Category Archives: Judges

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Battle Ready: Why God Doesn’t Remove Enemies of the Soul

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: Wouldn’t it make your life simpler and easier if God just stepped in and vaporized your every spiritual enemy? Why doesn’t He?
Among other reasons known only to God, one important reason is that He is testing you, and he is teaching you so that He might increase your trust in Him. He allows you to be in strenuous situations to test and temper your faith, and through those moments, He forces you to learn the art of spiritual warfare. You see, the battle you are in is not flesh and blood; it is from the unseen realm, and it masquerades as people and circumstances in the seen world. And your most effective weapons in every battle are your ruthless trust in God and unquestionable obedience to His commands. So, if you’re in a battle right now, take heart. You will be victorious … if you trust and obey. Furthermore, God is doing you a favor by getting you ready for greater things!

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 3:1-2,4

These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience)….These enemy nations were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.

Do you ever wish God would just annihilate sin in your life? Wouldn’t it be nice if he removed everything that troubles your soul? How wonderful it would be if the Christian’s voyage from salvation to eternity were nothing but smooth sailing!

 

Yes, that would be nice. But God doesn’t work that way. He could have given Abraham and Sarah, whom he called the parents of many nations, an heir long before they were in their nineties and well past the years of bearing a son. He didn’t have to leave Joseph languishing in a prison cell for 15 years, training him to be a faithful leader in small matters and under great duress, when a weekend stay would have sufficed. The Lord didn’t have to teach Moses how to shepherd Israel over a forty-year illustrious career by first burying him in ignominy and isolation during a forty-year stint as a goat herder on the backside of the Sinai desert. And God didn’t have to take the Israelites on a forty-year meandering journey through that same desert when two years would have gotten them from Egypt to Canaan and more than sufficed to mold them into a nation.

 

The thing is, God takes his time in preparing his people. He does it apart from our sense of time because God is God. And God knows more than we do. And God can do what he wants. And God knows that it takes us a long time to learn. So, he uses the sharpest edge tool, discomfort, to test us and to train us for glorious purposes.

 

 

 

After Joshua died and the Israelites settled in Canaan, there were still more than a few enemy nations in the land. Moses had commanded that Israel wipe them out because they would ultimately lead God’s people astray by enticing them to tolerate, then accept, then actually worship their gods. Israel had failed to remove these nations, and sure enough, Israel began to intermarry with some of them and live alongside others as if it were no big deal. But it was a big deal indeed, because what Moses predicted was exactly what happened: Israel began to embrace the unspeakable pagan practices of these Canaanite nations. So God punished them.

 

Punishment came in the form of subjugation—the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites defeated Israel and put onerous demands and taxation upon them. Finally, in desperation, Israel cried out to God, who in turn raised up judges to deliver his people. This is the story of Judges: Judge after judge is raised up to lead Israel into repentance, unite and inspire them, then lead them into battle and throw off the oppressive yoke of their masters. This vicious cycle of subjugation, desperation, repentance, and deliverance took place over a period of 400 years.

 

But there was something else going on during this time. God was testing the loyalty of his people by leaving these pagan nations that Israel had failed to remove; he wanted to show them how easy and quickly they would surrender to the enticement of the false gods, which they did! And he not only tested them, but he had to teach them how to battle their way back to holiness and freedom by throwing off the yoke of their oppressors. They had to suffer the consequences of the pain that always followed enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season; they had to relearn the power of holiness; and they had to learn the literal fighting skills it would take to decimate these enemy nations.

 

Why doesn’t God completely vaporize your every spiritual enemy? Same reasons! He is testing you and teaching you. He allows you to be in strenuous situations to test and temper your faith, and then in those moments, he forces you to learn the art of spiritual warfare, of which the chief weapons are ruthless trust and unquestionable obedience. The argument could be made that you wouldn’t really need the testing and teaching if you were sinlessly perfect, but you are not. So God does you a favor by testing you and teaching you.

 

So, until you are sinlessly perfect—which means you will have died and are firmly in heaven—then praise God that in the meantime, he is getting you battle-ready!

Choose You This Day: Are you enduring hardship and spiritual harassment? Step back and think about how God might be allowing this as a test to temper your faith. Then look for ways to cooperate with God as he gets you prepared for the battle ahead.

