Judges 9 is action packed as it recounts the story of blind ambition, nepotism, extortion, vengeance and violence. How did things get so bad in ancient Israel? Where was God in all of this? What does God one day intend to do about all the evil in the world? Join Pastor Jim for this look into the lessons of redemption history!
Sermon Notes
“Our world is like a convoy lost in darkness on an unknown rocky coast, with quarreling pirates in the chart room and savages climbing up the sides of the ship to plunder and do evil as the whim may take them. Where is the Captain? The ship is driving for the rocks, and man cannot stop it.”
H. G. Wells
The Mind at the End of Its Tether
1. The Lust for Power (9:1-6)
2. A Prophetic Parable (9:7-21)
3. Unbridled Evil (9:22-49)
4. Retributive Justice (9:50-57)
“Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.”
T. S. Eliot
“If our world continues to denounce the idea of moral absolutes, it cannot also continue to denounce the misappropriation of power and the misconduct of rich and powerful people. In a world that fails to acknowledge God as the final absolute, self-serving pragmatism will rule. The fact that people are seduced by power and wealth should not be surprising; what should surprise us is that such seduction is not more widespread.”
Kenneth Boa
The Perfect Leader
“If I don’t believe that there is a God who will eventually put all things right, I will take up the sword and will be sucked into the endless vortex of retaliation. Only if I am sure that there’s a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly do I have the power to refrain.”
Tim Keller, The Reason for God
“God’s wrath is neither an impersonal process of cause and effect (as some scholars have tried to argue), nor a passionate, arbitrary or vindictive outburst of temper, but his holy and uncompromising antagonism to evil, with which he refuses to negotiate. One day his judgment will fall. It is from this terrible event that Jesus is our deliverer.”
John Stott