Judges: Fratrcide, Fables, and a Faithful God Judges 9:1-22

There’s Bible Stuff, too

In 2019, Rick Rojas of the New York Times, wrote an article called,

What draws Atheists, Jews, and Catholics to a Presbyterian Church? At Rutgers Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, social justice and environmental issues unite the congregation. There’s Bible stuff, too. (Ricj Rojas New York Times 2019)

Listen to how Rojas describes the ethos of this church. He writes,

“Observant Presbyterians are always part of gatherings at Rutgers Presbyterian Church. But much of the time, so are Roman Catholics and Jews, as well as a smattering of people who consider themselves vaguely spiritual. Valerie Oltarsh-McCarthy, who sat among the congregation listening to a Sunday sermon on the perils of genetically modified vegetables, is, in fact, an atheist.

“It’s something I never thought would happen,” she said of the bond she has forged with the church’s community, if not the tenets of its faith. She was drawn to the church, she said, by “something in the spirit of Rutgers and something in the spirit of the outside world.”

Katharine Butler, an artist, was lured into Rutgers when she walked by a sandwich board on the street advertising its environmental activism. Soon, she was involved in more traditional aspects of the church, too.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this, singing away and all the Jesus-y stuff,” she said. “It was wonderful to find a place larger than me, that’s involved in that and in the community and being of service. It’s nice to find a real community like that.”

Typically, the connective tissue of any congregation is an embrace of a shared faith.”

Yet Rutgers, a relatively small church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, has rejected that. Sharing a belief in God — any God at all — isn’t necessary. Instead, the community there has been cobbled together by a different code of convictions, pulled in by social justice efforts, activism against climate change, meal programs for the homeless and a task force to help refugee families...”

“Houses of worship — including Christian churches from a range of denominations, as well as synagogues — have positioned themselves as potent forces on progressive issues, promoting activism on social justice causes and inviting in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But religious scholars said that Rutgers was reaching a new frontier where its social agenda in some ways overshadowed its religious one....For decades now, the church has been anchored near the bustling intersection of West 73rd Street and Broadway, where its “unapologetically progressive” outlook, as Mr. Stehlik described it, is on display.”

One of the congregants of Rutgers Presbyterian church is 71 year old Ms Hogenauer.

“Ms. Hogenauer, 71, has various ailments and relies on a rolling walker to navigate the neighborhood. She happened to come to the church several years ago simply because it was close to her apartment...Ms. Hogenauer does not consider herself an observant Christian. “I believe he (Jesus) was a good guy,” she said of Jesus. But she found comfort in finding people who hugged her, asked about her health and joked with her. “I’m more into the social aspect,” she said. “I care about a lot of the people, and they care about me.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/nyregion/the-presbyterian-church-where-believing-in-god-isnt-strictly-necessary.html)

The article says Rutgers traces its history to 1798, its name derived from the street in Lower Manhattan where it opened its first sanctuary. According to its history page on its website, by 1830, Rutgers had become the largest Presbyterian church in the denomination, with 1,157 members. The congregation has worshiped on the Upper West Side since 1888, and now has just over 100 members. In 1798, the Presbyterian church was devoutly committed to the Westminster Confession of Faith. It is the confessional document of the Presbyterian church. The Westminster Confession of faith holds to a conservative orthodox standard of Christianity. It holds dearly the sacred Scriptures as authoritative, inerrant, and fully sufficient for life and godliness. It holds up the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-three persons but none God. It confesses that the church is made up of regenerate believers. It clearly warns it is appointed for man to die once and then face God’s wrath in hell. It condemns sinful living such as idolatry, sexual immorality, coveting, lying, stealing, murdering, and the such. It compels the church to live in a manner worthy of the Gospel. It says things like, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” In the Westminister Confession of Faith, Jesus is more than a nice guy. He is the Son of God who is the exclusive Savior of mankind from the wrath of God and the giver of eternal life to those who put their faith in Him. There is nothing in the Westminster Confession that remotely affirms the ethos or the church culture at Rutgers Presbyterian Church. In 1798, atheist, Jews, and Catholics would not be members of the church body, not would they claim that Jesus was simply a nice guy.

How did Rutgers Presbyterian Church go from orthodoxy in 1798 to heresy 2019? How does any church leave such a strong confession of faith? On the one hand, they stop believing it, and on the other hand they allow leadership into the church that takes them further away from it.

