Daily Reading: Judges 9–10
Click here to listen to Alexander Scourby reading the King James Bible
Text: Judges 9:23 – “Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech.”
This devotion is more Bible study than warm-and-fuzzy devotional, because Judges 9:23 forces you to deal with a hard truth: God sometimes sends an evil spirit, a lying spirit, or a delusion as an act of judgment on people who already chose rebellion. He is never the author of sin, but He is absolutely the Judge who turns sinners over to the very darkness they insisted on loving.
In Judges 9, Abimelech murders his seventy brethren and the men of Shechem help him do it, so God sends “an evil spirit” between them. Why? “That the cruelty done to the threescore and ten sons of Jerubbaal might come,” meaning God uses their own treachery to boomerang judgment back on their own heads. That is not God making innocent people wicked; that is God letting wicked people choke on the wickedness they ordered for supper.
Scripture compares with scripture here. In 1 Kings 22:19–23, the Lord permits a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s prophets so that a king who rejected truth can march straight into the judgment he earned. In 1 Samuel 16:14, after the Spirit of the LORD departs from Saul, an evil spirit from the LORD troubles him, showing again that when light is refused, darkness is not far behind. In Ezekiel 14:4, God says He will answer the man who comes with idols in his heart “according to the multitude of his idols,” and in Ezekiel 14:9, “I the LORD have deceived that prophet,” meaning judicially, as punishment on hearts already bent the wrong way.
That lines up perfectly with Jeremiah 17:9–10: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” and the Lord searches that heart and gives every man according to his ways. Man does not need help becoming crooked; he came out of Adam with factory-installed deceit. God’s judgment often works by simply giving a rebel more leash, and sinners usually use that extra rope to hang themselves.
Paul states the same principle doctrinally in 2 Thessalonians 2:10–12: because they “received not the love of the truth,” “God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.” Romans 1:24, 26, 28 says it three times: “God gave them up,” “God gave them up,” and “God gave them over.” When men do not want truth, God eventually stops interrupting their funeral march and lets them follow lies all the way to the grave.
Now for the dispensational line, because if you miss that, you will stir the pot and still serve raw doctrine. Judges is Old Testament history under Israel’s covenant setting, not the church as the Body of Christ. So we do not take every judicial act in Judges and slap it carelessly onto church-age believers as though no dispensational distinctions exist; but the moral principle remains the same in every age: reject revealed truth long enough, and God may judge you by giving you over to the lie you wanted in the first place.
So what should the reader take from this study?
- Do not toy with known sin. Abimelech and Shechem played politics with blood on their hands, and God turned partners into predators.
- Do not come to God wanting approval for idols already parked in your heart. Ezekiel 14 says God answers that man according to his idols.
- Do not flatter yourself about your heart. Jeremiah 17 says it is deceitful and desperately wicked; your heart is not a compass, it is a crooked used-car salesman.
- Do not refuse truth. The end of that road is delusion, not liberty.
This passage is sobering, but it is clean Bible doctrine: God is holy, man is wicked, and divine judgment often comes by removal of restraint rather than by lightning from the clouds. Sometimes the scariest judgment is not that God stops you, but that He lets you go.
Continue reading because tomorrow’ reading from JUDGES 11–13 we’ll see more of Israel’s instability, a rash vow with deadly consequences, and the birth of Samson, a man set apart from the womb who will show how much trouble a powerful man can cause when consecration and character do not stay together.
Tomorrow’s Reading: JUDGES 11–13
Until tomorrow, Stay in the Book. 📖
Brother Tony