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Break The Vicious Cycle

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: God has no grandchildren. Each generation is responsible to seek God for itself. And it is the parents’ responsibility to drill that into their children. They may reject their parents’ faith, but not because the parents didn’t do their best to inculcate their kids with the knowledge of God. If the parents fail to do this, or if the kids refuse to accept this, the outcome will be predictable: Prosperity … Rebellion … Consequence … Repentance … Restoration … Prosperity … Rebellion  Consequence. Repentance. It is the vicious cycle of rebellion and restoration. It would be a lot simpler and far better if we stayed in the restoration zone.

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 2:10-14,16

After Joshua’s generation died, another generation grew up who did not acknowledge the Lord or remember the mighty things He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight and served the images of Baal. They abandoned the God of their ancestors who had brought them out of Egypt. They went after other gods, worshiping the gods of the people around them. And they angered the Lord. They abandoned Him to serve Baal and the images of Ashtoreth. This made the Lord burn with anger against Israel, so He handed them over to raiders who stole their possessions. He turned them over to their enemies all around, and they were no longer able to resist them.

Prosperity. Rebellion. Consequence. Repentance. Restoration. Prosperity. Rebellion. Consequence. Repentance. Restoration, Prosperity. Rebellion…

That is the sad cycle of Judges. So be warned: you will get a lot of that as you read this book. In many ways, it is a frustrating, if not depressing, history, but such is the dark reality of life in rebellion against God. Yet within this collection of stories that take place over the 400 years between Joshua’s death and the arrival of Samuel the prophet, you will also find sun breaks of God’s grace, inspiring stories of heroic men and woman who stepped in to lead Israel to revival, and invaluable life application for those who are serious about obeying their covenant of love with God.

This second chapter is both a preview and an overview of the book of Judges. The verse above captures the problem: when Joshua and his generation died, the baton was somehow dropped to the next generation, and for whatever reason, they “knew neither the Lord nor what he had done.”

Therein lies the problem that has perpetually haunted God’s people. The next generation somehow misses out on knowing God. Interesting, and sad, isn’t it! Their parents knew God, enjoyed his favor, experienced his presence, and walked in obedience before him. But their kids missed out. What the parents knew and loved didn’t transfer to the children. For the next generation, “the God of my fathers” never became “my Lord and my God!”

Why? Who knows for sure, but just as we have seen within our own families, there are different reasons. Perhaps the parents were so busy with God stuff that they didn’t include their kids. Maybe the parents assumed their faith would simply transfer, sort of by osmosis, to their children. It could be that the next generation grew up with a sense of entitlement—that they deserved God’s presence and his favor. It might be that the kids vicariously lived out their parents’ spirituality. Or it is possible that these children grew up around the holy, and it just became so common that their sense of God became jaded. There are many possibilities, but whatever the reason, the God of their fathers never became their God.

 

The deal is, God has no grandchildren. Each generation is responsible to seek God for itself. And it is the responsibility of the parents to drill that into their kids, early and often. At the end of the day, they may reject their parents’ faith, but not because the parents didn’t do their best to inculcate their kids with the knowledge of God.

If the parents fail to do this, or if their kids refuse to accept this, the outcome will be predictable: Prosperity. Rebellion. Consequence. Repentance. Restoration. Prosperity. Rebellion. Consequence. Repentance. It is the vicious cycle of rebellion and restoration. It would just be a lot simpler and far better if we would just stay in the restoration zone.

What is the key to avoiding the Judges syndrome: Know God and remember what he has done. That is not a passive thing, but an active laying hold of the things of the Lord. It takes consistent, dogged intentionality, but it is well worth the effort.

Going Deeper With God: Sit your children or grandchildren down and tell them of the goodness of God. Then invite them to know God personally. Help them to accept your God as their own personal Lord and Savior. Do it today!

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Dealing Ruthlessly with “Bad Neighbors”

When God Speaks—Be Quick to Obey!

SUMMARY: We must remember that when it comes to sin, we are in a battle. It is an all-out war that we can and must win (and with God’s help, we will, since he is fighting for us!), but it is a war in which there can be no truce. It is total victory or utter defeat. Sin is your enemy, not your neighbor. Treat it ruthlessly!

God Speaks—I Obey // Focus: Judges 1:21

The tribe of Benjamin, however, failed to drive out the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem. So to this day the Jebusites live in Jerusalem among the people of Benjamin.

