This topic was posted , thanks pastorbillrandles.
Posted on 11/05/2021 3:10:13 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.( Judges 13:1)
The Book of Judges is a divine record of the early years of the History of Israel, as they took possession (or failed to take possession) of the Promised Land.
It is a tedious and repetitious record consisting of a recurring cycle, in which Israel initially relied on God in Faith, and set out in Battle against her enemies to take the Land, and then would prevail for a season, possess the land, eventually Israel would ‘forget God’ and accommodate the paganism around them, make alliances, compromise, and come completely under the domination of the Pagans, to the point of varying degrees of slavery and oppression.
Then at the bottom of the cycle Israel would cry out to God for deliverance, He would raise up for them a Judge,( a deliverer). That Judge would lead a successful overthrow of the Pagans, and restore Israel’s fortunes, throwing off the shackles and liberating the people, who would then serve God, until they would forget him again, only to relive the same cycle of compromise, bondage and oppression again… until they would again cry out to God for deliverance.
Each time the cycle of Judges replayed itself, the oppression grew harsher, the bondage lasted longer and the people’s suffering was greater. Israel endured the Moabites, Ammonites, Amalekites, Midianites and Ishmaelites, and God raised up Judges to deliver them in turn, Othniel, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, and others as well through whom God wrought deliverance.
The final oppression of the book of Judges came at the hands of the Philistines. It lasted longer than any other, and the danger was far greater for a number of factors.
By the time of the Philistine crisis, There was one factor which was lacking in the cycle, as we see in verse 1 of chapter 13. In all other cases, we saw that Israel groaned and suffered under the oppression, until they cried out to God in their anguish, for relief.
But there is no such outcry in the Philistine crisis. It is as though they had gotten used to the oppression, or perhaps they were so exhausted that they were prepared to accommodate themselves to the (superior) Philistine culture in spite of the Paganism of it.
This is very relevant to much of the church of today. She has gotten comfortable with the sheer weightiness of wordliness which presses down on the world today. There is little or no desire for deliverance from the paganism which inundates our society and even churches today.
Judah in particular was living in a Philistine world and getting used to it, too much. Perhaps the oppression was ‘more humane’ , there is a chance that she saw the Philistine culture as superior and that Philistines could be reasonably accomodated. There was no cry out to God for deliverance as in all of the earlier examples in Judges.
The LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines, but to what end? He didn’t do so that they might just cast aside the only true religion on earth and make peace and love with these Pagans. The LORD didn’t cast aside his plan to create a Holy people through whom He would send a Holy Messiah, to crush the Serpent’s head, and to save the World. Then why did the LORD deliver his people into the hands of the Philistines?
He wanted to cure them of their tendency to idolatry by putting them under this people till they called out to Him for deliverance as in olden times such as Gideon or Deborah’s days.
But Judah had gotten too comfortable under the Philistines. She was enamored with their civilization, and submissive to these Pagans, perhaps there could be a co-existance, (in spite of the forced subservience upon the Jews).
But the most High God himself would send Israel a deliverer, whether they wanted one or not, for He has His own agenda, which involved Israel, and the Messiah which he intended to send through Israel to Redeem the whole world.
This topic was posted , thanks pastorbillrandles.
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