LOVE & HATE IN JUDGES
SGC. . . .hasn’t our time in Judges been faith enriching?! And faith building?! And faith inspiring?! Judges also helps us feed our faith with how to understand the Lord’s love and hate. And the reality of love and hate in our lives.
Five chapters in, we’ve seen how faith and failure played out among God’s people in and around 1200 BC. Much like we sort through faith and failure in 2023 AD. We’ve seen faith filled, but flawed, personalities living imperfectly as they follow the Lord. Much like we are faith filled but flawed individuals doing so as well. Most meaningfully, perhaps, we’ve seen how God’s love for and faithfulness toward His people is wonderfully elevated above Israel’s (His chosen people or nation in the O.T. See Deut. 7:6-11) failures apart from the faith. Not because God approves of their failures apart from the faith, of course. After all, He judges them time and time again. But, because of His longsuffering love for His people.
. . .we’ve seen how “God’s love for and faithfulness toward His people is wonderfully elevated above Israel’s. . .failures apart from the faith. Not because God approves of their failures apart from the faith, of course. . . But, because of His longsuffering love for His people.”
As we noted the other Sunday, He is routinely moved with “pity” (Judges 2:18) to raise up Judges and save his recalcitrant prone people. This is in keeping with His glorious character. Once He sets His love upon us, nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:31-39)!! As we are so gloriously reminded of with the Father sending His Son to die in suffering the judgement for our failures apart from faith, in our place.
The Judges themselves, foreshadowed this love of God in Christ among Israel, as we find them serving as redeemer and savior types until their deaths (Judges 2:16, 3:9,15 etc.); even as Israel was failing apart from the faith. Think about it, at the onset of their sin cycles, as the second generation separated from the faith of the first generation (Judges 2:10), we find the Lord judging His people (2:11-15). Yet, we also find him being moved with ‘pity” (2:18). And, being moved because of their suffering under oppressive and brutal foreign Lord’s, such as King Eglon (3:12-30). This pity of God, or compassion, brings the Lord to graciously (unmerited favor and preferred treatment) raise up judges to save his people so mercifully (unmerited relief from what is deserved).
“Once He sets His love upon us, nothing can separate us from His love”
Again, and this warrants belaboring, this pity (or compassion), mercy and grace, is born out of His love for them. As we reach back to Deuteronomy, just after the Lord our God saved Israel from Egyptian captivity and oppression, He clarifies His reason for saving them. And choosing them to be saved, over and against all other surrounding nations. He speaks through Moses, “The Lord your God has chosen you (Israel) to be a people for his treasuredpossession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you. . .but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you form the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharoah king of Egypt” (Deut.7:6-9; cf.10:14-15).
The Apostle John definitely has this ‘pity’ and love of God in mind when he invites us to, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we (you and me SGC) should be called children of God, and so we are. .. Beloved, we are God’s children now” (1 John 3:1-2). John says this, by the way, after commenting on how we are sinners, after warning against sin, and after exhorting us to avoid sin. What faithful love and ‘pity’ our Father has for us SGC!
“What faithful love and ‘pity’ our Father has for us SGC!”
However, with all of this being said and celebrated, our loving Lord and God always looks upon evil as evil. And calls evil what it is. After all, one of the common refrains that reoccurs in relation to Israel’s sin cycles throughout Judges is, “And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord…”
As we’ve noted on a previous Sunday, this verbiage of doing what is evil is language that bespeaks a systemic and prevailing lifestyle of sin. A rank abandoning of the Lord’s Word and following His commands (i.e. His moral law. See Deut. 5-11). Even with His chosen Israel, among whom His saved remnant lives, the Lord calls evil what it is. Because our Lord hates evil.
SGC, this is crucial for our awareness of what going forward in faith looks like and engenders. The Lord our God always and in all ways hates evil. He despises wickedness. And, He calls upon His people, you and me, to also despise evil. This is well captured in Psalm 139:19-22, “Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise against you? I hate them with a complete hatred; Icount them as enemies.” Notice the personal pronouns here, “I” and “me”. This speaks to what our disposition is to be toward how our Lord views evil. (Albeit, While this is to be our disposition toward evil, this isn’t to be our actiontowards evil! See below)
“The Lord our God always and in all ways hates evil. He despises wickedness. And, He calls upon His people, you and me, to also despise evil.”
In fact, as we’ve seen in Judges 3 for instance, we find the Lord actually -and in ‘real life’ as our 5 year so often qualifies- mocking and denigrating evil despots, abusers, egoists, and narcissists, et al (as this is His revealed Word ultimately reflecting His posture toward evil figures).
Please bear with me here?!
The writer of Judges (many hundreds of years after the fact) looks back upon the king of Mesopotamia as “Cushan-rishathaim”. This isn’t actually the name of the king. It was a Hebrew manner of speaking that identified this king as ‘doubly evil’. This sort of reflection and description speaks to how we are to remember and understand such nefarious and dubious personalities, totalitarian authority figures, abusers, haters, military and political despots, pedophiles, sociopaths etc. who never turn from their evil. History will remember them this way. Most significantly our Lord remembers them this way. We are to remember them this way. And, this is okay. Because it is in keeping with God’s nature and character.
