Month: July 2019

We find ourselves in a new book of the Bible: Joel.  The time of authorship is thought to be around 500BC, give or take a hundred years.  It is a minor prophet who declares  a crisis which is taking place and which includes the destruction of much of the agriculture of Israel.  Remember, Israel was an agriculturally based group of people.  Let’s look at chapter 1.

In chapter 1 we set the stage for a destruction of all that is growing on a scale that is incredibly grand.  Everyone is affected without a doubt.  All should be weeping because there is no longer anything to eat or drink.  We  look at vs.14 as the prophet declares that a time of fast ought to be called.  But then in vs.15 notice what he calls this tragedy…The Day of the  Lord.

So when we think of  the Day of the Lord, we might even call it the day of resurrection.  When we think of the day that Jesus comes back to earth and gathers us it is almost always seen in a very positive light.  When we think of the day of the Lord,  we can’t wait for it to come.  It is the carrot that is at the end of this stick that we call life.  Okay, I don’t think that way, but you have heard that said.  But  here Joel says no, don’t look forward to the day of the Lord because it is going to be desolate.  Our task is to do what we hear in vs.14 and 19.  Our job is to cry to the Lord.  I’m not sure we are going to get a good  answer to what is happening here in the prophet Joel.  Let’s keep going to chapter 2 and see what we get.  It is only 3 chapters after all.

Did I mention that I have three daughters?  So…, what part of this chapter do you think is appealing to me?  How about…NONE OF IT!!  But don’t ever forget the reminder that we get in vs.25.  It is a reminder of why the decision that was made by the other 11 tribes of Israel to allow the Benjaminites to go and kidnap young women who were dancers, or to go and slay all the males of the tribe that did not come up when basically a census was done, in order that these women could be given to the surviving males of the Benajaminites.

I hope as you are reading this you are able to put it within the context that this is what happens when the Lord is not directly ruling over you, and, in fact, when no one is directly ruling over you.  Anyone who wishes that there would be no government really doesn’t understand what that might mean.  Sure, we get frustrated with our government, but it is still the best rule that is found in the world.  The government that we have in the USA, with the system of checks and balances, cannot be matched by any other country.

Now, having said that we are very, very error prone and we do sin as a country.  There is no country that is able to follow all things perfectly.  We, as a country, are far from that.  But we are pretty spectacular, especially when you hold it up to the light of the what was happening in the Wild West, also known as the time of the judges. Well, we are leaving that chaotic time and hopefully we will find ourselves in a time that is a bit more ordered.  Don’t count on it.

I’m not sure if you picked up on this or not, but this is an account of a civil war.  These are the tribes of Jacob, who is later called Israel, at war among each other.  The Benjaminites are the ones that raped the Levite’s wife until she died and so this is retribution for this act since the Benjaminites refused to send out to the rest of Israel the people who were involved in this  heinous attack.  As a result, after putting up a good fight, they were utterly destroyed.  

Do you notice how the author depicts the fighting of the Benjaminities?  A couple of times we read about how they were “courageous fighters”, vs.44, vs.46.  You wonder if the author of Judges wasn’t a little sympathetic to this tribe or if the author had some roots to these courageous fighters who were defending a rapist culture.  Not something I would want in my resume, but it is interesting how this battle is depicted. 

It is also important to see how the people of Israel lost the first two battles even though they followed God’s command on what was supposed to happen.  It brought them to tears, and doubt, as they wondered if this was actually God’s  plan all along.  They came back in tears and didn’t know if they had missed something or not.  Shall we go back out into battle, after two defeats?  Yes, go up.  This time it worked.  It looked like they didn’t have much of a strategy the first two times.   The third time we read about their strategy, it was cunning, and it worked.

Just because God says that He is  on our side doesn’t mean that we can just relax, pull up a soda and watch TV.  We are still given work to do in order to ensure the best that we possibly can before the Lord.

The wild west meets a horror movie.  What happens in this chapter is horrific.  I think one of you at some point said that while you were reading the Scripture you told yourself: you know, at this point I think I am going to stop reading.  I’m guessing this is as far as you got.  Why does the Bible have this terrifying story?  It must be to depict the atrocities that were taking place when the people were doing what was right in their own eyes.  There was no person to rule over them, and certainly they were not following the commands of the Lord.  

