A Few Good Men [2] - Neil Ryan

 

I was scheduled to have breakfast with my son on Wednesday as we do every week when he called me to say he had got a puncture on his bike. I picked him up on Marion Rd and we decided to do a Drive Through at McDonalds.

 

As we were waiting at the window it dawned on me that Mark had never known a time when Maccas didn’t exist.

Imagine that!

 

Trivia time: When did first Maccas open in Australia?

Ans: 1971 in Sydney

First ever Drive-through was in Sierra Vista, Arizona, opening on the 24th of January, 1975. Soldiers from local military base were not allowed to enter a business establishment – so Maccas made a drive through!!

 

I did some research on McDonalds and discovered that although it all started with a couple of brothers called Dick and Mac McDonald selling Hot Dogs…..the founder of what we now know as McDonalds was a man named Ray Kroc!

 

Through some amazing deals he managed to run Dick and Mac out of business. Had the brothers maintained their original agreement, which granted them 0.5% of the chain's annual revenues, they or their rellies would be collecting in excess of $100 million per year today.

 

Fascinating story!

Reminded me of how much can happen in one generation!

Eg.

Tell me some things that have changed or developed or been discovered in last 20 years!

 

The backdrop to the Book of Judges is found in Judges 2:10

Have to remember that the Book of Judges spans about 400 years, so while the book seems like a frustrating sequence of instability, it is symptomatic of generational change.

 

Problem with generational change is the problem of PERSPECTIVE

What one generation sees as right and helpful, another generation sees as restrictive, unhelpful.

 

We are not good at transferring from one generation to the next those things that are critical to our well being.

 

Eg.

1986 is infamous for the Chernobyl Disaster.

Worst Nuclear Disaster in history.

31 people died as a result of the explosion and thousands more will die prematurely from exposure to radiation that drifted over Soviet UnionNorth America. , Europe, and

 

Nuclear fallout was nearly thirty to forty times more than was released by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

Do you know what happened?

A couple of engineers were performing what was later described as an ‘experiment’ on one of the turbines.

 

In order to perform the test they wanted, they had to manually override six separate computer-driven alarm systems.

 

One by one, as the alarms sounded, instead of shutting down the EXPERIMENT, they shut down the ALARMS!

 

That’s the perennial problem of generational change.

We want the freedom to experiment but we don’t want any alarms!

 

There is no doubt the alarms were going off in Judges but again and again the people turned them off!

 

We have a generation that is experimenting with the lives of our children and the results could be more catastrophic that any nuclear fallout!!

 

Probably the biggest danger is that we have become ambivalent to alarms!!

Even worse, in Church, is the resignation that we can’t do much about it!!

I want us to take a look at how God used a few good men to change things in times that were not much different to ours!

 

Read v9

Othniel walked in some big footprints! His Uncle…

Caleb was big man in Israelite history!

Explain…

 

Not easy following father, brother, sister, uncle etc

You either burn out trying to live up to something or you walk away from it altogether!

Hardest thing of all is to find your own sense of identity and purpose.

 

See that in John Bradman who changed his name to John Bradsen in an effort to escape the claustrophobic world that came with being the son of the incomparable Sir Donald Bradman!

 

In 1972 in announcing his change of name by deed poll, he wrote,

"I'm an individual, not a social souvenir,''

 

Let me tell you where Othniel drew a line in the sand.

 

He was an opportunist!

He grabbed this opportunity just like Uncle Caleb.

Here was a young man carving out his own story of faith, not just talking about his Uncle’s great exploits!

 

I want to encourage those of us who have a Christian heritage to take God given opportunities to WRITE YOUR OWN STORY.

 

As a CHURCH we have a great history but we need to write our own story. We want our children to see faith in CURRENT history not just in ANCIENT history.

 

 

What a great story about Ehud and King Eglon!

It’s so hard to maintain what’s good for us!!

Blessings can soon look boring!

