EP. 042 Abimelech’s Conspiracy

Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located

in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship

Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,

discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church

and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bigford and I will be your

host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing

to you and bring you closer to God. Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House

Salmon Arm podcast. My name is David Bigford. I'm the pastor here in Salmon Arm and today's

message that I have put together is called, Abimelech's Conspiracy, the Murderous Son

of Gideon. As we jump into this message today, the text that we're going to be working through

is our launching pad, Judges 9 verses 1 through 6. If you're following along, you can go

Judges 9:1–6

ahead and turn there. I wanted to first start off with an illustration on humility. An elderly

minister who survived the great Johnston flood of 1889 loved to regale audiences with tales

of that harrowing event. When he died and went to heaven, he found himself in a meeting

of the saints who were sharing their life experiences. He took St. Peter aside and asked

if he could tell about surviving the Johnston flood. Peter hesitated, then said, well, you

can tell your story, but just keep in mind that Brother Noah will be in the audience.

So then David Jeremiah writes, there's something in our human flesh that loves to tempt us

to talk about ourselves, how big, tall, great, smart, wealthy or wise we are, even how humble

we are. But God has this way of helping us learn that we're not quite what we would like

others to believe. In fact, to prompt a little humility on us, he tells us that our great

deeds are like filthy rags in Isaiah 64 6. It's not that God doesn't want us to be lifted

up, it's just that he wants to exalt us his way, not the world's way. He wants us to see

that our greatness is because of Christ's greatness, not because of ours. So next time

you're tempted to talk about yourself, look around the room and see who God might have

in that place. I like this illustration for many reasons, but the biggest reason I do

is because I give a lot of speeches and sermons and different things, but even in the course

of the week, I work in sales as well. So you're giving presentations and you always have to

remember to keep humility because you don't know who the audience is or their background,

especially in the very beginning stages when you're just building rapport. You don't know

who you're talking to. You don't know the experiences they've lived through, their successes,

their triumphs. And so it's very, it's very smart to remain humble so that you don't make

a fool of yourself. In our text in chapter 9 verses 1 through 6 of Judges, it reads,

Now Abimelek the son of Jerubbabel went to Shishem to his mother's relative and said

to them and to the whole clan of his mother's family, saying in the ears of the leaders

of Shishem, which is better for you that all 70 of the sons of Jerubbabel rule over you

or that one rule over you. Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh. And his mother's

relative spoke all these words on his behalf and the ears of the leaders of Shishem and

their hearts inclined to follow Abimelek for they said, he is our brother. And they gave

him 70 pieces of silver out of the houses of Baal-Pareth with which Abimelek hired

worthless and reckless fellows who followed him. And he went to his father's house at

Ofra and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbabel, 70 men on one stone. But Jotham the youngest

of the sons of Jerubbabel was left for he had hid himself. And all the leaders of Shishem

came together and all Beth-Miloh and they went and made Abimelek king by the oak of

the pillar in Shishem. So to understand the story of Abimelek it's important to know

where he started. Abimelek stands out as one of the many sons of Gideon. The story of Gideon

reads like an action movie. Gideon plays the role of an unlikely hero who rises to the

challenge against all odds to accomplish what most thought to be impossible. After the events

of Gideon we are introduced to Abimelek. Abimelek, one of Gideon's sons, served as a judge of

Israel following the judgeship of Gideon. He's first mentioned in Judges 8, 30, and 31 where

he read, Gideon had 70 sons of his own, for he had many wives. His concubine, who lived

in Shishem, also bore him a son whom he named Abimelek. There was a serious issue with Abimelek.

He was not made of the same stuff as his father Gideon. The story of Gideon starts with God's

calling of Gideon and the name that he was called was Mighty Warrior. This proclamation

is amazing because Gideon was not a mighty warrior at the time of God's declaration.

He was living in a spiritually backslidden nation and family. God instructed him to tear

down his family's altar to Baal in the Asherah poles. He threshed wheat while hiding in a

wine press so that the Midianites would not see him and take the wheat. Gideon describes

himself like this in Judges 6, 15, My clan is the weakest of all the clans in Manasseh

and I am the least of my family. So we see that God often chooses to use the lowly to

raise up and that is what he did with Gideon. But Abimelek was not Gideon. He was a lot

more like the leaders that we see in the world today and throughout history.

So this brings me to my first point which is Abimelek's murderous rise. Gideon had

rejected the kingship officially in Judges 8, 23 but Abimelek desired it for himself.

