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Judges: When Religion Runs Amok

Hello, I'm Connie Jeffery, and I'm Lonnie Melashenko.

CONNIE: Lonnie, I know you've been reading the Bible through from cover to cover recently--would you rank Judges as one of your favorite books?

LONNIE: It's certainly a fascinating book--full of stories of battles and intrigues. But it wouldn't rank up among my top-ten for reading over and over again.

CONNIE: I know that many people are put off by some of the stories of killing and mayhem--but there's a purpose to it all, isn't there?

LONNIE: I suppose the lesson would be summed up by saying DON'T GO THERE! I mean, Judges pictures how bad things got for people when they abandoned God, and that's why I've titled my message for today "When Religion Runs Amok." The book of Judges also has amazing stories about what happened when the people turned back to God, but overall, it deals with a nation run amok in self-serving immorality.

CONNIE: In our next segment, Ken Wade and David Smith take a look at some of the lessons that can be learned from Judges--and from one story in particular. That old favorite story of Gideon:

KEN: Well David you know our program today is titled "Judges—When Religion Runs Amok", and I was kind of intrigued by the fact that you and Lonnie did a series of programs a few months back "Rock Solid Living In A Run Amok World." Now Judges is a fascinating book, all kinds of interesting stories.

DAVID: Well, Run Amok would have to be the defining paradigm for the children of Israel in that book. I read it for my devotions just a few months ago, and yesterday and this morning again. Back and forth up and down, the spiritual gyrations are amazing as you read them now.

KEN: Yeah. Well what's your favorite story?

DAVID: Well there's several that are so interesting. Of course the story of Samson is in there and you talk about run amok. Here's a prophet of the Lord, serving the Lord, and then all sorts of foolishness. I suppose the story of Gideon has got to be a core experience there.

KEN: Well that's a great one. We love to tell our kids that story about how God delivered His people with His power, and you know it's really a neat story for teaching the lesson I think that Judges is there to teach us too, about where does your power come from.
DAVID: Well, no other story illustrates it quite like that because the human condition is to trust in the things around us. We think of numbers. Numbers and money, numbers and stock portfolios. If I could just pile up enough stuff, then I'm OK. I can look at that and say, "I've got a million in the bank, and that's always going to be there." And in the story of Gideon, you know the numbers were armies.

KEN: Yeah, first you've got 30,000 people.

DAVID: 32,000 troops, then 10,000, and ironically God keeps on saying cut those numbers down, cut them down, slice them down. Send these folks home, and before they're done, Gideon has a pitiful 300 people, and ironically that is the core of the story. God is saying, "I want your army to be so tiny that you will know you didn't win this by yourself, you're going to win by hanging on to Me. You're going to hold My hand to win. You're not going to win by the sword of 300 little guys.

KEN: Yeah, it's going to be a matter of faith, and of course that sort of thing happens. You mentioned about stock portfolio, but it can even happen in the church too, can't it?

DAVID: Oh absolutely!

KEN: You know, where a person thinks success in numbers or success in money. I wrote a book a few years ago about a man, he was an evangelist. He was quite successful, but then he started getting really critical towards certain things in the church, and you know he discovered a key: that the more critical you are, the more certain people like you.

DAVID: All sorts of folks who resonate with criticism, who love gloom and doom. You know they say some folks aren't happy unless they're not happy, and those people probably responded to that, but that is not godly success.

KEN: Well, but he was getting money, and what's your response? "The Lord is blessing us," you know. We have more money, we're buying more buildings, we're sending out more literature, therefore the Lord is blessing us.

DAVID: And from a point of view of the secular counting, that would be success, but in terms of spiritual blessing, that is not success. And of course this is what the book of Judges is trying to tell us over and over so painfully sometimes, is that the things that count as success in worldly terms, are not success because they often turn a person away from God rather than toward God.

KEN: Well, and think about why the people in Judges so often turned away from God. They were in a country where they were dealing with people who were worshiping other gods, and they could look down on the plains and say, "Hey those people's wheat fields, those people's olive groves are doing very, very well. Their vineyards are producing very, very well, and they're worshiping these other gods."

DAVID: With Baal and their Asherah Poles all over the place, and the crops are coming in.
KEN: And it's a natural thing to say, "Hey, that religion looks kind of fun." Because they would have some real orgies with their religion there.

DAVID: They have temple prostitutes and we don't, and it looks like it's working. Well again, that's why it is such a blessing for us today, thousands of years later, to read the whole story. You know they were stuck in a particular year, they couldn't see the big picture and see how the gyrations of spiritual turmoil very quickly led them away from God, and then away from prosperity and away from the blessings that God would like to give them. We can look back and read the whole thing and just see that these lurches toward paganism and toward the world's numbers were just disastrous, they were always disastrous.