When the church does not have a single minded heart united loyal love to Jesus, it opens the door for wicked and reckless leaders to lead the church.

Robert Chisholm brings a little more clarity to the point I am making. He says,

“When we embrace the attitude of the pagan culture in which we live, power-hungry opportunists sometimes seize leadership and spread conflict, but God opposes such people and will hold them accountable for their abusive, self-serving behavior.” Robert Chisholm

Abimelech did not assume power in a vacuum. Look back at Judges 8:33-35. In verse 33, the people whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their God. They’ve forgotten the God. Their love and loyalty was devoted to Baal-berith. Baal-berith literlaly means “Lords of the Covenant. Baal-berith is actually a combination of the worship of Yahweh and the existing false gods of the land. This false deity sometimes is referred to as El-berith (Judges 9:46), with the prefix El being a reference to Yahweh.

In essence, God’s people, with their half-hearted loyalty, tried to make God in their own image. Their synchronistic religion, mixing Canaanite gods with Yahweh, is a play right our of Canaanite culture. They embraced the pagan attitude of the the Canaanites, which opened the door for the like of Abimelech to assume power.

Church, watch the progression carefully in Israel. When God’s people are without a judge who keeps them true to God’s commands and covenant, they embrace idolatry. Once idolatry has its place in your heart, you view life through the lens of your idolatry, which in turn conforms your values. Your values are an expression and a commitment to what you treasure.

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.” That is, you love what you worship and you worship what you love; you treasure it. Your values reflect what you love most. For example, if you love sports, then your value system will reflect the culture of sports; the discipline, hard work, commitment, coaching, competition, and the hope that one day you or your child will “make it.” You will give your life to sports.

When the church looses its commitment to the authority, inerrancy, and sufficiency of scripture and the exegeting and exposing of the scriptures, it runs the risk of walking away from its confession of faith. When the church has a soft view of sin, or maybe and over character view of grace, or a confused view of God’s love, it runs the risk of loosing its holy testimony. When the church over accentuates Jesus’ humanity at the expense of his deity, the church runs the risk of loosing the gospel. When the church looses the gospel, it looses its Great Commission. When the church is filled with people who do not love Jesus the most, their value system is the grid they use to decide what is good leadership. With all of these fences down, the church is susceptible to wolves taking advantage of the opportunity to devour the sheep. Abimelech’s grasping of power did not happen in a vacuum. It happened because Israel had half-hearted love for the Lord, and a half hearted people committed to the Lord allow a wicked and reckless Abimelech to rule over them.

The wicked and reckless leadership of Abimelech (Judges 9:1-22)

Abimelech was the son of Gideon born to him from his concubine from Shechem. He was not recognized as a legitimate son because he was not born a Hebrew. He was not named among Gideon’s seventy other sons and he was not in line to receive any sort of inheritance. Always looking from the outside in, Abimelech took the identity of the illegitimate son.

Interestingly enough, the name “Abimelech” means “my father is king,” and Abimelech desired to inherit the throne of Gideon’s leadership for himself.

Shechem is a noteworthy city in the scriptures. Shechem is the place where God appeared to Abram and promised him land, seed and blessing (Genesis 12:6-7). It was the place where Joshua renewed God’s covenant with his people (Joshua 8:30-35). It is a place known for God’s blessings and promises, and Abimelech is going to tarnish it with his treachery and blatant rejection of God’s authority (Chisholm). What did Abimelech’s rejection of God look like?

Abimelech’s Treacherous Fratricide (Judges 9:1-6)

Abimelech has set in his heart to be king of God’s people. God has not called him, not anointed him. Just as he is Gideon’s illegitimate son, he is God’s illegitimate judge.

He appeals to his family to honor his heritage from Gideon. Although Gideon decline to be king over Israel, he set his family to rule like a monarchy, and Abimelech was gong to use his heritage and name to appeal to his family.

On the basis of his familial blood, he argues,

Judges 9:2 ESV

“Say in the ears of all the leaders of Shechem, ‘Which is better for you, that all seventy of the sons of Jerubbaal rule over you, or that one rule over you?’ Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh.”

Abimelech contends, “We don’t need seventy rulers. We need one ruler. We need a ruler who is one of us. We need a ruler like me.” Can you can sense the treachery? Doesn’t Abimelech’s words feel an awful like the deception of the serpent speaking to Eve?

