the book of Leviticus which belongs to the law section of the library. We're now going

to look at a history book - quite different. Actually, the Bible is unique in being mostly

history. If you study the other sacred scriptures of the world - of the other religions, none

of them are history. You read the Koran through or the holy Vedas, you find there's no history

in them. The Bible is a book of history and unlike any other history book it begins earlier

and it ends later; and in fact it records history that no historian can record - nobody

was present at the beginning of the history of our universe and nobody has yet been present

at the end of it, and yet the Bible covers the entire history of the universe from beginning

to end. Which means that the earliest part of the Bible and the latest part are either

divine inspiration or human imagination - but you've got to decide. But here's history written

when there has been no historian present to record what happened. But most of it is history

like other histories - it's the human part and in the book of Judges we're into a book

of history. Now there are four levels of studying history

- all history. And in the history section of your library you'll find histories written

from all points of view. One point of view is to study the Personalities who make history

happen, the great characters, the great figures. And one series of the history of England focuses

on the king or the queen and what happened during their reign. A second level of studying

history is to look at nations and Peoples and see the political history of the world

and how one nation gets bigger and stronger and another weakens, and then that one weakens,

and another takes over. The history of peoples as distinct from personalities. A third level

of studying history is to look for Patterns - to look for somehow rhythms in history so

you get cycles of recession and economic growth and some historians try and find patterns

of history and see how the ebb and flow of civilisations happens. There have been twenty-one

civilisations that have come and gone so far, and they follow a remarkably similar pattern

of rise and fall like the Roman Empire. There is a fourth level which historians like Toynbee

have tried to write and that is to see the Purpose of history – where's it going?

Is it just a matter of patterns, or is there a purpose being fulfilled through the centuries?

Is something going on, is there a plot, is there some clear end in view?

Well now, there are two answers to that last question - is there a purpose in history?

On the one hand, there are those who say there's no purpose; history is going nowhere, it's

going round in circles, everything happens again. Have you heard the popular proverb

'history repeats itself'? That's what we call the cyclical view of history, that

it's getting nowhere, it's just going round, and round, and round and you have good times

and bad times and good times and bad times and empires rise and fall, and history's going

nowhere - it's going in a circle. On the other hand, that's a human view of

history but the divine view of history is that it's a linear purpose rather than a cyclical.

In other words, history is going somewhere. It's travelling in only one direction from

the past, through the present, to the future. And this is the view of history in the Bible

and history is a line, it's linear, it's got purpose; it has a beginning, a middle

and an end and God is moving history to his planned ending. And therefore history is his

story and he's writing it. Now it's interesting that whenever in the

Bible people got away from God, this was the pattern that resulted, and if you've read

Judges you know that it's just one cycle after another; and the same thing happens again

and again, actually seven times in the book of Judges, the same story happens again, because

they had got away from the Lord. And in fact individual lives are the same - away from

the Lord, life is a roundabout: you get up, you go to work, you come home, you watch telly,

you go to bed, you get up, you go to work, you come home, you watch telly and you go

on doing that for forty years and then you retire and die and you get off just where

you got on, life's been a roundabout, a cycle and it's got nowhere. Whereas when you're

in line with God, your life has a purpose and it's going somewhere. It's a line again

- do you follow me? Now since in the book of Judges people had

got away from God and were disobedient to God and were not obeying Leviticus and the

other laws of Moses, life became cyclical - a roundabout, and things just happened again

and again and again. With the book of Ruth, on the other hand, the line becomes the main

thing and it ends with a royal line that is fulfilling God's purpose.

So, is life a cycle or a line for you - circle or a line? Depends on whether you're in touch

with the Lord. And that's one of the big things that redemption does for you. It gets

you off the roundabout and gets you on to a line that's going somewhere and that you're

part of a purpose that's being worked out in history. Well now, originally the book

of Judges and the book of Ruth were one book and still are in the Hebrew Bible. That's

very important because they belong together - they are really one book. And we're going

to ask who wrote this one book and why? Because in fact the most important question about

any book in the Bible you can ask is, why was that book written? And once you've got

the answer to that, you've got the biggest key to unlock it - why was that book written?

So why was this single Hebrew book Judges/Ruth written, and who wrote it, and when? And astonishingly,

we can answer these questions exactly, even though the answers are not given in either

book; but we've got to do a little detective work.

Now the tragedy is - we'll begin with Judges - and the tragedy is that most people only

have a Sunday school knowledge of the book of Judges. Do you know what I mean by that?

They only know the Bowdlerized version. Now that maybe a verb unfamiliar to you. Bowdler

was a famous man who didn't approve of William Shakespeare because he said, there are naughty

bits in Shakespeare. So he actually revised Shakespeare and cut out all the naughty bits

and it was known as the Bowdlerized version and his name has gone down in history. Well

I'm afraid you can't teach judges as a whole in Sunday school. It's full of pretty horrid

things of concubines and prostitutes being cut up into pieces and rape and murder and

phallic symbols. No wonder they edited it very carefully for Sunday school teaching.

And I'm afraid when you do that, you finish up only knowing about the personalities - you

don't know the book. That's typical. There's a comic of Samson, and actually he didn't

look like that at all he looked more like me. I mean if Samson had looked like that,

do you think Delilah would have said, what is the secret of your great strength? I mean

actually he had a very small physique. His strength did not lie in his biceps, he wasn't

Atlas or Mr. World or whatever, but we were given these in Sunday school - you know the

kind of thing. And lurid stories of his adventures, suitably Bowdlerized of course. But unfortunately,

that's the level at which most people know the book of Judges. They know about Samson,

they know about Gideon; if they're feminists, they know all about Deborah these days, but

we're getting a bit stuck now for some of the names of the others and that's a great

pity because it's not just a book of personalities. It's not just a book of Sunday school stories

or of folk tales - not fairy tales - folk tales; but they no doubt went through the

stages of folk tales - they were remembered, then repeated, then recorded and most of the

Bible came that way, as things were remembered and then retold and repeated and then somebody

put them down with pen and ink and they became recorded for us.

