Judges 9:1

Now Abimelech, the son of Jeroboam, went to Shechem to his mother's relatives and said to them and to the whole clan of his mother's family, "Say in the ears of all the leaders of Shechem, 'Which is better for you, that all seventy sons of Jeroboam rule over you, or that one rule over you?' Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh." (Judges 9:1)

When a people rejects God, there are no good choices left — only the bramble and the bloodshed that follow.

The Setting: Shechem and the Sons of Gideon

The book of Judges was one of my favorites when I taught junior high, because there's always plenty of blood and guts that keeps junior highers on the edge of their seats — and getting their attention is half the battle.

Judges 9 follows directly from chapter 8 and the two chapters before it, all centered on a man named Gideon. We're going to see a bit of Gideon's family here, and it all takes place in Shechem.

Shechem has a long biblical history as a place of recommitment to the Lord. We first see it in Genesis 12, where God promised Abram that all this land would be his. It was a city of refuge, where a person who committed an inadvertent killing could flee for safety. In Joshua 8 and 24, it's where Israel recommitted to follow the Lord. In John 4, we meet Shechem again as Jesus speaks to the woman at the well. So this is an important place — and here we meet a man named Abimelech.

Jeroboam is another name for Gideon, so Abimelech is one of Gideon's sons. He goes to his mother's family and asks, "Is it better that all seventy of Gideon's sons rule over you, or wouldn't it make more sense if it was just me?"

A People That Forgets God

Why is the question of who rules even coming up? Throughout Judges we've seen the pattern: God raises a godly judge, the people thrive, the judge dies, the people forget God, and everything goes down the drain. That's exactly what's happening here. At the end of chapter 8:

And Gideon made an ephod... and all Israel whored after it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and to his family. As soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals and made Baal-berith their god, and the people of Israel did not remember the Lord their God... and they did not show steadfast love to the family of Jerubbaal, that is Gideon, in return for all the good that he had done to Israel.

The people have already left God. The chances of them choosing a good leader are pretty low.

And his mother's relatives spoke all these words on his behalf in the ears of all the leaders of Shechem, and their hearts inclined to follow Abimelech, for they said, "He is our brother." And they gave him seventy pieces of silver out of the house of Baal-berith, with which Abimelech hired worthless and reckless fellows who followed him.

Abimelech's only qualification is, "He's just like us." And the seed money they give him isn't just any money — they take it from the temple of Baal-berith, "Baal of the covenant." Notice that: one of God's own names is the God of the covenant, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They've taken the attributes, the provision, and even a name of God and applied them to their idol. That's how quickly Israel tanks after Gideon's death.

The Slaughter at Shechem

[Abimelech] went to his father's house at Ophrah and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, on one stone. But Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left, for he hid himself. And all the leaders of Shechem came together... and went and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar at Shechem.

Abimelech takes his money, hires reckless fellows, returns home, and sacrifices all his brothers on one stone in front of the people — and the people do nothing to stop him. By letting it happen, they show they are no different than Abimelech.

And consider where he's made king: the very place where Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." In that exact spot of recommitment, the people now say, "We will serve Abimelech." They keep taking what belongs to the Lord and giving it to someone else.

Point one: a people that turns its back on God will get exactly the rulers they deserve. They rejected God, they chose Abimelech, and they are going to get Abimelech good and hard.

Jotham's Parable of the Trees

Jotham, the one surviving son, climbs Mount Gerizim and cries out:

"Listen to me, you leaders of Shechem, that God may listen to you. The trees once went out to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree, 'Reign over us.' But the olive tree said to them, 'Shall I leave my abundance, by which gods and men are honored, and go hold sway over the trees?'... [And the fig tree said,] 'Shall I leave my sweetness and my good fruit?'... [And the vine said,] 'Shall I leave my wine that cheers God and men?'"

