Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. While some proclaim man's basic goodness, we all know real evil when we see it. We encounter evil because evil is everywhere, on the news and on your street. Today, a study of the characteristics of evil people and how they got that way. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, the moral tone of a nation starts at the top. As you've said, we've been down this road before.
Only a work of God can free people oppressed by the kind of man you'll tell us about today. Well, Dave, you know, I don't know if you know this about me, but throughout the years I've had an interest in human nature. And one of the things that I have studied is indeed the evil that exists in the human heart, the possibility of evil.
And of course, today we're going to be talking about Abimelech. But you and I must recognize that even though we identify evil like that, when we see it at the same time, we have to be aware of the potential of evil in every one of us. And that's why we need the gospel. That's why the ministry of Running to Win is deeply committed to getting the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, because it is the gospel that transforms us.
If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. And we are grateful for the many people who stand with us as we continue to expand this ministry. And at the end of this broadcast, I'm going to be giving you some contact info. Meanwhile, I want you to listen, but I also want you to pray.
Pray about the possibility of investing in this ministry. But for now, let us listen. Today I'm going to speak to you on the topic of evil. We're going to be talking about an evil man. And we do that not only because this evil man happens to be in the Bible, but as we go through and describe him undoubtedly, each of us will think of various people who have crossed our paths either in the past, present, or future. And we say, yes, he has that characteristic or she has that characteristic because evil is everywhere. So I speak on the topic not only that we might know how to relate to and how to confront and how to submit evil to God, but also that there might be a warning that you and I might not become evil because we could, as we shall see the seeds of evil reside in us all. The man I'm speaking about, his name is Abimelech, probably not a name that you are acquainted with.
You probably don't have a relative by that name, though you may have a relative that acts that way. In Hebrew, his name really means my father is king and Abimelech in many respects had a good beginning, but there was a problem and we're going to see that the seeds of evil reside, first of all, almost always, not exclusively so, but almost always in the family. Abimelech was the son of Gideon, the great man that we've spoken about, the great judge who did such wonderful things for God. Problem was that Gideon had two faults. First of all, he fell back into foreign religion at the end of his life. He made this ephod that everybody worshiped and secondly, he also did not win the battle against sensuality. He had many wives and as a result of those many wives, he had, catch this now, 70 sons and as if that wasn't enough, he also had a concubine. Now, concubine was like a mistress. He was not married to her, but she was in Shechem and it was there that Gideon often went and she bore a son and that's who Abimelech is. How do you think Abimelech felt being the son of a concubine, whereas all of his 70 brothers all were from the wives of Gideon? I can tell you how he felt, diminished, rejected, not part of the clan. Something was growing within him that soon he would say, I have experienced enough of this and I want to settle the score and believe me, did he settle the score.
So you have this family structure that's going to contribute to his evil and secondly, you also have an environment that was conducive to it because in Shechem, I think some people pronounce it Shechem, but I'm going to pronounce it Shechem because in Shechem there was a lot of idolatry, there was a lot of evil and so this contributed to the problem. I want to draw a verbal picture for you of the scene. Back in 1968, it was possible to go to Jacob's well. You can't do that today when you go to Israel because of the Arab-Israeli conflict and so forth and it's really too bad because when you're there at Jacob's well, which is a deep well by the way, we poured a bucket of water down it just to see how long it would take before we heard a splash and there was definitely a second or two.
So it's a deep well, maybe 150 feet deep. But when you're at Jacob's well, you can see Mount Gerizim over here and you remember when Jesus was there on the well, the woman said to him, this is the mountain in which we used to worship. But also across the way you see Mount Ebal and that's where Joshua generations before had the people accept God's blessings but also be warned about God's curses and the mount of cursing was Mount Ebal and the mount of blessing was Mount Gerizim.
