JUDGES - A Study in Purity - Part 2
by Jamie Steach
Before we jump into Part 2, here is a little recap of the points covered in Part 1:
Purity is all about devotion to God
To be blameless as God asks, we need to be pure; if we are pure, then we are also blameless
Absolute obedience and submission to God’s/Jesus’s authority must be present with purity, as it is a result of pure devotion
Judges is a very interesting book of the Bible, full of many crazy stories. It’s a time that seems to not have clear leadership, except when God randomly selects a person He will use to save an oppressed Israel and call them back to Him. At first glance, it may not be the most obvious place that one would look to study out purity, BUT I feel that it’s here where we see God’s heart and God’s perspective in how He feels when we aren’t pure in our devotion. We’ve established that real, biblical purity is tied to being blameless, holding to Jesus’s (or in this case, God’s) authority, and having pure devotion to God (see Part 1). These are three things that were NOT happening in the period of Judges. So, if you’re like me, then you’ll think that Judges must be a place we can look to see how God really feels about this kind of disobedience, and what His picture of purity for His people looks like. Sure enough, I believe that’s what we see! We’re going to look at two stories in particular that highlight God’s picture of purity.
1 The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites.
6 Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.7 When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, 8 he sent them a prophet, who said, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 9 I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians. And I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors; I drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you, ‘I am the Lord your God; do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you live.’ But you have not listened to me.”
22 When Gideon realized that it was the angel of the Lord, he exclaimed, “Alas, Sovereign Lord! I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!”
23 But the Lord said to him, “Peace! Do not be afraid. You are not going to die.”
24 So Gideon built an altar to the Lord there and called it The Lord Is Peace. To this day it stands in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.
25 That same night the Lord said to him, “Take the second bull from your father’s herd, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. 26 Then build a proper kind of altar to the Lord your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.”
27 So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the Lord told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople, he did it at night rather than in the daytime.
28 In the morning when the people of the town got up, there was Baal’s altar, demolished, with the Asherah pole beside it cut down and the second bull sacrificed on the newly built altar!
29 They asked each other, “Who did this?”
When they carefully investigated, they were told, “Gideon son of Joash did it.”
30 The people of the town demanded of Joash, “Bring out your son. He must die, because he has broken down Baal’s altar and cut down the Asherah pole beside it.”
31 But Joash replied to the hostile crowd around him, “Are you going to plead Baal’s cause? Are you trying to save him? Whoever fights for him shall be put to death by morning! If Baal really is a god, he can defend himself when someone breaks down his altar.” 32 So because Gideon broke down Baal’s altar, they gave him the name Jerub-Baal that day, saying, “Let Baal contend with him.”
(Judges 6:1, 6-10, 22-32)
[Side note- if you’ve never read the full story of Gideon, do that now as well! These scriptures are SO much richer in context.] Here in Judges 6, we find the Israelites so oppressed by Midian that they are hiding in caves, clefts, and strongholds. Definitely a much different picture of Israel from when they were being led out of Egypt and into Canaan by Moses and Joshua under the power of God. And why did God allow them to become so badly oppressed? They did evil, and worshiped the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of the people around them. Exactly what God told them NOT to do in our very first scripture in Deuteronomy (from Part 1, Deuteronomy 18:9-13). When we pick up the story with Gideon, we see that Midian had “so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the LORD for help”. So, in a nutshell, they disobey God to worship their own way, and then once things are terrible, they come back and say “God please save us!”. You probably wouldn’t want to save people like that, would you? When God responds through His prophet, He tells them plainly that they have not obeyed or respected His sovereignty. The first thing He commanded them was to know that He was the LORD, and to not worship anyone or anything else, but they disobeyed Him.
