Let's turn to Judges 3, verse 31. And let's pray. Father, I pray for this time that you would bless us with your word and with the story of this ancient saint, Shamgar. I pray that you would help the one that speaks and help those that listen. And we trust you to accomplish all your purposes through the preaching of the word. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Verse 31, and after him, the him would be Ehud, right? We talked about that in my last newsletter article about judges, and we talked about that last month. So after him, that is Ehud, Shamgar, the son of Anath, who struck down 600 Philistines with an ox goat, and he also saved Israel. That's it. That's all we know about, that's all we hear here about Shamgar. So the question, of course, for curious minds is why so little? Why so little written about Shamgar? For first, that I think we can remember, and of course, most of you probably remember that at the end of John, he says, if all the things were written about Jesus Christ, it would fill all the books in the world. So the first reason probably there's so little put in here is it probably wasn't important. What is the point of the Bible is to tell the story of redemption. How has God moved it? So apparently the author looked at this particular person and what happened and said, well it doesn't really add to that story by the Holy Spirit of course. But there's another reason. We talked a little bit about the purpose of the Book of Judges last time, and remember that the author's point of writing the Book of Judges was to promote the idea that we need a king to rule Israel, and that king can't be from any old tribe, it's got to be from the tribe of Judah. Well, when you look at this verse, what does it mean when it says, Shamgar the son of Anath? Why did he put that in there? And why didn't he say, of the tribe of... Almost always when we're talking about Hebrew, it has to refer to a tribe. Well, apparently Anath is a sun goddess. So commentators think that Shamgar was a Canaanite of all things, but it's like we've talked about before, he trusted in the Lord just by the Holy Spirit, giving him a new heart, he became a believer just as we became believers. Canaanite believer so can you imagine if you're trying to write a book to make a point that we need a king over Israel? Wouldn't it be sort of shameful to say that a Canaanite our enemies our mortal enemies? Became the one who God called to save us so he probably left it out and more details just simply because of that it was like Wow. But he didn't include it, I think, because it showed how terrible things were at that time. It was so bad, there wasn't a single son of Jacob that could have been called forth to do this. That's pretty shameful, right? That make sense? I mean, I think that's probably why there was so little written about it. One, there was just too much information, maybe. Didn't really add to the Bible, to the scriptures. And the other was, it was actually a shameful thing that this man was called by God to do this. In that sense, anyway. But at any rate, although we know very little about it in that particular part, and we don't know much about his battles or anything else, which sort of reminds me, and this is a rabbit trail a little bit, but I think maybe, and this is pure speculation, not necessarily scriptural, and that's dangerous, I know. But I think when we get to heaven, maybe we'll have an opportunity, since we have eternity to listen to how God has moved through history, we might have a time to talk to Shamgar. Think of all the things, the wonderful things that did happen to him, how he was called, how he became a believer, and all the things that he did. We'll have the opportunity maybe to talk to him and hear more about that. That's extra. It's not in my notes. Sorry. Now, you might have noticed currently that We, in the United States, we sort of credit this as being a Christian nation and all that, and we have a Christian heritage and whatnot. But you know, we really also understand there's a powerful movement to silence Christians, right? I mean, if you're a politician, you can say you're a Christian or say the Lord's Prayer at a meeting in Florida. You know, but it's more of a pandering thing. If you were to possibly be a sincere Christian, if you even said as a politician, I believe the Ten Commandments are good. Oh my goodness, you could not get the votes. You could not. So there's a direct movement in our nation now to silence us as Christians. In the arts, What was the last Christian movie that was popular that was a big seller? I mean, we're relegated. A Christian movie maker that wanted to make a movie with true Christian themes is put into a different category, which few people watch. I mean, we watch them. We try to watch them. And really, the only legitimate representative of Christianity is Catholic priests. Are Catholic priests Christians? Well, maybe they are, but they're probably not. They're pagans. But if you spend much time watching TV, we like to see Blue Buds. It's sort of a neat program. It's wholesome. Blue Buds is about a police family and all that. And they're the only family on TV, as far as I know, that sit down and have an actual prayer before dinner. But they're all Catholics. So this whole movement about Christianity being pushed to the side. We can't be involved in politics. We try. We can't be involved in arts. I had to sign a paper in my employment that says it's possible that talking about religion could be harassment. Now, that doesn't shut me up. But there's that pressure all through our society to silence Christians. And Brandon said it well this morning. There are people out there that hate us. A lot of people that hate Christians. We're a threat and they hate us. Well, in Shamgar Day, it was much like that. So you might ask, you know, how do I come up with that? So let's turn to