Judges 6

Chapter 6. Self-Renunciation and Self-AggrandizementI have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other. (Galatians 5:15)The Israelites said to Gideon, “Rule over us—you, your son and your grandson—because you have saved us out of the hand of Midian.“But Gideon told them, “I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.” (Judges 8:22-23)One day the trees went out to anoint a king for themselves. (Judges 9:8)These various passages constitute a composite picture representing with peculiar vividness the nature and malignity of self. Self-Renunciation The first thing we see is self-renunciation. This stands out in the last chapter of Gideon’s life. After defeating Israel’s enemies, Gideon, by the world’s standards, deserves the honor of a crown. But he had the grace and humility to refuse it. As a result, his life ended as it began. It started in nothingness and ended in self-abnegation. That is not the case with all Christians, though. Some start with God’s glorious blessing, then they begin to heap upon themselves honor and glory because of His blessing. In the end their lives become consumed with self-consciousness and fleshly pride. Saul is an example of this kind of person. His life began in modesty, but it ended in stubborn pride. He stands as a monument of humiliating failure and irretrievable ruin. The same thing can happen to some noble Christian enterprise we decide to undertake. In the beginning, when it is weak and dependent upon God, it is blessed. But when it becomes strong and successful, it is apt to rise into self-sufficiency and end in world conformity and selfishness. This has been the bane of Christianity in every age. Peter crucified with downward head became Peter the Pope and Prince of Christendom. And Prelacy has followed Papacy as far as it dared, and now ecclesiastical pride in a thousand new forms threatens the purity and simplicity of the Church of Christ with the same peril. A republican form of government does not save a people from the kingship of human selfishness. The spirit of social preeminence, political bossism and personal ambition runs through all our institutions and social life. Similarly, the Church has lost her power because the disciples are still disputing who should be the greatest. Christ’s answer is forever unequivocal and plain, “whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave” (Matthew 20:26-27). Nothing is more important today than to guard the Church of God against the preeminence of men. No wise Christian worker will want to throw the shadow of his own personality too strongly across his work, or become necessary to the success of his cause. God wants no Popes, whether they be on Caesar’s throne, in St. Peter’s Palace, Episcopal Sees, Salvation Army Dictators or Christian and Missionary Alliance leaders. Let the secret of our strength be the simple apostolic rule, “you have only one Master and you are all brothers” (Matthew 23:8). “Honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10). Selfishness Leads to Ruin Set off against self-renunciation is self-aggrandizement. If we see self-renunciation in Gideon, we soon find the opposite in his son. The story of Abimelech and the parable of Jotham stand out forever as portraits of self in its most subtle and destructive forms. Abimelech was the illegitimate son of Gideon, born of a Shechemite mother. He seems to have been ostracized in some measure from the family and lived at Shechem with his mother’s relatives, while the other 70 sons of Gideon dwelt at Ophrah, their father’s home. After Gideon’s death the spirit of selfish ambition seized Abimelech, and playing on the clannish jealousies of his Shechemite relatives, he persuaded them to crown him as their king. He took the devil into partnership with him by going into the idolatrous temple of Baal-Berith and taking out of the treasury money with which he hired a bunch of mercenaries as the nucleus of his army. With these he attacked his father’s home and murdered all his brothers except Jotham, his youngest brother, who succeeded in escaping. After this, he assembled all the people in the valley of Shechem for his coronation. There, in the historic Vale of Ebal and Gerizim, with glorious pageantry the coronation ceremonies were opened. Suddenly, Jotham appeared from an overhanging crag about 800 feet above the valley and shouted at the crowd, “Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you,” (Judges 9:7). He then proceeded to tell them the parable of “The Thornbush King” (Judges 9:7-20), startling the crowd and the king with his sudden apparition and strange and sarcastic message which all could not fail to understand, and then, just as suddenly, he disappeared into the mountain recesses. Jotham’s parable was a portrait of the meanness and fleshliness of selfishness. At the same time it told in unmistakable language the sequence of events that were sure to follow the crowning of Abimelech as king. After Abimelech had governed Israel for three years, the prophecy began to unfold (Judges 9:22-57). Abimelech and his Shechemite friends became estranged and became more and more obnoxious toward each other. Treachery met treachery and hate met hate until it culminated in a revolution against Abimelech by the men of Shechem. This was followed by warfare until the Shechemites were murdered by the thousands and their city razed. Abimelech pressed on against his enemies, ravaging with fire and sword until at last he brought his foes to bay in the stronghold of Thebez. Some of this city’s people managed to escape to a tower and there made their last stand. Abimelech led the final attack, and as he approached the tower, one of the women defenders dropped a rock on him, crushing his skull. Not wanting his enemy to say that a woman had killed him, Abimelech called for his armorbearer and told him to kill him with his sword. Thus, God repaid Abimelech’s wickedness. Truly, as Jotham prophesied, fire had come out from the bramble of Abimelech to consume the men of Shechem and, at last, Abimelech. The Fruit of the Carnal Nature

1. The Flesh We see the origin of self-aggrandizement in this account. It is born of the flesh, even as Abimelech was born of the strange woman of Shechem. Self in all its forms, however subtle and disguised, is the fruit of the carnal nature, and it is the root and center of the sinful life. It is no use to cut off our sinful acts, habits and propensities until we strike the very heart of evil, our self-life, where the little “I” is exalted and made king and everything else made tributary to our own will, pleasure and honor.
