The transcript of A Sermon on Judges 12:8-15 has been lightly edited.
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If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, please take them and turn with me to the book of Judges. Today we are in Judges 12. We’re going to look at verses 8-15.
My original thought for today as we move into Advent was to lump these three judges in with the beginning of the account of Samson the next time we gather together after the first of the year. And preach on fasting today because why not? It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Maybe fasting would have been a good message.
But as I was looking, as I was kind of looking forward and preparing and kind of getting things in order for the next time we came back to the book of Judges, I noticed that while most of the commentators spent very little time on Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon, one of the commentators, Barry Webb, spent an awful lot of time just looking at these three people and their contribution to the protection and the preservation of the people of God. And I decided, well, maybe there’s something there. And so I looked more deeply into it.
And so we’re going to cover these three minor judges a little bit differently than we’ve covered the other minor judges who we have just devoted a brief point in a sermon about another judge to. We’re going to look at each of these three judges. Not only was the inspiration for this come from Barry Webb, but the shape of this sermon came from him as well.
And so let us look at the lives of Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon as we consider Judges 12:8-15.
“After him, Izban of Bethlehem judged Israel. He had 30 sons and 30 daughters he gave in marriage outside his clan, and 30 daughters he brought in from outside for his sons.
And he judged Israel seven years. Then Ibzan died and was buried at Bethlehem. After him, Elon, the Zebulonite, judged Israel, and he judged Israel 10 years.
Then Elon, the Zebulonite, died and was buried at Aijalon in the land of Zebulon. After him, Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Parathonite, judged Israel. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys and he judged Israel eight years.
Then Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Parathonite, died and was buried at Parathon in the land of Ephraim in the hill country of the Amalekites.”
Let’s pray. Father, as we look at these three people that we consider minor judges, we do ask that You would help us to see Your glory in their work. And I ask, O Lord, also, that by the power of Your Holy Spirit our eyes would be opened so that we might see You, so that we might know You, and so that we might be changed by what You teach us today. I pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So when I was growing up, the first time I ever heard about the race distance called a marathon, it was in the context of watching the Olympics. Now a marathon is a foot race that’s 26.2 something something miles in length. And so these elite racers would start at the starting line and they would run.
And marathons were something we watched on television because they were for really well-trained people. Well, if you look today, the marathon is just another foot race. There is probably somewhere around the country, even right now, a group of people very much like me who are in the middle of a 26.2 mile race that they have been training maybe their whole life for.
And they’re not going to be like Eliud Kipchoge and other African runners who can run that 26.2 miles in under two hours. They are going to be out on that course for five, six, seven, or even eight hours hoping that maybe they just cross the finish line before the race officials cut the timing off and you get a “Did Not Finish” category. And, you know, I mentioned Eliud Kipchoge and if you’re in the running world, you know his name because he does run marathons in sub two hour paces.
But the rest of these people that are running, you’re never going to know their name. They’re not going to show up on a web search for fastest Boston marathon. They’re not going to end up on headlines for finishing the race in record time.
But they ran the race. And most of them will finish. And we have a tendency to look at people like Ibzan and Elon and Abdon and all the other nameless people within the book of Judges and within the Scripture as “also-rans.”
And we gloss over them. And yet it’s good for us to slow down and take a little bit of time to see what the biblical author is trying to teach us as he points us to these three men. So today we are going to look at Ibzan the Unifier, Elon the Anonymous, and Abdon the flashy.
IBZAN THE UNIFIER
First, Ibzan the Unifier. Now, these three men, Ibsen, Elon, and Abdon, are the last of six minor judges. And if we put the six minor judges and the six major judges together, we see that there are 12 judges.
And this is likely in order to point us to the fact that all of Israel at this point in time needed rescue. This was not merely tribe A having a problem that they needed rescue from, but just as we have 12 tribes, we have 12 judges.
And the picture here is that the problems that show up in individual tribes are showing up in all of Israel. The idolatry, the rebellion, the turning their back upon God is something that all of Israel is dealing with at this time.
And Ibzan, we call him Ibzan the Unifier because we’re told that he has 30 sons and 30 daughters, and he married off his 30 daughters outside of the clan, and he brought in 30 women from outside the clan to marry his sons. And typically this was done in order to bring kingdoms together.
Now there is a possibility that he was marrying his daughters off outside of the nation of Israel, but more than likely what he’s doing is he is seeing the fracturing within the nation of Israel. We considered this with Gideon and with Abimelech and with Jephthah. We begin to see tribes complaining against the other tribes.
