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¹⁶ Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. ¹⁷ Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. ¹⁸ Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. ¹⁹ But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.

²⁰ Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant I ordained for their ancestors and has not listened to me, ²¹ I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. ²² I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their ancestors did.” ²³ The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua. (NIV)

Someone observed that just because we are ‘redeemed’ it doesn’t mean we can live any old how. Sin has consequences. Little compromises grow into greater ones, leading to sad and unwanted outcomes. As in the old Jungle Doctor story, ‘Little leopards (sins) grow into bigger leopards (sins), and big leopards kill!

Verses 16-19 summarise the tragic story of this book. We will see this cycle repeated time and again. We surely have to learn from it?

Sidlow Baxter writes: ‘The Judges who were mercifully raised up to recall and deliver Israel, stopped the rot for the moment, but it set in again worse than before as soon as the grave silenced each Judge’s voice…We can never enjoy God’s promised rest for long if we tolerate only partially crushed sins to continue with us. If we make league with questionable things because they seem harmless, we shall soon find ourselves wedded to the desires of the flesh again, and down from the heights to which God has lifted us.’

PRAYER: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test my thoughts.  Point out anything you find in me that makes you sad, and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (Ps 139:23,24: The Living Bible)

 After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. ⁷ The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.

⁸ Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. ⁹ And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.

¹⁰ After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. ¹¹ Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. ¹² They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger ¹³ because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. ¹⁴ In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. ¹⁵ Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. (NIV)

‘Parents cannot automatically pass their faith on to their children; being born into a Christian family does not guarantee that one will become a true Christian. But the teaching and, above all, the example of godly parents will indeed predispose their children to become Christians. However, the children themselves must take that final step of faith…Moses had told the Israelites to teach each new generation about the Lord (see Deuteronomy 6:6-9…); but teaching alone is not enough. Each person must experience the Lord for him or herself; each person must make his or her own personal commitment to the Lord. Clearly the new generation of Israelites had not done this.’ Tom Hale.

PRAYER:  Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23,24 King James Version

The loose tongue of the godless spreads destruction;
    the common sense of the godly preserves them.

¹⁰ When it goes well for good people, the whole town cheers;
    when it goes badly for bad people, the town celebrates.

¹¹ When right-living people bless the city, it flourishes;
    evil talk turns it into a ghost town in no time.

¹² Mean-spirited slander is heartless;
    quiet discretion accompanies good sense.

¹³ A gadabout gossip can’t be trusted with a secret,
    but someone of integrity won’t violate a confidence.

¹⁴ Without good direction, people lose their way;
    the more wise counsel you follow, the better your chances.

¹⁵ Whoever makes deals with strangers is sure to get burned;
    if you keep a cool head, you’ll avoid rash bargains.

¹⁶ A woman of gentle grace gets respect,
    but men of rough violence grab for loot.

¹⁷ When you’re kind to others, you help yourself;
    when you’re cruel to others, you hurt yourself.

¹⁸ Bad work gets paid with a bad check;
    good work gets solid pay. (The Message)

Reading verse 11a caused me to think about Jer.29:7:

”Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

I was at a prayer meeting this morning, and the leader reminded us of the reality of John 7:38, where Jesus said, ”Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” I thought about our village, which many people would say is a ‘special’ place, and I wondered to what degree this ‘specialness’ can be related to the presence of many Christians living in it, and praying for it, acting as ‘salt’ and ‘light’? What ”rivers” are flowing here!

The Bible encourages us to pray for our leaders (see 1 Timothy 2:1-4). May God give to them ”good direction” and ”wise counsel” that they may pass it on to us. How much we need it.

 “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.” (The Message)

Lord God, whether I am with others or on my own, help me to be myself; to be real in worship, real in my prayers. Grant that it may be me – really and truly and fully me – coming before you in Jesus’ Name and by the power of His Spirit. Let there be no pretence, no hiding, but all that I am sincerely approaching you and all that you are, and ever thankful for the blood of Jesus which cleanses from all sin.

 “Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?”