Interestingly, Mount Ebal is totally barren whereas Gerizim has quite a few trees. And in the neighborhood, there is this town called Sheken and it is there that evil was rife and what you found is that Abimelech was able to take advantage of what was happening in that community. Parenthesis, why is it that we have so much evil and violence today?
The roots are usually the home. It is there that children sometimes growing up rejected, angered, belittled, act out their anger and are saying in their minds someday I'm going to become somebody so that I can finally, yes, even that score. Now it doesn't have to be that way because in the next message in this series on the book of Judges, what we're going to discover is a man by the name of Jephthah who did a foolish thing but he was also someone upon whom the Holy Spirit came and he was the son of a prostitute and greatly rejected by his brothers whom we shall see. So I'm not speaking here about some kind of inevitability. I'm simply telling you that this is the way it often is even if it's not the way it has to be.
Well, enough of that. What are the characteristics of evil? First of all, evil people are motivated by opportunity. They exploit weakness.
They exploit weakness. Let's look at the text Judges chapter 9. Abimelech, the son of Jerub Baal, remember that's the name that was given to Gideon after he fought against Baal, went to his mother's brothers in Shechem and said to them and to all of his mother's clan, ask all the citizens of Shechem which is it better for you to have all the 70 of Jerub Baal's sons rule over you or just one man.
Remember I am your flesh and blood. Now he was setting up here a straw man so to speak because nobody was suggesting that all 70 sons of Gideon should rule but he's saying what would you rather have? Our territory broken into 70 different pieces because Gideon had died and apparently made no provision for transition and so he said what would you rather have these 70 or would you rather have me rule?
When the brothers repeated all this to the citizens of Shechem they were inclined to follow Abimelech for they said he is our brother. All right, so what does he do? He steps into this vacuum of leadership and he is going to use it for his own purposes in a very evil way. The nation is being torn apart by many different gods and now suddenly he comes to a situation where there is no leadership and he says why don't you support me and all of the people did and at this point we can't blame them too much because we have no idea.
They had no idea what was really in Abimelech's heart and what he was going to do. You know this far in the story it's almost something like Hitler coming to power isn't it? Because at first the people of Germany did not know all of his agenda and as a matter of fact Hitler would have never been able to come to power were it not for the fact that the great crash took place of 1929 and Germany was beginning to pull out of the difficulties of World War I.
The Weimar Republic was stuck no question about it but it was beginning to get a little better in Germany but then you have that financial crash and into that vacuum Hitler walked and said choose me because I'm your leader and I'm going to get you out of this mess and I'm going to take care of the humiliation of Germany and soon I'm going to be the man that everyone is going to praise because I'm going to get Germany back moving again and as it is in every era it was the economy and so Hitler moved into that vacuum of power just like Abimelech moves into that vacuum of power. You say well would Hitler still have been an evil man even if he wouldn't have had that opportunity to become great and the answer is yes but his sphere of influence would have been much smaller if he had ended up as a male clerk as his father had done he probably would have done a lot of damage he'd have hurt a lot of women as he already did he would have been a force of destruction but on a very small scale. What evil needs is a grand opportunity and Hitler and Abimelech both had one. Well let's go on to the second characteristic of evil it seeks for vulnerability. Evil destroys all rivals it crosses that line if somebody commits a sin we don't necessarily call him evil but he becomes evil when he destroys everybody around him to protect his own sick self either for self-preservation or self-exaltation.
