The Judges Deliver (Part B)

Whism is knowing what to do with what is before you. And if what is before you is a soggy altar and no fire, then call to the God from heaven that he might send fire and ignite you.

And if you once had it and you don't have it, get it back. If you expect God to do what you're supposed to be doing, it's not going to happen. God wants hard workers. Get used to that. Face it.

Laziness is not an honorable thing. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Judges. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching.

Now, here's Pastor Rick in Judges Chapter 3 with his continuing study called The Judges Deliver. There's a great difference between seeking knowledge and seeking truth. And this is why so many are always learning and never coming into the knowledge of the faith because the truth is not what they're after.

They just want to learn anything. And we should know better. We have filters. We filter it through what Jesus says. This irritates those who are confused about knowledge, who think learning everything is a good idea, even though they are the ones that want to censor other people from learning everything. Some things don't need to be shared. I don't want to read a book, Ten Ways to Build a Bomb.

I mean, why? Okay, I digress. Bill Dadd, one of the four speakers to Job during Job's crisis, Bill Dadd was incensed that Job held them in contempt. I mean, here was Job suffering, and you come to my house and you just make it worse for me. You're talking about things that you know nothing about, as though you were some sort of authority.

You don't understand you're hurting me. And so Bill Dadd, when he picks up that Job just has contempt for what they're saying, Bill Dadd responds, Why are we counted as beasts and regarded as stupid in your sight? Job's answer is this, Because you are.

And that's what we have to say to any lie about Christ, and they mock the Bible and they tout evolution and all the other crazy things they come up with. And they say, Why are you Christians so obnoxious? Well, define for me what obnoxious is. How do you mean I'm obnoxious? Because I don't agree with you? Because I think your views are dumb? You think my views are dumb, but I can't call you obnoxious because you say, What kind of Christian am I?

I'm so unloving. So let's just get to the point. Your views are dumb, I love you. Hopefully that will create more conversation. God wanted his people completely separated from the people of the land, and he wants us to be the same way when it comes to thought and acceptance. He doesn't want to separate it from them because we are here to engage them.

And I'm sorry, you know, I've talked about this before. I have a good friend, a good pastor friend, and they meet and they hand out tracts on Coney Island. I've never seen tracts work in this country. I've never met anyone that said, I came to Christ because I read a tract. I met people who've come to Christ because somebody got in their face with the gospel.

I don't mean with an obnoxious kind of thing. It works sometimes too. And other countries, it does work. Because the people are just completely, not every other country, but many third world countries, the tracts go a long way.

Because they're not getting anything. But here, the Bible's everywhere. Christians are everywhere.

So I bring this up to say, to encourage you, engage them, eye to eye, contact, get close enough to know whether or not they're using deodorant. That's what it takes. Imagine if, I think of my own self, the people that God has allowed me to preach the gospel to, imagine if I just stayed home and didn't get in front of them. It matters. You matter. That's why Satan messes with you, because he's afraid that you may unleash the gospel on somebody. Now to do this, you cannot be somebody that's icky. Your hygiene is important.

Praise the Lord, brother. Whoa, whoa, wait. That won't work. You have to take care of yourself. You don't want to give them a reason to justify cheap shots. They're going to take shots. They're going to mock you. Don't make it easy for them. Get to work on time.

Be a hard worker. Don't let an unbeliever outwork you. And you watch what God will do. I was talking with someone about this Sunday. As a steelworker, I can think of two, three men that gave me a challenge for working. One of them was a Christian. And I just, I felt God gave me that principle.

Just outwork everyone, and I'll send them to you. And that's exactly what he did. Well, the Jews were no better than the pagans, as we're no better than anyone else, but our God is better, and that matters everything. That's the whole story right there. Who is your God? It means everything. Verse 6, And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

They waved the white flag. I surrender. My God is not as good as your God. Your God is more fun. During this time of the judges, this adopting of the gods of the land was such an insult to the God of truth. I got you in the land. I brought you here.

