Summation of Judges: What we have learned

By Bob Mendelsohn

Given in Moscow, Russia

12 June 2014

For the last 11 days we have been learning from the book of Judges and today in our final chapel talk, (although I will have some final words tonight as well), we are going to draw some serious conclusions for our lives long after Campaign is over.

The topics all alliterate in English: Pattern, people, provision, persistence,  and prayer. Stay with me.

PATTERN

We saw it too many times to miss it. And we must know that if all Israel lives like we did in the Book of Judges we are in real trouble.

1)   Israel does evil in the sight of the Lord

2)   God gives us over to the enemy

3)   We cry for help (usually)

4)   God sends a deliverer to save us

5)   We fall again into sin

That pattern could be frustrating and make us want to give up, but it should actually inspire you in the exact opposite way. If God is interested enough in saving us, in delivering us from our sins and from our enemies, then we also ought to let Him do so. We will not necessarily be the ones who fail; we may be those who ‘live securely’ in the land God wants to give us.

The reality of the book is that we CAN start over, and no matter how many times we fail, He is cheering us on, to help us get to the finish line.  Remember what the Bible says, “For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, But the wicked stumble in time of calamity.” (Prov. 24.16)

PEOPLE

The real thing many of us learn on campaign and in reading Judges is that we are not alone, we don’t work alone, although many times on campaign we feel completely alone. We are part of a team. And if we work in a team, in Kharkov or Los Angeles or here in Moscow, we are stronger for it. Each of us brings certain good things to the table, each of us has gifts and talents. And when we bring those to the team itself, the whole team is greater than the parts. The Talmud says, “Two can do three times the work of one.”

The judges who served well, even oddly with daggers in fat men or in sword fights with Midianites or any other enemy, were those who rallied at least some of the tribes and cooperated. In fact the Ephraimites lost 42,000 men because they wanted the benefits of ‘team’ but refused to live it out together with the rest of the tribes of Israel.

One more thing on people, and that’s that God is looking for people. Ordinary people. He doesn’t need the superstar. He’s not keen on celebrities. He’s interested in real people who really love Him and really want everyone to know Him also. Like Gideon, the valiant warrior who was in the wine press or other somewhat reluctant heroes of the faith. Yesterday I met Nadia who was one of Avi Snyder’s first fruits in Odessa. Last week I met Volodia who also was one of Avi’s first fruits there, who is now serving in a ministry among drug addicts. Both got saved 20 years ago. Both are still around. Avi is an ordinary guy, my age, from an ordinary Jewish home in New York, who gave himself to God in 1977 and hasn’t looked back since. Avi taught Nadia. Nadia had a student named Maxim Ammosov and he learned well from her. Ordinary people who are available to God make a difference for God in extra-ordinary ways.

When you leave from Campaign, be available to God in Tashkent or Minsk, in Omaha or Odessa, and God will use you. You may not be on staff with Jews for Jesus, or you might be on staff, but no matter what your career, you can be useful to the Lord in your world, in your way, if you are available to Him.

PROVISION

If I’ve seen anything over my 43 years as a believer that keeps me going and growing in Messiah, it’s that He will always provide for us. He did that with sinful and needy Israel in the book of Judges. He did that for hungry Israel in the wilderness. He did that for Elijah with a raven and for at least 5,000 with a little basket of fish and loaves and the prayer of Yeshua. God provides for us, over and over again. Last Friday we learned the company that was bringing us food went out of business and with some extra work by our leadership, none of us went hungry. God provided others to feed us and we didn’t miss a meal.

We see this provision of the Almighty in the Book of Judges as well. He provided judges, military strategies, heroes, everything we needed, even songs to sing. He wants us to have a full life, and He will provide it for us, if we are near Him, if we trust Him, if we let Him.

What does the Bible say,  “I have been young, and now I am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread.” (Psalm 37.25)

                                          

PERSISTENCE

Each morning your alarm clock went off and woke you. You looked at the others in your room. You looked at the clock. You looked at your own tiredness and made a choice. You got up. And that persistence in carrying on, in keeping going for the Lord during this Campaign is essential to keep with you when you go home. What is persistence? It’s the ability to continue doing something, no matter what is against you. It’s ‘one more sortie’ when you are weary that afternoon, or this afternoon. It’s another lap around the track when you are exhausted. It’s praying when you think you have no more energy to stay awake.

Last Saturday we were in Gorky Park and there was a race that happened there that day. I don’t know how long the race was, but there were people crossing the finish line when we arrived AND when we left after our bicycle visibility sortie. So I’m guessing it was a long race. And if you have even been in a race like a 10 km or a marathon like my wife has run many times, you know that there are ‘walls’ along the way, hindrances to your finishing the race. On an ordinary three-week campaign, we would hit those walls after a week or so, and maybe in the middle of the 2^nd week. Our campaign was a bit short to have experienced those walls, but each of us had to break through barriers of weariness or boredom or hunger or distractions in order to finish this race, which we will finish tonight.

