DAY 89

BROKEN RECORD

Judges 9 & 10 and Luke 5:17 – 39

While Gideon was a very successful Judge, his offspring, or more correctly one of his seventy offspring, was a schemer. We read that Abimelech negotiated with the people of Shechem, his people. I know there have been many names of many cities. The key to understand just who Abimelech is negotiating with and the text says they paid him out of the treasury of Baal-berith: a Canaanite god. Getting the picture? Abimelech, son of Gideon, is in cahoots with people who do not worship the Living God. Abimelech kills all but one of this brothers, and he would have killed him had he not escaped.

Abimelech thinks he can mix one god with another god. This problem of syncretism (the combining of different beliefs) will plague Israel. It will seem like a “broken record”, one that plays the same song over and over. At the root of this behavior is the belief that we are in control; that we can decide what works and makes sense, as compared to what doesn’t.

It is why God told them to destroy all the people so that they would not be drawn away to idol worship. Yet this seems to be their Achilles heel. Even today we read one chapter later that, “⁶ The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria,the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve him. 

How many more gods are they going to serve? More of the same song: yet I too am like a broken record. Today as you read this we are on the other side of Good Friday with Jesus laying in the tomb. He has come to earth, lived among, taught and healed (a paralytic in today’s reading) and dealt with this issue, this issue of our tendency to not follow God, to sin. I spent much of today thinking about how my behavior is what led Jesus to the Cross.

What is it Jesus said today? “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Jesus has come to call all who turn to and serve other gods. Our gods of today look different. They look like money, comfort, the pursuit of beauty – none of these in their own right are bad, it is just when they become play too big a role in our lives. For example, God doesn’t dislike money, it is the “love of money” that is the issue.

The call of God, the call of Jesus, is to love Him fully – and to love others. This is a high standard. When I get tired I do a lousy job of it and begin to sound like a broken record. The Good News is that Jesus deals with all my shortcomings – perfectly deals with them.