In this exhortation we will identify a theme from two OT passages1, concerning
- answering the powers of the world from the word of God.
- obtaining the wisdom to help in times of trouble.
- the way to confound the world, not by the power of flesh, but by the wisdom of God.
Both in Judges 11 and Isaiah 36, there are Gentile kings who are making demands upon the Israelites, yet they are ultimately thwarted by the opposing leader of God’s people at the time. He, in both cases, in one whose trust and understanding of God has the effect of creating faith in God amongst those they are leading. Based on this faith , God is able to intervene and bring deliverance in their times.
Jepthah
The first part of Judges 11 explains the background to this most unlikely deliverer in Israel. Jepthah was born as an illegitimate child to a chief family in Israel, yet, as he was not born through marriage but unfaithfulness, he was punished by his brothers and expelled from the family. Albeit, in a time of trouble, the same people who rejected and expelled him came asking for help, as he had gathered together a fighting force of others of society’s rejects and malcontents. The leaders of Israel in Christ’s day likewise rejected Jesus on the same basis, for they believed he was illegitimate, and that those who were followers of him were at best deceived. Indeed, many such as those who Jesus healed were rejects of society as well. Therefore we can regard this story of Jepthah, this unlikely deliverer, as a foreshadowing of Christ and even our relationship with him, and our relationship to the world, for, by our beliefs, we are likewise rejected by the world.
The king of Ammon sought to make war against Israel, to take their land for his people, and Jepthah is asked by the elders of Gilead to lead them in defense against this coming attack. His first act is to send messengers to the King of Ammon, to seek a solution for his people. Jepthah asks the king of Ammon, this foreign Gentile king, why he was oppressing the Israelites, and receives a demand for territory. Jepthah could have acted as a worldly chief and boasted of his strength and of the people with him. Instead he uses his knowledge of the sacred history of Israel to explain that the king of Ammon had no legitimate basis for his demands. The king of Ammon had nothing left but to attack, but God was with Jepthah and Israel, and the power of the flesh was thwarted. As said, Jepthah was an extremely unlikely deliverer, the son of a harlot and exiled from his family. He was one who had spent his entire adult life leading the lowest sort of people in what we would call today a life of crime. In our day, Jepthah would be something like a gang leader, certainly not a religious man, yet he was the son of one of the great families in Israel. He obviously knew the Bible, such as they had it in those days. When the time was right, God sought him to deliver Israel, at the same time as delivering Jepthah from an ungodly and unproductive life.
So this is a story of the providential turning around of the life of a man on the fringes, and also the delivering of Israel, made possible by faith and understanding, faith that God could deliver Israel. He would only be a tool, so he could not trust in himself, using his understanding of God to thwart the wisdom of a worldly king. He was, in addition, a military leader, leading the Israelites in a battle of faith, and countered the unrighteous demands being put on God’s people.
Hezekiah
Isaiah 36 also contains an account of the word of God being used to confound human wisdom. This chapter is the beginning of the narrative of the Assyrian invasion at the time of Hezekiah. It is a story of a king of the world, the extremely potent king of Assyria, making demands on God’s people. This scenario was probably far worse for the Israelites than even that centuries earlier between Jepthah and the king of Ammon. This struggle between the messenger of the king of Assyria, the Rabhakeh, and the messengers of king Hezekiah, is a battle of wit and intellect. We cannot help but see the king of Assyria, and his agents, as typical of the powers of man, waging war against the king of Judah and his agents, those trusting in Yahweh, God of Israel.
It would have been very difficult to argue against the logic that the Rabshakeh used to demoralize the Judeans, as most of what he is saying is after all indisputable. The Assyrian army was overwhelmingly strong, and it had conquered most of the then-known world. No people, king or god of any land had been able to stop them. The Assyrian empire was a superpower that had the deserved reputation of being exceedingly cruel, so the logic of the Rabshakeh would have been even harder for the Judeans on the wall to refute. If a cruel and overwhelming enemy offers mercy if you submit and surrender to their terms now, but will cause immeasurable suffering and likely death or enslavement later if you refuse, then surrender is clearly most logical response. After all, from the Assyrian’s perspective, they would much rather not have the conquered resist, for siege warfare is costly and difficult. Hence it would be the calculated policy of the Assyrians, as with every other entity of the kingdom of man, to offer a series of ‘carrots and sticks’, persuasions and punishments, to make others submit. This would preferably be with the least resistance as possible, requiring only a minimum amount of force to achieve their ends. In the case of the Rabshakeh, the ‘carrot’ was the advise that, surrender now, and we will deport you to another land where you can live comfortably in peace. The stick was, if the Judeans didn’t starve or suffer from lack of water and die, or be killed in the assault, they would be taken away as slaves.
