A great deal gets said these days about leadership. It is not hard to find a load of books about how to be a good leader—whether that's a good leader in politics, a good leader in education, a good leader in business. There is a huge publishing industry in what makes a good leader, what kind of people should we appoint to positions of leadership, what characteristics are shown in good leadership, and what is an abuse of leadership.
That is true as well of Christian leadership. There are a huge number of books written to discuss what kind of church leadership is good and healthy, who would make a good church leader, and when would a church leader be abusing their position if they behave in particular ways.
That is the subject for us this morning. The story before us is a tragic story. It is, in every sense, a tragedy. It is a violent story, and the cruelty and pain within it is truly terrible. If you have a sensitive disposition and you've not watched too many of the wrong types of films to desensitise you, it is hard to hear this story and not feel some of the feelings of: why is this even in the Bible? It is so atrocious and awful.
Just two things if that's how you're feeling at this point. The first is: let me make the problem worse before I make it better. Keep reading the book of Judges—there is worse to come.
But the other thing to say is to remind us that these stories are not here because they are examples. The Bible contains records of all kinds of things that are done, and we can find within the pages of these stories God's assessment of the things that the people are recorded as doing. In this case, God's assessment is not one of commending it to us. God is not telling us to go away and emulate the kind of behaviour that is here. He is, in fact, warning us about the things that are here—not just saying "don't do it", but "this is the kind of thing that happens if you make certain disastrous decisions yourself and as a society".
So this is not here as an example—it is there as a warning for us to learn from, as God will tell us how to evaluate these terrible and painful deeds.
To help you see how tragic this story is, let me just show you how this story is deliberately breaking the cycle that we've come to expect in the book of Judges. If you've been with us over the past—I think this is number seven now—so the past six Sundays or some of them, we've observed that within the book of Judges the story goes around a cycle whereby the people disobey God and serve other gods. God disciplines them by putting them under the hands of a foreign nation that mistreats them. The people cry out to God for mercy, and God raises up a deliverer, a judge, who spares the people and frees them. And all is well while the judge is alive. But then the judge dies, the cycle begins again—only worse than before.
That's the normal cycle in the book of Judges. But in two key ways, the story here is different—it breaks the normal pattern.
Normally, all is well during the previous judge's life, and only when the judge dies do things fall apart. Whereas we read here that even while Gideon is still alive, the people are prostituting themselves to a false god. The problem has begun even before Gideon's death.
And then the other way in which the cycle gets broken is that here the enemy is not a foreign power. It's not the Philistines, it's not the Moabites, it's not the Amorites. The person causing the problem, from whom they need to be delivered, is a man called Abimelek, who is a fellow Israelite.
So seeing how the tragedy is almost starting to overtake the previous story finishing—and it's from within the borders of Israel that the problems are coming—helps us to see just how awful this story is, and how we're meant to see it that way.
So what we're going to do this morning—let me just give you a little road map for our time together. I'm going to, first of all, give you the headline message: what this story is here to teach. I'm going to unpack that message and show you where it comes from in the story, and then we will draw out the lessons for today.
So here is the headline message from today's passage:
God protects His people from leaders who bully and think they're kings.
Let's unpack that:
Leaders who think they're kings.
Let's start with Gideon. Gideon is invited to take the role of king: "Rule over us—you, your son, and your grandson." And then the one thing in this story Gideon gets right—he says, "That's not my job. You have a king. Your king is God."
But then it's unclear whether he actually refused, or whether he was just sort of saying, "Oh no, no, no—I couldn't do that," before doing it anyway. Because what he goes on to do is to be treated like a king.
So, for example, he has a huge amount of gold given to him. That's what a king would do after battle—"Let's gather all the soldiers and go on, give me one trinket each, my portion." We're told that he had enough wives to father seventy sons—and assuming biology was the same back then, presumably a similar number of daughters: 140 kids. He had enough wives to do that.
Well, again, in the ancient Near East at that time, that would be a mark of kingship—to have a huge number of wives like that. And then he has one extra son through a woman who is not his wife, and he names that son Abimelek. Abimelek means my father is king.
That's not a great name to give your son if you're trying to protest that you're not a king.
