Lesson 7<\/p>\n
Not Called by God<\/p>\n
Judges 8:31-35; 9:1-12:6<\/p>\n
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As you may have concluded that one of the people I admire is George Washington.\u00a0 From everything that I have read he was a man of integrity.\u00a0 When he was a very young man he wrote a code of ethics he called \u201cRules for Civility and Decent Behavior.\u201d By the time of the Revolutionary War he was a well-respected statesman. The Continental Congress had only one candidate for the general to be in charge of the Revolutionary Army.\u00a0 That man was George Washington.\u00a0 In the minds of most Americans he was the best man for the job.\u00a0 Like the positions he would hold from those early days until he retired from public service it was the call of his nation that he heeded.\u00a0 Reluctantly, he allowed his name to be placed in nomination as the first president of the United States.\u00a0 He has been called with great affection, \u201cThe Father of our nation.\u201d\u00a0 Personally, the greatest attribute of a man or woman is to be chosen by their peers for any type of position.\u00a0 All too often those who decide to become a leader on their own do it for all the wrong reasons.\u00a0 They are ambitious and self-centered who have only regard for themselves and not others.<\/p>\n
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From the beginning of Judges we have seen that God has called certain people to be leaders and judges of the people.\u00a0 A person should never enter into any leadership role of the church unless he or she truly senses that they are being led in that direction.\u00a0 Alexander Whyte, a Scottish minister, once said something like, unless you are totally miserable doing something else you should not enter into the ministry.\u00a0 Ministry does not call for special people, but it does require those who are totally committed to Christ with their whole lives.\u00a0 One cannot truly serve the Father in a difficult way of life without that commitment to Him.<\/p>\n
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The two men about whom we are studying today were opposite their predecessors.\u00a0 Even Gideon, the father of Abimelech had been selected to lead Israel into battle.\u00a0 Gideon had succeeded then failed miserably by the end of his life.\u00a0 We will not cover all of the next four chapters but selected verses that fit the title of this lesson.<\/p>\n
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Judges 8:31-35<\/p>\n
The writer sets the stage for the next period of time in the history of Israel.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Abimelech, the illegitimate son of Gideon was born. Gideon died. Not only did the Israelites then forget God but did not remember what Gideon had done for them.\u00a0 They also did not show kindness to his family.<\/p>\n
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Judges 9:1-6<\/p>\n
Rather than being called by God to lead the people, Abimelech seized the position by convincing the people of Schechem that he was the man to guide their future because his mother had come from that city.\u00a0 They agreed to follow him and gave him seventy pieces of silver.\u00a0 With it he hired ruthless men who proceeded to kill all of Gideon\u2019s children except one whose name was Jotham.\u00a0 Abimelech was then crowned king by the men of Schechem and Beth-millo.<\/p>\n
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Judges 9:22-49<\/p>\n
After three years the people discovered who Abimelech was and wanted to sever ties with them.\u00a0 The intrigued that followed showed that Abimelech did not even care about his own people.\u00a0 When they rejected him, he had the leadership killed by burning down the tower in which they had taken refuge.\u00a0 Then he went to the city of Thebez and was going to do the same to them.\u00a0 A woman threw a millstone and ended the plans of Abimeleh.<\/p>\n
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Judges 10:1-9<\/p>\n
Two other judges followed Abimeleh.\u00a0 There is no indication that neither Tola nor Jair were chosen by God to lead the people.\u00a0 Although the Israelites enjoyed a period of peace from their enemies those men had very little spiritual impact on the people was they drifted further from God.\u00a0 God seemed to be totally absent from the life of the nation of Israel for those forty five-years. Because they forgot God He became angry with them and allowed them to fall into the hands of the Ammonites and Philistines.\u00a0 The more those two nations oppressed them the more they began to worship their gods.\u00a0 It was a natural progression for the people to worship the gods of the countries that enslaved them.<\/p>\n
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Judges 10:10-14<\/p>\n
The Israelites had suffered enough so it was time to call on God for deliverance.\u00a0 The answer they received was not the one they expected.\u00a0 God told them that He had saved them for the last time.\u00a0 He recounted the times that He had delivered them only to have them fall back into the same pattern of worshipping false gods.\u00a0 His command to them was to go to the gods they had chosen to worship for answers and relief from their enemies.\u00a0 He was totally fed up with their actions.<\/p>\n
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Judges 10:15-16<\/p>\n