He hated his half-brothers possibly because he was the son of a concubine rather than

the son of Gideon's wives. Shechem was one of the older city states in Canaan. The Canaanites

were its primary inhabitants and as we can see from this story the Canaanite people of

Shechem seemed to have been more open to having a king over them than the Israelites as we

read in our text in Judges 9, 6. As a local boy as well as the son of Gideon, the famous

military leader, the Shechemites favored accepting Abimelek as their king. Even when Gideon's

shortcomings he had the right understanding of God's sovereignty over Israel. In Judges

8, 22-23 it says,

Then the men of Israel said to Gideon,

Rule over us, you and your sons and your grandsons also, for you have saved us from the hand

of Midian. Gideon said to them, I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over

you. The Lord will rule over you.

So Abimelek on the other hand leaves the Lord out of the picture entirely. It would seem

that Abimelek felt that Gideon's other sons were ambitious and wanted to be king too.

There's no indication in the text that any of them felt this way. He was perhaps projecting

his feelings on them, which is often true of ambitious people. Overly ambitious people

can sometimes become paranoid as Abimelek did as well as King Saul later on. Abimelek

was able to secure some popular and financial support by politicking. He hired some assistants

who promoted him and probably helped him to assemble and assassinate 69 of his 70 brothers

that we read about in Judges 9, 5.

He executed this slaughter on one stone, the Bible tells us, suggesting a well-planned

mass murder. We can compare and contrast the similar story of Jehu's slaughter of Ahab's

sons in 2 Kings 10. It is important to see how the departure from God, the inclusion

of idolatry, and the pride that rises up in man can result in this kind of hatred and

violence. The men of Shechem would have known about Abimelek's slaughter of his brothers

before they had even made him king. It could even be that Abimelek's violent behavior

enhanced his value in their eyes. Beth-Milla was the synodal in Shechem, the most heavily

fortified part of the town. The writer also called it the Tower of Shechem and may have

been the fortress temple of Baal-Pareth. We know from Judges 8, 33-35 that as soon as

Gideon died, the Israelites went right back to idol worship. In Judges 8, 33-35 it actually

reads, As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and hoarded after the

Baals and made Baal-Pareth their god. And the people of Israel did not remember the

Lord their god, who had delivered them from the hand of all their enemies on every side.

They did not show steadfast love to the family of Jerubbabel, that is Gideon, and returned

for all the good that he had done to Israel. The inhabitants of Shechem, the worshippers

of Baal-Pareth, carried out the election of Abimelek as king in the very same place in

which Joshua had held the last national assembly and had renewed the covenant of Israel with

Jehovah, the true covenant god. It was there in all this probability that the temple of

Baal-Pareth was to be found, namely according to Judges 9, 46, near the Tower of Shechem

or the Citadel of Milo. Abimelek was the first person ever to be crowned king in Israel,

as far as the text records show. He started a trend that carried on for all of the Israelite

kings. I find this story interesting in part because of the historical synergy. I find

it with this kind of rise to power. In the Ottoman Empire and many other Muslim Sultanates,

it was a common practice for the new Sultan to take power, and by the law, once they had

consolidated their grip, they had to have all their brothers executed. The method that

was ordained in the Muslim Sultanates was that they had to be executed by way of strangulation

with a silk cord. I think it's pretty interesting, this murderous thought process that exists

throughout our own history, throughout the world's history, that was present in this

portion of scripture in the history of the Bible. Before Abimelek's rise to power, his

sole surviving brother went into hiding. He protested against Abimelek and predicted the

effect of his rule. Jotham stood on the same mountain where six of the Israelite tribes

had declared the blessings of abiding by the law of God and denouncing the Shechemites

for their foolish and wicked actions. The contrast between the Israelite communities

are commitments in Joshua 8 and 24, and this passage must be one reason the writer includes

Abimelek's story in Judges. Jotham's fable was a parable with a moral, and it's generally

recognized as the first parable in the Bible. It reads in Judges 9, 7-21 like this, When

it was told to Jotham, he went and stood on the top of Mount Gerizium and cried aloud

and said to them, Listen to me, you leaders of Shechem, that God may listen to you. The

trees once went out to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, Rain

over us. But the olive tree said to them, I shall leave my abundance, by which gods

and men are honored, and go hold sway over the trees. And the tree said to the fig tree,