Of course, the leaders of Shechem go along with Abimelech. There is no Godly sense among these people. In verse 3, they give Abimelech seventy pieces of silver from the temple of Baal-berith. They fund the assassination of the seventy of Gideon’s legitimate sons, with the funds of a false god. This is the work of Satan. This is treachery.

Abimelech hires worthless and reckless men for murder. The word worthless means empty, without decency or morals. The word reckless describes turbulent waters. These are lawless men who have no regard for God or life. Abimelech uses these men to murder sons of Gideon on a stone.

The stone is important. It refers to a butchering table that was able to catch the blood of a carcass so it wouldn’t fall on the ground. Abimelech might have been worried that the innocent blood of the men he was murdering would cry out to for vengeance; much like Able’s blood cried to the Lord for Cain’s treachery. When the murdering was finished the sealed their treachery by making Abimelech king by an oak tree. Notice how Abimelech does not refuse like his father Gideon. He embraces his treachery and in his own eyes, the right to rule.

The irony here is that years before, Jacob buried his family’s idols at an oak tree in Shechem. Now, at an oak tree, idolatry in God’s people have allowed the rise of an illegitimate king who murdered his brothers with the funds of a false god.

Half-hearted love and loyalty to God uses the wrong grid to evaluate good leadership. keep in min your value system. When you value the pagan culture more than Jesus, you will value leadership that looks like your pagan culture. Your criteria will be based on the flesh. You will look more for charisma than godly character. You will be swayed more by the ability to tell a story than exegete the scriptures. You will value worldly pragmatism more than Christ-centered faith infused moralism. Your heart will gravitate more toward humor than holiness. Essentially you will value everything that God does not prioritize in his under shepherds. God values men to serve his church in leadership who are above reproach, self-controlled, sober minded, orthodox teachers, gentle, and seasoned in the Christian faith (1 Timothy 3:1-7). When churches do not value what God prioritizes, they subject themselves to leaders who have the potential to bite and devour their own people (Galatians 5:15). Such great foolishness comes upon churches who foolishly appoint illegitimate leaders to shepherd them

Jotham’s Fable for the Fools (Judges 9:7-21)

Jotham was the lone survivor of Abimelech’s massacre of his brothers. He confronts the leaders of Shechem on Mount Gerizim. Again, don’t miss the irony here. Mount Gerizim is the place where half of the tribes of Israel received the covenantal blessings of the Promise Land. it is a place of receiving God’s blessing. Abimelech’s treachery turned into a place of God’s curse, as you will see in Jotham’s Fable of the Thorn Bush.

Jotham stands on Mount Gerizim and offers the leaders a story of the trees search for a king. The olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine all reject the offer to rule over the trees. Robert Chisholm notes, “Their main concern is to yield their produce for the benefit of gods and men, not to sway in the wind (cf. Isa. 7:2) as king over the trees.” The Olive Tree is more concerned about producing abundance that honors God and men (Judges 9:9). The fig is more concerned about producing sweet fruit and the vine is more concerned about making wine that cheers god and man (Judges 9:10-13). In an act of desperation, the trees turn to the thorn bush, a bramble, and ask it to rule over them. A thorn bush is short and dry. It often caught fire and destroyed any vegetation around it. The bramble agrees but on one condition. All the trees must come underneath it for shade, or else he will bring fire down and consume even the greatest of the the trees, the Cedar of Lebanon (Judges 9:14-15).

This is absurd! How can a thorn bush have the capacity to cast shade over a towering Cedar of Lebanon, or an Oak tree? A bramble bush is incapable of providing shade, let alone protection for all the trees. Furthermore, the arrogance of the thorn bush to offer an ultimatum, get beneath me or I destory you resides in the hearts of tyrants! What is the point of the fable? It has two connecting points; first to the Shechemites and then to Abimelech.

To the leaders of Shechem, the fable says, “You foolish Shechemites! You made a bramble bush your king! You settled for a self-reliant tyrant instead of calling on the Lord to give you a man after his own heart.”” To Abimelech he says, “You are unqualified to lead and unable to provide power and protection and security for the community. You are a thorn promising protection, you will be a thorn in their side, and a thorn who will burn the community to the ground (Victor Hamilton).”