It was even worse than that for the Hezekiah, his ministers and the Judeans on the wall. This agent of the world not only had some understanding of their faith, but he was also able to challenge it, and the Rabshakeh even claims at one point to be speaking on God’s behalf, claiming that God had appointed the Assyrians to go up and destroy this land of Judah. In a sense, Rabshakeh here is acting as a false prophet, one that was very believable.
After all, the people of Judah had been taught for decades, up to the end of the reign of Hezekiah’s father, to worship the God of Israel along with idols. They would not have known anything else unless the Law had been available and taught to them, to show them that God is not worshipped in this way. The Rabshakeh was absolutely correct in Isa 36:7 that Hezekiah had been destroying his father’s shrines, telling them not worship before these altars, but only in Jerusalem, in the temple. The Judeans would have had good reason to be confused. Were those altars Hezekiah was removing the altars of the God of Israel, as the Rabshakeh was saying, as also the previous kings of Judah had been teaching the Judeans? If that were so, then it follows that God must be angry with them for destroying His altars, therefore it was quite reasonable to believe the king of Assyria has been sent by God to destroy the land. There would have been very few in Judah who would have had sufficient understanding of the Law so as not be persuaded by the Rabshakeh’s alternative religious interpretation. Many likely would have been persuaded that God could well be angry with them for destroying His altars on the High Places. From our perspective, we can understand why Hezekiah’s ministers did not want the Rabshakeh speaking in a language the people could understand.
Are there examples of things in our lives where the powers of the world have enough understanding of our faith, though they don’t share it, to be able to use it against us?
That could be from a secular source, as it is here, or a religious institution which claims authority, either by a recognized traditional influence and history in our society, or by current religious ideas. We know we are right, but, by the sheer number of people that acknowledge and believe falsity, we are pressured to do the same.
Examples of other secular forces challenging our faith can be as simple as acquaintances in the world who ridicule religious belief. They may possibly have legitimate complaints against the practices of ‘religious’ people, and then assume we are the same, holding against all religion and religious people certain complaints. It can be things much greater than this, as where the state has laws that may compel us to behave in a way that is contrary to our beliefs, or where intellectual thought and philosophy of the age we live in has ideas that are fundamentally contrary to the concept of faith in God. Examples of this would be aggressive atheism, humanism and academic ideas, such as evolution causing the origin of man.
Hezekiah’s father Ahaz had cooperated with the king of Assyria, paying tribute and acting the role of a vassal king. This was in conjunction with Ahaz’ religious policies, which encouraged a uniting of Jewish religion with that of the nations. At the beginning of the Assyrian attack in the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, the king of Assyria demanded tribute from Hezekiah. In an act contrary to his previous policies and probably his conscience, Hezekiah stripped the gold from the newly reopened doors of the temple, along with whatever other money he could find, to give it to the king of Assyria.
Hezekiah was a wonderful man of faith, yet he was susceptible to weakness and could lapse when faced with something as terrible as a threat of an over whelming army coming against him. More often than not, our faith is caused to waver and we give in and do things we know are not right. However, most likely for us we give in and pay tribute to the king of sin with far less incitement than an invading army. It is most certain that the young king was being put under pressure by his own ministers to give the king of Assyria what he wanted. Short of belief that God would intervene, that was the only possible way to save Judah from destruction. This brings up another issue for us, that just as we can help others and encourage faith and practice in each other, and, as sinful humans, prone to mistakes, we are just as capable of discouraging each other. This example of Hezekiah giving tribute to the Assyrian king should be a warning for us in our interactions with each other, and in our struggles against temptation.
Alternatively, there would have been a temptation to trust in Egypt. Egypt was the only other power that could rival Assyria, though by this time Egypt was weak and getting weaker. There are earlier chapters in Isaiah which warn against this, for spiritually, Egypt is representative of the world in general. The Rabshakeh recognizes the weakness of Egypt, warning them,
“Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: so is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all that trust in him” (Isa 36:6).