Judges 5, verse 6. Just flip a page. Now this is the Song of Deborah and Barak. Well, I sort of hate to go there in one sense because we're going to preach next month, I'll preach on them. But still, the chapter before, chapter four is a description of what happened, a narrative, a historical narrative about what happened. with Deborah and Barak, that whole war story. But then in chapter five we have the song of Deborah and Barak. Deborah was a prophetess. Okay, we can be a little embarrassed about that maybe, but the scripture says she was a prophetess. She was a prophet of the Lord. So in chapter five we read a prophetic interpretation of what came before. And in verse six, she gives a prophetic interpretation of what life was like when Shamgar was there. Verse six says, in the days of Shamgar, the son of Aneth, also in the days of Jael, that was more in her time, the highways were deserted and travelers went about by roundabout ways. So what she's saying here now is that the believers in Israel, because of the Philistines, were not allowed to travel on the main roads. They had to go on the back roads, they had to go on the goat trails, they had to get around. excluded from society in that sense. A different sense than we are, obviously. It's not the same as we are, but in a sense, they were excluded from the public life there. Why? Well, what we understand is that the Philistines came up and started encroaching on the territory that was supposed to be Israel. They were apparently, and we don't have all the details, but apparently they were confiscating goods as taken to market. Say if you're a farmer and you want to take your wheat to market, you have to sell this stuff. You have to sell the goats and the sheep. And when you're taking it to market, the roads, the main roads, the trade roads were dominated by the Philistines. So the Philistines would steal your sheep. Or maybe not all of them, but at least. At least they would do that, but at least they would highly tax you perhaps. So what Deborah, and I think it's, the title says Deborah Imbrach, but I don't think he was involved in this part. He might have sang along with it, but she was the prophetess, so she's the one prophesizing this interpretation of what was happening. She is saying, back then, when Shamgar was there, in his day, the highways were deserted. The travelers went by roundabout ways. Make sense? They couldn't travel those ways. They had to go the back ways. They were excluded. They were excluded from public life. They were despised by the enemy. Not exactly the same thing. But my father-in-law, for a time there, he bought a tractor trailer rig. This was back in the 80s, I think, and there was less regulation and you could be an independent contractor. So he'd pick up business wherever he went. Anyway, he told me that on the CB radio, he'd find out where the where the way stations are. Steve probably is aware of this. He'd take the back roads to get around the way station so the tax man wouldn't ding him for the load that he was carrying. So that's sort of what was happening back then. Basically, they had to go around to avoid the enemy. I make no comment about whether it's legal or not to do that. Probably not. Probably not. But they had to do the same thing. To avoid the thieving Philistines, according to this verse, I think that's probably what was going on here. They couldn't bring their, if they had to, they had to pay a huge tax or they had to lose some of their goods in the process of going to market. There's another clue a little further down. In verse 8 of chapter 5, it says, well, Deborah says prophetically, new gods were chosen during this time. And well, we already talked about that last time we preached about it. It's still going on. The sons of Jacob were choosing new gods. But then it says, then war was at the gates. Not a shield or spear was seen among 40,000 in Israel. That's another interesting thing. What happened to their weapons? They had weapons when they first went to the land of Canaan, right? They had swords, they had whatnot, but they don't have them now. Much later in 1 Samuel, we don't need to turn there, but I don't know if you recall, but Saul and Jonathan were going out to war again with the Philistines, and it says, the scripture says that there was not a shield or a sword in Israel. Basically because the Philistines had outlawed forges where they make metal and you know, blacksmiths and all, you couldn't have one, they had to be Philistines. So there was a That's basically the strategy of the Philistines is take away all your weapons. It's sort of the same today. They take all your weapons away. I mean, it's no different, right? So this is a time very much like today. And it's not a rant about the political situation or about gun rights. It's not that at all. But we're trying to get a picture of what it was like when Shamgar was living. There was no spears. It was sort of obvious because the scripture, it does say back in verse 31 that he had to use an ox code. Well, that's why. There was no swords there. So at this point, we want to ask the question, why were the Israelites, the people of God, reduced to this situation? They were in poverty. They were helpless, really, against the enemy. Were the Philistines that strong that they then were the children of God here just too weak? And sort of a repetition of what I said last month, but the clue is in how the scripture and how the book of Judges describes what the Lord was doing. It uses terms like the Lord gave them up to the enemy, and terms like sold them into the hand of the enemy, gave them into the hands of the enemies, right, over and over again. And I think this is just God's providence through the law, again, of the harvest. The people of God made compromises initially. When they first went to the land of Canaan, this was the promised land they were supposed