Well now, of the heroes and personalities in the book of Judges, it's really quite unbalanced.

For example, Samson has four chapters all to himself, Gideon has three, but some of

these others only get a little mention and it seems that the more sensational they were

the more mention they got, it's almost a tabloid newspaper record. Deborah and Barak had quite

a bit, Gideon had more so I've given him 2 stars, and Samson had most so I've given

him 3 stars. And the first impression is that it was simply folk heroes like Nelson and

Wellington – you know, people who've saved the situation. When you run through them,

what an odd crowd they are. This is Caleb's younger brother, and we're only told that

he brought peace to his people for 40 years, and that's about all we know about him.

Ehud was a very colourful character; he was left handed and he used to carry his eighteen-inch

blade sword strapped to his right leg and people who frisked you frisked your left leg

because that was where a right- hander would pull the sword from. So rather cunningly,

he carried it in his left trouser leg and he could pull it out pretty sharply. And he

went to the king of Moab and said, I've got a message for you and it's a very private

message, so send everybody out of the room. And the king of Moab was very, very fat and

when everybody had left the room, Ehud pulled out his sword - they'd frisked his right leg

but not his left, and he'd still got the sword - and he plunges it in to the king of Moab's

belly, who was so fat that the fat closed over the sword and Ehud's hand. A most edifying

tale this - and then having killed the king of Moab, he went out and he told the guards,

the king has gone to relieve himself, so he says, don't trouble him for the next fifteen

minutes - and thus got back safely to Israel. What on earth is that doing in the Bible?

Shamgar, well he killed 600 Philistines with an ox goad - bully for him! Then Deborah - Deborah

and Barak - and Deborah was a prophetess; her name means 'busy bee' and she was

married to a man called Flash - otherwise known as Lappidoth in Hebrew - and she would

settle disputes by hearing from the Lord. But when the big battle came, she did not

lead the people of God into battle, she called on Barak, a man to do that. He was not a man

and he said, I'm not going into the front line unless you come with me - because it

is the custom in Israeli army for the senior officer to lead his troops in battle - still

true of the Israeli army - which is why they lose so many officers when they fight. It's

the only army - British army is a little different and the Americans and the others. But there,

Barak said, I'll only lead in front if you'll come with me which would have exposed her

to danger and because of that, God was angry and said that the enemy Sisera would fall

to the hand of a woman to humiliate Barak in his cowardice and of course Sisera died

of surprise - such a thing had never entered his head before. And I'm just seeing if you've

read it, and if you haven't, go and read it and you'll find out why I said that.

Gideon - this fearful man - he put some meat on an altar and fire from heaven burns up

the meat and then he says, Lord I need a sign from heaven. I mean it's almost laughable,

that having had fire of heaven burn up meat in front of his eyes, he wants a sign. So

he asks for a fleece. A friend of mine in New Zealand, one night… he was invited to

consider being a missionary in Malaysia and he said, Lord I need a fleece. When he came

down the next morning, here was a sheepskin on top of his car in the drive covered in

dew and he has not, to this day, found out who put it there. None of the neighbours put

it there. He's never asked for a fleece again. But I meet so many Christians who say,

I'm asking for a fleece. Are you really? Well he's the only man I've ever known who got

one apart from Gideon, but Gideon got his sign with the fleece that was dry one day

and wet the next. But he had to learn that it's by God's strength and strategy that battles

are won and you remember that God reduced his army from 200,000 to 300 so that Gideon

would learn not to put his trust in human resources.

Just out of interest, you remember he sorted them out by bringing them to a stream and

seeing whether they lapped or not, that's the Spring of Hared where he took them. I

want you to imagine hundreds of Israeli soldiers stooping down. Those who put their heads down

to the water and licked, were rejected and those who cupped the water in their hands

and lifted it, so they could still keep an eye open for the enemy, they were chosen;

and ultimately got down to 300. By the way, that's where Deborah and Barak gathered their

troops on the top of Mount Tabor and this is the area where Sisera and his troops were.

It's a marshy area and their chariots got stuck in the mud and Sisera fled on foot,

but that's where it happened. It's a real education to go to the Holy Land (and Chris

Hill is the ideal person to take you).

Well now, let's go on. Who'd we got up to? Passed Gideon. Tola; Jair - Thirty sons, donkeys

and towns he had - interesting! Jephthah, the Head of Gilead, that's all we know about

him. And then Ibzan, he had thirty daughters and thirty sons, and all his sons married

outside the clan of Judah - and he belonged to Bethlehem. Now there's an interesting

little note, I want you to remember that. This family in Bethlehem married outside the

clan - still within Israel, but outside the tribe.

That's going to come up again a bit later when we get to Ruth. Then there was Elon,

we know nothing about him. Abdon had forty sons, thirty grandsons and seventy donkeys!

That makes seventy children and seventy donkeys. And then we come to Samson whose name was

Sunshine - that's what Samson means. And Sunshine was brought up a Nazirite. I was once preaching

on him and I said he wasn't allowed to take alcohol, and somebody in the audience shouted

Hallelujah! And I said, and he had to let his hair grow long - and there was dead silence!

And I said, why do you just approve of part of the word of God? But he was a Nazirite