Response

Judges 13:1 Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD, so the LORD delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for forty years.

I love the give and take in life. The ebbs and flows of season and weather, busyness and tranquility, empty and full. If all of life was the same, even exhilaration would get old. It is the valleys that make the mountains seem so glorious.

One of the things I notice about some Christians is that they get confused by passages like today’s text. The reason they get confused is there seems to be a contradiction between their theology of God’s sovereignty and his responses to human choices. They feel bound to defend God, so they say people don’t really have any choices; it is all predetermined.

Our text is just one in a long line of texts in Judges that point out the choices people made and the LORD’s promised response. It is simple. The LORD promised to bless if they did certain things, and to withhold the blessing if they didn’t. They had a choice and a responsibility. The LORD acted accordingly. He chose to give them some wiggle room.

He is in charge, but he gave them the Garden to tend. They were responsible for that small patch of ground. They were to be His images in that place.

And we see what happened when they chose to go their own way. The LORD protected them from the natural consequences of their choices. Being kicked out of the Garden was grace at work. Staying in the Garden would have been much worse for them.

So in the time of the Judges, Israel’s rebellion also had consequences that were grace in action. The Philistines were the instrument of that grace. WHAT? In punishment there is grace?

You see, the human heart is a tricky thing, a sinful thing, a cunning thing. It can squirm out of just about anything it wants to. It can avoid responsibility with an amazing array of choices.

The purpose of the Philistine discipline was the correction of their hearts. Hearts are some of the most stubborn elements of humans. We want what we want, and that’s it. We see it in the two and three year old child stomping their feet in defiance, as though someone ten times their size couldn’t just swoop down and pick them up. The defiance has no power, other than to prolong the disobedience and the damage the disobedience brings.

The grace of the Philistines is that the pain of oppression can open the heart to our own inability to control everything. We see our weakness, and consequently become open to seeing His strength. When we are we, He is strong.