The trees seek a leader and go first to the productive, healthy, nourishing trees — the olive, the fig, the vine. Each one says, in effect, "I'm busy. I am doing what I was created to do." These are all plants cultivated on purpose, grown with a purpose, useful. (This wet spring, I have plenty of plants popping up that I never cultivated — an abundance of life, most of it not on purpose.)

Each tree responds the same way: the call to reign is a call to leave what I was created to do. "We have no time for lesser things. God has given us a purpose, and we are fulfilling it." That made me ask: what is my purpose? I grew up in a more formal church background, and the Heidelberg Catechism we learned relentlessly answered it — the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. God gives us a purpose, and He wants us to walk in it.

The Bramble They Chose

Then all the trees said to the bramble, "You come and reign over us." And the bramble said to the trees, "If in good faith you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade, but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon."

They go to the bramble because it's the only thing left. They've exhausted every good choice. But brambles aren't even trees — they're thorny, nasty, grubby bushes. They produce pain and injury, no shade, no nourishment, no joy for God or men. They're a nuisance at best, a hazard at worst — the very things civilized people work to eradicate.

Point two: our purpose comes from God; living it produces joy in us as we serve others. All the fruitful trees had a purpose from God and were following it. God doesn't give us a self-focused purpose — He gives us one focused on others.

Asking the Right Question

When all the good choices seem to say no, the first thing we should do is examine the question we're asking. Sometimes we ask questions that don't have good answers. In Joshua 5, Joshua meets an armed man before Jericho and asks, "Are you for us, or for our enemies?" The answer comes back: "No." Joshua had asked an either-or, and the answer was no — "I am the commander of the army of the Lord." Joshua fell on his face and worshiped, because God gave him a different question.

Sometimes the question is good but our motive is wrong. James 4 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." I don't have to give you an example — we all have prayers that were selfish or misguided, and along with Garth Brooks we can sometimes thank God for unanswered prayer. If all the good trees say no and only the brambles remain, we're probably asking the wrong question, and we should walk away from it.

Why Seek a King at All?

Why were the people so worried about finding a leader when they were supposed to be led by God? First Samuel 8 gives us the answer. The people come to Samuel demanding a king. Samuel prays, and God says, "They have not rejected you, but they have rejected me." They wanted leadership because they didn't want God's leadership.

Samuel lays out what a king will do: he will take your sons for his wars, multiply ministers and bureaucracies, build his wealth on the backs of your children, take your daughters for his luxuries, take your best land, take the fruit of your labors, and enslave you through taxation. (What is it — April 14th? Anyway.) And he finishes: "You will cry out to God for deliverance, but none is coming, because you chose to submit to a king instead of submitting to God."

They wanted an earthly leader for two reasons: to be like all the other nations, and to go before them and fight their battles. We don't want to stick out as peculiar or set apart, and we don't want to be personally responsible for our own decisions. So God told Samuel to give them a king.

Earthly human government is founded on people refusing to be led by God. For the people of Christ, we must look past human government to heaven for our leadership. Does that mean we ignore the government? No — we're called to submit. But our ultimate orders and ultimate responsibility are to Jesus, and that must supersede everything else. We cannot outsource our responsibility to follow Him. And we are to live out Galatians 5: "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law."

Jotham's Indictment of the People

"If you then have acted in good faith and integrity with Jerubbaal and with his house this day, then rejoice in Abimelech, and let him also rejoice in you. But if not, let fire come out from Abimelech and devour the leaders of Shechem... and let fire come out from the leaders of Shechem... and devour Abimelech."

This is beautiful, Holy Spirit-led sarcasm. Jotham says, "If you've done the right thing by slaughtering my family after our father fought and died to protect you, then great — enjoy Abimelech, and let Abimelech enjoy you."

Notice who Jotham indicts. He doesn't aim this speech at Abimelech; he aims it at the people, placing responsibility on them for their choice. We bear the responsibility for the leaders we choose. "Well, I didn't vote for so-and-so" — I'm sure not everyone in Shechem was excited about Abimelech, but they were all called out, and they all suffer. Then Jotham flees to Beer to escape his brother.

