The Bramble King (Part A)

That is the principle of serving the Lord. Are you appointed to this by the Lord or not? And a competitive spirit must be resisted if you work in ministry.

And it creeps up so quickly. If you hear about somebody who excels in their profession and you applaud them unless you share the profession. And then I say, what do you mean? You're saying he's a better doctor than me? What are you saying? He's a better carpenter than I am?

So we have to watch those things. 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. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Judges Chapter 9 as he begins his message, The Bramble King. Judges Chapter 9, this is the longest chapter in the book of Judges. The Bramble King, that's the title of this ninth chapter. It's the story of a thug politician. And you'll only find those kind of politicians in the Old Testament.

You wish. Abimelech, that's his name. He was power-crazed, the power-crazed son of Gideon, the man of God.

He was homicidal, not Gideon. Abimelech, bloodthirsty despot is what he really was. And he wanted to be king so badly that he massacred 69 of his 70 brothers at one time. And what we have in this ninth chapter concerning his life, and it is contained to this ninth chapter, the three stages of his political life. And it is his seizing of power. You really can't say the kingdom, though he considered himself a king.

The defense of his power and then the loss of it. He was not anointed by God, and he was illegitimate among men in relation to his authority, but also in his beginning. We got some of that last chapter, chapter 8, that he was the son of Gideon through Gideon and his concubine. Now the ninth chapter strongly suggests that the concubine was a Shechemite. In other words, a Gentile.

A Canaanite, you could say. And so let's look into verse 1. Then Abimelech, the son of Jerubabel, that is Gideon, went to Shechem to his mother's brothers and spoke with them and with all the family of the house of his mother's father, saying, now before we get to what he is saying, his name means my father is king. We can speculate on how that came about because Gideon refused to be king, though he lived like a king as far as all of the niceties that surrounded his life. He was very wealthy, and again he had a very large harem. And Abimelech, my father is king, went to his head at some point. He felt he should be king.

He was like the crown prince who should have been but wasn't in his thinking. And so he goes to Shechem. Now his mother is from Shechem. Evidently he was born and raised there and moved away, but remained closely related. And he's not living in his hometown, but he comes to Shechem. And his mother's brothers, obviously his uncles, he recruits his uncles to launch his campaign to become leader.

And he's using Shechem to launch his political career. Verse 2. Before I read verse 2, I'll just add this comment. Right now the sons of Gideon, his 70 sons or a portion thereof, were the political leaders of this region in Israel under Manasseh's territory. And spilling out, we would think, we don't get a lot of details. And we have to go by how the story reads. And because there's no summoning of the tribes, it gives us a hint that he's pretty local in power. But verse 2, please speak in the hearing of all the men of Shechem, which is better for you, that all 70 of the sons of Jerusalem reign over you or that one reign over you. Remember that I am your own flesh and bone.

So you could listen to this and say, this gets kind of boring. This is just a story of what was happening to people years ago. This has been acted out throughout history globally. But of course, the Holy Spirit preserves precisely what he wants. And from that, he cherry-picks as we need or at some time that we will need to draw from the lessons, points that he wants to make to us. And in this case, this bramble king Abimelech, he's just a troublemaker. Oh, every church should have one. Every home should have one. Every city should have a share of troublemakers.

And how quickly these things just come to be. And so here he's using his campaign, please speak in verse 2, in the hearing of all the men of Shechem. He's saying this to his uncles. He's saying, go to the leaders of the city and get them to make me king. And so his rationale, which is better for you, as though he had the people in mind, that all 70 of the sons of Jerusalem reign over you or that one reign over you.

Which is better? You want 70 people leading you, you just want one. Really this is to make a difference. It depends on who they are. It's not a miracle problem. It's a moral issue. But that's his pitch, his campaign slogan.