So certainly he behaves how kings behaved. And in fact, if you read Deuteronomy 17, in which God tells the people of Israel before they enter the land what kinds of people they should appoint to be kings, it says they must not have much gold and they mustn't take many wives. So he's actually disqualified himself from being a king by the way that he's behaved.
So protest he might, but he set himself up to be a king—and a bad one at that.
And then there's this ephod. The ephod was not a statue, it was not an idol—it was an item of clothing. Ordinarily, an ephod would be a kind of a linen undergarment, a bit like a vest tabard. But in this case, his ephod's made of gold—which means what he's done is made a copy of the garment that would be worn exclusively by the high priest when the high priest entered the sanctuary to meet with God on behalf of the people.
And Gideon has made himself a clone of that. What he's saying is: me and my family—you've got a shrine, you can go to the tabernacle, you can go and meet with the priests from the tribe of Levi, they'll look after you—or come to me. And I will meet with God for you. I'll represent you before God. I'll give you God's guidance and wisdom. You want to know what God thinks about your life? You want wise decisions? You don't need to go to the priests. Come to me. I'm an alternative priest for you. Here's a rival shrine.
So here's Gideon—a man who wants to be king, and indeed priest.
And then there's Abimelek. Abimelek approaches the citizens of Shechem, where he lives. He stirs up the trouble, and he sows in their mind the thought that maybe Gideon's seventy sons are going to come and try and take over. Well, that was never in their mind, but the doubt is sown. And he says, "Wouldn't you rather have a single king who's one of you than seventy strangers from somewhere else come and rule?" And they go, "Actually, now you mention it, that wouldn't be a bad idea."
So he thinks he's king as well—leaders who think they're kings. He thinks he's a king, but he isn't.
You see, he rules from a distance. One of the things you notice in this story is things are forever being reported to Abimelek. Something happened in Shechem, and it was told to Abimelek. Why did he have to be told? Because he wasn't there. He lived in a place called Aruma—we don't know where that is, but it was somewhere else. So regularly, something would happen, and, "Oh, go and tell Abimelek. He'd want to know." He's an absentee landlord who wanted the status of a king, but without the actual responsibility—feet-on-the-ground responsibility of doing anything. He just wanted the taxes and the reputation.
And actually, at best he's a tribal ruler. If you look at chapter 9 verse 22, we're told: "After Abimelek had governed Israel for three years"—not ruled. He didn't rule as king—that's a different word. No, no—he was just a governor.
You see, he thinks he's a king, but he's a tinpot little ruler who can't even be bothered to live in his own city. It would be like Her Majesty the Queen deciding she wants to be the ruler of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the Spanish coast and occasionally—"Could you send a message? Her Majesty might like to know what's happening." "Oh, that's interesting."
See, he thinks he's a king—but he isn't.
And it's terribly ugly today when Christian leaders want to be treated with the dignity of kingship. They want to be paid like kings. They want the recognition of kingship—the reputation of being well known and much loved Christian leaders. They want to be indispensable. "If you want to know the Lord's will, come and talk to me. I'll put my ephod on. I'll tell you what God says. I'll be your guide." Christian leaders who want to have the status, the reputation—it does happen.
And it's as ugly now as it was then.
Leaders who think they're kings.
Leaders who bully.
So here's Abimelek. He takes money from Shechem, of all places, in which to perform this horrendous act. If you want to know why Shechem is full of irony, talk to the youth, because they had the director's cut extended scenes version of this —oh, all right then, look at Joshua 24 later, see what they did there in the same place, and figure it out.
But yeah, money from Shechem, okay. And then they use the money to buy muscle from Shechem—that lovely phrase, "reckless scoundrels." Tremendous language. And what do they do with the muscle that the money bought? He kills his 70 half-brothers on a single stone. Ugh.
So you're thinking Lion King, aren't you? Thinking kind of—it's a dusty, arid climate, huge rock somewhere. Only instead of having a lion kind of singing songs from the top of it, one after another, all 70 are annihilated. But they missed one, and we'll come back to Jotham later.
Leaders who think they're kings today are pretty ugly. These who bully today are also pretty ugly. When the focus is on our own reputation, when we gather people around us who will make us look good, bolster the leader—but when you feel threatened, when those people that are your support become a threat to you, you completely change. You abandon them. You cut them loose. In fact, you get rid of them as quickly as you hired them, because then you need somebody else who will make you look great.