God Sends Strife

Abimelech ruled over Israel three years. And God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem... that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood be laid on Abimelech their brother, who killed them, and on the men of Shechem who strengthened his hands to kill his brothers.

The same wording appears when God sends an evil spirit to torment Saul. God's purpose will win out. If they were following God, none of this would happen — but instead He uses both rebellious parties: the rebellious government to punish the rebellious people, and the rebellious people to punish the rebellious government.

The leaders of Shechem set ambushes and begin a kind of economic terrorism, robbing everyone who passes by along the trade routes. Then a man named Gaal the son of Ebed moves in, and the leaders put their confidence in him. They hold a festival in the house of their god, eat and drink, and revile Abimelech.

Gaal the son of Ebed said, "Who is Abimelech, and who are we of Shechem, that we should serve him?... Would that this people were under my hand! Then I would remove Abimelech."

The people didn't like their current ruler, so they chose a new one to get rid of the one they had picked. People are fickle. Our opinions change rapidly. Jesus rode into Jerusalem to cries of "Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord," and within a week the same crowd screamed, "Crucify him." If we are driven by public opinion, we will not be productive in any of our purposes. Proverbs 29:25 says, "The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe." We are called to live as godly people regardless of our situation.

Conspiracy, Deception, and Battle

When Zebul the ruler of the city heard the words of Gaal the son of Ebed, his anger was kindled. And he sent messengers to Abimelech secretly, saying, "Behold, Gaal... [is] stirring up the city against you. Now therefore, go by night... and set an ambush in the field."

We see leaders and politicians conspiring, backbiting, and fighting. How can a political system be this bad? Broken people do broken things — that is the history of humanity.

Abimelech sets his ambush. In the morning Gaal sees the army coming down the mountains, and Zebul deceives him: "You mistake the shadow of the mountains for men." When Gaal sees clearly, Zebul turns on him: "Where is your mouth now, you who said, 'Who is Abimelech, that we should serve him?'" Gaal goes out and fights Abimelech, is routed, and Zebul drives him out of Shechem.

Notice verse 39: Abimelech comes down to fight Gaal "and the leaders of Shechem" — the very people who chose him. Three years into his rule, they are now actively fighting against him.

Point three: ungodly choices will pay ungodly dividends. When we make ungodly choices, there is an ungodly price to pay and ungodly fruit to bear.

The Destruction of Shechem

The next day the people went out into the field — not an army, but ordinary people planting and providing food for their families. Abimelech ambushed them, killed them, captured the city, killed everyone in it, razed it to its foundation, and sowed it with salt. It would be two hundred years before Shechem was rebuilt. They chose the bramble, and now they receive everything Jotham warned them about.

But it isn't finished. The leaders of the tower of Shechem fled into the stronghold of the house of their god. Abimelech and his men cut bundles of firewood, piled them against the stronghold, and set it on fire, so that about a thousand men and women died.

It cost the lives of an entire city — men, women, and children — because they chose Abimelech. But really, it's not that they chose Abimelech; it's that they rejected God. When a people rejects God, there are no good choices left. It doesn't matter how attractive the option looks because "he's just like us," or how respectable the next man looks because "I represent the old ways." When a people rejects God, there are no good choices left.

The Judgment of God Is Unavoidable

Abimelech looks unstoppable — but the judgment of God is unavoidable. He moves on to Thebes, captures it, and prepares to burn another tower full of people.

And a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech's head and crushed his skull. Then he called quickly to the young man his armor-bearer and said to him, "Draw your sword and kill me, lest they say of me, 'A woman killed him.'" And his young man thrust him through, and he died.

The erstwhile king of Israel is killed by a woman defending her children with a dropped stone. And there he is, worried that his legacy will be that a woman killed him — when his real legacy is that he was a horrible man who wiped out entire cities. He is so concerned about his cause of death that he has clearly forgotten there is something after death. He thinks only about right now.

Yet the blame, as Jotham illustrated, is not only on Abimelech but on the people who chose him.