KEN: Twenty-twenty hindsight that we can see what happened, and yet let's bring it up to today because we can do the same sort of things, can't we? We can say, "Well if the numbers are coming in, and if the baptisms are coming in, if the money is coming in, well we must be doing something right. God is blessing us." But what's the key then, where do we go astray on that? How do we keep from going astray? You've written this book, Rock Solid Living In A Run Amok World. What's the key?

DAVID: Well all the way through, and of course that book is keying on the experience of Corinth and 1 Corinthians, that's what that series is based on. And all through there, Paul is saying to that infant church, "You can't follow me. You can't follow Apollos. You can't follow Peter. You can't be a disciple of a man. You can't be a disciple of a program or a system or a seminar leader. You have to follow Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, and if anybody comes along with a different gospel than the Christian gospel, let him be anathema, because the key is God alone and His Son Jesus Christ.

KEN: Well, and that's so true in our individual lives too, isn't it? You know we have to keep that focus, it's so easy when things are going along try to do it our own way, but we have to get back, and Judges teaches us that in a bit of a negative way, but we need to keep our focus on God, our faith in God, and that's where the real blessings come from. Thanks David.

DAVID: OK.

CONNIE: Thanks, David and Ken--all of us need to be reminded from time to time of how important it is to keep our contact close with God, instead of just going our own way--or following the crowd.
Buddy Houghtaling takes a light-hearted look at what happens when people start acting like a stampeding herd of cattle instead of listening to God. There's a good lesson in his song, "Follow the Herd."

"Follow the Herd", Buddy Houghtaling, from How Many Memories CD, Track 7

CONNIE: That was Buddy Houghtaling singing about the perils of following the herd. Information about music heard on our broadcast is always available at our homepage, www.vop.com.
LONNIE: If you'd rather follow God than the herd, here's a great suggestion: Get involved in a personal Bible study plan.

CONNIE: If you have a computer with a CD-ROM drive and Internet access, we've got something that will make your personal Bible study easier and more interesting. Just call us at 1-800-872-0055 and ask for the Discover CD-ROM. It's a great new product from our Discover Bible School. With it, you can study the first lesson in the Discover Bible series right at your computer and then hook up to the Internet to do the rest of the lessons.
Don't have a computer? Well, of course the lessons are still available by mail as well, so just tell the operator at 1-800-872-0055 you'd prefer the regular print version and we'll send you the paper edition of the first lessons by mail.
Kurt Johnson, the director of our Discover Bible School is with us in the studio today

CONNIE: Kurt, this new CD-ROM program for computers is a great addition to our lineup of Bible study products. I'm really impressed with it.

KURT: Thanks, Connie. We're really excited about the potential for helping people get better acquainted with their Bibles using this tool.

CONNIE: One thing that really caught my eye was the fact that this disk doesn't just have a Bible study on it, it also includes a complete study from our video Bible study library.

KURT: That's right. You can watch program number one from the 26-part video Discover Bible series right on your computer screen. This is a fantastic set, produced just a couple of years ago. It features Lonnie as the presenter, and also includes fascinating interviews with people whose lives have been changed by meeting God through Bible study.

CONNIE: Tell us a little more about what listeners can expect if they get a copy of this CD-ROM.

KURT: Well when you put the CD-ROM in your computer, it's self loading so it just comes right up on your screen and there's a welcome message which explains how the program works. You do lesson number one. You read it right on the screen, and then you fill out a response sheet, watch the video if you choose to, you connect to the Internet and you send that response sheet and it comes right back to one of our instructors.

CONNIE: And the great news is that it's free for the asking. Listeners can get a copy for yourself, or maybe for a friend who's really into computers just by calling 1-800-872-0055.

KURT: That's right, and of course they can request the regular print edition of the study guides at that same number.

CONNIE: I think most people are in the computer age, I mean we're all starting to get into this high tech stuff. What is the percentage now of people asking for the CD-ROM?

KURT: Well, it's something we've just started so to get that statistic right down to the correct number I don't have, but I'll tell you what, the age factor that we see is that most individuals that are 30 or under, they love the CD-ROM, and even some of us that are a little older than that, we get excited about it to, but the young people really like it.

CONNIE: That's great! Well remember call 1-800-872-0055, and ask for your free copy of the CD-ROM. After today's message, we'll give an address you can write to request the Discover Bible lessons, but right now let's listen as Lonnie Mealshenko present his topic "Judges, When Religion Runs Amok.

SERMON
It happened during the time of the Judges. One of the most famous stories in all of the Bible--in fact one of the best-known stories in the world. It's been made into movies over and over again.


It has all the elements of an adventure, with--of course--a love triangle or two thrown in for good measure.

It's a story about a man--a very human man--whose life could have turned out a lot better, if only he'd remained true to God. And yet it's a story about a man who was used by God in spite of himself.

It's the story of Samson.

It begins full of hope, but ends in a horribly tragic death.

It begins with hope because from the very get-go Samson's life is a miracle. His mother was incapable of bearing children until one day an angel appeared to her and promised a son. But more than that, he promised that this son would grow up to fulfill a very special mission: To deliver the people of Israel from oppression by the Philistines.