The lesson for us is simply not to turn to Egypt, in whatever sense. We cannot ultimately confound the things of the world by clever manipulation of worldly things. No more could the kings of Judah, in the end, save Judah by playing the diplomatic game between the powers of Egypt and Assyria.
It was the faith of Hezekiah to take the letter from the king of Assyria into the temple and literally spread the letter out, asking God to provide a solution. Humanly speaking there was no solution but surrender. Paying tribute to hold off the Assyrian empire did not ultimately work for Judah, for even after buying off the Assyrians, they still attacked. Such is a picture of trying to confound the world by its methods and principles. The two individuals we considered sought to defend their people against the demands of the world through the word of God, and ultimately rely on God to provide redemption. In Jepthah’s case it was a military victory over a larger force, and with Hezekiah a plague that destroyed the Assyrian army’s leadership
The pattern of both these deliverances by God is significant for us. In both cases, the Israelites were first challenged by a set of ideas that served to undermine them. From the king of Ammon it was a claim that the Israelites have no right to possess the land where they were dwelling. From the Rabshakeh they were forced to listen to clever arguments being put forth that their God had abandoned them, that their very efforts at religious renewal were in fact the cause of their alienation from the God of Israel. God did not shelter them from having to hear either of these views. Instead the Israelites, particularly these leaders, would have had to work through and examine their beliefs and understanding, in order to know how to react. It is only after the Israelites had been forced to intelligently defend their understanding of the purpose of their God with them that God provided the deliverance.
The suggestion here is that this is how it if for us. The trials we face are not things as obvious as an invading army that seeks to destroy our homes and enslave us. If that were so, we at least would recognize it as a threat. The danger for us is ideas that the world puts to us that can easily undermine our faith and turn us against each other and against the things which Christ was focused on and gave his life for. The world around us does not share our faith in God. It largely mocks the ideas of a kingdom of God on earth, resurrection, and even of a lifestyle of giving of ourselves for others. Likewise, our understanding of our faith needs to motivate us to maintain those lifestyles and practices that make us a peculiar and separate people. The Rabshakeh was able to see the inconsistency in the Judeans worship, a people that claimed to have a unique and powerful single God, but until recently had been worshipping the idols of the nations on their hilltops around. So also others will perceive inconsistencies and mistakes we make, and use them against us.
Conclusion
In the end, God brought about deliverance for both Jepthah and Hezekiah. As we have already seen, Jepthah was a leader who was rejected by his family and nation, and those who were with him were likewise rejected. Nonetheless, it was by his faith that God brought deliverance that day. Hezekiah was a king that had little or nothing to offer as far as the world would regard leaders. He certainly was young and inexperienced when he had to confront the message of the king of Assyria. Since he had turned away from the political and religious policies of his father, he would have had little support from a large portion of the nation. This picture of a seemingly small and despised ruler is apt when we realize that chapters like Isaiah 53, describing a suffering servant who was despised, was ultimately describing Christ. However, this was in the first fulfillment almost certainly written with reference to Hezekiah. What made him different from his father, and most others around him, was his willingness to trust in God when all other possibilities were exhausted. While he made all the practical arrangements he could to fortify Jerusalem and prepare the people for war, he knew that in the end it would be God who would have to bring salvation for all.
These are the two characters we have considered, both of whom would have been dismissed by the world. Yet they had the knowledge of the word of God to defend their people against the exalted arguments of those from the world who wished to undermine the faith of the believers. These could then stand up against the violent imposing of the world’s system on generations that were trying to be separate. Both of them are representative and foreshadowing of Christ. The way the people of Israel related to these rulers ought to be an example to us. How we should follow the faith of the one who has gone before us in faith, who triumphed over the demands of the world and flesh, living wholly to God.
When we gather to remember the sacrifice of Christ, our king, the one who has shown us by his example, his lessons and his parables, we are shown how to confound the wisdom of the world. Not by fighting it on its terms but in a spirit of humility and trust. He willingly sacrificed himself, first in a life of service to others, then in a sacrificial death, so that others may see and believe.
The bread and wine are the appointed emblems representing the body and blood of our Lord who died for our sins, yet was raised by God to express both Jesus’ righteousness and His own. By partaking of the bread and wine we are associating ourselves with him, and we renew our commitment to living out the life as he did in our own experiences, as much as is possible with our frail minds and bodies.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One