One or 70. And of course he wants to be the chief of the mob of family members who I'm sure they're saying to themselves, well if we make Abimelech king, then it's going to be good for us. We're going to get benefits too. And so his argument again is, do you want the out-of-towners to rule over you, those Jewish children of Gideon who happen to have brought us 40 years of peace? Or do you want a hometown boy, your homie, to be the ruler over you? He says, remember that I am your own flesh and bone. That's lame.

Those are not credentials. Again, we have peace right now. Why are we changing anything? And how come just because you're related to us, you somehow deserve to rule? And that's why I think their motives were selfish. They were saying, yeah, we put him in power, we're going to benefit from this.

He'll take care of us and we'll take care of him. This self-esteem leading to self-promotion in contrast to being anointed as Gideon was. Hebrews chapter 5, speaking about the office of the high priest or the priesthood, the writer says, and no man takes this honor to himself but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. That is the principle of serving the Lord.

Are you appointed to this by the Lord or not? And a competitive spirit must be resisted if you work in ministry and it creeps up so quickly. If you hear about somebody who excels in their profession, you applaud them unless you share the profession. What do you mean? You're saying he's a better doctor than me? What are you saying? He's a better carpenter than I am?

So we have to watch those things. When I was a welding inspector, I would joke rarely, I learned to not do this, but I would joke with some of the guys that were really good welders. They didn't know I was joking. I would say, who did this weld over here?

Who put this on here? And they get very defensive because they were very interested in laying down a perfect weld. And any criticism, you better be ready to back it up.

And so I learned, well, I better stop doing that. It's cute to me, but they didn't like it. Anyway, in the verse 3, and his mother's brothers spoke all these words concerning him and the hearing of all the men of Shechem, and their heart was inclined to follow Abimelech for they said, he's our brother. Doesn't matter if he's incompetent. Nepotism, it is disgusting. If you've ever been a victim of it, somebody allows their family to make your life miserable because they're family. They get to be the supervisor, incompetent and counterproductive, irritating and all the things that go with it because they're family. If you've ever worked in a family business, you may have been subjected to that. Well, he's my son and so, you know, he's going to get it and you're going to get it.

If it's bad, I mean, sometimes it works out well. So he sold the idea to the men of Shechem. Again, the men of Shechem, a mixed bunch, Jews and Gentiles, belong to this city. The Shechemites are descendants of Hamor who, you remember the story of Simeon and Levi going in and slaughtering them.

Well, there were survivors and there are people that claim to be connected and not everybody was home when the slaughter took place, evidently, to have survivors. Verse 4, so they gave them seventy shekels of silver from the temple of Bereth with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless men and they followed him. Something similar happened in the book of Acts where they tried to hinder the work of the apostles. They hired those lesser men of the baser sort, says the king, the old King James version, very poetically. Well, these men were base men, lesser men of the base sort, worthless and reckless men.

May we not be that way. So he receives not only authority, he has the finances to launch this massacre that he has in mind. Isaiah 59, 7, their feet run to evil and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, wasting and destruction are in their paths. They're just selfish.

They're all about them, they don't care what they do and this is Abimelech. He says from the temple of Bereth, one of the idols, it's an idol-based initiative. Habakkuk, chapter 1, verse 11, he makes this statement. He says, he commits offense, ascribing his power to his God. Well, his God wills it.

It must be right. It comes right down from his temple. It's God's will. And who can be in the way of that? Well, I have the money to be king from the temple. So this must be blessed because no connection to Yahweh and Abimelech is ever made. An unbeliever can serve eight of the Ten Commandments if they get rid of the first two commandments. Not take the Lord's name in vain as this mock morality or mock religion. They cannot kill and steal and those things on the surface outside but they have other gods. They have idols.

And this is Abimelech. He has another God. He has images of his God. He's not following the first two letters of the Ten Commandments and then he will go on and break as many of the others as he can.

But sometimes we come across people that, they on the surface, they're decent people. They may be very religious people. But when it comes to truly serving God, the first two commandments have been compromised. And that allows them to serve God in their own way. We see whole religions do this. You can buy your way out of guilt.