Leaders who are bad-tempered, who are volatile, who fear being shown up for a fraud, and who just manipulate the views of people around them continually so that everybody thinks they're wonderful—no matter what carnage that bullying creates—that is also ugly. And it does also happen. And I would be very surprised if at least one or two people in this room haven't been on the receiving end of that at some point in the Christian churches and circles that we've moved in.
Leaders who think they're kings. Leaders who bully. But then the other half of the sentence—God protects His people.
God protects his people
And He does it starting with the survival of the youngest. This man Jotham. Remember that Gideon was the youngest in his family. So this is the youngest son of the youngest son. And yet God ensures that he survives so that he can ascend his pulpit—a rocky outcrop called Mount Gerizim, just to the north of the city of Shechem—from which he can shout down to the city his fable.
It's a bit like Aesop's Fables. It's sort of a colourful story in which the trees want to appoint themselves a king. None of the trees that are any good want the job. They're all too busy just being useful to be distracted by this appeal for kingship. But finally, the bramble says, "I'll do it."
Right, and here's the thing—the bramble offers shade. Now, this particular kind of bramble, what it does, a bit like our brambles actually, is it sends out runners that just creep along the ground. But remember—dry, dusty climate, so sandy soil with not much growing on it. These dry branches that snake—they're not farmers' nightmare—that snake their way across the semi-desert and make it very hard to plough and process. They were lethal. If you had a forest fire, what would happen is the flames would just lick across these branches and set big tall trees on fire. They were a real nuisance at every possible level. The one thing they would not do is offer anybody any shade. They lived at ground height. All they can do is catch fire and wound you. And yet they offer to be king. And the idiots—the other trees—go, "Yeah, we'll have you." I don't know what they expect to happen from this.
Well, Jotham says that he—and the Lord God—has seen. The narrator makes clear that this is a prophecy from God, whether Jotham is clear of that or not. That it's not gone unnoticed what's been done. It's not gone unnoticed that there is absolutely no integrity in appointing Abimelek to be the king.
There's this little phrase that gets repeated in verse 16 and verse 19: "Have you acted honourably and in good faith by making Abimelek king?" No. Or verse 19: "So have you acted honourably and in good faith towards Abimelek"—that's Gideon by another name—"and his family?" No.
God sees. And God knows that there is no integrity in what these people have just done. And therefore, his prediction is that both the city of Shechem and Abimelek, the ruler, will destroy each other. And it is fire that will do it. God protects His people.
So the prophecy has been spoken. And now all God has to do—God's very absent from this story—all God has to do is the tiniest tweak, and then evil will unravel itself.
Understand this about evil—it is inherently unstable. It will eat itself, given the chance. All God has to do is just tweak it slightly, and it goes. That's because if you take Shechem and Abimelek, two parties who are united only in the fact that they were deceitful and treacherous towards Gideon, it's only going to be a matter of time before they turn on each other. And that's exactly what happened.
So all God has to do is one little thing. In verse 23, "God stirred up animosity between Abimelek and the citizens of Shechem"—literally, He caused there to be bad breath between them. And a little bit of bad breath between them, and down again like dominoes.
Dominoes. Little wooden blocks with spots on the side. You can play a game arranging them, or you can stand them up and make a kind of great big line of them. And if you really want to go to town, you can build little bridges and ramps and this huge thing with thousands of dominoes. And having taken weeks setting it up, you just flick the one at the end and watch them all.
If you do that, leave little gaps every 20 or so dominoes, so that if you accidentally set it off, you don't destroy the whole thing before you start. And all God does with His little bit of bad breath is just flick the domino. And the rest just goes. The rest is history.
So the bad breath is there. The people of the city want to cause trouble for their absentee leader. So they start setting ambushes on the roads. Shechem was at a key crossroads across the Palestinian-Israel countryside. Lots of stuff would get carried across that area, and so he got lots of taxes. So they deliberately put ambushes that would rob the trade routes, so that Abimelek couldn't get his taxes and he looked like a fool who couldn't even defend his own next door—his own back garden.