to destroy the enemy. Well, they didn't do that. That was one. But this was several generations later, that this is happening now, they were still making the compromises. They knew, but they were compromising with the enemies of God. Probably a gradual process, not necessarily a total like that, it was probably a gradual accumulation of compromises. And again, as I've said last month, there was this national God, always a national God of Jehovah, he was, you know, Yahweh was their god, but it was a national god to protect them from major problems. But the local gods really sort of needed them to make sure that the harvest, that the rain would come and that the plants would grow, etc., etc. They accepted the practices of their surrounding Canaanites in direct disobedience. So in God's providence, he did sell him into the hands of the enemies, but also through the law of the harvest, the sons of Jacob gave themselves up to their enemies. Again, God's providence and man's responsibility together. So here in the days of Shamgar, the sons of Jacob, due to their sin, had given up the sword. They didn't need to be confiscated. They gave it up. They gave up the shield. They gave up all their means of defense and all ability to fight against God. Again, because they did not fight the battles that God gave them to start. Not only the battles when they first came into the land, but also their daily battles every day they had to fight. They were saying things like, I wish we could chase those Philistines out of our land. They steal our sheep. They take our grain. I wish we could do something about that. But they couldn't. They just had to stand there in shame and poverty. They were helpless. But you know, that just wouldn't, that's just not right. They didn't have to be that way. I mean, they were called the soldiers of God. They should have kept the weapons that the Lord gave them to start. Weapons to cut the Canaanites off from the land that God had given them to possess. They should have obeyed at first and not lost those weapons that they had at first. Now we see the same thing today in the modern church due to their disobedience, and I'm talking about the worldwide church. We've lost the ability to have a voice in our society because we've made compromises over and over again. We should have been sharpening our swords through the preaching of the word and polishing our shields when instead we've been accommodating the world, trying to appease the gods of this world, right? I mean, we don't want to be thought of as being narrow-minded or homophobic or anything like that. We want to be thought of as, okay, we're just regular people. I'm talking about generally, not specifically. But the church really is made up of individual believers, so we're going to stop moaning and groaning about the worldwide issue and the world church and all that. Let's talk about just us, right? Because we're individuals in a particular church, and we're the only ones we can affect. We can't really affect the whole world, so we'll stop talking about them. We'll start talking about us. We do have a responsibility. A personal responsibility to be sharpening our swords, to be using them giving and using the weapons that we have as a local church. In the New Testament we're urged to put to death sin. And the Puritans said, mortify sin. That's a really neat word for it because it makes it a little more I don't know, it just appeals to me more to use that word, but sin really is the enemy of our souls. They are the enemy, okay? We have, in the Old Testament, the Canaanites, right? And they were a sort of a representative for us to look back on, to say, here's the sin that they were supposed to be fighting, but they weren't. That's what it is to us today. This was the sin that we should have been fighting. The Lord has given us weapons, but if we don't use those weapons, we will lose them. We'll lose them from a lack of practice, from a lack of knowing how best to use the weapons. And if we don't put to sin or put to death sin, we're subject to the same kind of spiritual poverty. And in the future, we may lose all ability to defend ourselves against sin. We become, just like they did, increasingly defenseless in the face of temptation. Now we need to look at Judges 3, verse 1 and 2 for another thing that I thought about This afternoon, which again is not a good thing, you should be prepared before this afternoon, but I thought about this, I said, there are actually two reasons for the Canaanites to remain in the land of Israel. Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test Israel, okay, so we know that, they're testing, there's a testing element to this. In God's providence, even though there was sin involved in the fact that the Canaanites were still in the land of Canaan, The Lord used that also to test them by his sovereign will, that is, those who had not experienced, and then he says, that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan, only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war. Interesting. We sort of got the concept that it's been testing them and reforming them, that's why the Lord brought an enemy, an oppressor into the land, is to reform them, to say, whoa, this is bad, we need to reform. This is a test, we need to reform, but also to teach them how to fight. So think about that, our temptations that we receive, maybe the Lord is using that to help us to learn how to fight sin. I guess that's obvious to everyone, but it wasn't that obvious this afternoon when I thought about it. Yeah, the temptations. Now, we all look forward to heaven, we won't have that issue, but at least for now, there are other reasons for temptation. One of us is to teach us how to fight it. And again, there's many Christians today, me included, that say, man, I wish I could do something about a particular sin. And it's just like, man, it