Do you think your parents were lying to you when they told you about the wilderness and crossing over and the monuments you think they just grew out of the ground? The law that you have, no man wrote that. God gave you the law. Everybody else, they wrote it themselves.

And you're willing to throw all that away. And so they surrendered. And any high place they could put themselves on to worship the fake gods of the land, they would do it.

This was the outcome of not paying attention to what God was trying to say to them. So as I'm standing here speaking, you have to say to yourself, or you know, hopefully people always say this, or get where I'm going, is do you get it? Is it sinking in? Or is it just someone else's words? Are you getting the faith? Do you talk to God? Are you ever moved by a Christian song emotionally?

Or are you just flat all the time? I mean, at times you just don't feel like it, or maybe, but there are, I don't know how you can be born again and have no fire at all. And if you don't have it, ask for it. James said God gives wisdom. He gives the ability to know how to do something with what you learn. That's what wisdom is. Wisdom is knowing what to do with what is before you. And if what is before you is a soggy altar and no fire, then call to the God from heaven that he might send fire and ignite you.

And if you once had it and you don't have it, get it back. If you expect God to do what you're supposed to be doing, it's not going to happen. God wants hard workers.

Get used to that. Face it. Laziness is not an honorable thing.

If they gave out awards for laziness, you'd be too lazy to go get it. So why would they do that? They took their daughters to be their wives and gave their daughters to their sons, and they served their gods.

It should have been the other way around. Before Israel showed up, all these people just got along well with Satan's lies, and then the Jews show up and Satan says, okay, I can't drive them out with the army. I'll drive them out with lies. I'll have them intermarry. To this day, pastors struggle telling Christians you should not do this. I don't mean as a suggestion, I don't have the right to command you not to do it.

Proof of that is you just go out and do it. But don't marry an unbeliever. You will have Satan for an in-law. And that missionary, you know, there used to be the thing missionary dating, you know, it's just a joke, a smokescreen. Well, I'm going to save them.

We'll save them first and then date them. He says they serve their other gods, the very thing that God, Moses, and Joshua worked so hard to prevent. Now he who receives seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

It still goes on. You would think the cravings for fake gods would have dissolved in the presence of so much light, but sin corrupts logic. It makes the person illogical when it comes to spiritual things. Otherwise, clear thinking people become spiritual morons when they reject the truth. This is what the Bible teaches. The word I just used, 1 Corinthians 2.14, but the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are moro, says the Greek word, where we get our English word moron from or moronic. It is the height of folly. They are moronic to them. That's why they don't receive the gospel.

To them, it's moronic. Well, what are we going to do about that? We try to help them get to an answer.

Well, let's open this up. And when you're sharing the gospel with someone over a period of time, you may have to try to find out, is this person just clinging to a lifestyle, and that's why they're not submitting to the truth? Or is it they just don't like the truth and don't want it?

Or are they in a state of ignorance, and I can turn the lights on for them? If they're the type of person that is saying, no, I just don't want to be a Christian because I have to give up too many sins, well, then the weapon against that is fear. You start talking about hell and consequence, as Paul did to Felix, and Felix said, I don't want to hear any more of this, you know, judgment to come stuff and conviction. Jesus said the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin. Convict involves fear because you've been proven wrong and there's a consequence. And if the person is just not getting it, then we excite them with truth.

And the Bible will excite people if you tell the stories, the parables, like the great Syrophoenician woman, the maniac at Gadara. I mean, again, Jesus steps out the boat, here comes this flaming maniac at him. What would you have done? A, get back in the boat, row away and get hit in the back of the head by something?

Because he's a mean guy. Pick up the oar and clock him when he's in range? That might not work. Stand your ground and give him Jesus. That's what Christ did. These stories are there for us to preach, not only to be preached to. Everybody wants the pastor to be prepared when he steps in the pulpit. The pastor wants the people in the pew to be prepared when they step in front of people out in the world. And to get there, you've got to be prepared when you come to church. Get your heart right. Get your head around these things together. Or not.