Does this story remind you a bit of Genesis 19:1-11?  Read  it again and see the similarities.  A similar aspect to both of these stories is yes, there was a desire by the men of the village to have sex with the men in the house.  That was an abomination.  But there is also the underlying sin of the people within the house were guests and there were very strict prohibitions against treating strangers in a way that was dehumanizing and not giving them hospitality.  

It is hard to imagine, and difficult to understand, what was in the mind of this Levite, who just might be the same Levite that we have seen all along.  To offer his wife, and by the way the fact that she is called concubine should not be seen as any justification, it  was his wife!  The people of the village raped her to death.  

What happens next is a set up for what will take place in the next chapter, an insight into how there will be hopefully some order set up after an especially atrocious act takes place.  It should remind us that often it is only when something tragic takes place that action is seen.  You would think that there could have been some steps take before this to ensure that there was some civility in the land.  That was not the case.  Everyone did what was good in their own eyes, which meant that they could do anything they wanted with no repercussions.  

We have a very unsettled picture of what is happening in the territory which should belong to the Israelites.  This poor tribe of Dan is wandering around because they weren’t able to establish the land that was assigned to them.   We read about how the Danites were pushed out of their territory in Judges 1:34-35.  We can also read in Joshua 19:47 about this similar battle depicted in this chapter, which wasn’t much of a battle but more of a massacre of a peaceful innocent people.  But notice how Micah comes back into the picture.  We still don’t know the name of the Levite, but he was very much sought after.

This is a time of utter chaos within the land of Israel.  Not only did they not have a king, but it also seems like they don’t have a judge to rule over them.  Micah does not play that role, this wandering Levite doesn’t play that role, no one plays that role within this scene.  As a result a wild-west reality seems to take over the land.  If a band of marauding Danites wanted to take a home’s idol and their priest, they could do so.  If they wanted to threaten that homeowner, in this  case it was Micah, with bodily harm, they could and the homeowner would have to decide if it was worth it or not.  Micah decided it was not worth it.  

The Danites got their land in a time where might means right.  It seems like we are living in a bit of time like that as well now.  But keep in mind “might makes right” is not a Scriptural axiom, but rather a sign that chaos and ungodliness is ruling the land.  At least that was the sign of the times in the Old Testament in the 18th chapter of Judges.

Good intentions don’t always mean good decisions.  Here we find a man named Micah who stole money from his mom, gave it back to his mom, and his mom, out of gratitude decides to make an idol to use in order to worship God.  The son carries out her plans.  There are so many things wrong with this scenario, which simply underscores that statement which repeats itself and we find in vs 6: “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”  This is an example of doing wrong while thinking you are doing right in your own eyes.

So what do we use as a guide to what we should and should not do?  Well, to begin with, Scripture tells us not to steal.  Okay, check.  Then it also tells us not to create or worship idols.  Okay check.  Then the mom said that the silver which was returned would be entirely consecrated to the Lord, but only 200 pieces out of the 1,100 were used to make the idol.  Maybe the rest was used to pay off this strange wandering Levite without a name who then becomes Micah’s private priest.  

The final line is telling to modern day prosperity gospel folks.  Because of all that he did Micah is convinced that “the Lord will prosper me”.  Well, we don’t really have that guarantee.  This is a clear chapter on what not to do.  

So a lot of poets and song writers have captured the troubled love affair of Samson and Delilah but none so convincingly as the Grateful Dead.  It is interesting how Samson tends to get himself into trouble over and over again, kind of like the people of Israel, with women who don’t really support him or are very loyal to him.  Delilah was offered silver in order to betray her husband.  She took the deal.

Oh, here is another song that includes these two heroes, well, at least one is a hero and the other is a villain.

I often put myself in the shoes of Samson and I wonder at what point do I figure out what my wife is doing in order to put my life in danger.  Three times it is obvious that she has done something that was told to her by Samson in order to put his life in danger.  But he still not only stays with her, but tells her a fourth time.  The Scripture implies in vs.16 that it was really Delilah’s fault that Samson gave in, but come on, he should have known by now that things were not going the way that he had hoped with this new wife.

Once he is captured and his eyes are poked out, then Delilah disappears.  He destroys the Philistine chiefs and his family takes him up and buries him and as an afterthought we read that he had judged Israel for 20 years.  I wonder how many of those years were behind Philistine hands as a blind man.