That same thing is true of life. If we persist,   if we endure to the end, we will be all right.

Rachmiel Frydland was from Poland, a Holocaust survivor, and lived in the US until he died in 1984. I was privileged to work with him at Jews for Jesus in New York City for many years. He well knew the difficulty of surviving. He escaped Hitler and camps and found eternity in salvation in Jesus. He was a dynamic evangelist and Bible teacher. One of his favorite expressions was that quote of Yeshua, “He that endures to the end will be saved.”  (Matthew 24.13) He did just that. And we can do that as well.

PRAYER

Every day people around the world have been praying for us. And I saw that many times on our Campaign that all of a sudden we had wisdom to say something, or to leave somewhere, or to turn in a new direction. What prompted that? It was God answering the prayers of His people in England or in South Africa, in Poland and Berlin, in Australia and the US. When God’s people pray, God listens and God answers. So your encounters with people were more often a result of the prayers of the saints worldwide than it was your cleverness or strategy. I’ve been on campaigns since 1980 in Argentina and in New York in Sydney and Melbourne and have this experience to be sure. God organizes our lives.

That’s what we learned in Judges. God rules in history! He gives us leaders and He gives us judgment and all kinds of things to make us His people. He gives strength to Samson to kill 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. He gives 300 Gideonites strength to chase and kill 135,000 Midianites. He is the ruler of history. He also gives us free will to choose to follow Him, and that’s shocking if you understand sovereignty. But it’s true. And without that freedom to choose, we cannot really love Him. Without that freedom to choose, we cannot understand evil in the world. Without that freedom to choose, we would not be born again ourselves.

What made our events good? What made the singing and the dancing and the art show explanation good? Sometimes people talk about ‘feeling the Spirit.’ I get that, although everyone might have different meanings associated with that expression. What’s clear is that when someone is praying, from anywhere, for an event or for our wisdom, for our spirits to be united with His Spirit, for love to be manifest in our hearts… God listens and answers.

No wonder we encountered people on park benches and in subways like Marina did yesterday on our way to the Kremlin armory.  No wonder Paula kept encountering English-speakers. No wonder Scheffee got to lead a man from Nigeria to the Lord. We were moved to stand, to be, to smile, to participate, because God was answering someone’s prayers.  How awesome is that!

Final reminder

Finally, let me end with this. Live a life of faith; trusting, leaning on God. Proverbs 3.5-6 says,

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.

All your heart. Tonight I’m going to show you a Bible verse about joy and whole heartedness, which you may not know, but you need to know. For now, when we say trust in God with all your heart, we then ponder our own failings and think, wait, I didn’t trust Him last week. Or last year on that weekend. Look, the Bible is saying, trust in God completely and don’t even lean a little bit to figuring it all out. Don’t even make the slightest bit of a lean towards personal intellectualism OVER AGAINST the Lord and the Scripture.

God’s Word is Truth. God is Truth. Yeshua is the Way, the Truth and the Life. He is all we need. No wonder we can say we trust Him. No wonder we can put full confidence on Him.

In the subway cars, you see people who hold on to the railings when the train is crowded. And then there are times you cannot find a rail to hold. When the train comes to a stop, you see people leaning one way and then the other. Tossed by the velocity of the train, they are not stable. God says, if you want to make a difference in the world, don’t lean on what you know. Don’t lean on human wisdom. Don’t lean on the way it ‘has always been.’ Trust completely in the Lord, in your marriage, in your workplace, in your office, in your neighborhood, in your church, in your relationships, with your children and your parents. Don’t lean on your own life. Trust Him completely.

Let’s go out today, our last scheduled sorties, crossing the 200,000 mark on broadsides, getting another 20 or 50 UJs to join the 430 so far, and let’s persist and endure to the end. In the power of God, who knows and oversees all things, and who is answering the prayers of the many, even our prayers, amen?!

The rhythm of the book of Judges

By Bob Mendelsohn

Given in Moscow, Russia

From Judges 1-2

2 June 2014

When I think about Bible books that I like to teach in new situations, I always prefer John or Genesis, Proverbs or Revelation, you know, where God is active and teaching and helping us who want to learn about His plans. The narratives like John or Genesis where the storyline preaches even without much work from me and Revelation because it’s about so much of God and us together. Proverbs because it’s so informational and great in short thoughts to help us get through the days. But if there is a book I usually avoid it’s Judges. You see, Judges is not only about good judges and we will study them over the next fortnight, but it’s also about disobedient and ever-stubborn Israel.

If I teach that to Jewish people I worry that they will think all I ever talk about is sin, and not about God’s faithfulness or such. If I teach that to Gentiles, I worry that they will get an attitude of “Those stupid Jews who never get it right.” Anti-Semitism doesn’t need me to stoke its flames.

That said, the book of Judges IS in the Bible and IS useful and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3.16). So I will go there. And especially because the Russian-speaking and Moscow staff have entitled this 21^st Moscow campaign, “The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon.” So we have to take our lessons from the book where Gideon shows us much about God. In fact, Gideon is mentioned in over 100 verses, way more than anyone else in the whole book. And we will get to him and lessons learned from him tomorrow and two more subsequent days.

