Transcript
As you know, we have finished our multi-year series through the Gospel of Luke. And my first inclination was to go on through the book of Acts. But it has occurred to me that I have never preached from this pulpit entirely through a book of the Old Testament. And so I changed my mind.
I decided that we should well try to go through an Old Testament book. And I have chosen for that purpose the book of Judges.
Before we turn to the book of Judges, let me just give you a couple of words of introduction. In all probability the book of Judges was written during the reign of King Saul or over the nation of Israel. We are not sure who wrote this book. The author’s name is not mentioned in the book.
But there is a Jewish tradition that the book of Judges was written by the prophet Samuel, who also just happens to be the last of the judges. But whoever wrote this book, he wrote under the inspiration of God. And the book of Judges is therefore the Word of God.
Let’s turn therefore in our Bibles to the book of Judges chapter 1. Judges is the seventh book in the Old Testament. You’ll find it right after the Book of Joshua.
The book of Judges chapter 1, and reading at verse 1:
Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Indeed I have delivered the land into his hand.
So Judah said to Simeon his brother, Come up with me to my allotted territory, that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I will likewise go with you to your allotted territory. And Simeon went with him.
Then Judah went up, and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand. And they killed ten thousand men at Bezek. And they found Adoni-Bezek in Bezek and fought against him. And they defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
Then Adoni-Bezek fled. And they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. And Adoni-Bezek said, Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather their food under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. Then they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.
Now the children of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it. They struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. And afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who dwelt in the mountains, in the South, and in the lowland. When Judah went against the Canaanites who dwelt in Hebron, now the name of Hebron was formerly Kirjath Arba, and they killed Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai.
Do you remember where you were this past Christmas Eve? Well, there are some people in Sindlingen who will never, never forget where they were. You see Sindlingen is a western suburb of the city of Frankfurt in the country of Germany.
On Christmas Eve about seventy people were gathered in the church in Sindlingen South. As the first Christmas Eve hymn began, some of the worshipers had noticed a woman sitting in the third row from the back. She who had not removed her brown cape or wrap. That seemed odd because even though it was icy cold outside, the church was warm. And it was lighted by a Christmas tree decorated up front.
For a moment or two the church auditorium filled with music. And then suddenly the woman, who nobody knew, set off two grenades. Killing herself and killing two sisters who were sitting next to her. Bloodied survivors ran screaming from the church auditorium.
Later they were able to wander back, not knowing what else they could do. The inside of the auditorium was a horrible sight. Burnt pieces of flesh sticking to the ceiling, splinters of pews and pools of blood. The pew on which the woman had been sitting was smashed by the impact of the explosion. The two sisters next to her were aged fifty-nine and sixty-one.
Police and medics treated some of the wounded at the adjacent house of the pastor. They even treated a woman lying on the floor underneath the lights of the Christmas tree. By the next day they were still ten worshippers who were hospitalized, including a woman in critical condition and a twelve-year-old girl.
The pastor’s name was Hans Blum. And he had delayed his retirement in order to spend one final Christmas Eve with his congregation. But after the explosion he was in shock. Surprisingly the head and torso of the bomber remained intact. And the police circulated pictures of her to see if anybody could identify her. Her age was estimated at about thirty.
A police spokesman said that the evidence pointed to the fact that she was disturbed and had wanted to kill herself in a spectacular way. The grenades were either strapped to her body or carried in a bag which she had. The explosion had gone off at eleven fifteen p.m. But then the police spokesman added this. He said, Christmas Eve. It’s unimaginable. Christmas Eve. It’s unimaginable.
And yes, no doubt that was an unimaginable tragedy that occurred in that church while hundreds and perhaps thousands of churches all over the world were observing Christmas Eve in peace and quiet. But you know there is a real sense in which the peace and quiet of the hundreds of churches that celebrated Christmas Eve that way was an illusion.
And there is a sense in which the explosion in the Church of Sindlingen was a confrontation with reality. You see for those of us who are born-again Christians, and by that I mean if you have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for the free gift of eternal life and you know for sure that you’re going to be in heaven, you are a born-again Christian.
And for born-again Christians the Christian life is not like a peaceful and quiet Christmas Eve. The Christian life is a confrontation with evil. The Christian life is a warfare against the forces of evil. And sometimes those forces explode in our faces. And that’s why the book of Judges is such an appropriate book for us to consider.
You see the book of Judges is a book about war and peace. It’s a book about victory and defeat. It’s a book about captivity and deliverance. And my friends that is what the spiritual life for every born-again Christian is all about. It’s about war and peace, victory and defeat.
