Well friends, would you turn in your Bibles to Judges chapter 3, Judges chapter 3, and I want to look particularly this morning at verses 7 to 11, verses 7 to 11, Judges chapter 3, verses 7 to the 11. The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God and served Balaam and the groves. Therefore, the anger of the Lord is hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushan Reshathayim, king of Mesopotamia, and so on. When the children of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer, Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, and the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel, and the land had rest after the judgment of God upon this wicked man. We'll come to him in just a moment or two. Just a brief context here again, as we look at these things. How wonderful that God had been with his people. What a wonderful testimony had Caleb and Axa, his daughter, given to us, if you remember back when we were dealing with that, and the way in which she showed such faith and witness and testimony to God's grace. And yet God had to come and challenge his people here as we saw in chapter 2, we read those opening verses, the angel of the Lord, a pre-incarnate appearance of God, the Son, the Lord Jesus, actually comes and speaks to them and challenges them and reminds them of what God had done, what he had done for them, that he had rescued them from Egypt, that he'd brought them to the promised land, as he had said, and that he had done that, and we see, if we had read on in the chapter, we see in verse 11 of chapter 2 that the children of Israel did evil, and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, they forgot God again, and we see God's judgment upon their sin, God hates sin. And yet how stubborn were these people not to receive God's Word and God's grace. And why is God so angry with their sin? Well, because they worshipped the Baals. And what did that mean in the days in which they lived there? Well, it meant temple prostitution, it meant immorality, it meant wickedness. My friends, we live in wicked days today, don't we, where people's morals seem to have gone through the, well, through the roof, through the floor, probably. The wickedness of our life, of our world. I was only thinking of this, I can remember when I was a youngster, nobody would have ever, I don't know why I was thinking of this, but I was thinking of this this morning as I was driving here. When I was a child, nobody would ever, if it was a Christian, would never dare admit that they had seen a James Bond film because they were immoral. And yet, well, I haven't seen all the James Bond films, I must confess, but when you think of what is paraded before us today, some of those early films are very mild. I mean, they're still obnoxious, they're still immoral, but they're very mild with the kinds of things we see today. I've no idea what the latest ones are, I haven't seen any of the later ones, I really don't know what they're like, but if you consider some of the early ones, you know, they were for us, when I was a teenager, they were quite exciting with all this sort of going out and fighting against enemies and winning and all that kind of thing. They were immoral, and you never dared admit that as a Christian, or as a young person, you'd actually seen it. I mean, it was just not the done thing. But when you consider what we are paraded with today on the news and on the media and just everywhere else, it's evil, it's wicked. And no wonder God is angry with the wicked. The Bible tells us that. And the Lord will wet his sword and bend his bow against evil and wickedness. And it wasn't long before here, the children of Israel, we read even in the chapter three, as we read this morning, they took their daughters, chapter three, verse six, to be their wives and gave their daughters to their sons. They served the Canaanites. They joined in with the immorality of the wicked community around them. And God's judgment comes upon them again. But you can't have that with the living God. His worship is to be exclusive. Choose you this day whom you will serve, God said through Joshua, to the people. But the wonder of it is, and we see it expressed at the end of chapter 2 particularly, we see not only the judgment of God, we also see the mercy of God. And into that situation, God still shows compassion and mercy. Verse 16 of chapter 2, nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them. And verse 18, and when the Lord raised up those judges, then the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord heard their groanings and the reason of the oppression and so on. This is incredible. God's mercy and kindness and grace, what a God our God is, that he comes to save and to rescue people. God is angry with the wicked, yes. But when there is sign of repentance, he shows them mercy. And that was incredible. And that was amazing. How does God look at you this morning? Does God look at you because you have come to receive his mercy and his grace? Well, with that in mind, let's now turn to consider these things in chapter three here. And I want particularly to look at this man, Othniel, and see what we can learn from him today. Because the old problem has come back again. And what God had challenged them about in chapter 2 now happens in chapter 3 and it happens over and over and over again in the book of Judges. Here were more mixed marriages. Verse 6, they were led astray by these Canaanites and Hittites and Amorites, these evil, these wicked people, these wicked nations. until the Lord