This is only magnified when we consider the description of King Eglon in Judges 3:12-30. This king is described, remembered and spoken of using the most unflattering of verbiage. The entire section is recorded in a deliberatelysatirical manner. Or, to be a touch more on the nose, in an obviously insulting manner. Eglon is portrayed as a nincompoop; more or less. He’s described (by God btw) as an incompetent oversized (although heaviness in their day wasn’t necessarily a sign of insult but of wealth and prosperity) ruler who is ultimately foolish and naive in allowing Ehud (a foreign emissary) a private audience in his personal space. And if this wasn’t insulting enough, Eglon is remembered as a guy who uses the restroom on himself. Or, whose dung spills all over himself. This is how he is posthumously remembered. Or, rather, infamously, deleteriously and derisively remembered. A lump of hot, steaming. . .well, you smell what I’m stepping in.
This remembrance, is a reflection of absolute -and God approved- derision for this grotesque malefactor who’s presence defiled humanity, while disabusing and exploiting those under his authority. We are also to have such a remembrance for the aforementioned doubly evil lives and persons. The Lord preserves his memory or legacy as a lasting joke. Or a punch line, even.
What does this mean?
Well, among the church, we are to always and everywhere view such villainy as evil. We are to positively and mockingly affirm it as evil. And, even look back on such folk who don’t turn from such evil. . .disapprovingly, derisively and mockingly even!
So. . .with this in mind, the Caesars of Rome were doubly evil. The child sacrifices of the Incan empire were doubly evil long before the Portuguese arrived (whose exploits were also doubly evil). Boko Haram is doubly evil. Apartheid was doubly evil. The Bolshevik revolution was doubly evil. The Confederacy was doubly evil. Segregationwas doubly evil. Red China was doubly evil. China’s present government is doubly evil. Robert E Lee was doubly evil. Mao Tse Dung was doubly evil. Hitler and the Holocaust were doubly evil. The transatlantic slave trade was doubly evil. Saddam Hussein was doubly evil. Supreme Court Justices voting in favor of lawful abortion are doubly evil. Politicians consciously legislating in favor of one class at the expense of another is doubly evil. The Holy Warswere doubly evil. The Roman Catholic sacerdotal discrimination of priest and laity was and is doubly evil. Jeffrey Epstein was doubly evil. The systemic child and sex abuse among the Southern Baptist Convention was and is doubly evil. So forth and so on. Critical Race Theory is doubly evil.
“. . .among the church, we are to always and everywhere view such villainy as evil. We are to positively and mockingly affirm it as evil. And, even look back on such folk who don’t turn from such evil. . .disapprovingly, derisively and mockingly even!”
So many more could be added to this list SGC. Nothing is new under the Sun as Ecclesiastes reminds us; includingthe doubly evil. You and I know this. We experience this. We feel this. We have memories of this. And experience trauma due to this.
It goes back to the fall. Sin is the origin of this evil. Sin is its cause. And sin is a doubly evil influence and reality. This is why Jesus Christ is our only help.
He is our only helping and comforting presence in the face of any presence of discomforting evil; or even the doubly evil. He also experienced the doubly evil actions of Judas, the Pharisees and Sanhedrin, along with the Roman Empires doubly evil oppression. He even experienced this doubly evil to the point of death. And yet, He overcame and endured them all!
SGC. . .Jesus empowers us and you to do the same! He arose from the doubly evil experience of an unjust crucifixion at the hands of doubly evil humanity and doubly evil human institutions. And, in so doing, He overcame and conquered the doubly evil. Jesus alone is the sinless One who suffered the evils of all of our sin/s, so that we have strength for life in the face of any and all of the doubly evil we may encounter. Plus, He gives us strength to arise above the temptations toward the evil of sin ourselves.
He also gives us and you helping rest and peace as the One who personally experienced the doubly evil and wasn’t undone by any of them. . . .He was kind to Judas, His betrayer. He healed the Jewish soldiers ear who was present in Gehtsamane to unjustly arrest him. He lovingly entreated Peter, even though He overheard Peter’s public denial of knowing Him while being unjustly oppressed (doubly evil).
SGC, you and I can know peace and respite, in the face of the doubly evil, or even in the face of common and ordinary evil encounters each and every day, because Jesus had peace unto the most unjust death and mistreatment. As you may recall, after the redeemer and savior types of judges were raised up by God to save Israel, their land experienced peace for 20 years, 40 years etc. This brought the people to also know rest and peace. However, these stints of peace were short lived, as every Judge eventually died. Christ, on the other hand, has risen from the grave! And, being alive forevermore, the strength and peace He supplies us with also is alive in us forevermore! And, we can go forward in faith boldly in Him SGC
Excursus | Now, while this to be our disposition towards rank evil, our action towards rank evil is much different. We are called, in Christ, not to pray for the slaying of the wicked, but to pray for the wicked and to do good to them (Luke 6:27-28; Acts 7:54-60; Proverbs 24:17,25:21-22; Matt.5:44; 1 Timothy 2:1-2; 1 Peter 3:9; Romans 12:14-19; 2 Timothy 4:14-18). Moreover, Jesus calls us to love them (Luke 6:27-28; Matthew 5:43-45), to honor the office of rules even when their practices are evil (Rom. 13:5-7; 1 Peter 2:13-25; Titus 3:1-2).