Tonight I helped lead a Bible study that used one of Tim Keller's guides for looking at the book of Judges. We focused on Judges 3. In this passage, we see a pattern that continues to show up over and over again throughout the Old Testament. The pattern is: Israelites are happy. Israelites forget God. Israelites have trouble. God saves Israelites. Rinse and repeat.
So from this, it seems the big lesson is God's faithfulness. We get into trouble, and God is always going to be there to save us, right? Yes and no. The truth, it seems, always merits a deeper look into things, and the Bible is certainly no exception to this rule. (In fact, it may be most true in this case -- but that's a discussion for another day.)
Certainly, this passage shows us that we are constantly in need of God's grace. But is also shows us that this grace comes in ways we rarely expect. In the passage, the Isrealites are first saved by Othneil. Othneil seems like the "sensible" choice. He is a man the community can admire just because of who he is, and he transitions into a leadership easily once God places His spirit upon Him. Othneil leads Israel to whoop up on their captors in open battle. O.k., nothing too special here. The Isaelites just needed a little help getting started, and they seemed perfectly capable of taking care of the rest.
In the next cycle, God raises up Ehud to save Israel. Ehud is described as"left-handed" in the text, which doesn't seem very special to us. But Tim Keller states that the way the verse is phrased seems to indicate that this person was not just left handed, but that his right hand was somehow damaged. I am not a Hebrew scholar so there would be little point for me to investigate the original text to see if this is true (I actually found this article that had a bit of a different take on this), but I can see why this could make sense. In many eastern societies the left hand is considered dirty. Often it was (and still is) used to wipe oneself after defecating. Knowing this, the people really tried to use the right hand for everything else, because the left hand was just plain dirty. If Ehud chose to use his left hand, I'm sure this was not a choice he made lightly out of some minor convenience. He probably did it because the right hand was just non-functional.
So, we have this guy Ehud who was possibly deformed and probably looked down upon as unclean because he had to use his poop hand for everyday activities. Not a good start. What God does with him doesn't really improve the situation. Ehud deceives the king of the conglomerate of nations ruling over the Israelites and assassinates him. When I first read this my first thought was: "well that's not very honorable." Even in modern warfare, engaging the enemy in open battle is seen as honorable, but tactics like utilizing snipes, spies, and assassins is looked down upon as "second class warfare." Why did God chose such a strange path to save Israel?
The question gets more obvious as the book of Judges continues past chapter 3. We see Deborah, a woman, raised up a a Judge. Later we see Gideon, a serious doubter and a person of little significance. Even further on we see Samson, a womanizer. Why would God use these people? The answer is given in a very beautiful way in 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. God does this so no one may boast, that God may get the glory instead of the individual.
So what does this tell us about how God acts in general? Well, first of all, He's complicated. If you think you have God figured out, what you're worshiping is probably not God, but some picture of Him that you have manufactured to make yourself feel comfortable. God is not something we can wrap our minds around. The book of Job does well summing this up.
If this is true, how do we balance our belief in God's faithfulness with our knowledge that we cannot fully understand Him? God says He is faithful and consistent, but He seems most consistent in doing things we don't expect. We are told our sins are paid for, yet we are told that we should expect suffering. We are told that we should follow the 10 commandments, yet Christ reveals that God's view of morality is actually quite a bit more complex than that. How do we maintain faith in such a complex God who we can't understand or predict?
This question brings us back to where we started, in Judges. We are told over and over again that the Israelites "forgot" their God. Does this mean that in one short generation any memory of God vanished from the collective mind of Jewish society? Doubtful. More likely, the Israelites forgot about who God is. Maybe they remembered what He had done, but their vision of God narrowed as they fell further away from Him. They constructed a comfortable vision of God based on His past actions, failing to maintain the fearful uncertainty commanded by an eternal God wholly beyond their comprehension. Such an understanding is the beginning of true faith.
I have come to see that maintaining faith in God is a balance between remembering His past faithfulness and expecting the unexpected from Him, remembering God is capable of acting in ways you will not be able to fully expect or comprehend and having absolute respect for His sovereignty in this decision. I hope God's unpredictability in your life is a reminder for you of the fact that the your life in controlled by a sovereign God who chooses the weak, the foolish, and the depraved to carry out His plan for drawing His creation back to Himself, so that He may receive all the glory on the day this plan is fulfilled. To God be the glory!
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