Have you ever noticed people becoming promoted in the company you’re in? Does there appear to be a pattern to it? What about marital relationships that survive as compared with those that fail? Is there a pattern to success and failure?
Judges 2:11-23 tells us of a recurrent life pattern of disobedience and defeat the nation of Israel suffered each time it turned away from the truth of their God, the LORD. The opposite of this pattern i.e. for obedience and faithfulness, also applies.
The pattern in Judges charts the historical pattern of Israel’s history through the period of the Judges prior to Monarchic rule, but the pattern continued through the period of the kings as well.
The just, righteous, obedient kings were blessed by God and the unfaithful, idolatrous kings would be punished and would lose their kingdoms--this is how the kingdoms of Israel and Judah eventually fell (respectively to the Assyrians and Babylonians) in 722 B.C.E. and 586 B.C.E. This law of God’s ancient wisdom has worked consistently right through the ages and remains today.
In our lives, too, whenever we step away from the truth, doing the wrong thing, we are thus judged or potentially judged (for the Christian, by God, for the non-God-believing person, by ‘life’) and we must then work our way back into the favour of people or the situation we’re out of favour with. This is merely the implementation and outworking of God’s wisdom in the historical tradition.
Wisdom in this way can equally be termed ‘truth’ as it’s the way things generally work out. Wisdom can be applied by anyone and it will work, regardless of spiritual affiliation. And wisdom in this sense is still very much biblically based. This explains why the spiritually-blind person’s heart ‘rages against the LORD’[1] and others when things don’t go right for them--they don’t understand or respect God’s ancient framework for the law which is simply based in ‘cause and effect.’ They can’t get away from it; nobody can.
We can take this wisdom and put it in the setting of a workplace relationship. For example, when someone talks a lot but they don’t listen very well, they won’t be afforded much real respect by their peers or supervisors. Sure, they’ll be tolerated and treated nicely when face to face with people, but people will talk behind their back; certainly there will be less true respect for the things they stand for. There is a natural lack of tolerance for obnoxious people.
If we have a habit of speeding we’ll get caught eventually--eventually our luck runs out. If we’re non-genuine or even only half-genuine about an issue, people will perceive this lack of authenticity and we’ll be tarnished. We can apply this rule of truth to really any situation--God’s wisdom ends up reigning eventually.
This is why it is ultimately important that we’re as obedient and dedicated to the truth and God’s wisdom as we can be. It’s a commitment that is honoured in many ways in the end. Knowing this, why would anyone go against it?
Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
[1] See Proverbs 19:3.
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