Peter Barnes | Judges 9
SERMON NOTES
ABIMELECH: A FAILED KING
(Judges 9)
– Shakespeare: ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.’
1. Beware of cunning appeals.
– 9:1-6; false religion and violence together
– cream rises to the top but so does flotsam and jetsam
2. ‘Study rather to be good than great’.
– 9:7-21; the saying is from Charles Simeon
– only other fable is in 2 Kings 14:8-10; like Aesop’s Fables
– the olive tree, the fig tree and the vine say ‘no’ to the kingship, but the thornbush accepts; be good rather than great (1 Kings 3:5-14)
3. God sovereignly destroys evil with evil.
– 9:25-57; the Soviets defeated the Nazis in World War II
– Rev. 17:16-17; note that God sends the evil spirit in Judges 9:23 and He destroys both Abimelech and Shechem in 9:56-57; the conclusion is 2 Peter 3:13