2. Human Selfishness We see, too, that self lives on the selfishness of others and uses the same principle in them for the gratification of its ends. Abimelech appealed to the men of Shechem by ties of race and blood and by the inducements of their own self-interest. And so self-aggrandizement becomes a web of countless coils woven and interwoven with the selfishness of others, until hand joins hand, and a thousand chords of mutual self-interest bind together political parties, commercial monopolies, criminal confederacies and the baneful associations of evil men which so largely constitute human society. Each is bound to the other by his own selfishness, and the man who knows best how to play with the selfish passions of others makes them all tributary to his own needs, while the devil sits supreme as king over all. When you see a man appealing to the selfishness of others you may be very sure that he is selfishness incarnate.
3. Devilish Partnership We see self in partnership with Satan. Abimelech went to the house of idols and got the means for his unholy war from the temple of Baal. The devil is always ready to advance the funds to carry out any scheme of human selfishness. He is a liberal investor in selfish trusts and sinful monopolies. You can always get money for a political campaign and a whiskey trust even when missionary societies are threatened with bankruptcy. Millions and millions of dollars are being thrown away every day in Satan’s investments and sin’s cooperative societies, and the cause of Christ is languishing by reason of the selfishness of its followers. The devil has his providences as well as the Lord, and the man who wants to plunge into the depths of Satan will find plenty of capital waiting his call and wonder often at his own success.
4. The Instruments We see also that the devil not only provides the means but also the men. Abimelech soon found a group of rascals ready to follow him and do his bidding. Unfortunately, there are plenty of such men still to be found. They swarm on every side waiting for employment. They are recruiting by thousands; a hundred to one they can be found on every corner, as compared with the volunteers we seek for Christ. They are the peril of modern society. Some day they will rise in myriad swarms, like the Vandals who swallowed Rome, and in the dark tribulation days will capture this world for Satan. And selfishness is ever ready to use them as its minions, and things that some men would not do themselves, they are willing to let these sons of Belial do. There are many that sit in the high places with kid-gloved hands and polished manners who never perhaps shed a drop of human blood, nor soil their feet and hands with the grosser forms of crime; but they are murderers and criminals all the same, and they do not hesitate to use the basest tools to carry out their purpose. Some day they will stand red-handed and pale with agony as David in the hour when God proved him guilty of another’s crime.
5. Its Cruelty Next we see self unmasking itself and sinking to the depths of cruelty to accomplish its purpose. Abimelech never stopped until his hands were drenched in the blood of his own brothers. Sixty-nine of his own father’s children, boys that played with him in childhood, he butchered on the very stone where the angel half a century before had accepted Gideon’s offering. Perhaps Abimelech had no idea, when he began, of committing fratricide, but he did all the same. When a burglar enters the house of his victim, his direct object is not to murder, but he is armed for the worst, and if murder is necessary to accomplish his design or to protect himself, he is not going to shirk it. Likewise, when we start out on the pathway of selfishness and sin, only the mercy of God can keep us from doing evil. Well may we all thank God that we have not been allowed to go further than we have.