Jotham alludes to the plight of the Shechemites and of Abimelech in verses 16-20. Jotham says,

Judges 9:16–20 ESV

“Now therefore, if you acted in good faith and integrity when you made Abimelech king, and if you have dealt well with Jerubbaal and his house and have done to him as his deeds deserved— for my father fought for you and risked his life and delivered you from the hand of Midian, and you have risen up against my father’s house this day and have killed his sons, seventy men on one stone, and have made Abimelech, the son of his female servant, king over the leaders of Shechem, because he is your relative— if you then have acted in good faith and integrity with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you. But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the leaders of Shechem and Beth-millo; and let fire come out from the leaders of Shechem and from Beth-millo and devour Abimelech.”

Jotham calls the leaders out on both Jerubaal and his seventy brothers. We know that the leaders of Shechem dealt horribly with Jerubaal and his family form chapter eight (Judges 8:35). Jotham knew the kind of men he was dealing with by their past actions toward his family. He knew they were guilty as sin of treachery. Jotham calls down a curse on Shechem and on Abimelech, calls fire down to devour them in their treachery. I think TimothyKeller best sums up Jotham’s thoughts. Keller paraphrases,

“If you’ve been fair to Gideon’s family in making Abimelech your king (and let’s face it, you haven’t, but if you have), then may you find great blessing in the rule of King Abimelech. But if you haven’t (and, let’s face it, you haven’t), then I hope you and he get what you all deserve—you burned by him, and he burned by you.” Timothy Keller

When God’s people do not have a single minded heart united loyal love for Jesus, it opens the door for wicked and reckless leadership in the church. When the church synchronizes with its pagan culture, do not be surprised when the leadership of the church is pagan. Furthermore, do not be surprised when the leadership takes the church away from fidelity and toward heresy. Rutgers Presbyterian Church compromised its commitment to orthodox Christian doctrine. It allowed heretics and false teachers to assume leadership in its pulpits. These illegitimate leaders are wicked and reckless with the faith and discipleship of their congregants, and they will have to give an account for their treachery, just like the leaders of Shechem and Abimelech.

You will notice that God has not spoken in all of chapter nine. The first time he is mentioned is in Judges 9:22. This does not imply that God has been absent or ignoring the nonsense in Judges 9. In verse 22, you see God working to rectify the sin of the leaders of Shechem and of Abimelech. God is sovereign. God is always present. He may be silent abut he is not absent. Judgement is coming on the Shechemites and Abimelech, and God will provide rest for his people.

A sign of good healthy leadership is presence. Good leaders are always present and engaged in the lives of the people they lead. That is what I love about God’s kingdom. He is always present and engaged, even when his people are being seduced by the pagan culture and allow wicked leadership to lead. God never leaves or forsakes his people. God is going to deal with Shechem and Abimelech’s treachery justly. He is going to restore his people. If we will repent of our idolatry and turn to the Lord, if you will confess your sin and put your hope in Jesus Christ, our Great Faithful Shepherd who died on the cross for your sin and rose again on the third day and is seated at the right hand of God interceding for the saints, God will hear us and restore our church. He will bless us with heart that love his Son, are infused with His Spirit, and delight in His word. He will bless us with good leadership, a leadership who will faithful fight to help every single one of us joyfully advance the kingdom of the God by making much of Jesus until the church, community, and home joyfully abide in Jesus, and will protect us from wicked and reckless wolves.

Next time we will see God fulfill Jotham’s fable, and judge Abimelech and Shechem righteously.

C. The three year Tyranny of Abimelech (Judges 9:22)

II. God sends an evil spirit, which will result in future retribution on Abimelech and on Shechem’s lords (Judges 9:23-25)

III. Closing Narrative (vv. 26–41): retribution visited on Abimelech and on Shechem’s lords, and vv. 23–25 actualized (Judges 9:26-55)

A. vv. 26–41: Gaal ben-Ebed challenges Abimelech, only to be routed by Abimelech

B. vv. 42–45: Abimelech murders the ordinary people of Shechem

C. vv. 46–49: Abimelech kills the lords at Migdal-Shechem as they seek refuge

D. vv. 50–54: Abimelech himself is killed

E. v. 55: everybody “goes home” after Abimelech’s death

IV. Conclusion (vv. 56–57): God has repaid Abimelech and the guilty Shechemites for their dastardly deeds, thus fulfilling Jotham’s curse on them (Judges 9:56-57)