Without a King: Othniel & Ehud (Part 1) Rev. Ben Hentschke Sex, violence, massacre, brutality and deceit do not seem to be friendly materials for us in the story of salvation, do they? Given the Bible’s subject matter: God and salvation; living well and loving deeply – naturally we would probably expect to find in its pages leaders who are good, noble and honourable. In the book of Judges, as we are going to discover together over the next six weeks, we find instead - mayhem and chaos. And as we look at the judges Othniel and Ehud today, we are going to see that in their flaws and in their strengths they point towards the coming King, the one we know who lived and died and lived again, Jesus Christ. But before we get too far into this series – we will start today with a bit of background. And to do that we are going to start at the end, and then work our way forwards. The last verse in the book of Judges reads: In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit. (Judges 21:25). In many ways you could say that not much has changed in the three millennia since those words were written. There are many parallels between our situation and the time of the book of Judges, which recounts the history of God’s people, Israel, between the time of Moses and Joshua, and that of the first kings – around 1200BC. It was a time of spiritual pluralism. The society of Canaan, the land God had promised to give to his people, and where they were now living intermingled with other nations, was a mixture of believing and pagan people. It was a time when God’s people daily faced the choice between looking to God as their Lord, or following the spirit and preferences of their age. The book of judges is mainly the story of how God’s people failed in this task – of how they constantly turned from knowing, loving and obeying God to do what was right, or fit in their own eyes. Tim Keller in his commentary writes that ‘Judges can be described as “despicable people doing deplorable things” and as “trashy tales about dysfunctional characters.” And so you can see that it is going to be interesting as we dig into this book and discover what God is saying to us over these coming weeks. And the book we are looking at Judges, really gives us an impression that the judges were a group of people whose primary task was in the legal sphere, arbitrating in disputes. But this was really a subsidiary function of the characters we will be following each week. The judges in a way were primarily the ‘saviours’ or ‘deliverers’ of their people from their enemies. And there was really a common cycle that we see replayed over and over in this book, and it is described in chapter 2 of Judges where we read: After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshipped various gods of the people around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways. (Judges 2:10- 17) In a nutshell, the cycle looks like this: It is really that the people rebel, God gets angry, the people are oppressed by their enemies, which leads them to cry out to God, salvation is delivered through the chosen judge, there is peace in the land, the judge dies, and then the cycle begins all over again. And each of the judges that we will look at possess outstanding qualities of leadership which were considered to be the result of God’s Spirit coming on them. And this supernatural equipping of the judges helped them to shatter the yoke of an oppressor and deliver the people of God from their enemies. So with that background in mind, over these coming weeks we are going to focus on the characters in this book of Judges: Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Abimelek, Jephthah and Samson. Today, though, we are looking at Othniel and Ehud. And we find these judges in Chapter 3. And the first judge that we will look at, Othniel, really is a stereotypical image of the judges cycle that we just spoke about, and you will be able to see this as we read: The Israelites did evil in the sight of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. (Judges 3:7) Now the words ‘forget’ and ‘remember’ in the Bible really have quite spiritual significance. To really say that the Israelites ‘forgot’ God is to pretty much to say that he was no longer real to them. They knew who he was, not unlike most people in our society, they know about Him, but they didn’t truly know Him, and so the Bible uses the term that they ‘forgot’ Him. The reason that the Israelites go through this cycle as we will continue to see is because truths about God which were revealed to them that were once vibrant and real and the purpose for all they did, had, over time, been lost, and they started serving other gods, in this case the Baals and the Asherah’s instead. Martin Luther writes in the catechism that to help us not ‘forget’ using this language, or to constantly remind ourselves of our baptism into the family of God that we should start each day with God’s name, reminding us of our God who is loving, who is gracious, and who is real. So we see what the Israelites are doing – forgetting the Lord and worshipping idols, but then we see the focus turning towards God as the main director, as we continue to read: The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years. (Judges 3:8) God’s sends trouble. Why? We might think of this being terrible, but really, this is God acting kindly, because by bringing about suffering and difficulty, the people could now see their true position: how spiritually enslaved they were and what judgement they were facing. He doesn’t send them to suffer to pay them back, but rather, to redeem them. And in a way this still happens today in the way that God allows us to go through things that ultimately, are so that we are lead back to Him and the love, grace, forgiveness and mercy that He gives to us. And then the next step in the cycle we read: But when they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother who saved them. (Judges 3:9) You notice here that the only thing that the people do for their salvation was to cry out to the Lord, and so God sends them spiritual leadership, and this first judge cycle is really the ideal because as we will discover over the coming weeks, Othniel is really the only judge who isn’t explicitly flawed. And in this process we continue reading: The Spirit of the Lord came on him, so that he because Israel’s judge and went to war. The Lord gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel, who overpowered him. (Judges 3:10) It is worthy to note the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament right here. In Pentecost, we know, as we remember celebrating just a few weeks ago that God poured out His Spirit on all people, but in the Old Testament, it was always one at a time. But as a result of this Spiritual renewal, through Othniel for the people we read: So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died. (Judges 3:11) This was peace from physical oppression, but also from the self-inflicted spiritual oppression of idolatry, which had caused the physical oppression in the first place.