just seems like it goes on and on and on. And, you know, I keep falling for the same temptation. It grieves me. It grieves me to be so powerless and weak as to not be able to fight. Some have even got to the point where it's ruined their careers. Some sin that they haven't dealt with, and they may even end up in the legal system. I mean, it's grievous. Sin is not a thing to play with. But due to my and others' previous compromise with sin, we've lost the sword. We've lost the ability to fight sin. We've submitted earlier to the enemies of their souls, and they have not learned to fight. And therefore we've lost the ability to fight. The enemies of the gospel and the enemies of our souls run all over us. But we have hope, of course. In all these episodes in the book of Judges, we see the Lord raising up a deliverer. So we too look for that perfect judge, that perfect delivery, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ successfully fought the battles, fought our battles, the ones we should have fought. He fought it successfully, perfectly. In Shamkar's war, it was the against the enemies of God, it was God who acted, right? It says this over and over. It doesn't say it, well, except for him, this one, it just said, Shamgar, the son of Anath. But all the other judges, it says something like, when the sons of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer. The Lord raised it up. The people didn't raise it up. Shamgar didn't raise it up. The Lord raised Shamgar up. He's the active one. He's the sovereign one. So anyway, there are several observations that I'd like to make to encourage us in this fight. Note that going back to Judges 3 verse 31, Shamgar, what was he doing? What was he? He was a farmer. He was at least, he plowed, he used oxen to plow. He has an ox goat. He was probably a farmer. He worked, even at this time when people were stealing his wheat. and et cetera. People were stealing stuff from him. Right? It must have been a discouraging time to be a farmer when you could take your stuff to the market and the Philistines would steal your stuff or some of your stuff. I mean, you've got to take it to market, right? I mean, this sort of a fallacy may be that a farmer can be totally self-sufficient, but he might have some chickens and a cow, and he might raise some grain, but he's got to sell the grain or trade it somehow for metal pots and pans and stuff that he can't make. Does that make sense, right? So he has to take it. Okay. I don't have to go there. So, but he kept working at that job, right? He was doing the thing that the Lord told them to do when they were to go into the land of Canaan. It was supposed to till the land, take care of the land, take over, master the land. He was the farmer that did that. He didn't give up just because of that. He kept working at the occupation the Lord called him to do with the tools that the Lord had given him, oxen and an oxcoat at least, and probably seed and all the other things that farmers need. Shamgar continued to work even when the work seemed to be futile at worst, or at least it was unrewarding in many ways. So the question we ask ourselves, what field has it called us? Are we working that field? What field has He called us to do as individuals? Right? We've read the book, Ordinary, and been excited about that concept, but this is where we need to be working hard at. It's where we've been called a mother, been called a, you know, whatever. We're supposed to do that to the best of our ability using whatever tools the Lord has given us, whatever talents He's given to us. And no more. Now Shamgar's God-given tool was apparently, it's mentioned here, was an ox goad. Now that was apparently from my research, it was like an 8 to 10 foot long pole with a sharp thing on the end of it. And you've got this, you've got an ox and you've got a harness and you've got to plow, right? You've got to plow the dirt, flip it over so you can put the seeds in there and soften it up and all those things that I'm not really that familiar with because I'm not a farmer. But anyway, this pole apparently was to help the oxen to direct them and encourage them when it gets, when they sort of slow down too much, you poke them in the rear end. It could be any draft animal. It could be a horse maybe or whatever. Now as I understand it, ox, horse, mules, they can be taught some verbal commands. But occasionally you've got to poke them in the places where it would encourage them. And to direct them. When you get to the end of the row, you need to turn. So you have to have some way to communicate to the oxen how to turn. So the ox goad was a goad. We also, on the other end, apparently there was a sort of like a putty knife. I guess that would be the best way I'd describe it. Apparently when you're plowing and I've noticed that when I do I've done a lot of digging in my life with a shovel if you especially in Georgia clay the clay will stick to your shovel the next thing you know and now you're trying to get the dirt off your shovel, it's got a clump of clay on there, and then you have to bang the shovel or kick it with your foot or something like that. Well, anyway, on the other end of the ox goad, there was sort of like a putty knife kind of thing to scrape off the dirt. Because you think you're plowing along, you don't want to have to stop and get on your hands and knees and scrape the dirt off the plow. You want to be able to keep moving. So you have to scrape the mud off the plow. You have to clean it occasionally. The advantage of the long pole is that the driver wouldn't have to get down on his hands and knees to clean the plow. And the goad also is the same thing. You might have more than one oxen. You might have a team of oxen. You have to reach a long ways out. You don't want to run around there and tell the oxen, turn. You want to poke them somewhere to get them to do