Trusting God in the Battle

Judges, Chapter 5 is a poetic rendition of Chapter 4 of the Book of Judges. It's describing an event that took place whenever Israel was entering the land of promise. And one of the series of events, the story of Judges is over and over again the story of how the people of Israel who entered the land of promise continually fell short of what God was asking and wanting them to do. And their process followed the same pattern all the time. Each time they began to be Canaanized. That is, they began to act like the people of Canaan. Which meant that they were turning away from the promises they made to God and were adopting the patterns of life and lifestyle that was the nature of the people in Canaan. So that the promises they'd made to God when they entered the land, that they would do everything that He told them, they were continually turning their back on that promise. And what would happen when they did that was that God would remove His promise to keep that He'd made to them because it was a contract promise. I will guide you and I will provide for you and I will protect you and I will make you a nation that's a great influence on the world around you. So whenever they didn't do the things He told them, their side of the contract, He would remove Himself from guiding them, providing for them and protecting them. And then difficulty would come. This is the middle of one of these stories where the people of Israel now have been terrorized. Scripture talks about them being in their houses and afraid to get outside because of the people who had taken over the land from them. And they were terrorized about what was taking place. Deborah was a judge at that time. Unusual for a woman to be a judge in Israel. The judge didn't mean what we do like a court, law court judge. A judge was someone who settled disputes among people based on the Old Testament instructions from God. So they weren't necessarily legal judges like we would think of it, but they were instead people who were more dealing with relationships between people. Relationships that were judged by the instructions from the Old Testament, what we call Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Those laws there that were dealing with how you relate to people or how you deal with people. So she was a judge. And the time came when God was ready to deliver the people of Israel from the hand and power of their enemies. This starts the story where we're going to pick up in chapter 5 of Judges. I want to begin reading at verse 13. Then the men who left came down to the nobles, and the people of the Lord came to me with the mighty. Now, this is introducing the battle that's going to take place. The men who were left, and the word left means left over, or people who were not captured, or the people that were the survivors. You might say that word. These were the people who were survivors, and they came down to fight the nobles, or the people were powerful. So the people came to do battle. Then it said the people of the Lord, this is the only time in the book of Judges this phrase is used for the people of Israel, the people of the Lord came to me with the mighty. What the poem is getting to is that now the battle is ready to be taken, but the people who are the warriors are the survivors, or the people who didn't get killed. They didn't have an army really, but they were just the sort of people that had been hiding, and now they were coming out of hiding ready to be able to fight. They came down to the nobles, means they were in the hill country, and the people they wanted to attack were in the valleys. So they came down to be able to do the battle, and then the people of the Lord came to fight those who were stronger than them, the ones who were survivors had hid out from the enemy. Now they came to be able to engage in the battle. Now beginning with verse 14, he starts what some people think is the third section of this poem, and in this poem he begins to talk about what happened in the battle, and he deals with it with regard to the people of Israel. There are 12 tribes of the nation of Israel, each one of them given a different part of the land for themselves, and now the battle is ready to begin. Here's a picture of God's people who are at battle. In the story of the Old Testament, the battle is between the people of God and the enemies of God, the people of Israel and the enemies of Israel, so that here the battle is shown like we would say about the church. Here's the church ready to do battle with the world around it spiritually. So it's a physical battle, but it's also a spiritual battle with them. So the analogy that we would get is this is the way God's people actually go to battle spiritually about the things around us in the world. So he starts off by saying, Some came from Ephraim, whose roots were in Amalek. And the word Amalek is a tribe of people who were enemies of Israel, and they were people who were unreliable. They were not dependable. They were not careful. And so whenever they were a trustworthy friend, you couldn't depend on them. So the Ephraimites, who were the tribe first located here, the heroine of this story was a part of that tribe. So you would think that Deborah would want to say good things about her own people. But here she says, Some came, indicating a few, came from Ephraim, but they were unreliable soldiers. They were people who knew that they should do the battle, but they were people who complained and grumbled and criticized and were rebellious and were not submissive to those who were trying to lead them around. Their roots or their life was connected to the Amaleks so that they were influenced by them. Benjamin was with the people who followed you. From Machir, captains came down. From Zebulun, those who bear a commander's staff. Now, he's giving us a list of the tribes that were participating in what happened here. And in the first section, he's talking about a group of people who were volunteers. They were volunteers, but they weren't necessarily reliable volunteers. And even the names of the tribes are changed a little bit. Machir was not a tribe, but it was sort of a nickname for the tribe of Manasseh. So he talks about Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh who came down in Zebulun who was a leader or had the commander's staff or who was in the position of leadership. The princes of Issachar were with Deborah. That was with her implying not physically, but with her in terms of supporting what she was