6. Shortsighted The sixth thing we see is the foolishness and shortsightedness of selfishness. How vividly Jotham brought this out in his exquisite parable of the Thornbush King! The olive tree did not want to be king because it would cost too much to leave the fatness of its fruit and the richness of its soil for the empty honor of waving over the other trees. The fig tree, too, had no desire for a glory that would rob it of its sweetness. The vine was too sensible to sacrifice its luscious grapes and its reviving wine, which even God appreciated and which was a blessing to man, for the sake of a brief preeminence over the other trees. The only shrub that was willing even to consider the proposition of royal honors was a thornbush, which had no fruit to sacrifice, no blossoms to lose and no real business in life but to be a nuisance and torment to others. So the bramble entered into negotiation with the trees. It expressed a little courteous surprise and skepticism about their sincerity in appealing to it, and almost suggests that they would not have come if they could have gone anywhere else, and then adds, with a touch of sarcasm, “If you really want to anoint me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade” (Judges 9:15). The thornbush meant business. If it was to be king, it insisted on the complete subjection of all the other trees under its thorny scepter. If a thornbush could smile, this one must have smiled at the mention of its own “shadow.” But in the next phrase we see that it spoke out its honest thought and intention, “if not, then let fire come out of the thornbush and consume the cedars of Lebanon” (Judges 9:15). We see how little attraction supremacy had for the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine. They had something better to do than rule over others. They had a mission of beneficence, sweetness and service. A man anointed by the Holy Spirit, fed on the sweetness of Christ and bearing fruit for God and man, is not craving after self-aggrandizement. Empty glory can never fill the human heart; vanity and pride are no substitutes for the joy of the Lord, the fullness of the Spirit and the sweet rest we find at Jesus’ feet. A life of holy service for others is much more delightful than receiving and seeking their honor. Let us not be so foolish as to waste our lives in the same pursuits as the thornbush wasted its life. The society queen is earning a broken heart. The ambitious political leader is laying up for himself the disappointments of a baffled ambition, and perhaps the curse of an evil conscience and an avenging God. God made us for Himself and for the ministry of love. Let us give no place to self, which is but a sapling out of Satan’s root. A thornbush by nature, self has been a curse to us as it will be to everybody else.
7. Self-Destroying We see the evil fruition of self as it works out in the destiny of others and then reacts in our own destruction. Abimelech’s life was the historical fulfillment of Jotham’s parable. For a little while the thornbush king seemed like an olive or a fig tree. His thorns were not yet fully grown. For three years Abimelech seemed to do well. Similarly, self hides its sting for a while, and under its nice manners and winning smile, it almost looks like an angel. But when the test comes the sheathed claws appear. The slumbering serpent awakes with its poisonous sting. The men of Shechem had harbored a serpent in their bosom who was going to sting their lives to death. What an awful picture of treachery and destructiveness! Abimelech oppressed the Shechemites, and they attempted to dethrone him. In turn they were consumed and destroyed by his vengeance. And in the final turn of the wheels of retribution, Abimelech was killed. How true are the apostle’s words, “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Galatians 5:15). A selfish spirit is a torment to everybody and at last the greatest curse to itself. Like the scorpion, it spends its life in stinging others, and then at last gathers up itself and with one last effort stings itself to death. So many a woman has destroyed the honor and purity of others and then has hurled herself into the dark abyss. So many a man has gone on corrupting innocence with his heartless selfishness and then become himself the avenger of his crimes. It is not possible for selfishness to make anybody else happy, and it is still less possible for it to make its possessor happy. It is a thornbush by nature, and its end will be the crackling thorns and the consuming name. One of Aesop’s fables illustrates this point. A fox fell off a cliff. He reached out and grabbed a thornbush to break his fall and found that it had injured him worse than the fall. He turned to it in anger and disappointment and reproached it for its deceitful cruelty. The bramble honestly replied, “How can anybody expect to catch hold of me, when the business of my life is to catch hold of others?” May God open our eyes to see the curses of selfishness! If there is one thing in us that seeks for honor and glory, it is a thornbush. And it can only bring us misery and the flames of judgment. Let us repudiate it and follow the life of holy service, finding our rich reward in the sweet, divine joy of holy usefulness. Two Pictures How can we be saved from the curse of selfishness? Let us gaze on two pictures.
8. The Curse of Eden Let us look back at Eden’s gate and see the thornbush. It is the symbol of our curse; it is the fruit of sin; it is the first outcome of man’s sad fall. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. (Genesis 3:17-18) The thornbush still stands as a representation of man’s sin and God’s curse. Will we make it our king? Will we join hands with Satan, whose own fall began with selfishness and pride? God forbid! Let us turn our backs on it and seek the Tree of Life in the midst of the paradise of God.
9. The Cross of Calvary Then let us take another look and gaze on Calvary. What is this that lacerates our Savior’s brow and wreathes His gentle face with such a rude, tormenting crown? It is the old thornbush again—a crown of thorns. What are those drops of blood that stain His face and the tears that mingle with them and flow down His cheeks? They are the brambles of my selfishness; they are the thorns of my pride. It was this selfish “I” that I let not only crush my fellows, but even murder my Lord. It was not only for our sins He died but also for our selfishness. And in that death we die. That is the secret of victory over self. “We are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Corinthians 5:14). We see, too, the vision of hope in that thorny crown. We see the thorns of our selfishness fastened to His cross, and we know that we as well as our sin are dead indeed. The people we were now no longer exist. They have been nailed to the cross with Christ Jesus. There they hang on the bowed head of our Redeemer. We are new men and women, born out of heaven and united with the risen Christ. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). And now, like Christ, our place is to live the life of self-renouncing love, and win the highest place by forgetting all about place and seeking only to serve and bless. Blessed Master, help us thus to cease to be, and let your Spirit be in us instead of us, so that it will be truly no longer us living, but Christ living in us.