You can write a check and be forgiven and they will make it official for you. You can light a candle for somebody who's dead and somehow they're going to be blessed by the burning wax and wick. These can get away with this because they run in a group that really the first two commandments don't really count. So with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless men and they followed him. These are gangsters on the payroll.

In those days there was no CNN or MSNBC to have on your side. You had to take matters into your own hands with a sword and that is what they're going to do. The old saying, show me your friends and I'll show you your future. These are the friends of Abimelech. These gangsters.

We'll find out what they're up to. Verse five, then he went to his father's house at Ophrah and killed his brothers, the 70 sons of Jerubbabel on one stone. But Jotham, Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbabel was left because he hid himself. Loosely referred to the 70 sons. We see this in the New Testament with the 12 apostles because the 70th of the number gaped.

The youngest one, he hid himself. This killing the competition was not a metaphor with Abimelech. It was a reality. Again, Habakkuk. He says woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed who establishes a city by iniquity. That's what he's doing. He felt entitled. He's again the prince that should have been and never was.

And it just bothered him too much. To usurp the definition from Webster's Dictionary to seize and hold as office place or powers in possession by force or without right. And he's doing it by force and he is doing it without right.

He is usurping the authority. He is massacred. 69 men. How much grief was upon that village in Ophrah because of this maniac? 70 sons of Jerusalem. That is, of course, Gideon. Let Baal answer for himself. And so he's now a graduate of Satan's school for dictators. It is a growing alumni.

It has been expanding over the centuries. Proverbs chapter 16 verse 12. It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness for a throne is established by righteousness. Well, you didn't write that earlier, Solomon, so that Abimelech could have read that and he would have behaved.

Unfortunately, it's not that way for the wicked, for the righteous it is. But Jotham the youngest again, he survived. The one survivor, verse 6. And all the men of Shechem gathered together at Bethmillo and they went and made Abimelech king beside the Tiribeth tree at the pillar that was in Shechem.

This blood-soaked coronation. They gathered together to make Abimelech king, some kingdom. Again, highly doubtful that his influence reached much beyond Manasseh, if it even reached throughout Manasseh. His mother, as I mentioned, was a Shechemite. His father, of course, Gideon, was Jewish. And that allowed him to have influence with the Gentiles in Shechem and the Jews outside of Shechem as well as the ones that were there also. And he could comfortably, more comfortably according to his logic, represent both sides. Well, both sides were doing fine without him.

We don't read about a problem until he comes along, he is the problem. This place in Shechem, at Shechem, you know, with much Jewish history there. Abraham, of course, said it had an altar there. Joshua pronounces the blessings on the people and gathers the people to Shechem before the end of his days. Jacob buried the idols that were in his caravan there at Shechem. And this is this tree that is referenced here is likely associated with the patriarchs.

This makes the crime even worse, a mockery. And it is that ecumenical thing that satisfies the Gentiles because they have their pagan image there, and it satisfies the Jews who are sitting on the fence with their religion because it is connected to the patriarchs. Verse 7, now when they told Jotham, he went and stood on top of Mount Gerizim and lifted his voice and cried out and said to them, listen to me, you men of Shechem, that God may listen to you.

It's a nice introduction. Maybe if he was speaking extemporaneously, just you know, just write out, or if he wrote this down, he published it at some point, somebody said this is good stuff and preserved it. It's a wonder, he's going to get this parable that is scathing rebuke on these wicked men. Now his name, God is perfect. And apparently a godly man, we wish we knew more about him because there's so much coming out of his parable.

In preparation, I'm saying to myself, I don't know if there's so much to take out of the parable, I don't know if we'll finish the chapter because it may take up some of the time, not on paper, it's if the Lord just gives me stuff or if I feel he does. Anyway, Mount Gerizim, that's where Israel was supposed to pronounce the blessings on the people of God for obedience and Mount Ebal across from it was where the other half of the tribes would pronounce the judgments and curses upon the people for not honoring God's word. Well, Jotham uses Mount Gerizim, which should have been the mount of blessing, to curse those who had forsaken God and slaughtered his brothers.