that. Well, the word goad is used in the New Testament. As we all know, the words of Christ are a goad. In fact, Christ told Saul on the Emmaus Road, why do you kick against the goad? So the goad is another Hebrew word for teach. It's another word for teach. So we can see also that the GOAD, this tool that Shamgar had, at least, and I'm getting a little wild with the analogy here, but still the GOAD had a function of teaching. Okay? So Shamgar had a GOAD to help learn and to be taught The Word of God, is that, am I stretching? I'm stretching pretty far there, but still. We, like Shamgar, with daily use of the Word of God can be taught. We can be skilled at the Word of God. We can become wise, right? Those who know the Word and are taught by the Word become wise. God's Word also has the function of cleaning. The other end of this ox goat has that cleaning putty knife. The Word of God has that function of cleaning us according to His wisdom and His will. In fact, the psalmist says, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. In our days, in the days that we live, there's, the church really is largely defenseless to her poverty of God's Word, the preaching of God's Word. Not that the word is lacking, of course, but the church has failed to teach and preach the whole council, the whole of its instruction. And we see with that poverty of scripture, scriptural preaching is so weak in the church that it really has little impact on the culture, right? We understand that. It's sad. We see it. That's why, I think, just like in Shamgar's day, they had lost the weapons. There's really no longer much distinctiveness between the lives of believers and unbelievers in the church. Let's rail against divorce. We'll immediately throw back the fact that we have the same rate of divorce as unbelievers, or unchurched people. Most of the other issues are the same. And many, many really today who claim to be Christian do not live in light of the word. But we know the word, when properly applied to the people of God, makes them wise and guides them in living lives that reflect the glorious gospel to the lost world around us. And we're again reminded of the chief purpose of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. So again, the encouragement is that we should be using the word in our daily lives. And to be reminded that one of the goals here at this church Lord willing is to plant churches that will preach and teach the whole of scripture for the glory of our God and for the edification of God's people. And I think for the good of society. The ironic thing about a sinful society, it just makes them stupid because really if there were more Christians in the world, it would be a much better world. I mean, okay, more Bible-believing ones who are seeking to follow the words of Christ, this would be a much better world. Wouldn't it? Why do they hate us? I don't understand. Finally, three paragraphs. The people of Shamgar's day had lost all means of defending themselves due to their past compromises with the enemies of God. So too, today, we can accept and compromise with sin, but then we're in danger of losing the same means of fighting sin. Sometimes a gradual process. We start with the little things, but in the law of the harvest, it's inviolate. We plant and nourish, what we plant and nourish will eventually harvest the fruit of that investment for good or for ill. The story of Shamgar is of an ordinary man who is faithfully fulfilling the task that the Lord had given him. That is to subdue that little corner of the promised land that God had given him. little field of responsibility that he had. But when the Lord raised up the liver and called him, he obeyed, and he also saved Israel. Don't you find that a funny little phrase there at the end there? One sentence here, and Samuel probably said, he also saved Israel. Like, it was just a small thing. This little guy of no importance, and he wasn't. He was just a farmer. He also saved Israel. Matthew Henry said of this passage, he that has the residue of the Holy Spirit could, when he pleases, the Holy Spirit pleases, make plowmen judges and generals and fishermen apostles. It is no matter how weak the weapon is if God directs and strengthens the arm. An ox goad, when God pleases, shall do more than Goliath's sword. And sometimes he chooses to work by such unlikely means that the excellency of the power may appear to be of God. which is the other story here again this is about God's power obviously because this was just a poor farmer guy the story of the sons of Jacob in this whole book here is that the process degenerates to the point where the Lord will judge he will send one to oppress and test his covenant people to see if they would obey and in his good timing he sends a redeemer to save those who are his and yet That same would destroy those who are not his. One of the assurances that we have that we are his is that we will hate sin. Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Are we able to keep the commandments? No. But Christ did what we are unable to do, and therefore we fight on. We fight sin. When we fail, we trust him in repentance and plant those further seeds of obedience. Yes, constant, constant fight against remaining sin. But we know the Lord is the rewarder of those who seek him by faith. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, please grant us a spirit of resolve to furthermore fight against the enemies of our soul. Help us to see sin as you see sin as that great offense that is hateful in your eyes and that kills everything it touches. Help us to fight and help us to look to Christ in times of temptation. Father, give us a hunger for your word that will make us wise and that our best defense against the enemy. Be with us this week, protect and guide us until we meet again in this place. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.