So what does God do when they cry out to Him? He reminds them of who He is, what He asks of them, and how they have wronged Him. And then He goes and saves them anyway. If you know the story, immediately after verse 10, God appears to Gideon and tells him that he is the next person chosen to save Israel. Gideon offers a sacrifice, at which point he discovers he has been speaking with the angel of the LORD, and he freaks out a little bit because he understands the fear of God, and that God is holy. This brings us to the next interesting part of the story, and where we will focus for the discussion of purity. God tells Gideon to destroy the altar of Baal and Asherah, to build an altar to Him instead, and to give a burnt offering to the LORD on that altar. God has already established through His prophet that His issue with Israel is their disobedience and worship of other gods. Gideon obeys God, and destroys the objects of that worship to establish worship of the LORD, instead. And how do the people react? EVEN AFTER God has made it clear that He is NOT happy that they have worshiped other gods, THEY ARE ANGRY WHEN THE ALTARS TO BAAL AND ASHERAH ARE TORN DOWN. What?!? God’s message was clear, right? So why on earth are these people upset when someone does what they should have been doing as soon as God brought His charge against them forward? Not only are these people angry that the altars have been destroyed, they want to kill Gideon for it! No wonder he waited until night to carry out God’s commands! I love Joash’s response here, especially considering it was his altar that was destroyed. Joash challenges the crowd, and Baal, right back, by saying if Baal was really worth their devotion, he would be able to defend himself and assert his power. But Baal is, of course, a worthless idol, so we all know he isn’t going to defend himself. Only God can do that. Which, I believe, is part of Joash’s point.
So what does all of this have to do with purity? God’s command to them in Deuteronomy 18 was to be completely set apart, completely blameless. No trace of any other worship among them. This, in addition to the first two commandments, is the same charge He recalls to them here. But what is the whole point of these commands, and why does God keep rehashing this idea? Aside from the obvious answer that the Israelites keep disobeying and worshiping other things, God is making it very clear that serving other gods is a HUGE evil because it directly violates the covenant He has tried to make with them. Their devotion can’t belong to Him with other gods in the picture. But I think one of the bigger points is this: TO BE PURE, WE NEED TO RECOGNIZE THAT GOD IS ALWAYS SOVEREIGN, AND ACT LIKE IT. What does this look like in our lives? We are IMPURE when we have idols. We are defiled before God with any idol. God wants all of our devotion, all of our heart, everything we are. It will take acknowledging God’s sovereignty to be able to live this way. The first and most important step to being pure, being blameless, being set apart in the eyes of God, is recognizing this exclusive sovereignty, and cutting out anything else in our lives that draws us away from it, thereby making us defiled and impure. God is the ONLY one we should worship and the ONLY one we should give our desire to. We cannot turn to any person, thing, or idea in the place of God, or we become impure and are no better than these Israelites. To be pure, we need to destroy the strongholds or places of worship for anything other than God in our lives.
There are a lot of things in this world just waiting to distract us from God, and waiting to claim “high places” in our lives. Have you ever gone chasing success? Financial and career success, including sports careers, are huge idols in our world, and our country especially. How many movies can you think of that show a grumpy businessman who is still working on Christmas because he has pushed everyone else away in pursuit of his own success? That’s idolatry, and it’s fueled by selfish ambition. What about pursuing intellectual success? Knowledge can be just as much of an idol if we pursue gaining knowledge above all else. How about relationships? It’s so prevalent in our culture (real and fictionalized) to completely lose who you are in pursuit of a romantic relationship, or even being one of the “cool kids”. Whether you change in a good or bad way, if you’re changing or compromising for a person, or if your life revolves around a person, then that relationship has become an idol to you. Even in a marriage, your devotion to God should far surpass that of your partner. The list of potential idols in this world goes far beyond these examples. When we set up these different idols in our lives, we give sovereignty to them. Remember how Jesus said “no one can serve two masters”(Matthew 6:24)? Whatever that other master is, we are not recognizing or acting on God’s sovereignty when we allow ourselves to be devoted to other things or people. His call is clear: destroy the places of worship in our lives for everything other than Him. We must submit to God’s absolute sovereignty to be in relationship with Him, and to be pure before Him.