^21-23 “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you Samaritans will worship the Father neither here at this mountain nor there in Jerusalem. You worship guessing in the dark; we Jews worship in the clear light of day. God’s way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you’re called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.

^23-24 “It’s who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That’s the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration.”

²⁵ The woman said, “I don’t know about that. I do know that the Messiah is coming. When he arrives, we’ll get the whole story.”

²⁶ “I am he,” said Jesus. “You don’t have to wait any longer or look any further.” (The Message)

The search was over. Jesus was the answer. Jesus is the answer. He was the One she had been looking for all along. He was the hope of all her people (25).

Initially, when Jesus shone the spotlight on her true situation (17,18), she tried to change the subject (19,20), as many still do. Diversionary tactics? Perhaps. She asked a question about the correct place to worship. This led to Jesus’ wonderful and famous answer. God is looking for true worshipers, and it’s not a matter of where you worship, but how. It’s not about the venue but the heart.

If she was trying to wriggle away from His heart-searching gaze, she couldn’t. By the time we get to verse 26 it’s ‘Check-mate’! She knows she is face to face with all she was ever looking for.

‘But why awaken such memories? Why open the cupboard and bid that skeleton step down? It could not be otherwise! Christ was there not to enter into an argument, but to awaken the dormant conscience and save. The woman evaded the sword thrust, but she realised that she was dealing with a master hand in the spiritual realm. Hence her question about worship. This led to one of the greatest sayings ever uttered on earth-that God is spirit. That he is ever searching for true worshipers, that he is indifferent to places and nationalities and method, that we cannot worship until we live in the spirit realm and are willing to conform ourselves absolutely to truth-these thoughts have revolutionised the religious thinking of mankind.’ F.B.Meyer

 The woman said, “Sir, give me this water so I won’t ever get thirsty, won’t ever have to come back to this well again!”

¹⁶ He said, “Go call your husband and then come back.”

^17-18 “I have no husband,” she said.

“That’s nicely put: ‘I have no husband.’ You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough.”

^19-20 “Oh, so you’re a prophet! Well, tell me this: Our ancestors worshiped God at this mountain, but you Jews insist that Jerusalem is the only place for worship, right?” (The Message)

Yesterday we were thinking about this woman’s quest for life. She kept drinking from a well that did not satisfy. This was particularly true of her love life. Someone observed that ‘she had lived with a passing parade of men.’

So when she asked Jesus for the satisfying gift He offered (15), Jesus abruptly raised the issue of her ‘idolatry’. Men had been her ‘gods’. This was where she had been looking for meaning, but failing to find it. Jesus’ words, as someone else noted, ‘precipitated a crisis in the conversation.’ It seems it was this prophetic knowledge of her that so affected her (see v.29).

In Revelation 1, in John’s majestic vision of the risen Jesus, he says, ”…his eyes were like blazing fire” (14b). One preacher, speaking about that passage, said, ‘Jesus has X-Ray vision.’

Indeed He does. This woman experienced it. So have many of us He kindly convicts of sin, and brings to repentance that we may know ”the life that truly is life” (1 Tim.6:19).

Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”

^11-12 The woman said, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this ‘living water’? Are you a better man than our ancestor Jacob, who dug this well and drank from it, he and his sons and livestock, and passed it down to us?”

^13-14 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst—not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life.” (The Message)

This was the Samaritan woman’s story, and Jesus knew it. She kept drinking ‘water’ that did not, could not, satisfy her thirst. ‘But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for’ could have been written over her life up to this moment. If only she had known who Jesus was, and what He had to offer, her life would have been so different. It was about to be. Watch this space!

There is a profound irony in the question (12): ”Are you greater than our father Jacob…?” We know the answer to be a resounding, ‘Yes’.