You come and rain over us. But the fig tree said to them, Shall I leave my sweetness and

my good fruit, and go hold sway over the trees? And the tree said to the vine, You come and

rain over us. But the vine said to them, Shall I leave my wine, that cheers God and men,

and go hold sway over the trees? Then all the trees said to the bramble, You come and

rain over us. And the bramble said to the trees, If in good faith you are anointing

me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade. But if not, let fire come out

of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Now therefore, if you act in good faith and

integrity when you made Abimelek king, and if you have dealt with Jerubabal in his house,

and have done him as his deeds deserved, for my father fought for you and risked his life

and delivered you from the hands of the 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 Abimelek

the son of his female servant, king over the leaders of Shechem, or Shechem, because he

is your relative. If you then have acted in good faith and integrity with Jerubabal, and

with his house this day, then rejoice in Abimelek, and let him also rejoice in you. But if not,

let fire come out of Abimelek and devour the leaders of Shechem and Beth-Miloh, and let

fire come out from the leaders of Shechem and from Beth-Miloh and devour Abimelek, and

Jotham ran away and fled and went to Beer and lived there because Abimelek his brother.

This indictment of Abimelek was sure to follow. We see in our own society the rise and fall

of many who hope to be great men. Even in our current day, the politics that we see

taking place every day in our lives, we see men and women who grasp for power only to

achieve it and then fail in disgrace. Society has a way of building up their idols only

to subsequently tear them down as soon as they stumble.

This brings me to my next point, which is Abimelek's fall and his disgrace. Abimelek

ruled over Israel and it appears to have been very small in scope as well as short in duration.

He was only the ruler of Shechem and its surrounding territory. He evidently lived at Aruma about

five miles southeast of Shechem. So even though he is the first Israelite king that we hear

about in the Bible, he is usually discounted because he was not ordained to be king nor

did he come from an ancestral line of royalty. There were many bad kings of both Israel and

Judah but Abimelek is mostly forgotten. Some scholars would say Abimelek's government

was not a monarchal reign but simply a tyrannical despotism. God intervened with the rule of

Abimelek by sending an evil spirit to bring contention between Abimelek and the leaders

of Shechem.

In Judges 9, 20, 2, 24 we read the downfall of Abimelek. Abimelek ruled over Israel three

years and God sent an evil spirit between Abimelek and the leaders of Shechem and the

leaders of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelek. That the violence done to the seventy

sons of Jerubbabel might come and their blood be laid on Abimelek, their brother, who killed

them and on the men of Shechem who strengthened his hand to kill his brothers. One of the

leaders, Gael, led an uprising against Abimelek. Gael was evidently a Canaanite who disliked

Abimelek because he was the son of Gideon. He also opposed him because Gideon had both

destroyed the altar of Baal and Ofra and established the worship of God in Israel. Gael, whose

name connects with a Hebrew word meaning loathsome and his father's name means servant, did

not want Abimelek to continue ruling over that part of Canaan. He did not want Shechem

to remain under Abimelek's control either. In the end, Abimelek suffers a major defeat

and is disgraced by the Shechemites. In Judges 9, 50-54 we read, Then Abimelek went to Thebes

and encamped against Thebes and captured it. But there was a strong tower within the city

and all the men and women and all the leaders of the city fled to it and shut themselves

in. They went up to the roof of the tower and Abimelek came to the tower and fought

against it and drew near the door of the tower to burn it with fire. And a certain woman

threw an upper millstone on Abimelek's head and crushed his skull. Then he called quickly

to the young man his armor bearer and said to him, Draw your sword and kill me, lest

they say of me, a woman killed him. And his young man thrust him through and he died.

This brings me to my final point which is our servant king Christ Jesus. The story of

Abimelek ends with a whimper. The tyrant king is killed and his followers fade away. So

as we finish off Judges 9, 55-57 it says, And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelek

was dead, everyone departed his home. Thus God returned to the evil of Abimelek which

he committed against his father and killing his seventy brothers. And God also made all

the evil men of Shechem return on their heads. And upon them came the curse of Jotham the

son of Jerubabal. This story from Judges is powerful to me because we see it repeated

so often through the history of mankind. Abimelek's request to be finished off by his armor bearer

is similar to Saul's later request to avoid dishonor in 1 Samuel 31.4. The careers of

Israel's first self-made king Abimelek and the first divinely designated king Saul end

at a very similar kind of disgrace. Abimelek was an idolater from the beginning and Saul

was rejected by God for disobeying God's explicit commands in 1 Samuel 15. It's interesting

that the men of Israel would follow such a man as Abimelek. It provides a sad commentary

on the moral and spiritual level of God's people at this time and it also draws a picture

for us today. It highlights the fact that mankind can be easily swayed into sin if we

disregard the word of God. This is what incomplete obedience to God's law and compromises that

we can allow into our lives and what it can produce. In the book of Judges we see the

mercy of God at work. We also see the greatest threats of Israel's existence did not come

from the outside. They were not outside enemies that devastated Israel so often. Israel's

most serious enemy has always been and still to this day continues to be the enemy within.