The next example we can look to is the story of Samson-- the perfect example of the negative power of relationships in our lives. Samson’s whole story is a pretty wild ride. In fact, I almost hesitate to use his story here because it’s just so...weird. The way he fills his role and calling of a judge is also very different from the other examples we see of the judges of Israel. To sum it up, an angel appears to Samson’s mom telling her that she will give birth to a son, and he must be raised as a Nazirite (a special kind of vow dedicating him to God, and requiring him to abstain from certain things). Samson is born and his parents follow the angel’s instructions on how to raise him, and once he’s older, God basically uses him to pester the Philistines. We are told Samson leads Israel for 20 years, but he doesn’t lead the armies of Israel in a great battle like many of the other judges, he basically serves as a one-man wrecking crew against the Philistines with the special strength the Spirit of God has given him. He is such a thorn in their side that when he falls in love with a Philistine woman named Delilah, the rulers of the Philistines persuade her to try to uncover the secret of his strength.
15 Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” 16 With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.17 So he told her everything. “No razor has ever been used on my head,” he said, “because I have been a Nazirite dedicated to God from my mother’s womb. If my head were shaved, my strength would leave me, and I would become as weak as any other man.”
18 When Delilah saw that he had told her everything, she sent word to the rulers of the Philistines, “Come back once more; he has told me everything.” So the rulers of the Philistines returned with the silver in their hands. 19 After putting him to sleep on her lap, she called for someone to shave off the seven braids of his hair, and so began to subdue him. And his strength left him.
20 Then she called, “Samson, the Philistines are upon you!”
He awoke from his sleep and thought, “I’ll go out as before and shake myself free.” But he did not know that the Lord had left him.
(Judges 16:15-20)
So Delilah has been pestering Samson to give up the secrets of his strength. We see in verse 16 that she nags him so much that he becomes sick of it. As a side note, what’s really interesting to me here is why he even stays in this relationship. It’s clearly not a healthy one, considering that every time he gives her an answer for what the secret of his strength is, she literally goes and does the thing that he says will take his strength away while he’s sleeping on three separate occasions (Judges 16:6-19). What? Bro, why are you still there? There are literally SO MANY red flags in this relationship. But I digress. She nags him so much that he can’t stand it anymore, but instead of walking away from her, which would probably be the wise choice, he decides to give up his secret. As soon as Delilah cuts his hair, his Nazirite vow is broken, and his purity as a Nazirite is compromised. He becomes disobedient to God, even though he didn’t actually cut his hair himself. Because Samson was in this relationship, he gave Delilah power in his life. He may not believe the same things she does, and he is definitely not a Philistine, but because he chooses to enter this relationship he is now directly influenced and affected by Delilah’s choices and actions. A proper partnership would not have put him in this position, and would not have compromised his obedience or his purity before God. However, because he chose to trust Delilah, he becomes defiled and God leaves him.
I almost wonder how seriously he took his vow. He clearly obeys it, but we see in his thought process this final time that he thinks he will simply be able to break free as before. To me, there can only be two reasons he would think this: 1) For some insane reason, he doesn’t realize Delilah is manipulating him and trying to take his strength, or 2) Because he has lived his whole life as a Nazirite with the power of God’s strength, he takes it for granted; he doesn’t realize that it’s possible he could lose God’s power. Whatever the reason, the biggest thing I take away from Samson’s story is this: If we value our purity, then it matters who we are in relationship with (friendship or otherwise). Purity is a standard set forth by God, and our relationships can either protect that standard or draw us away from it. We have to be careful in choosing who we give our trust to. If we spend too much time with those who do not adhere to God’s standards, our resolve to honor God’s sovereignty will be weakened (1 Corinthians 15:33-34). I’m not saying we can’t have friendships with those who are not Christians, as this would be nearly impossible, but what I am saying is that we need to take care in choosing who we allow to influence us, and who we choose to share our hearts with. We have to recognize that a relationship that is not founded on God’s standard will only lead us away from God. If we break the standard, then we suffer Samson’s fate: God can no longer be with us.
Check back next Thursday as we finish off the series with a look at Romans and final thoughts on purity for Part 3!
Part 2 Recap:
To be pure, we need to recognize that God is always sovereign, and act like it. (Basically an iteration of point 3 from Part 1)
It matters who we are in relationship with; those who influence us will either protect or destroy God’s standard in our lives.