doing. Deborah and Barak were the two leaders of the nation of Israel. Issachar was with Barak and rushing after him into the valley in the districts of Reuben, there was much searching of heart. Reuben was far away. They were a tribe that was a long way away from them. But Issachar was close by or connected to what they were doing. So he starts with a list of people who should be volunteering to begin to work in the army to do the work that God was trying to get the people to do. And here he has a group of people, some of them who come, but they're grumbling and complaining all the time. Benjamin was the people who were followers that they should have. And Manasseh sent captains down and Zebulun came to be a leader among the tribes. And the princes of Issachar, that is the leader there, were with them and with Deborah, giving support. Yet Issachar was with Barak, rushing after him into the valley into the districts of Reuben who was far away and there was much searching of heart. What he describes is a group of people who had a common call. This is the battle. We want all of you to come out and fight. And yet each one of them responded in their own unusual way. Instead of everyone being passionate about being obedient, some came but they were half-hearted and rebellious and hard to deal with. Some of them didn't come at all. Reuben was far away. He was sitting at home, this tribe, trying to decide what to do. What are we going to do? How are we going to handle ourselves? And so they were not really committed to the task of rescuing their brothers and sisters as followers of God. So you have in the family here in this list of tribes the volunteers. Some who were ready to volunteer. Some who volunteered but they were hard to deal with. Some who were too busy to be able to participate in what was going on. Does it sound very much like a church? Pardon? Without the lordship of God. That's true. What he's trying to describe is the circumstance in which this nation finds itself. Trying to fight a battle for its very life but the people who ought to be there doing the job are either absent or unreliable. In verse 15, princes of East Issachar were with Deborah. And yes, Issachar was with Barak rushing after him into the valley. In the districts of Reuben there was much searching of heart. Why did you stay away? Why did you stay among the campfires? To hear the whistling for the flocks? In the districts of Reuben there was much searching of heart. The story of Reuben's part in this was they were sitting at their campfires discussing whether or not the battle ought to be done. Discussing what their role was to take. They were searching their hearts about what they should do or should not do. They were trying to make a decision but the decision they were trying to make was based on something different than what they should have been asking. What is the question that the people of Israel would need to ask? Does God want us to fight? I mean, if God is in charge of Israel and is the Lord of Israel that's the only question you have to ask. You don't have to ask, do we want to? You don't have to ask, will we win? You don't have to ask, is it going to be comfortable? If you have God as the Lord of your life there is one question. What do you tell me you want me to do? So Reuben is sitting at home around his campfires talking about what the options are for them when the options are really very simple. I think oftentimes people who are trying to follow God have this difficulty because when you sit down to talk about things I was visiting with someone the other day and we were talking about the situation in this person's life in their home and they were telling me about it. I said, well, it's really just simple. Here's what you do. And they said to me, you make it sound so simple. Well, it is. You just do what is clear that God wants you to do. But see, when you start talking like that and then you start saying but if we go to battle we might be killed then you say, well, wait a minute. Now we've got to think about this. Do I trust God even if it means I'm going to be killed in the battle? For us, it's do I trust God even if it means somebody might get mad at me? Am I going to do what God tells me even though it seems like it's going to be hard? Or does it seem like it's going to be painful? Or does it seem like it might be costly? See, we have all kinds of questions about whether or not we should do what God tells us. All of those are questions about God's trustworthiness. In other words, it's clear what God wants us to do most of the time. But what confuses us is that the consequences of doing what He tells us could be destructive. It could be painful. And it could be costly. So when we begin to think of all those things that it might do to us, then we sit around the campfire trying to make our minds up. What does God want me to do? Well, there are certain things that are really clear about what God wants. He's laid them out in the Scriptures for us so that we know what we're supposed to do. But what really is the problem is we want to do what we want to do. And when our desire comes in conflict with what God says, now is the time to do this, and we begin to think of all the things that could go wrong if we do what we know God wants us to do, and we don't trust God completely, then we end up like Reuben, sitting around the campfire discussing whether or not we should join the battle that God has asked us to fight. Reuben becomes the poster boy that Tribe does for people who sit down, hear the call of God, and don't answer because they are afraid or because they don't want to pay the cost or because they can see problems ahead if they do what God tells them they should do. It could be about friendships. It could be about money. It could be about all kinds of things. But here's the secret to this. Obedience to God always comes at a cost to us. Always does. And it comes at a cost to us because God wants to know if we trust Him. If I was to give you directions about how to get to some place, and I told you where to turn and the roads to turn on, and you left with my map drawn out and all the things on there that you should, and you started driving, and you got to a place where it didn't look like you were getting anywhere, you would maybe throw the map away and just start asking other people. When we moved up here, we left Texas in two cars. Carol and I was in one car and her mother and dad in another car. And we drove up from Fort Worth, Texas, and we picked them