And then what happens is this guy moves into the city. They all get drunk one night at harvest time. And when he's drunk, he's got mouth. So Gaal's going, "Ah, get rid of Abimelek, I'll be a better ruler." And they go, "Oh, not a bad idea." So the idea is sown.
Zebul, who was Abimelek's actual man on the ground, he's cross—probably only because he's been accused of being nothing other than a puppet. So he gives a little tip to Abimelek: come in the middle of the night, lie in wait, attack the city while they're not ready, and it will be destroyed. And he gets Gaal—lovely story there.
So get here and Gaal go and stand in the city with their morning coffee, watching the sun come up. And out are coming all of Abimelek's troops. And Gaal goes, "What's that? Is that people coming towards the city?" And Zebul goes, "Should have gone to Specsavers. They're just shadows." "Oh," he says, "hang on a minute—those are definitely people." And he goes, "Ha! Now where's your gobby mouth? Go on, get the army out, sort them out!" They're unprepared, and Abimelek chases them out and is banished from the city.
And the people then all think, "Okay, it's all right, Gaal gone, back to work, back to normal." Next day, they all go out to work in the fields as normal. But no. Abimelek is a man on a vengeance. He is a narcissistic tyrant, remember. So he won't settle for this.
So he comes in a second time. He cuts off their return to the city, sends some companies of soldiers to kill the men in the fields while killing all the people inside the city, and then tears down the entire city and symbolically puts some salt on it to say, "Nothing will ever happen here again."
And that's the city of Shechem destroyed.
Except, there was a stronghold. And we can't tell from the story whether it's another place down the road called the Tower of Shechem, or the stronghold in the middle of the city. But the leaders gather in the tower. So he gets his mates. They go up Mount Zalmon, which is a hill the other side of the city from Mount Gerizim. They gather lots of brushwood, they prop it up against the tower, and they set light to it. And a thousand people are killed in the fire.
Then he thinks, Okay, I'm on a roll. Down the road there's another city called Thebez—let's have a go and try the same trick with that one. Except, while he's kindling his fire, a certain woman just happens to lob a really heavy stone out of the tower, just in case it happens to deter things a bit and buy them some time. And it just happens to catch Abimelek right on the skull, and he's mortally wounded. He's not dead, but he knows that word will get out that a woman killed him, and in his mind that would be totally humiliating.
So, a bit like King Saul a bit later on in the story, he gets to his armour-bearer and says, Go on, kill me now, because otherwise the alternative is worse. And he's gone. And then everyone just goes home. It's extraordinary.
So verse 55: When the Israelites saw that Abimelek was dead, they went home. Show's over, guys, let's go. Okay. Not one tear was shed. No mention of a funeral, of a "Oh well, that's over," off we go—end of story.
Here's the thing. So just flick the domino—you see, it just plays out. But God did it. Not only did he flick the domino, but the narrator tells us at the end, verse 56:
Thus God repaid the wickedness that Abimelek had done to his father by murdering his seventy brothers. God also made the people of Shechem pay for all their wickedness. The curse of Jotham, son of Jerub-Baal, came on them.
This was God’s doing. That stone that just happened to land in the right place—God is providentially in control. He can make sure that a stone lands exactly where he wants. This was God’s doing, even if his presence is in the background.
That woman with the stone might remind you of Jael. Remember Jael, the woman? Yeah. So Sisera, the commander of the army of whichever nation it was, is fleeing, wrapped up in his blanket so he's all warm and snug after his battle. He thinks he's safe. And Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, gets the tent peg and hammers it through his temple.
Isn't that funny? In Judges we keep getting tyrants killed as women destroy their skulls. What is it—twice now? It is the last time that will happen. It's all right if you don't like that. Okay, it's not going to happen again. It's okay, we've got the last one.
But there is a reason for this, and it's to do with Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. Adam and Eve have sinned. God curses the serpent. God curses the woman. God curses the man.
Here's what God says to the serpent (Genesis 3:14):
“Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
The glimmer of hope in the Garden of Eden is that one day, the descendant of the snake—the devil—will be destroyed as a descendant of the woman crushes his head. Well, that ultimately is the Lord Jesus, who destroys all evil as he dies on the cross.
But it is no accident that women in particular are delivering us from tyrants by crushing their heads, because it's showing us that one day the Lord Jesus will come back and will crush Satan under our feet. So for now, we have the destruction of one leader by his... in his head... in anticipation of that total deliverance.