And for our very first lesson this morning from the book of Judges we can consider it to be a primer, a manual on the Christian warfare. So our very first consideration from the book of Judges, I want to consider the following topic. Victory. What does it really mean? And of course that is the title of my message to you this morning. Victory. Spiritual victory. What does it really mean?
Now many of you probably did what I did a couple of weeks ago. You watched large portions of the last game of the Dallas Cowboys. And depending on how rabid a Cowboy fan you are, you watched with growing horror and dismay as an upstart expansion team named the Carolina Panthers eliminated the defending Super Bowl champions and dealt them a very decisive defeat.
Needless to say there was a lot of joy in Charlotte that particular day. And I think they liked the film clips of the Panther players running along the base of the stands and high-fiving with a loud whoop their enthusiastic supporters. But of course in football victory only lasts until the next game. And the following week the Panthers went to Green Bay to play on a field that has been nicknamed the frozen tundra. And it was their turn to experience defeat. And Green Bay’s turn to be victorious.
And now of course we are waiting for Super Bowl thirty-one which will be held in New Orleans and will feature the Green Bay Packers versus New England Patriots to determine who will be the most victorious team of all.
And you know we have to be impressed as we read the passage of Scripture that was before us a moment ago that we are looking at a winning team. We are definitely looking at a winning team. You see Joshua was now dead. But Joshua had been one of the greatest military generals ever to live. In fact I understand that his campaigns in the land of Canaan have sometimes been studied in war academies to learn the lessons that his campaign can teach about warfare.
Joshua had led the children of Israel into the Promised Land. And he had been their leader as they conquered a large portion of that land. But at the time that Joshua died there was a lot of land that was still not really conquered. And so at the very opening of the book of Judges the children of Israel do a thing that is very wise and prudent for us all to do at all times. They turned for advice to God. They turned for advice to God.
They knew that they needed to conquer the rest of the land. But they said to the Lord, Who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord’s response was very encouraging. God said, Judah shall go up first. Indeed I have delivered the land into his hand. What an encouragement that must have been to the tribe of Judah. Yes, God had picked them to lead first. And He was guaranteeing victory.
And then the tribe of Judah did something that was very generous and open handed. The leaders of Judah apparently turned to the leaders of the tribe of Simeon and they said, Will you go up with us into our allotted territory to fight against the Canaanites? If you do we will go with you into your allotted territory.
Now my friends that was a generous offer. And it was a logical offer because you see the parents of these two tribes, Judah and Simeon, had been brothers who were born to the same mother Leah, the wife of the patriarch Jacob. Not only that, the inheritance of the tribe of Simeon was inside of the inheritance of Judah. This was a perfectly logical alliance. And it created a winning team.
And if you will, to give a name to this winning team I’d like to call them the Judah-Simeon Jewish Patriots. Now believe me they had a history of victory behind them. They had followed Joshua. They had followed Moses before they followed Joshua. And now they had the guidance of God to go out and to fight with their enemies and to be successful.
Now pause here for a minute. As most of you know nineteen ninety-six, nineteen ninety-seven I’m a year shy. It’s the year when I’m going to step down from the board that runs the church. I will be stepping out of leadership in this church for the first time in I don’t know the number of years but a long, long path.
Now I have this to say to Victory Street. If the board of Victory Street Chapel will join hands with the congregation, if the congregation will join hands with the board of Victory Street Chapel and if you will move forward in dependence upon God’s power and in reliance upon God’s promises, God will lead you to new and fresh and significant victories. God is the one who does it. We link ourselves with one another and we go forward in reliance upon all that He has promised to do. And I hope that will be the experience of this church.
Needless to say the Israelites experienced victory. And God not only delivered the Canaanites whom He had promised into their hands but He delivered the Perizzites as well. And in a very serious battle at a place called Bezek they actually killed ten thousand enemy soldiers. That is a massive military victory for the ancient world.
Just so happened that the man who ruled over the city of Bezek bore the title Adoni-Bezek which means Lord of Bezek. And when this man saw his army collapsing against the forces of the Israelites he decided he didn’t want to fall into their hands and he fled. But they pursued him and they captured him. And the Bible says they cut off his thumbs and his two big toes.
Now in our modern day and age that strikes us as a piece of cruelty. And if we had the Geneva Convention on the proper treatment of prisoners of war in operation somebody would surely have accused the Israelites of violating the Geneva Convention and mistreating their prisoner of war. To us that might sound cruel. But let me assure you of one thing. The really cruel person in this story, the really sadistic person in this story was Adoni-Bezek himself.
