Judges 3

Judges 3 opens with a passage describing how God tested Israel by allowing Canaanites to live in the land. He wanted to teach the future generation how to fight. Now that seems weird to me God would want His people to be fighters but at the same time if we look at this in the spiritual world, that's exactly what God calls us to do. God does not always want us to be on the defense when it comes to the devil. God desires us to be proactive! He wants us to charge the gates of hell so we can make the devil aware we know who we are in Christ. However, we can only take on the devil when we are prepared. We must be prayed up, read up, and spiritually in tuned with God prior to trying to take on the devil. The more we prepare, the more we battle, the more experience we gain and the more confident we become in trusting God will be with us and fight for us. That's what the Israelites lacked at this time, they lacked that experience. The bible says there were many who had never fought so they were unaware of God's redeeming power. They had not experienced God's hand fighting with them and for them. They did not know the feeling of knowing God was fighting the battle with them, so God wanted to give them the opportunity to experience this and grow stronger in the faith and trust in God. Experience is a powerful teacher and we often learn much more through experience than we do through books and readings and stories from others. God wanted the Israelites to EXPERIENCE Him, so He gave them that opportunity. Sadly, they failed to engage in battle. They decided to live among the enemy and give their daughters for marriage and take foreign women for their sons. That was not what God wanted for them. Joshua's farewell address warned the Israelites not to do these things and they made a covenant not to do these things, but the covenant was broken and the Israelites missed the chance to experience God's faithfulness to them and His might hand which would go before them in battle.

In addition, to breaking the covenant and living among the Canaanites they began to worship their gods. They turned their back on God and started worshiping false images. This made God extremely angry. God had warned them in Exodus 20 that He was a jealous God and did not want to share His people with false gods. The Israelites had been warned but they did not heed to God's warning and chose to break yet another part of the covenant. God removed His protective hand from the Israelites and they were forced to served a worldly king for 8 years. However, God is a loving and merciful God and when the Israelites called out God raised up Othniel to overpower the enemy and drive them out. God showed the Israelites His might redeeming hand. It won't the way God wanted it to be. God wanted to show His might by going to battle and driving out the Canaanites in the beginning, but God did demonstrate His power and the people gained the experience He desired by them going to battle. God's Will will occur one way or another. The important thing is to ask ourselves our we going to allow God's Will to happen freely in our lives, or our we going to fight, become broken, then call out to God to experience God's love and redemption?

Unfortunately, the Israelites sis not learn from their experience. They lived in peace 40 years, but something happened. The next generation again did what was evil in the site of the Lord. They failed to learn from the experience of their fathers. This time the Israelites were forced to serve the king for 18 years. God is a gracious God, He started with 8, but that didn't seem to make an impact so now we see the Israelites are forced to serve for an addition 10 years compared to their fathers. Again the Israelites called out to God and God raised up Ehud. This has always been one of my favorite stories because Ehud is left handed. Yup, a good ole' lefty. It goes to show God can use even the smallest aspects of our lives. Ehud was able to enter the  king' s presence with a dagger strapped to his right thigh because the guards would only check the left side of the body for weapons (since the large majority of the population is right handed). Ehud goes to see the king and while he was in there he shoved the dagger into his gut. The king was so large his fat and entrails swallowed the dagger and Ehud escaped out the window and led the Israelites in an attack against the Moabites and God delivered the Israelites and they lived in peace for 80 years. 80 years the Israelites lived in peace. The first time it was only 8 years of captivity and 40 years of peace. This time it was 18 years or captivity and 80 years. God may have increased the captivity time but the time of peace was also increased. It appears the experience of God's redemption stayed with the Israelites for a longer period of time.

The last verse in Judges 3 is about Shamgar who delivered the Israelites by killing 600 Philistines with an oxgoad. This is all we know of Shamgar. We are not told if Israel was being oppressed due to abandoning God or if the Philistines were attempting to capture Israel and God was protecting them. All we know is Shamgar did was God called him to do at that time. He was obedient and that is what God desires from all of us. It may not get our names in lights all of the time, we may not have a large section in the paper dedicated to our accomplishments but God sees when we are obedient to Him and we will be rewarded. Keep the Faith!