up. I don't know where it was we picked them up. Anyway, they took one of our cars. But then, in those days, at 55 miles an hour, we came up out of Wichita, and Bud Allen told me how to get from Wichita to here. I've only been there a couple of times. But the way he told me, you turned at Cropper Corners and went down that dirt road, down that road all the way down there until you came to a tree, and then you turned to the right, and you went up by that evangelical Mennonite church, you know, until you got up to the road where they went through Cheyenne Bottom down there. Well, it was late at night, and when we left Wichita, I knew that gas here in those days was cheaper than it was anywhere else. So we got out on the Cheyenne Bottoms road coming this way, and we were about 10 miles down that road, and her dad behind us was honking and flashing his lights. So I stopped, and I said, What's wrong? He said, We're about to run out of gas. He said, He's kind of a worrying kind of guy. He said, We're about to run out of gas. We passed that road down there, and it said, Watch out for cattle. And we drove 10 more miles. It said, Watch out for deer. It said, We're getting further and further away from civilization. Are we going to be able to make it? I said, Don't worry. I've been down this road at least three times. I know exactly where we're going. And he said, But we're about to run out of gas. I said, Well, I know how far it is from here to Great Bend, and we're going to get there in time because I know how much gas that car has. But he didn't trust me. And whenever you get in a position where you don't have confidence in the person guiding you, it's a very difficult situation. And oftentimes God says, I want you to forgive when we don't want to forgive. All the time, sometimes He says, I want you to sacrifice by giving what I'm asking you to give even though we don't have any more. Sometimes He asks us to do jobs or work that we don't have time or the ability or training. Sometimes He asks us to witness to someone where you don't even know if they're going to get mad when you do it. All of these are ways by which God is simply saying, I want to know if you trust me. I don't think Carol's dad trusted me, but he just didn't have any other options. We were on that road and there was nothing else he could do. Not always that you don't have options. You have them all the time with God. But you have to make a decision as to whether or not you really trust God with your life. Reuben did not trust God. So they stayed at home around their campfires arguing about what was going to be done. Now Gilead was not a tribe. It was a geography, a location. But for some reason, Gilead, the tribe of Gad was who this was. Gilead was called that here. Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan. Whenever they came into the land of promise, the tribe of Gad wanted to stay on the east side of the Jordan River because the land was really good. But they made a promise to God that whenever the land was settled, they would fight the battles and secure the land before they went back to their home where their families were settled. And they did that. But then the war broke out. And now they were called again. But they were on the other side of the Jordan. They were safe and secure and no one was going to bother them. But now the call came out, there's a war. Come and join us in the battle to secure the land for all the tribe of Israel. And what oftentimes happens to us as Christians or followers of Christ in the church, as long as we're happy and satisfied and content, we don't care whatever happens to the others. As long as my family is taken care of, my friends are taken care of. And so you want me to pray for your family and you want me to pray for your family. But other people's families you don't care much about. I mean you care about them, but you know that's just not a big issue to you. You see, the people of God bear one another's burdens. That's the point of this. You joined up to be a part of the family of God and you're a part of all of the people's families that you're a part of. We're the body of Christ. Do you say about your right arm, it hurts me, I'll just whack it off. You care about the whole body. And one of the indications that God is in charge of our lives in a church family is when we're concerned about somebody else's brother and sister as much as we are about our own brother and sister. You see, the body of Christ is an image in the New Testament describing what was wrong here. The head, Christ, is giving directions, but the body functions only in a way of its self-interest. If I'm happy and peaceful and content, then it doesn't matter to me what everybody else's problems are. And this is illustrated in this story in the Old Testament about how self-focused people can get. Gilead stayed beyond the Jordan. They didn't come. And Dan, why did he linger by the ships? Well, Dan was another fellow, another tribe. And he was settled on the Mediterranean Sea. And he had ships going out to carry goods to the nations around them to bring them back in, in business. And his problem was he was just too busy. I mean, he had things to do. If he walked off and left his ships, his business would suffer. So while he had great sympathy for the people of Israel and the problems that they had, he just thought his own issues were so much more valuable and important to him that he didn't come. It was a battle for the very life of the nation of Israel. And Dan was too busy making money to worry about what was happening to anybody else. Asher remained on the seacoast and stayed in his coves. Asher was another one of the tribes. And he wasn't so much Asher. The tribe wasn't so much interested in trading around the Mediterranean as they were in the shipbuilding business. But they were working on their ships and they didn't have time to do anything to help. The people of Zebulun risked their very lives. This is the last group. The group of the heroes. The people who gave something of themselves to make sure that they were award winners in the story. The people of Zebulun risked their very lives. Unlike the people of Dan. Unlike the people of Gad. Unlike the people who set by the fire Reuben and argued about what they should do. When the call came, they came to fight. And they were willing to get on the front lines and give their lives for the cause that God had given them. And so did Natali. On the heights of the field. Kings came, they fought. Kings of Canaan fought to knock