You see out of his own lips comes a confession that he had conquered seventy kings. No doubt rulers of nearby lands and nearby cities. And also many of these men had suffered the mutilation of their thumbs being cut off and their big toes being cut off. Now quite obviously that incapacitated them for future warfare. Very hard to handle a sword or a bow without a thumb. Very hard to keep your footing in battle without big toes.
And if that is all that Adoni-Bezek had done that was cruel enough. But he did more. He wasn’t content with that. He humiliated these kings and he compelled them to gather around and under his table as if they were the family dogs. It was often the case in those days. And he forced them to get their meals by snatching up the scraps and the crumbs that Adoni-Bezek and his guests at the table were willing to throw back.
I’m telling you that this man was cruel and sadistic. And what the children of Israel did to him was exactly what the law of God said should be done. You’ll remember it in the book of Exodus. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, finger for finger, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. And in his case big thumbs for big thumbs and big toes for big toes.
And here’s the amazing thing my friends. When this justice was visited on Adoni-Bezek, Adoni-Bezek realized that it was just. And did you notice his words here? Adoni-Bezek says, Seventy kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather their food under my table. As I have done so God has repaid me. As I have done so God has repaid me.
Remarkable my friends. And a wonderful victory for Israel. They not only defeated this man militarily but from his own lips comes a confession that God is righteous. That God’s justice was deserved. In other words this cruel sadistic man glorifies the God of Israel.
And listen to me my Christian friends. Victory for us will lead to exactly the same result. It will lead to men and women around us glorifying God. Do you remember the words of the Apostle Peter which he speaks in First Peter chapter two? He says,
Beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. And have your conduct honorable among the Gentiles.
That when they speak of you as evildoers, by your good works which they should observe they will glorify God in the day of visitation.
Now my friends we are not called to fight with the enemies of the gospel. We are not called to fight against the unsaved world around us. Our enemies are the lusts of the flesh, the temptations of the flesh. Immorality, covetousness, jealousy, anger. And all around us there are men and women who don’t know how to cope with those temptations. They get into them all the time. They get into them all the time.
And when we as Christians by the strength and power of God have victory, victory over the lusts of the flesh, our unsaved friends, our unsaved co-workers, our unsaved schoolmates look at us. They can see the reality of God’s power in our lives. And sooner or later, whether in this life or in the life to come, they will give glory to the God to whom we bear witness.
Dr. Henrietta Mears was a well-known Christian woman. And on one occasion she was visiting the Taj Mahal in India. The Taj Mahal was a white marble mausoleum, a tomb in other words, which is famous for its acoustical properties. Now she was on this tour. The guide got into the center of the mausoleum and in a loud voice he said, There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. And the words that the guide spoke reverberated and echoed all through the Taj Mahal.
When the reverberation died down Dr. Henrietta Mears said to the guide, Can I say something? And the guide said courteously, Certainly. So in a very firm voice Dr. Henrietta Mears said, Jesus Christ, Son of God, is Lord over all. And her words reverberated through the Taj Mahal. Lord over all, over all, over all, over all.
Now you don’t need to go to the Taj Mahal to bring glory to the Lord our God. All you have to do is live by His power victoriously in front of the unsaved people who know you. And then your testimony will reverberate in their hearts and in their souls. And the day will come when they will honor God for what they see in you.
And don’t you see in the Christian life that’s what victory really means? That’s what victory really means. It means that you live so that God is glorified in the people around us.
Not only that the campaign of the winning team swept on. The armies of Judah and Simeon go to Jerusalem. They defeat it. They set it on fire. And then they sweep forward to fight with the Canaanites who are in the mountains and in the South and in the Negev and in the lowland. And everywhere they go they are triumphant.
At last that brings them to the very ancient city in Israel, a city originally called Kirjath Arba but which we know more commonly by the name of Hebron. Now those of you who have been following your news just this past week will realize that this ancient city that we’re talking about has been in the headlines just this past week.
You see the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat finally after months and months of haggling over the agreement reached agreement. The Israeli army moves out of the city of Hebron except for a small enclave where there are five hundred Jewish settlers. So Hebron is a city not only in our news today but it is a city with a history that stretches way back.
It was King David’s first capital for six years when he was reigning over the tribe of Judah before he moved to Jerusalem. And I want you to notice in our passage today that something very important and significant happens at Hebron. For our text tells us that when they came to Hebron they killed Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai.
Now we learn from the book of Numbers as well as from the book of Joshua that these three men were alive at the time that Moses led the children of Israel to the borders of the land of Canaan. They were descendants of a famous man by the name of Anak who was apparently a man of humongous size. And he was the ancestor of a clan or a tribe of people who had huge size and they were very fearful in warfare.