It’s time to experiment!!

 

Interesting that we read

I bet Eglon never saw it that way!

I’m sure Israelites didn’t give it a second thought.

 

This was just another generation experimenting with beliefs and flirting with their heritage.

It went on for 18 years!

For 18 years they ignored the alarms!!

 

Finally the penny dropped and they called out to the Lord and he gave them a deliverer – Ehud, a left handed man..

 

“Lefties” have always done it a bit tough.

Even the etymology of the word is not good.

Latin word for left-handed = sinister

Today, word for someone with skill and ability is

Dexterous = right hander!

 

So left handers have carried the baggage of being sinister and somewhat suspiciously evil, while right handers are the epitome of all that is right, proper and normal!

 

But there is more to this interesting left handed judge!

The Hebrew actually says it slightly different.

It doesn’t say he was left-handed, it says he couldn’t use his right hand.

It doesn’t say why.

So Ehud was left handed by DEFAULT.

 

He was incapacitated but he wasn’t inhibited.

He didn’t have a right hand so he excelled with his left!

He didn’t dwell on what he DIDN’T have; he used what he DID have!

 

 That is a key attitude in being used by God!

Lord I may not have what everyone else has but you can have everything I DO HAVE!

 

We are suckers for a bit of gossip aren’t we?

As King rose from his seat for Ehud to whisper in his ear, He exposed what the Bible says was a rather large belly, and Ehud gave him the message!

Bible doesn’t spare the detail

Read v22

 

We are so smart in this generation.

Instead of this instilling a sense of reverence and fear in us,

we read this story and we would rather sit and debate the morality of such violence seemingly sanctioned by God.

 

Eg.

Man in London at Central Methodist Church

 

As we take the high moral ground and stand in judgement upon God we seem to be completely oblivious to our own massive contradictions.

 

Who can explain the fact that you can be fined for destroying a birds egg and yet get government assistance to have an abortion!

 

Who has any explanation of the kind of world we live in that gives us the right to stand in judgement upon a Holy and Righteous God!

 

We don’t have what it takes to scrutinise God!

But we have been given a message!

 

Message of Jesus!

 

Great preacher Wilbur Chapman once said,

“My advice to pastors is to give up preaching for a few months. Take an outline and spend time in prayer over it and then enter the pulpit and tell the story of Jesus. People have had too much preaching."

 

I agree with that.

How much preaching do we need?

How many sermons have some of us heard?

What does it take for us to understand that God says,

“I want your heart!”

 

 

Not saying others didn’t have a heart, but this seems to be all Shamgar had going for him.

 

Othniel had a great heritage, Ehud had great skill and determination, but Shamgar is just a peasant and when it came to the crunch all he had going for him was an ox goad!

 

Rough old piece of wood with a sharpened point on one end for prodding animals!

 

Shamgar ought to give hope to many of us who just think we are so ordinary and have little to offer God.

He was a peasant who took hold of what he had!!

I love the fact that Gideon gets 3 chapters of the Bible and Shamgar gets one verse!

 

I love the fact that we get all the gory details of Sampson’s life in 4 sordid chapters and yet Shamgar is summed up in one sentence….struck down 600 Philistines with an ox goad

That’s it!

He’s up there with them!

He did his bit.

He took his part with the same passion, the same commitment, the same resolve as the more highly fancied judges.

What has God given you to do?

 

You may not have the spiritual pedigree of an Othniel or the fiery courage of Ehud, but you can be a Shamgar!

 

Eg.

Never forget when I was 19 years old I worked in Sheet Metal working plant for 6 months

Manager was a Christian and one day I told him I wanted to go to Bible College.

Why?

“I’ve read great stories William Carey, Hudson Taylor and Adoniramp Judson. They inspired me.”

 

He said

“Remember this, God doesn’t want William Carey to reach this generation he wants Neil Ryan!”

Put your name there!

 

It might even be the modern equivalent of SHAMGAR!