Bryan Richardson

Crisis

Re:Verse passage – Judges 6:22-35 (day three)

“Will you contend for Baal?”

Whose case are you making? If you will not learn humility by seeking the forgiveness of a person you’ve wronged, isn’t that making the world’s case that toughness is survival? If you will not reflect on how your economic choices affect the most vulnerable among us, isn’t that making materialism’s case of more at any cost? Sin is hardest to part with when you’ve invited it to shape your habits and your thinking. It’s a crisis of existence, really: How will I live if not this way? Herein lies the riskiness of faith in God. It’s not for the brave, but for the terrified. Sometimes the townspeople see only the terror, and they turn away. But sometimes, people sense God’s possibilities breaking through the terror. That happened to Gideon.

You

Re:Verse passage – Judges 6:1-16 (day three)

“But now the Lord has abandoned us.”

One of the most common phrases ever to make the rounds through the years in evangelical circles is this one: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” The only problem with that is that it places an awful lot of faith in one’s ability to know where the sin ends and the person begins. That’s why in practice it just feels like “hate the sinner.” And then, it’s easy to project onto God that same way of assessing persons. If God hates sin, he’s surely going to hate you. Can you imagine that God would actually be very different than that? Gideon couldn’t. God’s big revelation to Gideon, though, is that people are not their sin. Therefore, God had never lost track of Gideon. Or Israel. Nor has God lost track of you.

Event

Re:Verse passage – Judges 4:4-23, 5:7, 24-27 (day three)

“Now Heber the Kenite…had pitched his tent as far away as the oak in Zaanannim.”

When you and God live together within a life of love, his purpose is that all events in the universe – even the randomness that God allows – occur in such a way as to bring good to you. This actuality informed Jesus’s deep calm and confidence as he walked this earth. It fueled Paul’s courage in the face of suffering. Even seemingly unconnected occurrences form the fabric of reality that will strengthen and protect you. A decision made by Heber prior to Israel’s military campaign positioned his family’s tent in a location that would intersect Sisera’s flight from Israel’s army. Jael took care of the rest. Happenstance? Well, consider that “it just so happened” precisely because God made a universe that works for your good.

Nation

Re:Verse passage – Judges 3:31 and Acts 2:42-47 (day three)

“After [Ehud] came Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; and he also saved Israel.”

“All the believers were together and had all things in common.”

If there is any commonality between these two passages, it might be that they each present a view of a nation in its formative stages. The former passage from Judges chronicles the rise of Israel in its middle period between wilderness wanderer and geopolitical player on the world stage. The latter passage from Acts narrates the dawning of the church as it represents the eternal community. Hopeful prayers arise in each age. In Judges, one might say the prayer was “In Canaan as it was promised in Egypt.” In Acts, as profound fellowship took shape, their experience echoes another prayer: “In earth as it is in heaven.”

Moment

Re:Verse passage – Judges 3:11-30 (day three)

“They struck down at that time about ten thousand Moabites, all robust and valiant men.”

There were some deliberative and judicial responsibilities attached to the position of judge, depending on the judge. Each judge was remembered, however, not so much for the cases he or she decided, but for the moments they opened up for Israel – opportunities to live out from under the oppressive grip of other geopolitical entities. Judges did not solve all the problems; rather they cleared a space for Israel to act, both in war and in spiritual pursuit. Ehud killed Eglon, but there remained a formidable force of “robust and valiant men” yet to see defeat. Would Israel rise to this opportunity? In this ancient time, war provided the proving ground for spiritual and national focus. The church will have opportunities no less than Israel. What are they?

Turn

Re:Verse passage – Judges 2:11-20, 3:5-11 (day three)

“The Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them.”

Here is the cycle in Judges: spiritual and moral ruination, military occupation, spiritual awakening, military and societal revolution, then peace, followed again by further spiritual and moral ruination, military occupation, spiritual awakening, military and societal revolution, then peace, followed again by spiritual and moral ruination, and so on. The seemingly incessant pattern elicits much tut-tutting in church congregations and Bible study groups. “They never learned,” you might hear it said. “We can be exactly the same way today,” people sometimes remark. Both sentiments are certainly valid. But is there anything in that cycle that invites something besides disparaging comments? Yes. At each spiritual awakening, “God was moved to pity.” This is God. When you turn, he is moved. This is hope. This is life.

Pattern

Re:Verse passage – Judges 1:1-2, 8-13, 20 (day three)

“Now it came about after the death of Joshua…”

The first line of Judges plunges us into the story of an age in Israel’s history that would last four hundred years or so by some accounts. It’s chaotic, tumultuous, gruesome, offensive, and full of heroes that do horrible things. In other words, it’s a society we can recognize if we’ll drop the pretense of politeness. It wasn’t the society they needed, but it was the society they deserved. There was mercy for the asking. But the cyclical social patterns took their toll. In the course of time, Christ provided a way out of that cycle. Its allure still beckons, though. We would do well to read Judges as if it’s our own diary.

Potential

Re:Verse passage – 2 Chronicles 9:13-31 (day three)

“So King Solomon became greater than all the kings of the earth in riches and wisdom.”

It might be easy to dismiss Solomon’s wealth and understanding, to waive it away with the pronouncement that none of it mattered if his heart wasn’t right (which it eventually wasn’t). But Solomon was the king. One word from him could save a life or condemn it. It’s precisely because of his power that his riches and his insight were so critically important. Wealth and wisdom well-stewarded afford the kinds of initiatives that form character and build infrastructure and institutions for the common good. Wealth and wisdom ill-stewarded do not, and the greater the wealth and wisdom, the greater the agonizing sense of tragedy when what could have been never happens. Solomon could have built a kingdom that represented heaven’s kind of life. What a waste.

Fall

Re:Verse passage – 2 Chronicles 9:1-12 (day three)

“And Solomon told her all her questions: and there was nothing hid from Solomon which he told her not.”

How can someone fall from wisdom? The question arises in the first place because it’s easy to think of wisdom as a failsafe. Surely wisdom will warn a person when she or he is falling. But no such failsafe exists. Neither wisdom, nor intelligence, nor confidence, nor skill, nor knowledge – none will do the heavy lifting of living a life of good. For that, the will must act. It cannot outsource its responsibility to deliberate and to choose. It all comes down, again, to the will’s need to be transformed by Christ. “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Turn

Re:Verse passage – 2 Chronicles 7:11-22 (day three)

“…therefore he has brought all this adversity on them.”

There is adversity that arises no matter how we live. But there is also adversity that comes when we will do what we know to be unrighteous. The statutes of God give us a window into the life of heaven – ordering ourselves to God’s authority, looking after one another’s good, keeping our word to those around us, caring for our families, ceasing our labor, cultivating generosity, acknowledging the sacredness of human life. When we depart from these things, we will bring about – in ourselves and in others – heartache, misery, regret, abandonment, pain. It takes time, but we begin to heal the wounds in ourselves and others when we come back to the statutes from which we strayed. With God, there is a way back home.