And it shows how far by doing this. He shows how far Israel had fallen from obedience and integrity and honor, and it is actually quite symbolic. Abimelech would have known that, but it just wouldn't have mattered.

He was that rotten a person. Verse 8, the trees once went forth, now he begins his parable, to anoint a king over them and they said to the olive tree, rain over us. Now this is the first recorded parable in the Bible. And of course, parables are in both the Old Testament and the New Testament.

They are timeless illustrations, very beneficial, and they take some concrete situation and they cast it in an abstract, you know, sort of light that ends up, or kind of like abstract concept, and it ends up being concrete, solid, something you can say, yes, I see it, and you don't forget it easily. Ezekiel and Daniel in their ministries, they used trees to make their point to the nation before Nebuchadnezzar, and so we have Jotham doing the same thing. He's using these trees. He starts off with the olive tree.

These fruit trees are nominated. That's where he's going with this. He said the olive tree, the vine, the fig tree, the olive, fig, and vine, they represent those nominated to rule over them, those fruitful people to rule over them.

That's where he's going with this. The fruit-bearing trees were those who fulfilled the needs in life. They made a contribution to life. And then in a society where harvest and the animals dictated the rhythm, people were very in touch with these things. Now the grocery stores do it for us.

What time do they open? These trees that he's giving as an example, they're not looking to do anything else but bear their fruit, unlike Bimelek. Spurgeon preaches about this in one of his sermons.

He says, they strove to win over those better trees which had remained faithful. So now look at it in this light. You have someone who is very fruitful in life.

And someone wants that person to run for political office. To stop being fruitful and come lead us in this office. And their response of the olive tree type character. Now, what I am doing here is very important.

I'll get back to that as we color in more the parable. Verse 9. But the olive tree said to them, should I cease giving my oil with which they honor God and men to go and sway over trees? Now the trees are the people that are coming to the fruit trees to nominate them to rule over them. And the fruit trees are telling the non-fruit bearing trees. In one sense, all trees bear fruit.

That's how they continue to exist. Acorn is the fruit of an oak, for example. But it's not a crop. You can't eat. I'm told you can eat an acorn if you know how to prepare it.

And it's quite dramatic. But let's just go with you can't eat an acorn and not suffer consequence. So verse 10. Then the tree said to the fig, you come and reign over us. So the olive tree said, I'm not interested.

So they went, they're going down the list. Okay, let's try to find a fig tree. And they figured out where a fig tree was. And he says, verse 11. But the fig tree said to them, should I cease my sweetness and my good fruit and go sway over trees?

This is a masterpiece of a parable. The quality and value of these trees, they're not measured by size. They're measured by their fruit, by their contribution to life. I don't know, I love olive oil.

I'm not big on the figs, but there's other fruit that you could substitute like cherries or something, peaches. So anyway, but they make this contribution. And they would be distracted from what they were created for, what they are ordained to do, even anointed to do. They would be distracted from serving their God-given purpose if they were just to listen to anybody, no matter how noble the nomination might appear. Should I stop serving God and care about those who don't care about God's system? I don't want to have sway over the cares of the world. In verse 12, he says, then the tree said to the vine, you come and reign over us. Well, the fig tree said no, the olive tree said no. I have always felt, since I've been a Christian, that it's a step down for a pastor to leave his pulpit for politics.

I think it's not only a step, it's not like a step down a step, it's a step down an abyss. And yet they do it. They think they get a following of people in the church that then qualifies them. And somebody gets hold of their ear, you'd make a good senator the way you deliver your points.

Oh boy, and the flattery just pours on them. We need more godly men in pulpits. We need godly people in politics, but not at the cost of our pulpits.

The pulpits should contribute to producing fruitful characters who have what it takes to hold public office and survive on that salary at the same time. 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.