Thus God returned the evil of Abimelech, which he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers. And God also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads, and upon them came the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal.

God used the evil ruler to punish the evil people, and the evil people to punish the evil ruler.

The Problem Is Us

What does this mean for us? The main problem was never Abimelech. He was a problem, but the real problem was a people who had turned away from God. It wasn't that they elected the wrong man — it's that a nation that turns its back on God is left only with bad choices.

The state of a nation is a reflection of its people. And the state of our nation is largely a reflection of us, the church. We are called to be salt and light, to influence culture, to go and make disciples — yet too often we've stayed put and stayed quiet. So the problem, in the words of that great contemporary prophet, is, "Hi, I'm the problem; it's me."

It's my fault, because I get distracted so easily by things that look important only when I take my eyes off of Jesus. Right now my freezer at home is dying — I'm literally watching the temperature climb on an alert. It seems like a really big problem until I put my eyes back on Jesus and remember I can trust my Lord. Is it an inconvenience? Yes. Is it a big deal? No — because when I put my eyes back on Jesus, "the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace." Our world will present a myriad of problems, and they will all look big until we put our eyes back on Jesus.

Our Marching Orders

The crisis at Shechem arose because the people forgot God: "as soon as Gideon died, the people of Israel turned again and whored after the Baals." We are human beings; it is easy to forget what God has done, so we must constantly remind ourselves. The commands are to love God and love others. Anything else is failure on our part.

Jesus refines the call in Matthew 28:

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

This is our marching orders. We change the world not by changing the world but by changing individuals in it — we tell them about Jesus, the Holy Spirit ignites a spark in their hearts, their lives are changed, and it ripples outward. We so want it to be easy. We want to outsource it: "I voted for the right guy." "No, you voted for the wrong guy." But that argument doesn't change the command God gave His church to go and make disciples.

To do that, we need help — we can't do it on our own. We need to remember who we are: all of us are sinners who have broken the law and earned its punishment. We need to remember that there is a Savior, Jesus, because we cannot save ourselves. We need to remember that He died for us, paying our penalty, rose again on the third day, defeating sin and death, and now sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us — because we need it all the time.

Communion: Discerning the Body

We remember these things primarily through communion. In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul writes:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then... For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.

In the formal background I grew up in, if you weren't a card-carrying member of the church you couldn't take communion, based on this passage — which I think distorts its heart. Membership in a church does not make you right before God. And "discerning the body" doesn't mean believing the bread physically becomes Jesus' flesh; I don't think Scripture supports that. We are the body of Christ. I take communion not to get something, but because of who Jesus is and who He created me to be.

My son recently asked his boss how to advance in the company — and got a long list of "work hard, stay focused." The irony is that his boss holds his position because his dad owns the company. How often do we do the same with the gospel? Someone asks, "What must I do to be saved?" and we answer, "First stop drinking, stop cussing, stop hanging out with the wrong crowd — then, when you're good enough, come to Jesus." No. If you want to come to Jesus, come to Jesus. That's the first step. Everything else — sanctification — happens later. The first thing we need is Christ.

We so often forget that it was our heavenly Father who brought us here, not our own works or understanding. We're not looking for perfection — that's found only in Jesus. We're looking at our own brokenness and understanding that yes, I needed, and still need, a Savior. Romans 8:1 says, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death."

Closing Prayer

Paul said, "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'" Let's take the bread together.

Thank you, Jesus, for the sacrifice You made on our behalf. Thank You for being the perfect sacrifice that we could never be. Thank You for taking my sin upon You and paying my penalty. Thank You, Jesus.

In the same way also He took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." Let's take the cup together.

Thank You, Jesus, for a new covenant. Thank You for the freedom we find from sin and death. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for the sacrifice You made, the freedom You purchased, and the covenant You wrote for us, where we can stand before You clothed in Your holiness, covered by Your sinless righteousness. Help us keep our eyes on You. Thank You, Jesus. Amen.