Sermons, Articles, and Other Things

Some Bible characters, such as Abraham and David, are given a lot of space as far as accounts of their activities are concerned. Othniel was not like them as far as such information is concerned, although he did lead God’s people for the same period of time as David did – forty years. Othniel is only mentioned in three brief passages, one in the Book of Joshua and the other two in the Book of Judges. There is something unusual about the three references and that is that the incident recorded in Joshua is retold in Judges. Of course, we only need to be told about someone once in the Bible in order to pay attention to him, but we should sit up and take notice when the Holy Spirit tells us twice about an incident. Othniel has the position of being the first of the judges that God raised up to lead Israel. We are not told that he was the choice of the people, and that they gathered together to give him this position. Instead God provided him as a leader for his people and gave him to ...

Who are some of the wisest people you know? Are they the people who ask questions or are they those who can answer them? It is the case that the ability to answer a question is not always proof of wisdom. We could ask a gambler how much money he is wasting and he could provide the exact figure, but his knowledge is not an expression of wisdom. If he were wise he would not throw away his money. Of course, questions can be used to make people think in order to discover the reality of a situation or to bring to a person’s attention the seriousness of a situation. We assume that a news reporter has asked appropriate questions before he delivers his details, but those details should cause us to ask further questions. Or we can picture a lawyer in a courtroom asking questions to get to the truth. Paul uses the method of asking questions in this passage. Did you notice how many questions there are within it? There are at least six, and seven if we include the question quoted from Isaiah ...

Last week we looked at what Judges 1:1–2:10 had to say about the situation in Israel after Joshua and his fellow leaders had passed away. Instead of continuing to enjoy ongoing success, the tribes of Israel encountered opposition from the inhabitants of the land and chose not to obey God and remove those people from the land. Eventually the Lord passed judgement on them, and the judgement was that he would not remove those people groups. Whatever else he would do for Israel, those other peoples would remain. Israel would have to live in a situation in which there would be long-term judgement. A case can be made that the problems of false religion connected to those people groups was not finally sorted until the Babylonian captivity centuries later. The fact that this long-term judgement was in place did not mean that God would not provide times of spiritual blessing. The details in this chapter show that he sent several periods of spiritual recovery, each of them after a period of s...