The tribe of Benjamin failed to drive out the Canaanites. So did the tribes of Judah (Judges 1:19), Manasseh (Judges 1:27), Ephraim (Judges 1:29), Zebulun (Judges 1:30) Asher (Judges 1:31), Naphtali (Judges 1:33) and while we are not explicitly told the tribe of Dan failed, apparently, they permitted their enemies to stay around the edge of their territory (Judges 1:24-26).

So basically, Israel failed to do what God commanded them to do when failure was not one of the options he gave his people.

And it came back to bite them! You see, pagan enemies always make bad neighbors. When Israel allowed the godless Canaanites to live in their midst, or even close in close proximity, over the 400 years time span that the book of Judges covered, early and often God’s people predictably fell victim to a variety of sinful influences these godless cultures embraced—sexual immorality, idol worship, child sacrifice, and if even worse, if that is possible. Let me say it again, because God said it over and over to his people:

Pagan enemies make bad neighbors!

Obviously, we are not commanded to literally drive non-believers out of our neighborhoods, our community groups, or our various governmental expressions—local, state, or federal (although the right to vote allows us to make those kinds of changes through legal means). That would be rather poor form these days, and, in reality, against the law. Instead, we are to witness to them of the grace of our Lord Jesus, model for them the redemptive love of God, and win over their hearts and minds to his kingdom.

 

Yet the spiritual application from Judges 1 is quite clear: Just as God commanded Israel to drive the pagan enemies out of the land that he had promised as their homeland, we have been called to deal just as ruthlessly with spiritual enemies in our homeland—our hearts and homes. Failure to do so will result in these worldly influences harassing us until the day we die. They will be a constant source of irritation at the very least, and at worst, perhaps even trainwreck our relationship with the people we love and with God. Moreover, when we allow godless influences into our homes, especially through the unfiltered and unchallenged consumption of media, we are exposing the vulnerable minds of our children and ourselves to these destructive pagan influences.

We must remember that when it comes to sin, we are in a battle. It is an all-out war that we can and must win (and with God’s help, we will, for he is fighting for us!), but it is a war in which there can be no truce. It is total victory or utter defeat.

That is not just because I say so; it is due to the nature of the conflict. The reason Jesus came, died, and rose again was to defeat the Enemy:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work….Jesus shared in our humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil.” (1 John 3:8, Hebrews 2:14)

On the other hand, while Jesus’ purpose was to kill that which would steal, kill, and destroy us, the devil is committed to our utter defeat. He is not looking just to gain territory; he is not hoping that we coexist; he will not be satisfied with establishing a demilitarized zone with us; he wants to destroy us. He hates God, and everything of God, which includes you and me:

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

That is the nature of the conflict. C.S. Lewis rightly described it thus: “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” And your life is ground zero in this cosmic conflict. So take note, stay alert, be armed, and get ruthless with sin. And be encouraged, because you were made to win:

But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

So just remember, spiritually speaking, pagan enemies make bad neighbors.

Choose You This Day: What are the “pagan enemies” that have moved into your “neighborhood,” that is, the worldly influences that you have allowed to hold sway over your mind, to infiltrate your home, to exert influence through your relationships, and/or who have input with the people over whom you are responsible? It is time to call them out and then kick them out. And why wouldn’t you? God is ready to help you.

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If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail

Attempt Great Things For God

SYNOPSIS: What would you attempt for God if you knew that he was already where your steps of faith would lead you. How energetically would you press forward if you knew he was waiting there for you to arrive? What level of confidence would you have knowing that God had gone ahead of you and secured your victory even before the battle began? The truth is, when God calls you to step out, he has not only promised to be with you, he has promised to actually go before you, and while you may not see around the bend of faith, God is already there with your victory in hand.

If You Knew You Couldn't Fail - Ray Noah

Moments With God // Focus: Judges 4:14-15

Then Deborah said to Barak, “Get ready! This is the day the Lord will give you victory over Sisera, for the Lord is marching ahead of you.” So Barak led his 10,000 warriors down the slopes of Mount Tabor into battle. When Barak attacked, the Lord threw Sisera and all his chariots and warriors into a panic.

What would you attempt for God if you knew the Lord was marching ahead of you? What grand thing would you pursue if you knew that he was already where your steps of faith would lead you, waiting for you to arrive? What level of confidence would you have knowing that God had gone ahead of you and secured your victory even before the battle began?