gives them over to this man, Kushan Reshathayim, king of Mesopotamia. We'll say something about him in a moment. But what happened in verse 7, they forgot God, and the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgot the Lord their God, and served the Balaam. My friends, we're in the world, but we're not of the world if we're Christians. And we're not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers. The true Christian is to be different. He is to stand out from the wickedness of the world. And this in verse six was deliberate disobedience. God had warned them about this in chapter two. He talked about it in chapter one as well of judges. But they'd settled down and thought they could manage without God's word and without God's commands. And they were comfortable and they were prosperous. And God had to bring them into their senses, verse 8, therefore the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. And he sold them into the hand of this man, Cushan Rishasayim. We'll come to him in a moment or two. But we need to notice, before we come into this in detail, we need to notice the way in which God, right throughout the book of Judges, shows his mercy and his grace. Now there are many people who come to the book of Judges and they think, well this is just a terrible chapter of judgment after judgment after judgment. But we have to remember the context of this book and what is happening. Because although that sequence of failure, deliverance, restoration, peace, failure, deliverance, restoration, although that repeats over and over in the book, we need to remember that the times of blessing, which are often just passed over with one verse, are far greater than the times of judgment. If we look at verse 8, for example. The anger of the Lord was hotter against them. He sold them into the hand of this man eight years. When they were delivered by Othniel, in verse 11, at the end of our passage for this morning, they had rest for 40 years. And then there's judgment for 18 years, in verse 14. and deliverance by Ehud, and maybe if I come again, I'll preach, well I know I'm coming at least once more this year, so maybe we'll look at Ehud next time. And they had rest for 80 years! And then they had judgment for 20 years, and then there was deliverance by Deborah and Barak in chapters 4 and 5, and they had rest for 40 years! And then chapter 6 verse 1, judgment for seven years. And then they were delivered by Gideon for 40 years. So the blessing times and the deliverance times were far greater than the times of judgment. But the book, although it concentrates on the judgments, we mustn't forget that there were great long passages of blessing and grace and God's goodness. God's mercy is far greater than his judgments. That's wonderful, my friends. That's glorious. That's what our God is like. He will judge sin. He will punish sin. But He's a God of mercy and a God of grace. He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He delights in mercy. That's why it's so foolish to reject Him and to turn your back upon Him. Now, I trust that because you're here, you're willing to listen to Him. But let me encourage you and some of you who are younger, you know you've got life before you. And there can be all sorts of pressures and temptations as you go through life. But you follow the Lord. He's wonderful, he'll never fail you, he'll never let you down. He's a great and glorious God. I was converted when I was a child and I've let the Lord down lots of times, as I've said many times, but he's never let me down. and he's a wonderful God. Now I'm a grumpy old man, all right, and the Lord is still faithful to me, and he's never let me down. And through all the trials of life, and my wife and I, we've seen a lot of trials. As you know, my wife's disabled, and so she finds life difficult, and I have to do a lot of things for her. Before I came this morning, I had to make sure she'd got up and everything, and sorted everything out. Don't take this the wrong way, I'm getting quite good at putting tights on. Not me, but on her. Because I have to help her with things like that because she can't do them. And I'm glad to be able to help her doing that. But it's hard. But both my wife and I, we can say the Lord is good. And we know the Lord is good, and it's wonderful to know that. And through all the trials of life, God never lets us down. So don't listen to the world and the ungodly people who try to lead you astray. You come and follow God and serve him. And we see what God does with his people here. For his mercy far exceeds his judgments. He will and he must punish sin. But he takes, as I say, no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He delights in mercy. How foolish is it then to oppose him and to disobey him when they could enjoy his blessings? And they did enjoy his blessings when they didn't forget God. Well, verse 7, they forgot God, but verse 8, God does not forget them. And in his anger, in his judgment, he seeks to bring them back to himself, that they may follow him again. His judgment and deliverance teaches us the pattern that God uses with his people. as I said right at the beginning. We see that there in chapter 2. I know we didn't deal with chapter 2 in detail. But here again, we have to begin with the negative, judgment, and then we'll come to the deliverance. So just a word or two about the judgment first. The people, we read, forgot the Lord their God. L-O-R-D, it's capital letters. In the Bible, it's Jehovah, Yahweh, that word, Jehovah, Yahweh, the Lord, is the special