What is the consequence? Israel was supposed to be this witness to these surviving pagan nations. They were supposed to win them to the faith at the very least. They were supposed to drive them out.

Okay, plan B. Unfortunately, the Jews, many of them were one to bow and ash the wrath and all the other ghastly gods of these peoples. Verse 7, so the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.

They forgot Yahweh their God and served the bowels and the ash the wraths. So the cycle now begins. First comes the sin. Then comes the servitude. Then the crying out to God.

Then the deliverer comes and frees them. And then the cycle repeats. Okay, I'm not going to whine about that. I have no control about that. I don't like the cycles of the seasons. Summer is coming.

I detest summer. I can't do anything about it. So I'm going to make it work. We have to train ourselves to this. When you're young, you may not figure that out. You know, if you were like me when I was a young man, I got angry at everything I didn't like.

It's an automatic response. If I didn't like anything, I just hated it. And you get older and you find out, you know what, you're just beating up yourself. Anyway, I've got stories.

If you want to hear them, send me a note and I'll do them. Never mind, sorry. They forgot the Lord God, their God, and served the bows. Again, it should have been the other way.

If the Jews established more garrisons, more fortresses in the land with standing armies, they would have been more successful. Nehemiah got this. He understood this.

This is something for us, Nehemiah 4. Nevertheless, we made our prayer to God. And because of them, we set a watch against them day and night, and they were armed guards. Well, we're supposed to set guards too, but you have to understand that if you set your guards, the world and Satan is going to try to bribe the guard to take him down.

That's why we see our young kids go off to the workplace or to the universities and then wave the white flag and surrender, because their guards were compromised. They lost sight of the truth. The truth became secondary. Somebody else had better truth to them. Verse 8.

Oh, one other thing. I think to be an effective Christian, living a constant popularity contest is a mistake. If I was speaking to a young pastor starting a church, I would say, make sure you're not running a popularity contest. Sure, you want the people to love you. You don't want them to hate you. But if your motive for doing anything is so that someone will like you, you're making a mistake and it's going to bite you hard. So just skip that step and just focus on what God is telling you to do and live with the consequences or the blessings. So if some folks just, you know, they want to be loved and so they begin caving in and appeasing people and, you know, and when you start doing that, the people that are not important to you, you treat less. You don't treat them well because they'll offer you. But the people that you want to like you, you do whatever they want.

How much nonsense is caught up in that? Just live before God. Love everybody, like some more than others if you like. You can't help that. That's automatic.

I mean, those of you who are people persons, you know how to do those things very well, but not all of us are people persons. So, verse 8, Therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushan Reshathaim, king of Mesopotamia. And the children of Israel served Cushan Reshathaim, eight years. That's a long time of suffering, eight whole years.

Let's imagine you're in first grade and by the time you get to the eighth grade, this guy's still running things. Therefore the anger of the Lord was aroused, and he had good reason, sold them. Four times we come across that phrase in the book of Judges. Four times we hear that God sold his people to the enemy because they were acting like slaves of Satan anyway. So onto the auction block they went as slaves. The Jews had to learn these hard lessons, and the writer, the compiler, the historian who put this together, he's trying to teach future generations, look at this, don't make these mistakes.

And of course many of them did anyway, but not all of them. I'm sure Daniel read this. Daniel understood what was going on.

Outstanding man of God. This Cushan, his armies came a long distance to invade this area of the world from Babylon, that area of Babylon, the Euphrates area. And he was an external danger, so you had the peoples in the land that were not chased out. They were an internal danger, your flesh, and then you have the external dangers in the context that I'm using it. And so you get hit from all sides, but you should have a protocol in place. You should have things in place to protect. And you'll take hits, that's what God's mercy is for. God has a sick bay. He has corpsman medics if you're in the army. Well the Air Force, I don't know what they do in the Air Force other than play golf all the time. But I don't know if we have any airmen here, but that was an intentional loving shot at you.

