?" It's the one thing he can't control. He can't even control his own death and life. This is kind of the point: you can't control everything.

And then finally, he can't stop. Did you notice even at the end of the story? Here's Abimelech on the ground bleeding out from the rock to the head incident, and he wants to control the circumstances of his own death. "Armor bearer, run me through. Make me the human shish kebab. Right? Run me through so I cannot be said that I was killed by this woman in the tower." So crazy—controlling to the very end. Or maybe not so crazy. When we think about our own tendencies to be controlling, can you find yourself here? Man, I can. This has been a very convicting sermon to prepare.

The Cure for Control

What's the cure? What's the cure for control? Several things I want you to see here. First is you can't fight fire with fire. Now I know that phrase, but it doesn't work here. What are you going to do? Control your need to stop being in control? Fix yourself? Do you hear how absurd that language is? You can't stop controlling your controllingness. You can't stop trying to fix things. You can't fix your need to fix things. There's something about that that should leave us in a place of a little bit of humility and concern. I can't stop. I don't know what to do. And when you're in that place, you're in gospel territory, friends.

Because what's really important is that we follow the breadcrumbs. We follow the line of control to its logical conclusions, to where it goes. And you see it played out in the story of Abimelech. His control takes him to this ultimate place of death. And as we read in the end of this passage, curse.

The curse of Jotham, son of Jerubbaal, came upon him. — Judges 9:57

Now I know that we live in a culture that's not so familiar with what cursing and blessing really mean. Is that a thing? Well, there's a real sense in this passage that this man's life was cursed because he came face to face with the two things that he could not control: his sin and his death, his desire to be king of everything and his own circumstances of his death.

The Bible tells us that when we are captains of our own lives and try to be king of the universe, this is the most dangerous type of sin. It's pride, putting ourselves in the place of God. And we stand rightfully under a curse for that, just like Abimelech.

And yet scripture tells us in Galatians 3, this bizarre story about Jesus, that Jesus was cursed.

Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. — Galatians 3

Jesus comes and becomes the curse, takes on the curse of God for sin—for replacing ourselves with God, putting ourselves on the throne of the universe, putting ourselves up where only God deserves to be. Jesus took on that curse for us. This is the work of the cross. This is why Jesus had to die for us. The one thing that we can't control are the two things: our sin and our death. Jesus comes and removes the curse from your life so you may experience God's blessing.

Application: Follow the Name

This is how I want you to apply this sermon: follow the name. Follow the breadcrumbs. Follow the name. We read last week that Abimelech's name means "my daddy's the king." We know Gideon gave him that name because Gideon wanted to be kind of king-like. But it's fascinating to have that name put on the next generation. Can you imagine what it'd be like to grow up in a household and hear that as your name? "My daddy's the king."

There's a way that name should have worked against Abimelech's control. That's a way that name over your life should work against your control. Because brothers and sisters, in Christ, you do have a Father. What did Jesus come teaching his disciples to pray?

Our Father. — Matthew 6:9

And your Father is the King. This is what he taught us to pray every day in the Lord's Prayer.

Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. — Matthew 6:9-10

You're in control. You're the King. You're my Father.

Can you use this? I want to urge you to take that and apply it inside when you're stomping the gas pedal—the imaginary gas pedal—when you're tempted to find the remote control button for the people in your office. When you're feeling out of control, say this: My Father is the King. I do have a King.

Application: Repent and Turn

This leads me finally to the last application of this: to repent. Now, I know you may not like that word, but that is a Bible word. Repent in Hebrew just simply means to turn.

You know, this is the only story in Judges that doesn't have an outside oppressor, that doesn't have a judge that has a king, and it kind of messes with my sermon theme of redemption stories. It's not really a redemption story, is it? But it could be. It could be this morning. This could be, depending on how you respond to the sermon. God is holding this up to you. Will this story—your story—have a redemptive ending? Today? This morning?

Let me close with this illustration. I wonder what would have happened if Abimelech would have done what I'm inviting you to do this morning, which is to turn.

There's a story from the Napoleonic Wars. The mastermind of the British Navy was Lord Admiral Nelson. He's in a fight with the Spanish Armada, and he defeats a very famous Spanish admiral. That admiral's brought onboard the boat, and he knows that Nelson is very famous for his gallantry and over-the-top showmanship. So he comes and offers his hand to him. But Nelson backs up. He says, "Won't you take the hand of a vanquished foe as now a friend?" He says, "I won't take your hand till you surrender your sword."

Brothers and sisters, there is a way in your life and my life where God is inviting you to let go of the sword. Ultimately, our desire for control in our lives is our weapon that we're holding up against the Lord of the universe, the one who we need the most. And I want to invite you, in order to let go of your need for control today, to come and lay your sword at Jesus's feet.

Because ultimately, your desire to control people and circumstances is a desire to be god, and it's incredibly dangerous. This is not a redemption story, but it can be. Will you repent with me this morning? This is the thing that God wants most in your life today: for you to come in a place of weakness and vulnerability. Open up your hands. Lay down your weapons. Yield yourself to the Lord. Say, "Lord, I need you more than I have. I haven't seen this. I've been fighting you for so long. I surrender."

Would you pray with me? Father, how silly and foolish we are to think that we can be in control of all things. And yet, Lord, we live in such fear and such anxiety. We're so overwhelmed, and nothing seems to be working in many cases for us. And it makes us dig in more. We've become more dangerous. Father, would you uproot our unbelief and our fear and anxiety today? Would you help us to cling to the cross? Would you help us to turn and collapse at your feet? Would you help us to let go of our sword?

Would you help us, Lord, to realize you are the king and you are our father, and that is the right order of the universe. Father, have your way among us this morning. We surrender ourselves to you. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

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