You remember that when Moses sent the spies into the land of Canaan to kind of survey the land, when they came back those spies said, We saw the sons of Anak there. Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. We saw the giants, the descendants of Anak in the land. And we were just grasshoppers in our own eyes compared to them.
That’s a vast exaggeration. A few of these people were not that tall though the children of Israel were scared by the report that was brought back by the spies. And as a result of the fear and unbelief of the nation they refused to go into the land of Canaan. And God condemned them to forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
But under Joshua they had defeated most of the Anakim. And apparently only these three men or at least not much more than these three men were left alive of the race of the giants. And the triumphant armies of Judah and Simeon kill these men. And there is a sense that in the death of Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai we find a closure to the fear and unbelief that had gripped the nation of Israel.
Now it seems that their fears are defeated. And these three men are dead. And you know that in the Christian life one of the biggest problems that we will ever face is the problem of fear. You remember the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy who was reluctant and anxious at the time. He said,
Stir up the gift of God which is in you. For God has not given to us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind.
But the giants that stand in our pathway are often the fears that grip our hearts. Ann Landers a number of years ago, the famous advice columnist, was receiving about ten thousand letters a month. But someone asked her, In all of the letters which you receive what seems to be the greatest problem? And Ann Landers’ response to that was very interesting indeed. She said it appears from my letters that the biggest problem in people’s lives is fear.
They are afraid of losing their health. They are afraid of losing their money. They are afraid of losing their loved ones. They almost seem to be afraid of life itself. And to Christian friends, all around us there are unsaved people who are gripped by fears. All of the fears I have named including the fear of death because they’re not ready to meet God.
And it is a wonderful testimony to God when you and I are victorious over our fears. We used to sing here at Victory Street a nice little song. Some of you will remember it. “Mount up with wings like eagles. When your fears are the mountains high and they block your pathway. Wait upon the Lord. Then your eagle wings will grow. Up and up and up you go.”
And there is a person sitting in this audience who will not face sooner or later a giant called fear. And it is on the eagle wings of faith that we can rise above our fears and triumph over them by the strength and power of God. And don’t you see that that also is one of the things that victory in the Christian life really means? Victory in the Christian life means we are willing to be victorious over our fears and to trust in the power of God.
One of the greatest disasters to the Allied cause in World War number two was the defeat that occurred at Dunkirk. By the time Dunkirk was over the empire of Adolf Hitler stretched from the borders of Russia through the Pyrenees Mountains at the borders of Spain. At Dunkirk there had been a devastating defeat and the horrifying evacuation of a part of the British troops.
And after Dunkirk forty-seven British ships were sunk in battle off the coast of Norway. After Dunkirk half of the destroyers in the British Navy were in the shipyard for repair. The Royal British Air Force had lost forty percent of its planes. The island of England was on the verge of starvation. And its remaining troops were desperately lacking in food and equipment. The British soldiers had lost fifty thousand vehicles, military vehicles. And friends it looked as if England lay prostrate before the advancing forces of the Nazis. And an invasion was anticipated at any time. It was a dark, dark day of fear for England.
But into that dark day of fear stepped one of the greatest wartime leaders of our generation or any generation. And that was Winston Churchill. And addressing his nation on the radio Winston Churchill said something like this. He said, We will defend our island whatever the cost. We will fight on the beaches. We will fight in the fields. We will fight in the streets. We will fight in the hills.
And if our island should be subjugated and starving, our empire on the seas will continue the battle until in God’s good time the new world in its power and might steps forth for the rescue and liberation of the old. Those words must have sounded brave in that dark moment. But in the light of history we know that they never even invaded England. That the new world in the form of the United States came to the assistance of England. That Germany was defeated. And that Hitler died perhaps a suicide in a bunker in Berlin.
Winston Churchill was a great wartime leader. Joshua was a great wartime leader. But Joshua’s name is just the Old Testament name for Jesus. And the greatest and most mighty military leader that we could possibly follow is our captain Jesus Christ. And if we follow Him into battle trusting in His power He can lead you and me and this church to victory.
Are you surprised that one of the best-known hymns in our Christian hymnal is a hymn about warfare? Have you ever stopped to consider it? Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before. Christ the royal master leads against the foe. Forward into battle see His banners go. At the sign of triumph Satan’s host doth flee. On then Christian soldiers on to victory. Hell’s foundations quiver at the shout of praise. Brothers lift your voices. Loud your anthems raise. Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Shall we pray?
We thank Thee for our master, our captain, our general, our Savior and our Lord, Your Son Jesus Christ. Father we pray that we may follow Him boldly, confidently not only in our personal lives but in our church life as well. And allow Him to do what He can do. Lead us to victory. We ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.