Let's read the rest of the text. They gave him 70 shekels of silver from the temple of Baal birth that's where the people worshipped in an idolatrous way and Abimelech used it to hire reckless adventurers who became his followers. He went to his father's home in Orphra and on one stone murdered his 70 brothers except one who was able to escape Jotham. What's happening here? Well obviously you have a man who's going to consolidate his power but there's something else taking place and that is what he is doing is making sure that he can work out that vengeance in his heart. You think you're better than I am because you are the son of wives and I'm the son of a concubine I'll show you a thing or two and so he begins to kill and murder and he becomes a butcher. Now you'll never understand the nature of evil unless you realize that evil people cross that line and they destroy everyone around them as I mentioned to protect themselves and so what you have is they may not use murder in today's society because that has consequences for which they might have to pay a life sentence in jail maybe and so what they do is they use verbal abuse, they use changing the rules, they use manipulation, they stir up trouble, they tell lies and in the process they keep insulating themselves from any possibility that they may be wrong. Let me put it this way, an evil person lives in two different worlds. In world A he could even be attending a church, teaching a Sunday school and be thought really well of in the community, that's world A. In world B he could be molesting a child, he could be an adulterer, he could be a thief, he could be doing all kinds of wrong things and world A is insulated from world B and those two never do meet and he does not allow them to meet.
If you'd have asked Bimalik are you doing wrong? Would he have said yeah I really did wrong? Of course he didn't do wrong because remember the truly evil person does not see the evil as residing in himself but he sees it only as residing in others. You have to understand that an evil person believes that it is his responsibility to take a crooked world and to make it straight and he's going to make it straight by destroying everyone so that he can protect himself.
He really does believe that he's doing right. Let me ask you a question, have you ever tried to reason with someone who's evil? In an entirely different context I was in northern New York last week at a camp and I spoke on evil but not this message it was some other message and a woman came up to me and said we have two children and she said my husband became evil. He became an adulterer which is usually the path to evil and now what he has done is he has poisoned the attitude of the children towards me. He has done everything that he possibly can to destroy my reputation. He has made up lies. He takes all truth and gives it a half turn and he's done all the damage he possibly can. That's the nature of evil. That's the nature of the Abimelech.
Well let's hurry on. What happens to those who are evil? There's a third step here. Thankfully there's a third step and that is that eventually he overreaches Abimelech does. Now I'm going to tell you the story because the ninth chapter of Judges is rather long. This Jotham who escaped bless him. I want you to visualize now here's Mount Gerizim and he runs to the top of Mount Gerizim and he gives a sermon. He tells a parable. It's the first parable ever found on the pages of scripture and don't you wish you had a video camera to see him do this and to have picked up his sermon and he's preaching to the people in the valley and because there is a natural amphitheater there where Joshua had the tribes confess the Lord as their God centuries earlier.
He's standing on the mountain and he's shouting and he is saying this is what happened. He says that people asked an olive tree to reign over them. All the other trees said let's let the olive tree rule and the olive tree said I'm too busy creating all of oil.
I won't. And then they went to the fig tree and then they went to the vine and each of them said I'm too busy doing what I'm created to do and then they went to the thorn bush and they asked the thorn bush to become king and then the parable goes on very sarcastically and says that the thorn bush said come and hide in my shade. Well of course a thorn bush is too small. Nobody can hide in a thorn bush's shade. Thorn bushes are really thorns in the side of all farmers because the only thing they're good for is fire. And so what Jotham says is either accept the fact that you made a good decision by putting Abimelech as your king and crowning him and rewarding him for the evil that he did. Either say that that's good or else admit that it's bad and let fire come from this thorn bush and devour all of you. And with that the Bible says in verse 21 Jotham fled.
Would you blame him? And so he gets out of the way because he knows that he's certainly on Abimelech's wanted list and what happens then is God begins to intervene. That's the most comforting part of this passage of scripture because when we see evil reign, when we see it begin to take hold, when we see destruction and there is no retribution and people get by and oftentimes evil people do, they'll get by for an awfully long time. In the case of Abimelech it was three years.
In the case of Hitler it was 12 and in the case of people that you know it may be years and years and years and years and it seems as if they are never caught. And you say where is God in all of this? Well we pick up the text in verse 23. After Abimelech had governed Israel three years, God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the citizens of Shechem who acted treacherously against Abimelech. Very briefly what happened is they began to say why is he getting all the money and all the tariffs of the trade that is taking place?