word for God that was only used by the Jews, nobody else. You had idols, you had other gods, little g, idols, but you never used this word for anyone but the true and living God. the good God, the God whom we worship, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. What does God do? Well, he brings them under the scourge of this man, Kushan Rishathayim. Well, who was he? Well, we're just given the Hebrew transliteration. But what does this word, Rishathayim, mean? What it means literally is this. Cushan, the one who was victoriously wicked. In other words, he was very, very wicked. It could be translated, Cushan, the twice evil one. He was twice as bad as anybody else. Cushan of the double crimes. In other words, he was notorious for his evil and wickedness. And that's the name by which he was known. He probably came from the land of the Hittites, or the land between the Hittites and the Assyrians. I won't go into all the archaeology and discovery of that. But the Hittites allowed him to march through their land in order to come to Palestine and to fight against the people of God. God used an unexpected enemy. They didn't expect him to come. He was, they thought, far too far away. But God knew what he was doing and he allowed him to come and attack them. And yet, in spite of that, end of verse 8, they served him for 8 years! They didn't even cry out to God for 8 years! How sad! How sad! For 8 years they were quite content to serve him. and to follow Him, and to accept the fact that He had conquered them. My friends, I wonder sometimes if we feel the Lord's hand is heavy upon us. What do we know of calling to Him to deliver us? For He will, and He's promised. And yet so often we want a quiet life, don't we? We act as though we've forgotten God. Well, that was God's judgment. We need to mention that, the negative. But, This was followed by deliverance. Because we read in verse 9, and when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, why didn't they do that earlier? Why did they wait for eight years before they cried unto the Lord? But God, when they cried, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel. Wonderful! So let's look at these principles, if we like, these principles, three principles I'm going to give you, that always apply when people call upon God. Here's the first one, or the first thing, the cry of his people, cry to him, call out to him. Verse 9, the people got to the point where they realized their helplessness. This twice wicked, this evil man was ruling over them, and at the end they got to the end of it, they thought, we can't cope with this any longer! And that's when they cried out to God, because they knew that they couldn't save themselves. There's a wonderful verse in Psalm 119, Psalm 119, the longest Psalm. Psalm 119 is a lovely Psalm. It talks, almost every verse in that Psalm talks about the Bible, talks about the word of God, the statutes of God, the law of God, the ordinances of God, all referring to God's word, the statutes, the commandments, all of these words used. A wonderful verse, but in Psalm 119 and verse 67, the psalmist says this, before I was afflicted, I went astray. Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but when I was afflicted, I called upon God. Do you see what's happening here? Here are the people, they're afflicted by this wicked man, and eventually they come to call upon God. What a good thing that was, that they called upon God. And so often maybe we look at our trials and our sorrows, and maybe we're full of self-pity and grief, but do we cry to the Lord? Do we commit it to the Lord and trust, as the psalmist says in another verse, Why had they forsaken God? Had God ever let them down? No! Never! God had been faithful to them. Chapters 1 and 2 demonstrate that. And particularly when the angel of the Lord came in chapter 2, which we read in the first part of our reading, to say, look what I have done, I rescued you from Egypt, I brought you to the land of promise, I did what I promised. God never broke his promises. God keeps his word. He saved them from Egypt. He kept them in the wilderness. He brought them into the promised land. And if God has done all this for his people, why did they forget him? But what of us, my friends? If we know anything of the work of the Lord, we know that God has saved us from this wicked world as he delivered the Israelites from Egypt. Has he not kept us through the wilderness of this world, and with our doubts and with our fears? Has he not brought to us the blessings of his promises? If God has done all this for us, why forget him? Why turn your back upon him? Take him at his word, cry to him, because when they cried to the Lord, the Lord heard them. So let us learn from that to cry to the Lord, for he will hear us. So in the deliverance, we looked at judgment, then we looked at deliverance, and in the deliverance, the cry of his people. Secondly, notice the sovereignty of God's action. The sovereignty of God's action, verse nine. What did he do? And when the children of Israel cried unto the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer to the children of Israel who delivered them, even Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. He was the son of Kenaz, so he was Aksa's cousin, all right? Came from the same family. God raised up a deliverer, and it was another godly man. You see, God will teach his people that he will act in response to their earnest cry. And when we cry to him, God hears our cry and answers his word. Many of the judges of the Book of Judges