God\u2019s message was very clear.\u00a0 The people realized that they had stepped too far over the line and the way back was not going to be business as usual.\u00a0 They realized that they had sinned against God.\u00a0 Unlike other times when they just expected Him to act on their behalf they understood and were willing to accept the consequences for their disobedience.\u00a0\u00a0 It is unsure if they were talking about deliverance from their sin or from their oppressors.\u00a0 Evidently, God understood it as asking for forgiveness.\u00a0 As proof that they were serious they put away the foreign gods they had been worshipping and began to serve the Lord.\u00a0 At that point God forgave them.<\/p>\n
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Judges 10:17-18<\/p>\n
As the Ammonites approached the people in Gilead, which was east of the Jordan River, the Israelites began to seek a new deliverer and leader for them.<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:1-3<\/p>\n
On to the stage of history stepped the next judge of the Israelites east of the Jordan River, which would have included the tribes of Reuben, Gad and the half tribe of Manasseh.\u00a0 The writer provided a short biography of Zephthah.\u00a0 He was described as:<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:4-11<\/p>\n
Interestingly, the Israelites turned to Jephthah to be their leader.\u00a0 He was pretty skeptical at first because they had rejected him and now were coming to him to get them out of the problem they faced.\u00a0 They promised that he would be appointed as their head if he stopped the Ammonites.\u00a0 They promised before God that they would follow through and make him their head.\u00a0 Only after questioning them about the truthfulness of their statement and hearing them make a vow before God that they would make him their chief did he agree to go with them.\u00a0 Jephthah believed that what he said was in the presence of God.<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:12-26<\/p>\n
Before going into battle Jephthah attempted to negotiate with the Ammonites.\u00a0 He gave them a history lesson concerning how God had been instrumental in giving the territory east of the Jordan to the Israelites.\u00a0 His main point was to make it clear that the Ammonites had no legitimate claim to any of the land that God had given to His people.<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:27-28<\/p>\n
Jephthah concluded his words with appeal to reason.\u00a0 He made the actions of the Ammonites more personal.\u00a0 Based on what he had said he and the people were innocent of taking action against them but they were wrong to come against Israel for no valid reason.\u00a0 God would therefore be the judge between the actions of the two nations.\u00a0 Sadly, the king of the Ammonites did not listen to what Zephthah had said.<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:29-33<\/p>\n
Jephthah in the power of the Holy Spirit went about gathering his army.\u00a0 He then made a fatal mistake. Rather than trusting God for the victory over the Ammonites he found it necessary to make a foolish vow.\u00a0 He promised to offer whatever came out from his home to greet him when he returned, he would sacrifice to God.\u00a0 God gave the victory without the need of making the vow.<\/p>\n
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Judges 11:34-40<\/p>\n
His daughter met him when he returned.\u00a0 She agreed to allow him to carry out his vow.<\/p>\n
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Judges 12:1-6<\/p>\n
If it was not enough for him to lose his daughters he was now confronted with representatives from other tribes who felt left out of the war.\u00a0 They even tried to kill Zephthah which brought about a minor civil war. The result of having their feelings hurt caused the death of forty-two thousand Ephraimites.<\/p>\n
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Judges 12:7<\/p>\n
Jephthah judged Israel for six years and then he died.<\/p>\n
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Throughout the book of Judges we have seen all kinds of people become judges in Israel.\u00a0 Some were provided great leadership and provided Israel with the stability.\u00a0 During their tenure the people at least gave lip service to God.\u00a0 There were others that were weak and self-centered. Their legacy was to leave in a spiritual condition that was worse when the passed from the scene than we they began.<\/p>\n
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Churches have all too often made poor decisions in the selection of leaders.\u00a0 Many times leaders have been chosen because of business acumen or they have charismatic personalities.\u00a0 When we listen to God He will help us to select those men and women who will guide the church in fulfilling the mandate God has given in His word.\u00a0 1Timothy 3 gives a very clear picture of the type of man who qualifies to lead others in the body.\u00a0 Acts 6 called for men to be of good reputation, filled with the Spirit and having great wisdom.\u00a0 If Israel had just heeded the concept of the words found in these two books they would have saved themselves a great deal of heartache.\u00a0 Fortunately, we do not have to guess at what God wants to do through those kinds of leaders because we have His word.\u00a0 We have many opportunities to help people take part in ministry.\u00a0 Let\u2019s be careful that the person matches the position.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lesson 7 Not Called by God Judges 8:31-35; 9:1-12:6 As you may have concluded that one of the people I admire is George Washington.\u00a0 From everything that I have read he was a man of integrity.\u00a0 When he was a very young man he wrote a code of ethics he called \u201cRules for Civility and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalmastery.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}