Back in 2012, Jilly and I spent a long week-end in Barcelona. On a Sunday morning, we decided to leave our hotel very early, when the air was cooler, and walk to the beach. As we walked through the city centre, probably around 5 a.m., we saw crowds of people, mainly young people, moving out of it. After a night in the clubs and bars, and so on, many looked rough, and some were clearly unwell. Yet we knew, and commented on this, that come the next week-end, probably most of them would be back for more of the same – drinking unsatisying water from a temporal well. This is the human condition: desperately searching for meaning and satisfaction. We are empty inside, and we have to find a way to fill the vacuum. But nothing and no-one can help us, outside of Jesus. St. Augustine, in one of his ‘Confessions’, famously said, ‘…Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.’ Later, in the same confession, he went on to pray: ‘Who will send Thee into my heart to inebriate it, so that I may forget my woes, and embrace Thee my only good?’

PRAYER: Lord, give me a heart to see the crowds as lost sheep without a Shepherd. May I never forget that I was once among them – desperately looking for something I could not find. May I never forget that you came and found me, and brought me home, just like you did with the woman at the well. So I pray for ‘labourers’, and offer myself to serve in your harvest field.

 ^1-3 Jesus realized that the Pharisees were keeping count of the baptisms that he and John performed (although his disciples, not Jesus, did the actual baptizing). They had posted the score that Jesus was ahead, turning him and John into rivals in the eyes of the people. So Jesus left the Judean countryside and went back to Galilee.

^4-6 To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon.

^7-8 A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.)

⁹ The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.) (The Message)

This has been characterised as ‘the story of the bad Samaritan.’

Technically speaking, Jesus did not have to go through Samaria on His homeward journey (4). He could have travelled another way. But this was a heavenly ”had”. His Father arranged His schedule, and He had written an appointment with this one lost woman into Jesus’ schedule. It was what we might call a ‘divine appointment’.

She was just one ‘lost’ woman, but she mattered to God. Furthermore, this work which started with one was to spread to many. What a stark contrast we see between John 3 and 4. In the third chapter Jesus encountered the religious and (presumably) morally upright Nicodemus; in chapter 4 He met an immoral woman. Both needed Him.

Are we prepared to do ‘whatever it takes’ to reach lost people? On this hot day in a Samaritan village, our Lord broke with convention in at least two ways: a.) He, a Jew, spoke to her, a Samaritan. According to social custom at that time such a thing was not to happen; b.) He, a man, spoke to her a woman. I found this comment in Bible Hub: ‘Respectable men, especially teachers, avoided public one-on-one dialogue with any woman not of their household. John deliberately notes the disciples “were amazed that He was talking with a woman” (John 4:27). Their silence underscores how entrenched the taboo was; yet Jesus honours her with the longest recorded private discourse in the Gospels.’ Jesus did not hold Himself tightly in some self-protective cocoon. We might say He lived life out on the edge. May we live out there with Him!

I have been listening to a recent interview with John Ortberg. Reflecting, early this morning, on something he said, I was reminded of his book about evangelism from several decades ago, bearing the great title, ‘If you want to walk on water, you’ve got to get out of the boat.’

PRAYER: Lord, please lead us in our daily interactions with people. Show us how to break down false barriers. Help us to be daring, and willing to take risks to reach the people for whom you died.

 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, ² and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? ³ And I have also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.’”

⁴ When the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, ⁵ and they called that place Bokim. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord. (NIV)

There are moments – indeed there are ‘seasons’ – of God-given opportunity. But we can miss them. The people of Israel could have, should have conquered, but instead they compromised. Sin always has consequences. In this case the Lord was going to stop fighting for Israel, and the very people they could have, should have driven out (and their gods) would cause them no end of unnecessary trouble. May we not miss any opportunities for service God is putting in our pathway through sinful obedience.

‘Only the Lord knows whether their weeping indicated true repentance or only remorse and regret (Matthew 27:3-4). True repentance is always accompanied by the deeds of repentance (Acts 20:21; 26:20) – giving up sinful behaviour and turning to the Lord. Perhaps at this stage the Israelites did repent – at least for a time – because they offered sacrifices to the Lord. They named that place Bokim which means ”weepers.” ‘ Tom Hale

PRAYER: ”Investigate my life, O God,
    find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
    get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
    then guide me on the road to eternal life.” (Psalm 139:23,24: The Message)