It seems like even though Samson was judging the Israelites the Philistines were still masters over  them, as we read in vs.11.  We also read that in the last chapter, 14:4.  So Samson decides  that he wants to be with his wife again, you  know the one that he gave to his companion in 14:20 and when he gets to where he expects to find her the father of the bride says that she is with his companion.  Why don’t you just settle on her sister, after all, her sister is pretty as well.  So the father of his wife refuses to allow Samson in to see his daughter.

Well, what do you do when you are angry?  Everyone has their own version of blowing off steam, and Samson’s version is to tie the tails of foxes together and light them on fire so that they would run through the fields of the Philistines.  As a result all of their wheat, grapes, and olives trees would be burned to the ground.   So Samson goes and burns off steam and of course those very sensitive Philistines become angry and they ask why Samson did this.  They found out about the father-in-law thing so they end up  burning and killing his father-in-law and apparently the woman who was still Samson’s wife.  Finally, Samson says, when I kill Philistines people will say that it is not a random act of violence, but rather that I was justified because they killed my wife, even if I had given my wife away to my companion.

The Philistines come  looking for  Samson who happens to be in the cleft of a rock.  Remember who else was in the cleft of a rock?  Look at I Kings 19 for an answer as well as Exodus 33:22.  The Israelites come up and plead with him because the Philistines are about to slaughter them for what Samson had done.  Okay, bring me down to see the Philistines.  They do, and he slaughters them instead.  As a result, Israel had peace for 40 years.  Actually it doesn’t say that, like it says with all the other judges. It just gives a non-committal fact that Samson judged Israel for 20 years.  No value judgment there.  Samson, like just about all of our biblical characters, is complex and messy.  Things are about to get messier.

Who remembers Samson’s first wife?  Most of us, if not all of us, remember that Samson tore a lion apart with his bare hands.  That’s okay, that is in our VBS and Sunday School memory.  We even remember that he gave some of this honey to his parents, as a good boy would do.  But do we remember what this lion and this honey have to do with Samson and his first wife, not named Delilah?  

Read the story again and make sure we commit it to memory.  Samson demands from his parents that they give him a Philistine wife in marriage, specifically one that he had found.  On the way to introduce his parents to his fiancee he kills a lion, leaves it on the side of the road, and then comes back and finds honey in it which he brings back to his parents.  The marriage is set and at the ceremony he entices some Philistines into a bet that they couldn’t guess his riddle.  They threaten his now wife with murder for her and her family if she doesn’t find out the answer to the riddle.

Now this part of the story should be familiar, even though we haven’t seen it yet, it comes next chapter or two.  His wife, according to vs.16-17, nags him until he gives in and tells her the answer to the riddle, which she quickly shares with the Philistines.  Samson owes them a lot of money as a result, and he gets that money by killing a whole lot of other Phillistines and taking their stuff.  I do have to say that one of my favorite lines in Scripture is the following:  “If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.”  Who says that?  As a result he gives his wife to his  best man.  End of story, no more wife for Samson, until two chapters later.  

But do notice  that this story, or a likeness thereof, repeats itself with Delilah.  the accusatory statement of: If you loved you would tell me, finds itself coming up very soon.  Be very wary of anyone who says to you: If you loved me then you would…(fill in the blank).  That person only has their interest in mind.

Every time that you read a chapter beginning with a barren woman you can pretty much lay money down that the child who will be born from the barren woman is going to be pretty special.  Think of Sarah, Hannah, Elizabeth…, Mary wasn’t barren but you get the picture.  This is where we find ourselves in this Scripture.  As you read through this Scripture we can’t find the name of Samson’s mother, only his father.  I googled: “what is the name of Samson’s mother?”  Guess what came up?  Wife of Manoah.  Yeah, not what I had in mind.

So the angel of the Lord promises that Samson will be a Nazarite.  All this means in the Hebrew is that he will be someone “separated or consecrated”.  The mom was not to drink any alcohol or eat anything unclean.  The child, once born, shall not have his hair cut.  Then comes a promise if she were to follow God’s command.  This child will lead the people of Israel out of bondage from the Philistines.  Remember how this chapter begins in vs. 1?  Let’s see if we can guess: “The Israelites again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”  They were under the rule of the Philistines for 40 years.  

We find that once Samson is born that the Spirit of the Lord began to stir in him.  Hang on, because things are going to get really interesting with Samson.