When God calls you to a step of faith, you are guaranteed his presence and his power, which means that you are invincible in the journey. Moreover, he has not only promised to be with you, but he has also promised to actually go before you, and while you may not see around the bend of faith, God is already there, waiting for you to take the victory lap for a victory that he won for you. How cool is that!

That is exactly what the prophetess Deborah is telling the reluctant general of the Israelite army, Barak. He is shivering in his boots knowing that his army is outmanned and outgunned by the Canaanite army of General Sisera. We are told in Judges 4:3, “Sisera, who had 900 iron chariots, ruthlessly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years.” 900 iron chariots to Israel’s none…no wonder, on a human level, Barak was not too excited about leading Israel into battle.

But this battle was not going to be fought only on a human level. No battle is. In the spiritual realm, God had already heard the cries of the Israelites and had determined to deliver them from their oppressors under the guidance of Deborah the Judge and Barak the General. In light of that, the fight was over before it even started. Barak couldn’t see that, but Deborah could. That is why she told him, “now get out there and fight, for God is already ahead of you and how guaranteed the victory. C’mon, go take your victory lap.” And that is exactly what Barak did, and a great deliverance for Israel was accomplished.

Perhaps you are a little uncertain about what’s next for you. Maybe you’re not too confident about your future. Maybe the circumstance you face is overwhelming, from a human perspective. You are outnumbered and outgunned. But where God is asking you to step out in faith, those odds do not matter one iota. God is on your side; he is with you, he is actually before you. He is already where he has called you to go, waiting for you to walk into a victory that he has secured for you. You cannot lose. So take heart.

Therefore, because of God’s exemplary record of faithful goodness in leading his people to victory, do not be afraid to trust an unknown tomorrow to a known God. So get ready! This is the day God will give you victory, for he is marching ahead of you. That is God’s promise to you!

In a verse similar to this, King David said to his son Solomon as he gave him the daunting task of building a temple in Jerusalem to the God of Israel,

Be strong and courageous and get to work. Don’t be frightened by the size of the task, for the Lord God is with you; he will not forsake you. He will see to it that everything is finished correctly. (1 Chron 28:20, LB)

Whatever is before you, if God is calling you to step out, then do it with confidence. God is already out there where you have been called to go. And he has guaranteed victory if you will go with him!

Take A Moment: Picture your greatest challenge. Once you have that in view, picture God already there waiting for you. Now get out there; go take a victory lap in a victory that God has won for you.

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Your Judas

God’s Deeper Work Sometimes Comes Through A Betrayer

SYNOPSIS: In living out the law of agape love, we become like God—something that truly honors and pleases the heart of our Father. That’s what Jesus said: “You will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.” (Luke 6:35, NLT) That’s a pretty compelling reason for choosing to express unconquerable, benevolent, kind, invincible, reconciling agape love—especially toward people who least deserve it. It is who God is, it is what God does, it is when we are most like God, and it is what his Son asked us to do.

Moments With God // Matthew 26:16

From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

From that time on, Judas began looking for an opportunity to betray Jesus.

Sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but everybody gets a Judas in life. At one point or another, you will bear the pain of someone you trusted thrusting a knife in your back. It is simply, and sadly, the awful reality of living in a broken world alongside fallen human beings.

Among the sixty conspirators who assassinated the Roman leader on March 15, 44 BC was Marcus Junius Brutus. Caesar not only trusted Brutus, he favored him as a son. According to Roman historians, Caesar first resisted his assassins, but when he saw Brutus among them with his dagger drawn, he gave up. He pulled the top part of his robe over his face, and uttered those heartrending words immortalized by Shakespeare, “Et tu Brutus” … “You, too, my child?”

Julius Caesar was not the only one to know such treachery. The passionate Scottish patriot William Wallace experienced it when Earl Robert de Bruce betrayed him. Not even the brightest theological mind who ever lived—the Apostle Paul—or the most perfect human being ever—Jesus Christ—was spared. No one gets a pass on betrayal.

So here’s the thing: Are you willing to consider the possibility that God has a far deeper work to do in you that can only come through the betrayer’s knife? Charles Spurgeon said,

I bear willing witness that I owe more to the fire, the hammer and the file than to anything else in the Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see the most.