were not what we might call great men. This is the only chapter we hear about Othniel. He wasn't a great man like King David, he wasn't renowned like Joseph in that sense, but he was a faithful, reliable man of God. God takes these men up. We only hear of Ehud once. We only hear of Jael, Heber's wife, once. One account. One little bit. Very little that we know about them. But they were God's men and women. God used them at the right time. And God watched over them. And here is Othniel, and he comes from a godly family. And Othniel was a man of great face, and he is sent by God, and used by God, and empowered by God. This was God's sovereign act to save his people. And you know, Othniel by now was an old man. He was an old man. You know people sometimes say, and I've had it said to me, you're just an old man, you're out of date. People have lost respect. I'm not complaining, I'm just making the point. But by and large people have lost respect, even young Christians have lost respect for older Christians. It seems to me, this isn't me grumbling, it's an observation. I see it in churches, I see older men in churches who are, sometimes they're even despised by younger Christians, and that's tragic, that's tragic. Not always, not always, but it happens. Men in the ministry who have all sorts of troubles, they've been in the ministry for years, and they've been faithful to God, and yet younger people in their churches start complaining about them and grumbling and things like that. He was an old man. And people could have said, well, you're out of date and we're not interested in you. But what are we calling people to do? We're saying, come back to the old ways. Come back to the ways of God. The fact that it's old, I've often said this to people when they've said, oh, that's just old fashioned. I sometimes say to them, well, you know, the wheel was invented a long time ago, but we still find it quite useful. The fact that something is old doesn't mean to say it's not useful. Do you understand what I'm saying? Now, all right, there are some things that are old and we want to, but there are things that are reliable and they've stood the test of time. And there are many things like that in the world that we use. And there are many ideas that are good ideas and profitable and blessing. And God says in his word, stand in the gap and strengthen the foundations, and come back to the truth, and God's sovereign choice is often unexpected and surprising, but here was God's man for the hour. Almost unknown, passed over in a couple of verses in the Bible, we know nothing but he was God's man for the hour, and God used him, and it was God's sovereign action, and that was wonderful. But the third thing, not only the cry of his people, and God's sovereign choice, the sovereignty of his action, but the third thing is the power of God's Spirit. Look at verse 10. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel, and he went out to war, and the Lord delivered Cushath Rishathayim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand, and in his hand prevailed against Cushan Rishathayim. the Spirit came upon him. Now you know there are some people, I know you wouldn't do this, but there are some people, sadly, or even some Christians, who say there's very little evidence of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. My friend's judges is full of the work of the Holy Spirit, and so is much of the Old Testament. And here is God's Spirit coming upon him. And what is the first thing he does? The first thing he does is he judges Israel. And only then did he go out to war against their enemies. He comes to assess the moral and spiritual state of Israel and to challenge them. And he condemns their idolatry and seeks to restore to some extent the true worship of God. You see, repentance must precede deliverance. Conviction of sin and return to righteousness must precede the defeat of our enemies. True leaders are to be godly. Pray for godly members of Parliament. Pray for the spiritual life of our leaders. Pray for those who are pastors and teachers in the Church of God that they may be kept. Why is there moral collapse on all sides? Is it not because there is little concern for the law of God, for the law of God? So hear God's word and trust his word and his truth. Repentance must precede deliverance, not only in the church, but also in the land. Pray that God, by his Holy Spirit, will come to his people in these days, that God, by his Holy Spirit, will come to us. and that we may know what it is to be so filled with his grace and his goodness that we will follow him and serve him and that many will find salvation and God's favor upon us. My friends, I don't know where you all stand, but oh how you need to know that this God is your God. that you trust Him, that you love Him, that you serve Him, that you don't make the mistakes that the people of Israel did here, but you learn from what they had to learn and come to find in the Lord Jesus Christ, your Saviour and your Lord, and then you will know His joy and His blessing and His grace upon you. Well, may God bless these things to our hearts this morning. We're going to sing a hymn about the work of the Holy Spirit. We thank God for his grace and for his Holy Spirit. And while we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, of course, it is through and by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we're going to sing 312, 312, O Holy Ghost, thy people bless who long to feel thy might and feign would grow in holiness as children of the light, 312.