Sunday 10th August
Read Psalm 121
If you don’t have a bible at home you can find the readings on a website such as www.biblegateway.com or an app such as YouVersion
This has been a well loved Psalm of Scots with its opening verse, “I to the hills will lift mine eyes”. Sadly it is often completely misconstrued imagining its meaning as a song about the beauty of hills and of creation, which it is not. Within the setting of the land of the Bible, the hills were places where altars to idols were set up and the Psalmist is asking a rhetorical question, “Will I lift my eyes to the mountains?” and his answer is definitely not. “No, my safety comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth”. Let’s think about where we look for our safety and security in life. It won’t be where the world around us looks.
As you read the Bible Stop; Read; Ponder; and Pray.
Monday Judges 2:1-5
Under the ‘Angel of the Lord’ (which means messenger) we may take prophetic words perhaps through one or more prophets in Israel. The significance of Gilgal and Bokim can be thought of under the historic meanings of the places, Gilgal being a place of blessing (where the twelve stone were set up after the people crossed Jordan and rejoiced being set free from Egypt and having entered the promised land) and Bokim which means ‘weeping’ as the people weep hearing the condemnation of God on their disobedience.
God told them that he would no longer drive out the people of the land and they would become a trap for the people and their gods snares. They offered sacrifices to God but with tears in their eyes. We may praise God at times but realise that our struggles are going to continue. These verses introduce us to the next passage which is about how the decline happened.
At the close of the time of Joshua the tribes went away to take possession of the portions of land allotted to them and during the lifetime of Joshua they remained faithful to the Lord. After he died we hear of a whole generation of Joshua’s time dying and another generation growing up who “knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel”. How often have we seen in the history of God’s people, Old and New Testament and right through the following centuries, similar things happening?
Verse 11 tells us “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals”, the fertility gods of the Canaanite inhabitants of the land. The result was that God gave them into the hands of their enemies who plundered them and they found out they could not resist them and ended up in great distress. It is always the case that when a people depart from God they find themselves prey to dark forces which bring great distress.
We are then given a foreword about the book of Judges which tells that God raised up Judges or Leaders in the land who saved them from the hands of the raiders but despite his help to them through those Judges the people still rebelled, returning to the ways of their ancestors, arousing the anger of the Lord who let the enemy nations remain and trouble them. We shall read all about this in the coming pages.
When the people, under Joshua, crossed the Jordan and entered the land they had to fight to establish their presence and make the promised land their own. However, after that generation died and the people began to sit loose to the Lord, beginning to worship other gods, the Lord made the inhabitants of the land their enemies so that they had to constantly fight to keep their position. Verse 2 tells us that God allowed this to teach warfare to the people who hadn’t had previous battle experience.
Christian people need, all the time, to fight and struggle against the forces of the enemy who would like to reclaim them for himself. If you haven’t realised it already you will come to know that being one of God’s people isn’t a rose garden, it involves struggle against the old triumvirate of the world, the flesh and the Devil. The temptations to fall back to be and live as the world around, the temptations of the body and all its indulgences, and not least the assaults from the dark side of the spiritual world (remember Paul’s words; “we don’t fight against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers of this present world”).
The enemies we have are there to test us to see whether we will obey the Lord’s commands (v4). The people of Israel did fight but they also began to accommodate themselves to the style of the people round about which is what verse 6 means about the intermarriage of the children. We shall see what happened.
Thursday Judges 3:7-11
The deliberate abandonment of Jehovah as Lord and turning to the Baals and Asherahs of the land roused the anger of God against the people and let them become victim to Cushan-Rishathaim who was a powerful king of the north-western part of mesopotania. Rishathaim means ‘doubly wicked’ which is probably what the Israelites called him.
We ought to take the expressions of God ‘burning with anger’ as anthropomorphism yet nevertheless real in that God’s attitude to evil is not quiescent – He opposes it and will not have evil triumphing although he allows its use in certain times. Here the people cry out to him under the fierce power of Cushan-Rishathaim showing that infliction of power by evil can turn people towards prayerful supplication and the result is that Othniel is raised up by God to become a deliverer. Othniel overpowered Cushan-Rishathaim and led the people into a limited time of peace.
Judges is a great book for children – because they love the gory bits! Ehud the left-handed man will be remembered for his skill with the hidden knife. The story however is about whatv28) we see again and again in the book of Judges, the people turn away from the Lord and he gives them into the power of an adversary, in this case Eglon King of Moab. He had got the Amalekites and the Ammonites to join with him to overpower the Israelites and thereafter had sway over them for 18 years. The Israelites cried out for help to the Lord and he gave them Ehud. Ehud went withtribute to Eglon but with a hidden plan based on his left-handedness. Today if we are entering a place where there is heightened security we know all the routine, In Eglon’s time people were searched for weapons but something kept inside the right thigh ready for a left-handed person was missed and Ehud used his special dagger to stab Eglon (in another way delightful to children) and afterwards he was able to escape without being caught.
On returning he summoned the people to join him and fight as “the Lord has given Moab into your hands” (v28). The people went out and blocked the fords of the Jordan stopping the Moabite forces from crossing to get back home and destroying them there. After this the tables were turned on Moab and they became subject to Israel for the next eighty years. Ehud the left handed man had gained victory for the people.
Apart from the major figures in the book there are some minor names mentioned but who nevertheless gained victories for the people and Shamgar in v31 is one of them. We ought always to remember that it is not always the big names or well-remembered people in the Churches that are important, God uses the minor people as well.
In chapter 4 we find the sorry tale repeating of the people departing from the Lord in evil ways the result being that God gave them into the hands of Jabin, King of Canaan. Sisera was the commander of his forces which were extensive and he cruelly oppressed the people for twenty years causing them to cry to the Lord for help.
It was a woman, Deborah, a prophet, the wife of Lappidoth, who was the leader in Israel at the time. She sent for a man called Balak and told him that the Lord had commanded him to take ten thousand men from the tribes of Naphtali and Zebulun to figth against Sisera with the promise that he would be successful. Next comes the fear of Barak who says that he won’t go unless Deborah comes with him, the well-preached message being that if men aren’t willing to go about the Lord’s work he will take women. In scripture it is always men who are charged with leadership roles, nowhere are women criticised for failing to take that role but in situations where men won’t step up they will be used. Deborah agreed to go but said the honour of the victory wouldn’t go to him but to her, a woman, instead.