She was and is a nation that appears determined to destroy itself. Only the gracious intervention

of God prevents this from happening. A pattern that seems to emerge from the story of Gideon,

a pivotal turning point in the book of Judges, each major Judges administration concludes

with or is followed by Israelite on Israelite violence. The book of Judges ends in chaos.

So how then do we as Christians look at the book of Judges and this tale of Abimelek?

It goes back to the simplicity of the Shema and the commandments of God. So when we look

at how Jesus paraphrases this we can look at Mark 12, 29-31. Jesus answered and said

the most important is, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall

love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with

all your strength. The second is this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There

is no other commandment greater than these. So on April 18th, 1775 when British soldiers

ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and the others to disperse in the name of George the

Sovereign King of England, Adams responded with, we recognize no sovereign but God and

no king but Jesus. As Christians we need to keep God in his rightful position. God the

Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are to be our everything. That means we do not place

our trust in men and we do not scheme in the hopes of gaining power over our fellow man.

We place our trust in the Lord and we serve our fellow man. I'm going to repeat that.

We place our trust in the Lord, we place our faith in the Lord, everything into the Lord,

and yet we serve our fellow man. Our King is King Jesus and he is a servant King. It

was through his sacrifice that we are able to come to the Father. He is to be our authority,

he is to be our example, he is to be our covering, and he is to be our salvation. God's grace

has been extended to us but we have to receive it and live by it. This brings me to my final

portion of scripture as we close this. It's John 3, 16 through 18. Very well known portion

of scripture.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should

not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn

the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in

him is not condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has

not believed in the name of the only son of God.

With that if I could have every head bowed and every eye closed as we conclude this message

today. Verses 17 and 18 of John 3 I believe get passed over in lieu of the more famous

16. Because everybody likes the idea that God so loved the world that he gave his only

son that whoever believes in him should not perish. Everybody likes that, everybody likes

eternal life. But as we see in verse 17 he didn't send Jesus to condemn the world but

in order to have a way to be saved. But in 18 we get the hook, we get the reality of

the statement that you do have to believe in him in order to not be condemned. You have

to give over your life and allow him to be your sovereign. Because if you're not willing

to do that then you're already condemned because the sin that is in your life and the sin that

is in this world. This is the reality of Jesus. This is what separates Christianity from all

of their faiths. Is that you have to accept that Jesus is the one and only way to receive

eternal life and salvation through grace. So if this message has impacted you maybe

you're not living a life of humility. Maybe you're not living a life in service of others

currently. Maybe you recognize that your ambition is driving you to target your fellow man rather

than to serve your fellow man. Maybe this message is pointing out the fact that your

path, your goals, your desires are causing you to live a life that goes against the word

of God and takes you away from relationship with the Father that actually literally does

condemn you because of your sin. Well then because of this sacrifice that Jesus gave

on the cross in Calvary there is a way to rectify the sin in your own life, the sin

in all of our lives and your past. And that is to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and

Savior and to turn from the sin that tarnishes your life. If this message has spoke to you

and that's you I want you to signify that with an uplifted hand. I can't see it but

God sees everything and he sees your heart at this moment. So if you rose your hand and

you meant it I want you to repeat after me, Dear Lord God, I know that I'm a sinner but

I know that your son Jesus Christ did die for me and I repent which means to turn away

from my sin and I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior as my sovereign and my King.

In Jesus name I pray, Amen. That simple prayer writes your name in the Lamb's Book of Life.

It's a confession of your sin, it's a turning away from your sin and repentance and it is

acceptance of King Jesus. Now as we close this message and we're finished with this

podcast today I just want to thank you for listening this long and if this message impacted

you I'd love it if you could like, share and subscribe to this podcast. It helps us get

this word and this message out to more people. And I just really want to pray that God will

speak to you through these messages and that it will encourage you to be more vocal with

your own faith. You can say it as like paying forward or we could call it paying the fee

in the sense that the great commission is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. So I

challenge you to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in your life with one person today.

Because if we can all share the gospel with one person a day we can change the world,

we can help to bring about a new revival in the land because the Bible tells us that his

word will not go out to the world and return void. So the more of us that are sharing the

gospel the more seed that is planted for his word the more likely we'll see the harvest

come in our life. So with that I just want to thank you again for listening I can't wait

for you to come back next time. I hope you have a great week. God bless.