God protects his people from leaders who think they're kings and who bully.
Let’s draw out the lessons for us today. Three lessons:
First lesson: Don't be that leader.
Don't be that leader. This is a hard passage to study and prepare to preach as someone who is in a position of responsibility in church leadership, because it challenges your motives for entering Christian ministry. It challenges the attitudes with which you lead. It challenges and exposes my desire to be popular and to be liked, and it challenges the extent to which I do what I do to serve others rather than myself.
It is hard to study this without feeling profoundly challenged. But I'm not the only person here in positions of leadership. Some of you will be in leadership at work. Some of you will be in positions of leadership in this church. We develop everyone's gifts here so they can serve—including leadership gifts. There are people leading in ministry teams, leading in life groups, leading with children, leading with youth. There is leadership in this room being exercised in this church, and we all need to feel the challenge not to be that leader.
One day, some of you may take on pastoral responsibility, helping to lead a whole Christian church somewhere. God may one day cause some of you to do that. Don’t be that leader.
Second lesson: Don't create that leader either
Bad leaders need other people if they are to do harm. They need Christians to appoint them to positions. And once they're in post, they need others to bolster their position and to remove those around them who threaten it. Without other people colluding with bad leadership, bad leadership could do no harm.
So don't create the kind of leader we find here either.
There have been a number of stories come out over the past 10 years or so of large churches where it turns out the leadership has been abusive and bullying and domineering. But in every case, that has only been possible because there have been plenty within that church who have loved the style of leadership being offered and have been glad to support it.
So don't collude. Don’t create it.
If you look at this passage, you will see in verse 24: God did this in order that the crime against Abimelek’s seventy sons—the shedding of their blood—might be avenged on their brother Abimelek and on the citizens of Shechem who had helped him murder his brothers, literally “who strengthened his hand.”
It is hard enough for leaders to resist the temptation to think, It's all about me. That’s hard to resist without others wanting those leaders to be kings like the nations around us have—and therefore encouraging it.
So please pray for your leaders. We need it. Thank you, Christine, for praying for us this morning. Please pray for us. Please remember that we have clay feet, and don’t put us on a pedestal that we cannot deliver. And please hold us accountable. Ask us hard questions, and make sure that we do not become the kind of leader that is here.
Third lesson: Don't forget your Saviour
Don’t forget your Saviour. This is where it all went wrong. They forgot that they already had a Lord who had delivered them.
Judges 8:34: “They did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.”
And they also failed to show any loyalty to the family of Jerub-Baal—that is, Gideon. So their disloyalty to Gideon is all wrapped up with their forgetting that the Lord God—and indeed Gideon—were their deliverers.
If you forget what God did, if you forget that God is your rescuer, then you cease to value his leadership. And the one we need to follow is the one who saved us.
We have a perfect Saviour. So follow him as your King. Don’t forget your Saviour.
And the final lesson for today:
Jesus is the perfect King
He's not only our Saviour—he’s the King. Unlike Abimelek, he doesn’t just think he is—he is.
See, they were wrong to seek a king because they already had one. The Lord God was their king. And we already have one. But unlike Abimelek, with Jesus it’s not all about him. He came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
Jesus doesn’t bully. A bruised reed he does not break. Jesus is no tyrant. Jesus acts—always, remember that phrase—honourably and in good faith. Jesus is the shepherd who loved his sheep so much that he laid down his life for his sheep. And so, as his sheep, we know his voice and we follow him.
So if you are weary of abusive leaders who tread down others to make themselves look great—if you’ve discovered that sometimes we get it in the church as well (and we do; and Judges 8 and 9 shows us that we do, because this is the people of God experiencing this kind of leadership from within)—if that is a reality that you are aware of, and you're weary of it, then Judges 8 and 9 shows us that God is in control.
We have the perfect leader. The perfect rescuer. The perfect king. He will protect his church from the wrong kind of leader. This story, terrible though it was, only had three years to run. And then God reined it in. "That's enough, we'll stop that now."
God will protect the church from the wrong kind of leader. God will protect the church from you—from me—if he needs to. He will protect his church.
And he calls us to trust him. He calls us to follow him. And we will find rest for our souls.