But today we begin in learning this cycle of Israel’s history.

The book opens with military conquest. That should excite Russian historians. I read much about the history of this country before I came here. You must know that as a child I thought of Russia as our enemy, and thus I’m actually in enemy territory. That’s uncomfortable for many people. This is of course highlighted to me by my lack of ability to read metro subway signs and to discuss anything with almost anyone out on the streets. But I have two more weeks here. We’ll see.

So Israel’s military victories should give us reason to rejoice in God and to honor Him as God our Saviour. We should memorialize our victories with stones and rocks, with trumpets and loud praises. And we should have completed our victories across the country, but if you read the text carefully, you will see some of these things missing.

In chapter one we conquered the enemies around us: Canaanites, Perizzites (v. 1-20) from Dan to Beersheba, including Gaza and Jerusalem. Amazing and quick and powerful overcoming.  God was with the Jewish people. (.18) Then the words drop like cannonballs on our text, “But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.

  

Living with the enemy was not God’s plan and that allowance, that permission, that disobedience would haunt Israel then, and honestly, to this day. (1.21-36) And the problem is like we see in other Bible stories, like Saul and Agag and the Amalekites, like Eve and a little disobedience, like Ananias and Sapphira, is that a little disobedience is a lot of trouble to the person then and to the people of God in the future. And the problem is not one of obedience first. It’s a matter of faith in God. If God said something, if He tells me something to do, then I must first believe Him and then go to do it. Disobedience is foremost an unbelief issue. Amen?

Why did God want us to remove the Canaanites, Hittites, Jebusites, and all the other nations in the land of Promise? The idolatrous peoples of the land had heard about the Jews, and about their escape from Egypt. They could have turned to the Almighty for forgiveness, but did not. They chose to live godlessly and the Lord knew that if Israel had opportunity to stay with these nations that eventually even the Jews would turn away from Him. That was not good on so many levels and God’s plan was about keeping His people with Him, and thus away from the enemy nations.

The danger is that Israel would imitate the nations around her. And by walking away from the Almighty, we would actually fail God’s promises, thus we would be the tail and not the head. We would comply with idolatrous nations and live their lives instead of ours. Look what happened in chapter two.

An angel of the Lord shows up and reminds Israel to be separate from the 7 nations in the land, and that God will keep His covenant. He tells Israel that it’s personal.

We did not listen to His voice. More on this tomorrow with Gideon.

Then the angel uses a phrase you might have heard before in the Newer Testament. “Thorns in your sides” is sometimes the phrase attributed to the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me — to keep me from exalting myself!

You may have been taught that the problem Paul had was something about blindness or weak eyes. You may have heard that this thorn in the flesh was something physical. But the phrase is a clear reference (to me) that is about people.  Consider the three times the phrase is used in the Older Testament.

Num. 33.55 ‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come about that those whom you let remain of them will become as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they will trouble you in the land in which you live.

Josh. 23.13 know with certainty that the LORD your God will not continue to drive these nations out from before you; but they will be a snare and a trap to you, and a whip on your sides and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from off this good land which the LORD your God has given you.

Judg. 2.3 “Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’”

Here we see God’s warning to the Jewish people in Moses’ day, in Joshua’s day and now told us by the angel of the Lord, that if we don’t trust God, and don’t remove the people from the land, that they, people, they will become like thorns in our sides. And so Paul had people who followed after him, centuries later, who told false gospels, who taught the people wrong things about Yeshua, legalizers, people who insisted that the people needed more than faith to find forgiveness. The thorns in Paul’s sides were people who taught wrong information about God.

OK, back to our story.

There is a pattern in the book of Judges which you must see. Read chapter 2 later, but for now, here is the cycle:

1)   Israel is disobedient

2)   Israel cries out for help

3)   God delivers us from our enemies by means of available men and women

4)   We forget God and fall into sin again

Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals, and they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the LORD to anger. So they forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. The anger of the LORD burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had spoken and as the LORD had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.

Then the LORD raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the LORD; they did not do as their fathers. When the LORD raised up judges for them, the LORD was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the LORD was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. (2.11-19)

What do we learn then from today’s lesson?

1)   God’s desire is for us to trust him, no matter what we see

2)   Victory is ours if we do trust him

3)   The enemy wants us to allow for him, to hang out with him, to live a double life

4)   When we fail, God will deliver us, if we call on Him and trust him

So today we go out to battle. We go to claim souls for Yeshua. We go to proclaim Messiah Lord of Moscow and Lord of Heaven and earth. And we go, not in our own strength, but in our righteous Savior. We go because He went. We go to our Jewish people because He came to His own. We trust the Lord to give us people with whom to witness. And our victory is in knowing Him, and sharing Him with others. He loves them much more than we do. Let us go in His name, no matter the cost, no matter the false teachers and other thorns out there. Let us go to proclaim Yeshua, Lord of all. Amen?