We're going to take it. And Abimelech didn't like that very much and so antagonism developed between him and the city and pretty soon there was a civil war and in the midst of this civil war the people of Shechem they gather in a tower and they think that they are secure. Abimelech wants to come and burn the place down and I'm going to go right now to the end of the chapter. In verse 52 it says Abimelech went to the tower and stormed it but as he approached the entrance to the tower to set it on fire a woman dropped an upper millstone on his head and cracked his skull. Hurriedly he called to his armor bearer and said draw your sword and kill me so that they can't say a woman killed him. So his servant yeah a little bit of ego there maybe. So his servant ran him through. That's a euphemism for saying that the sword went through him and there was a mess to be cleaned up and he died. I like that so his servant ran him through and he died.
The Bible is so characteristic often of understatement. When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead they went home. Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelech had done to his father by murdering his 70 brothers.
God also made the men of Shechem pay for their wickedness because many of them died in this battle and the curse of Jotham and Jotham was the man you remember who went to the top of Mount Gerizim and gave his parable came upon them. What I'd like to do is to bring this down to where all of us live so that we can understand evil a little better and our struggles with it. First of all the seeds of evil lie in all of us. Can you accept that the seeds of evil lie in all of us. When Eva Braun's movies of Adolf Hitler first became known and all of us have seen them they've been on television many times. There were many people who protested strongly saying that the public should never see those movies.
Why? Because they humanized Hitler. If you remember Hitler he's there in Birches garden at the Berghof and he's on that veranda and he's just enjoying himself.
He's looking over the beautiful trees of the area. He's tussling the hair of a four-year-old girl. He's playing with his dog Blondie and just enjoying a wonderful evening out and they say that that makes him too human. What we want to do is to keep Hitler as a mysterious person. Half demon half human. Don't let people see his human side. But Hitler was human.
Same blood ran through his veins as runs through all of us. As a matter of fact did you know that there are in the world today thousands and thousands and thousands of Hitler's. But we've not heard from them and the reason is because they have not had the opportunity to act out the evil that is in their heart. But given the right situations, the right conditions, the right amount of animosity and they would do the very same thing.
Just read the newspaper and see the wars and the struggles and the evil of this world. What do you think? Do you think that when the Hitler's mother had that little baby in her arms was he somehow more evil at that point than others? I don't think so.
I don't think a bivouac was. My friend that's very sobering and of course we have to recognize that the seeds of evil exist in all of us. And we as human beings are prone to misunderstand ourselves, to misread ourselves and to deceive ourselves. We here at Running to Win as you already know are deeply committed to getting the gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible.
Why? Because we need the gospel, we are sinners as we have been emphasizing and we must flee to Christ or endure the wrath of God. I'm holding in my hands a letter from someone, an Arabic listener.
You must realize that the ministry of Running to Win is all throughout the Middle East in Arabic thanks to people just like you. This person says, I've been struggling with depression and sadness because of trauma. I encountered your ministry and now I'm going to the last sentence. As a result of listening to this, I found hope and love in Jesus.
This is the first time I feel calm in my heart and I can smile. Would you help us get this ministry to even more people? Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? Of course, you need info. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy.
And as you pray about this, just know that we are dependent upon people just like you. Go to RTWOffer.com. That's RTWOffer.com and when you're there, you click on the endurance partner button or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Let me thank you in advance for helping us.
You know, it's because of people like you, the gospel of Jesus Christ is going to 50 different countries in seven different languages. Consider becoming an endurance partner. Once again, that web address, go to RTWOffer.com, click on the endurance partner button.
You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. That was Pastor Erwin Lutzer with part one of When Evil Rules, the seventh of 12 messages on the topic, We've Been Down This Road Before, taken from the book of Judges. We've learned that evil people are motivated by opportunity. Next time, we'll explore in more detail the second characteristic, that they're motivated by the vulnerability of their victims.
We'll learn what happens when we try to reason with evil people. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