The truth is, the fire, the hammer and the file of a betrayal may result in some of God’s finest craftsmanship—if you keep your heart soft and your eye on him. If you are going through the pain of a betrayer’s wound right now, remember, you are walking where great people have walked before. Their greatness came because they didn’t allow betrayal to ruin them; they learned how to turn their pain into greater usefulness for the Lord.

Jesus responded to Judas’ money-making treachery with obedient submission to God—and transformed the world. Perhaps God wants to use your pain to form you, and to transform your world.

To what enemy do you need to extend unconquerable, benevolent, invincible, reconciling kindness? Go do it! It’s what your Father would do—and you’ve got his DNA.

Take A Moment: If you are going through the pain of betrayal, memorize and pray this psalm of David, who knew a little about betrayal: “But I call to God, and the LORD saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and he hears my voice…Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.” (Psalm 55:16-17, 22)

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How To Read The Old Testament

When You Obey, God Blesses

SYNOPSIS: What the Bible describes does not mean it excuses. Sometimes scripture is simply painting a sad picture for us of what happens when God is marginalized in our thoughts, feelings and actions. Bad behavior is never justified; rather, it is pictured for us as a warning sign of what life will be like when we put our needs, wants and interests ahead of God’s purposes and plans.

The Journey// Focus: Judges 21:4-5, 25

Early the next morning the people built an altar and presented their burnt offerings and peace offerings on it. Then they said, “Who among the tribes of Israel did not join us at Mizpah when we held our assembly in the presence of the Lord?” At that time they had taken a solemn oath in the Lord’s presence, vowing that anyone who refused to come would be put to death….In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Let me get this straight: Israel has just basically wiped out one of their own tribes (Judges 20); they then vow to never allow their daughters to marry any of the remnant of that tribe, Benjamin (Judges 21:1); they feel really bad about it (Judges 21:2-3,6); they call a sacred assembly to offer sacrifices before the Lord (Judges 4); and then they make another vow to kill anyone who doesn’t show up to this worship service (Judges 21:5). Now there’s a great way to increase church attendance!

What a mess! Then they discover that the people from Jabesh-gilead had not attended church that day, so they ordered their execution: “So the assembly sent 12,000 of their best warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children.” (Judges 21:10) But wait, someone then comes up with the idea that if they spare the unmarried woman of that city, they can then force them to become the wives of the left-over Benjamite men, making it possible for that tribe to repopulate so Isreal won’t lose one of its tribes after all, and technically, they will not have violated their vow not to let their daughters marry anyone from Benjamin. Wait, what? .

Problem was, there were only 400 of these girls from Jabesh-gilead, and there were gobs of guys from Benjamin needing wives. So someone comes up with the idea that sanctions kidnapping brides from Bethel for the rest of the Benjamite men who didn’t get a bride from Jabesh-gilead as the Bethel girls are leaving one of their annual festivals. (Judges 21:19-22) Wait, what?

Then everyone went home and lived happily ever after—not! Why not? Because as the last verse of Judges observes, “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) They had no controlling moral authority to keep them between the lines of civility with their neighbor and righteousness before God, so they kept on coming up with social solutions—assuming they were being guided by God—that only made their national mess bigger and bigger.

Now as you read this chapter, and plenty of other chapters like it in the Old Testament, you, too, can assume that since it was recorded, and you find no condemnation of what is recorded, that God must have approved of what they are doing. But notice in Israel’s crazy plan to get brides for Benjamin that there is no use of the phrase, “the Lord commanded.”

God didn’t tell the nation to annihilate their fellow tribe. God didn’t order them to make a rash vow. God didn’t instruct them to kill off the city of Jabesh-gilead for not showing up to church. God didn’t show them how to devise a dumb plan to kidnap child-brides for the Benjamites. God wasn’t talking in this chapter. They had pushed God to the margins, then blamed him for whatever they did next.

So what does this have to do with how you read the Old Testament? Simply this, what the Bible describes does not mean it excuses. The writer is simply painting a sad picture for us of what happens when God is marginalized. Moreover, rather than justifying unrighteous behavior, these kinds of stories are to stand as warning signs to us when we put our needs, wants and interests ahead of God’s purposes and plans.

Without God at the center and circumference of our thoughts, feelings and actions, life will ultimately stink! With him at the core of everything we do, we have his eternal promise to bless us with success, prosperity and his smile. (Joshua 1:8)

Never forget: when you obey God blesses! When you don’t—well, just re-read Judges.