by the waters of Megiddo. But they carried off no silver and no plunder. The victory was won by the Israelites. Here's a picture of what it means to be a part of the community of Christ. The body of Christ. Christ is the head. Paul describes this as talking about each one of us in the church are a member of the body of Christ. We're connected together. There is one leader and that is God. He is the head of all this. In our church we try to involve people. Our church structure is a little bit different than some where we have business meetings where we come together and talk about what is it that we need to do. We ask people to pray. We ask people to express their opinions. What we're listening for is God to speak to us through all the people that are here. What is God trying to tell us? Because we want to hear His voice. And when we hear His voice we know what He wants us to do and we do it. And there are a lot of people that really love the church and what God is trying to do. But they have other things to do and things are more important. But the body of Christ needs to find the will of God to start with. What does God want for us to do? And it's up to us to determine that because the Spirit of God lives in all of us. Every one of these members of the army had an individual call of God. I want you as a car to come and fight this battle. And in the church we all have a call from God to the place and part that we're to have. And we help each other because we see from a perspective that someone else doesn't see. And when the work needs to be done in the body of Christ God asks for all of us different kinds of things. He asks us money sometimes. He asks us time sometimes. He asks us to risk things sometimes. But in each one of us when we contribute the part that we have we fulfill the body of Christ. This is a pattern all the way back from the very beginning of Scripture that God utilizes all of His people to do His work. And it's risky. You know this story is told but they don't tell us how many people died in these battles. But some of them did. And whenever they decided that they would go and fight it was a risk. But God does sometimes ask us to do things that are very risky. Very difficult and very hard. Because He wants to see if we really trust Him. He wants to see if we when we say to Him God I give you my life. I will do whatever you tell me you want me to do. He wants to see if we really believe that. So He will ask us to do things that are risky. And sometimes He will even ask us to do things that are painful. And sometimes He asks people to do things that are deadly. All around the world there are people gathered in communities of faith, churches where there are guards standing outside trying to make sure that the people inside are not killed. All over the world that's taking place. And the people still go in those meetings to worship together because they know God has said don't forsake assembling of yourselves together as some people do. I don't know what God is going to ask you to do if you've committed your life to Christ. But I can tell you sometimes it will be something you don't want to do. You'll think it's risky. This could be painful. You might be embarrassed. I doubt if you'll be killed by doing it. But He's trying to test the limits of whether or not you believe Him. The temptation sometimes in the church is to remove all that. To make it so easy that you can be a part of the family of God that there's no pain. No cost. If we do that, we violate the very principle of what this is about. Jesus said, if you want to follow Me, I'm going to ask you to do some things you don't want to do. So, you know, it doesn't just seem good to make a survey in the church and say tell us the things you don't want to do and we won't ask you to do them. That's not even the issue. For Jesus started, if you want to follow Me, you must do some things you don't want to do. Then He said, you must do those things even though it's painful and costly. That's what it means to take up the cross. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and act like I acted. Now, you know, when we do this, we say, okay, I want to be the part where He takes the little fish and stuff and feeds 5,000. That's the role I want to play. Well, the cross may be the one He asked you to play. You don't get to the cross, you know, you don't get away from that in following Christ. He'll always be there. Deny yourself. Take up your cross and do what I told you to do like I did what the Father told me to do. From the very beginning of the Scriptures, God's call is plain. Do what I tell you and you will find life. Will it be hard? Yes. Will it be painful? Yes. Will it be deadly sometimes? Yes. But trust me. Now, in this story, there's great encouragement to us. More than half of these tribes didn't do their job. Two of them didn't even make the list. I mean, they were so bad they didn't even get on the list so we had 10 of them. And you have the 10, most of those didn't participate or were not good. When they tried to participate, they were more damaged than they did good. But here's the encouraging thing. The kings came, the Canaanites, the kings came and fought the kings of the Canaanites at Tanach and the waters of Megiddo but they carried off no silver and no plunder. Even though not everybody did their job, God took those that were willing and He won the victory. The enemies of Israel did not carry off the plunder. They lost. This is our great promise. Everything doesn't have to be perfect for God to win. He just needs someone who will say, I will risk my life doing it. I will pay the price and He can win. God is destined to win. But do you want to be in the group that gets to celebrate the victory or the group that's sitting around the fire arguing about whether or not you should? That's your choice. Let's pray. Father, give us confidence that Your plan is always right. It's never easy. It's always painful. Always costly. Always requires sacrifice. But my, what a great benefit it is to win. For when we participate in the great victories that You bring in the world, we stand side by side with Jesus Himself. Help us to know for sure in the circumstances what You want us to do. And whenever Satan raises in our minds fear that if we do them it will be costly, remind us of this story. We are called to be faithful so we can celebrate the great victory that the kingdom of God is guaranteed to win. In the name of Christ, we have this assurance. And it's in His name we pray. Amen.