Because the rest of us were in mud holes and tick infested woods with snakes and other stuff and mosquitoes and things that blow up, and you're sitting in an air-conditioned barrack somewhere watching videos. Okay, I've been holding that in. Where's Larry and John? His name, this Kushan character, means doubly wicked, or double dose of wickedness. And it was probably a name given to him by his enemies, which is just another chance that we see in scripture. The writers, those who were the scribes of scripture, what an honor to be able to have your pen be used by God. Anyway, these scribes of scripture, when they put these records together, they got their zingers in.

They let it be known their disdain for things that were harmful. And here is just one example. We'll get to more when we get to kings. Well, we move to verse 9. When the children of Israel cried out to Yahweh, Yahweh raised up a deliverer for the children of Israel, who delivered them. Athniel, the son of Canaz, Caleb's younger brother. Now again, we've covered Athniel before. The theologians debate on how he was related to Caleb.

It really is insignificant. It's kind of lost in the Hebrew for us. But here are the judges now, the deliverers.

And that's what it meant. They were to deliver the people from their enemies, and at the same time deliver them from civil strife. And protect them from misguided religions. Verse 10, the spirit of Yahweh came upon him. This is Athniel. And he judged Israel. He went out to war. Yahweh delivered Cushan, Rishathayim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and his hand prevailed over Cushan. Well, here it is that the word that stands out, he went out to war. Again, if he had an inferiority complex. As a little bit, we're going to get to Barak.

Barak had some of that. Deborah said, if I go with you, I'm going to steal some of that thunder. You had a chance here. And he was like, I don't care.

You coming. And so, I find those things kind of cute. Some of you just, but it's okay. You know, the pastors are not supposed to beat the sheep, except when it comes to humor.

All right. Well, so he goes out to war. Verse 11, so the hand, so the land had rest for 40 years and Athniel, son of Kness, died. What a great testimony. Of course, there's so much more to his life.

Well, we got to get to Ehud because we've covered Athniel before, that old hero of the Jews. Good leadership and it's an essential ingredient to victory. What is it on an individual scale? Making good decisions, wisdoms, wisdom, not being around the wrong crowd. Some people just gravitate.

They always go down. If there are bad boys and bad girls, they want to be in that group and not outside. The cemetery has taken in a few of those types.

That comes with a price. Jehoshaphat was a man of that kind. He was a good man, but he just could not pick the right friends. And God had to rescue him from death on several occasions. One of the prophets had to come out and rebuke him severely. The prophets would come out and say, what, do you hate God and love his enemies?

What's up with that? So remember that I think the Book of Kings and Second Chronicles, that historical account is really worse than the Book of Judges. The reason why I think we don't see it that way on the surface is because there are these heroes in Kings and Chronicles that really stand out. I mean, over the history of the Jews, still there's always David and Hezekiah and Elijah and judges. You have the judges, but there's much to offer from them, but there's a lot of stumbling there too, and you don't get so much of that with men like Elijah and others. That's my understanding.

We'll get to that later. So back to verse 12, later like two years from now when we get to Kings. The children of evil, they did evil in the sight of Yahweh, verse 12. So Yahweh strengthened Eglon king of Moab against Israel because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. So Eglon, the king of the Moabites, was used as a scourge of God. God was going to use him to discipline his people, but there was a limit on that.

There is a note of frustration as this verse starts, and the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. Well, you can either take a frustration and turn it into energy and fuel for the solution, or you can just let it make you suffer. I'm working on it, but I've made a lot of progress in the years I've been around. So hopefully you will, especially you younger ones, bookmark that in your head. Life is going to get frustrating.

Some of you have not yet met your husband or your wife, and that will introduce to you challenges that you never saw coming. And you can be frustrated and take that frustration and do something very useful with it, or you can just be frustrated and become bitter and things get worse for you. So that outlook has to be associated with that up look. Anyway, this again, add to it the shameless evil committed right under the nose of God. It's a very serious condition. They did evil in the sight of the Lord right under his nose.

They had no excuse for this. This phrase, evil in the sight of the Lord, it is a dominant phrase in Judges 1 and 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross Reference Radio.