Going Deeper: Justification of thoughts, feelings and actions without consideration for God is a dangerous thing. Is there an area where you might be guilty of that? If so, repent—ASAP!

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Selective Outrage – And What It Says About Us

Live By God's Unchanging Truth

Moral outrage that is not based in any kind of higher, propositional and immutable moral truth might be real, but it is wrong. It is selective, inconsistent and hypocritical—and ultimately dangerous. That is why God calls us to live by his unchanging truth.

The Journey// Focus: Judges 20:5-7

The Levite, the husband of the woman who had been murdered, said, “My concubine and I came to spend the night in Gibeah, a town that belongs to the people of Benjamin. That night some of the leading citizens of Gibeah surrounded the house, planning to kill me, and they raped my concubine until she was dead. So I cut her body into twelve pieces and sent the pieces throughout the territory assigned to Israel, for these men have committed a terrible and shameful crime. Now then, all of you—the entire community of Israel—must decide here and now what should be done about this!”

If you have been following this story from Judges 19, you have to question the outrage of this Levite. It seems a bit manufactured. After all, he is the one who pushed his wife out the door and into the waiting arms of the sexual perverts of Gibeah, who brutalized her throughout the night until she died. He cowardly offered her up to save his own skin, showing no concern for her safety, much less her dignity as a precious human being. Then the next morning when he walked out the door and saw her lying there, he callously told her to get up and get moving. If you dare, read the story in Judges 19:25-29—but be warned, it will turn your stomach.

But wait, there’s more. The Levite then takes the dead body of his wife, a concubine, and cuts her into twelve pieces, sending a part to each of the twelve tribes of Israel in order to manufacture national outrage over what has been done to him. At this point, it is no surprise to us that he had considered her nothing more than property—if that. To him, she was nothing more than trash.

Why the selective outrage? Isn’t this the height of hypocrisy? Of course it is. And it is the predictable result of people following a philosophy of moral relativism. When people have no controlling moral authority to keep them between the rails of decency and civility, they will do what seems right in their own eyes—which will habitually be so wrong. Ultimately they will be anything but decent and civil. In one moment, they will do things and allow things that are beyond the pail without batting an eye. Then in the next moment, they will blow a gasket in anger at what someone has done to them. Even though they feign tolerance of what somebody else thinks is right, they become insanely intolerant when that person’s thinking becomes action that personally affects them.

The anger is selective; the wrath is manufactured. Make no mistake: it is real, but it is wrong. It is wrong in the sense that the moral outrage is not rooted in any kind of higher propositional and immutable moral truth. If truth is relative, then to be consistent, nothing can be consistently wrong. It might be wrong at this moment, but not in the next. At the end of the day, moral relativism is absurd. That is why this man’s outrage—and that of the nation—was hypocritically and fundamentally flawed. It was selective, inconsistent, and disengaged from God’s unchanging law. In a very real sense, it was worthless. And most likely, the guilt of the perverts of Gibeah that he was proclaiming was really the guilt he felt about his own immoral behavior.

That is what happens when a society thinks they can do better than God. Isn’t that what we see in our society today? We don’t mind aborting babies in the name of choice but will riot in the streets over genetically modified wheat. Crazy, huh. Not that GMO’s are right, but taking life in the name of freedom to choose what happens to your own body is akin to what Jesus described as “straining at a gnat but swallowing a camel.” (Matthew 23:24)

Ok, enough of using our relativistic culture as a punching bag—although it deserves it. What about us? Do we do the same? Do we cluck our tongues in disgust at sex trafficking but consume porn in private? Do we gripe about the breakdown of society but tolerate divorce in the church? Do we decry world hunger yet ignore the needs of the poor in our own community?

I could go on and on, but the simple answer to all of the above examples is, “yes we do!” The point I want to make is this: whenever you begin to get upset at something, check yourself for personal consistency. Is your outrage selective? Is your disgust hypocritical?

Probably! That doesn’t make you an irredeemable human being. It just reveals that you are a sinner in desperate need of God’s grace. And it means that God is calling you by the power of the Holy Spirit to walk in a manner worthy of your calling as a redeemed child of God—consistently submitted to him.

The world is now famous for manufactured outrage. Don’t be of that tribe!

Going Deeper: Wherever you are feeling anger, take a look at what God is revealing in your own life. He is calling you to repent and to consistently surrender to himself.