Quick note for anyone interested - I've come to the conclusion that if for any reason I'm not able to do my Bible Study on any given day (such as driving 8 hours back from Cornwall yesterday and basically losing the ability to think, let alone study!) then I'm not going to give myself a hard time about it - I'm going to crack on and keep with the date I'm actually in - otherwise I'd always be playing catchup - and I simply don't need the extra stress in my life!

So here's May 2nd

Judges 1:1-2:23

Cutting off big toes and thumbs! Not a very nice thing to do - but useful - it prevents the vanquished from ever reforming as an army and attacking - without thumbs you can't hold a sword, spear or bow, and without big toes, running at any great speed or holding a defensive line without your main gripping toe must have been impossible.There is also a sense of God's justice here - this is not a practice Israel indulges in often - but it is a practice that the king who has been captured, Adoni-bezek, had indulged in previously. 

God declares to the people of Israel, who have refused to follow the covenant that they have made with God about driving out the peoples of these lands, that he remembers their covenant and so curses them for not obeying it. 

I used to have a problem with this concept of covenant - in the OT it meant that these people - the Israelites were God's special and privileged people. And this was true - however, it also meant that they had grave responsibilities - they had to honour God by following His commands - and in not doing so, they have brought down his wrath upon them. As I say, I used to think that these were the special ones who could get away with pretty much whatever they wished to - but the reality was that they were under an almighty and just God - merciful as we shall shortly see, yet just as well. 

God's mercy is exhibited here in his non-destruction of the Jews. They have broken covenant with God, and the just and holy God must punish them for doing so. But here I see something of God's mercy as exhibited in Genesis. I wonder how these people got to this stage - they were a generation removed from slavery in Israel - had they thought it would be handy to have a few servants? Had they become arrogant enough to think that they were special and so whatever they did, God wouldn't punish their wrong deeds? Had they forgotten God? Or had the snake gotten into the garden and asked once more 'did God really say that?' I don't know, I wasn't there - all I can read are the consequences - but all of those surmises may well occur in any of our lives - I'm glad that God's so merciful - or He would have been forced by justice to strike me down many times already (and several times today!)

It is amazing how quickly these people forgot God - though they may have not been slaves in Egypt, they were sons of the slaves of Egypt, and they wandered the desert, God gave them great victories - and their reaction? To turn from God to other idols - and why? What is it about the human heart that makes us want to forget God and find substitute Gods? Clive at Leadership Training suggested something that has stuck with me since - specifically, he was speaking of the Holy Spirit and how we often attempt to sanitize the HS by thinking of Him not as a part of the all-powerful God, but rather as a weak and wimpy dove. Similarly, we imagine Jesus to be a soft, fluffy hippy-man who wouldn't hurt a fly if it could be at all avoided. Our reason for sanitizing God is to make Him more controllable - if your god is a little wooden idol, then you can hide your god away from view if you want to get up to tricks with your girlfriend - if your god is not omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, then you are absolved from accountability to your god - indeed, you are in control of it and you can make it say whatever you wish. And really, we've been doing that since the fall - taking responsibility for our own lives and conscience into our own hands, and putting God in our little boxes. We really need to realise that and look up more often. God's big, powerful and not a little bit scary!