The story of Samson comes down to us from the 11th century BC--over 3000 years ago! It comes to us from a time of war and disruption that affected the whole Mediterranean world. It's from the same time-period as the famous story of the Trojan War.

In fact, historians now know that the Philistines arrived in Canaan somewhere around 1200 BC as part of a great migration of people that took place partly as a result of the Trojan War.

It was a time when people thought differently than we do today. In those times, most people thought that there were many gods in the world, lurking behind the scenes, influencing human events, and especially involving themselves in great, epic battles. Whichever nation's god was strongest would be the victor on the battlefield. The Greeks believed that the gods Athena, Hera, Poseidon, and Hermes had all fought on their side against the Trojans.

But God's people--the Israelites--knew differently. In their heart of hearts they knew that there was only one God. The LORD, who had delivered their ancestors from slavery in Egypt.

But as they entered into the Promised Land, they soon became sidetracked from their devotion to the God of their fathers. They forgot God, and as a result found themselves in all kinds of trouble. The book of Judges documents that trouble. A phrase that echoes over and over throughout the book is found at the beginning of Samson's story, Judges 13:1:

Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD.

But even though the people forsook and forgot their God, He didn't forget them. He continued to teach them about Himself--often in the school of HARD KNOCKS. When they would turn away from Him and worship other gods, they would soon see the results. They would come under the power of the gods they worshiped--in the form of the people who worshiped those other gods.

Moabites, Ammonites, Midianites, and Philistines would come against the Israelites and oppress them, until the Israelites would call out to God and He would then send a deliverer. These deliverers were called judges, not because they presided over a court of law, but because their job was to bring justice to God's people--to deliver them from their oppressors.

The Lord had great plans for Samson--just as He had great plans for all of His people. Even before Samson was born, he was dedicated to the Lord to live a life of special purity as a Nazirite who would never drink wine or cut his hair. He was set aside by God for special purity--just as Israel had been set aside for special purity when God rescued them from Egyptian bondage.

But when Samson grew up, he wanted nothing to do with his special vows of purity. He was much more interested in getting married to a pretty Philistine girl--and nobody was going to stop him. Because of God's special blessing he was as strong as a dozen oxen, and nobody dared get in his way. When a lion attacked him, he tore it limb from limb. When his enemies tried to shut him up in a city, he ripped the gate right off its posts and carried it away.

With God's blessing he was like Israel back in the days of Joshua--strong and unstoppable.

But like his nation, his mind soon turned away from God to other things. No man could stop him. But a woman could.

First it was the pretty Philistine girl. Then it was a prostitute from Gaza who almost got him killed. Finally it was Delilah.

Love is blind, Shakespeare wrote, and in Samson's case, love led ultimately to complete blindness. Delilah shaved his head and then, shorn of the symbol of his total devotion to God, Samson became as weak as any other man. The hero who had defeated a whole army with nothing but a donkey's jawbone for a weapon, now stood powerless before his enemies. They tied him up, put his eyes out, and put him to doing donkey's work grinding grain.

His eyes had always been his downfall--his weakest point--his Achilles' Heel. But no more. Blinded and humiliated, Samson found himself in prison with a lot of time to think.

There's another phrase that runs like a refrain through the book of Judges. It's found in chapter 17, verse 6:

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right IN HIS OWN EYES.

It was his own eyes that led Samson astray. It was their own eyes that led the people of Israel astray.

The reason the Philistines were able to bind Samson was that God finally abandoned him to his own devices. The reason the Midianites, Ammonites, and others were able to defeat God's people was because they turned from Him and He had to leave them to their own devices.

Too often it was only when they were defeated, blinded, and enslaved that they would finally turn back to God.

Both the story of Samson and the book of Judges end with stories of victories won at great cost. Judges ends with a tragic story of warfare between the tribes of Israel. The tribe of Benjamin was nearly wiped out, and tens of thousands of other Israelites died in the war as well. It was a war that could have been avoided if the people had remained true to God--had kept their eyes fixed on the purity He wanted for them. But in their blindness they wandered away from Him and into trouble that led to thousands of needless deaths.

For Samson, his greatest victory ever came when, in his despair, he finally gave himself whole-heartedly to God. At the end of his life he brought down the temple of the Philistine god Dagon on top of his captors' heads. But that victory cost him his life.

Despite his failures along the way, Samson's name is found in the heroes of faith list in Hebrews 13. In the end he was willing to sacrifice all for his God.

The book of Judges is a fascinating book--full of stories. It makes interesting reading. But perhaps its greatest lesson is found in this: Though the people were not perfect; though God sometimes turned away from them; God never forsook them. He kept coming back, wooing them and winning them.

He does the same for us as well. Whatever your life story has been. Wherever your eyes have led you, God still wants you. God still loves you. He wants you to turn back to Him. And He can still use you as a warrior in His kingdom.

Won't you turn to Him, just now?