We begin to see this unity that should be built around being the people of God. We begin to see it fall apart, and we begin to see it crumble. And it’s almost as if we see Ibzan here seeing that crumbling and trying to fix it.
But he tries to fix it in his own power. He commodifies or objectifies his daughters and these 30 other women that he brings into his clan with his sons, and he turns them into tools in which to be used in order to bring unity among the tribes. And the picture here is that unity and unification of the nation is a good thing to pursue, but we need to pursue it in God’s way and not in our own.
It is not a good thing for him to turn his 30 daughters into commodities, into tools of unification. They are created in the image of God. They should be treated with the respect and with the dignity of the image of God, and yet he uses them as tools for unity.
And we are called in the church to be united as well. Whether it’s the book of Philippians, which while it focuses on the joy of the church, it also focuses on the unity that should be within the church. We need to make sure that we pursue unity in the way that God calls us to pursue unity.
Too many times within the church or within the culture, we pursue unity by compromising the law of God. “Well, I don’t want to get into an argument or a conflict with so-and-so, so I’m not going to bring the truth to them where I see their life falling short of the truth.” Or, “I don’t want them to be uncomfortable with the fact that I think they’re teaching something wrong, so I’m not going to go to them and talk to them about that. Because you know, the Bible tells us to get along.”
Well, no, the Bible doesn’t tell us to merely get along. The Bible tells us to be united around the truth. And the Bible also teaches us how that union comes about. Bruce is going to be doing a study next year on the book One With My Lord by Sam Allberry. And one of the chapters in there is he talks about our union with Christ.
We are crucified with Christ. We are raised with Him. What is true about Him is true about us. And part of that union is we are also united to each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Allberry says,
“We all come to Christ in the same way. There is only one lane: Faith in Christ and what He has done on the cross. Being slave or free, Jew or Greek, a man or a woman makes no difference. All alike have fallen short of God’s glory. All alike rely solely on the free grace of God to us in Christ. And in this, we are all one in Christ Jesus, brought together through Him, united at the foot of the cross.”
Why are we to pursue unity? Because we’re all sinners in need of a Savior who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ.
And that means that we don’t all have to look alike. Heaven forbid you all turn into a bunch of Ike’s because that would be really difficult to get along with on a regular basis. Just ask me. I struggle to get along with myself.
We’re not to be uniform, but we’re to be united around the truth that we are all sinners in need of grace who have received that grace through Jesus and through Him alone. And that means that sometimes, rather than compromising truth, we seek unity around the truth.
Sometimes we take the chance on hurting somebody’s feelings because they are apart from the truth. Because we want to be united at the foot of the cross as we are called to be. So Ibzan, the Unifier, teaches us that yes, it is good for us to be united, to be in communion as the people of God, but we must pursue that unity in God’s way and according to God’s prescription.
ELON THE ANONYMOUS
Well, secondly, we have Elon the Anonymous. We know three things about Elon. We know his name. We know his tribe. Well, I guess four things. We know his name. We know his tribe. We know how long he judged Israel. And we know that he died.
And Elon, it’s hard to find things about him, so we look at his tribe, the Zebulunites. And the Zebulunites teach us that there is still a little bit of grace in Israel at this time. The first time we meet Zebulun, the tribe of Zebulun in the book of Judges is in chapter 1, verse 30.
And the author says that Zebulun did not do what they were commanded to do by God. They did not expel the Canaanites from the boundaries of their tribe. That’s the first introduction we have of Zebulon in the book of Judges.
But the next time we see Zebulun mentioned is in chapter 4 and 5 with Barak and Deborah. And when Barak calls, Zebulun steps up. And we see in verse 5, as they’re recounting the work of the tribe, the Zebulunites are praised.
They are commended for their role in the battle. And then we see them again in the time of Gideon in chapter 6 where they respond once again to Gideon’s call to come and to gather and to be God’s instrument of salvation for the Israelites.
And the fact that in this book that is in a generally downward, morally downward progression, we start with Judah answering God’s call to expel the Canaanites from their territory. And they do that and they help others. And we’re going to end the book of Judges in the depths of despair with the nation of Israel being described in terms that we would expect to find in Genesis 19 with the description of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We still see God’s grace at work because here and there, there are people that are still answering His call.
It is easy to get in despair in our world right now. We look around and we see our nation falling apart morally and politically and spiritually. And it’s easy to look and to say, “Oh my goodness, we’ve lost.”
But there are still churches that are growing. There are still people that are coming to faith in the good news that Jesus saves sinners. And God’s grace is still at work.
Who is building this church? God is. Jesus says, “I am building My church. And the gates of hell, regardless of how successful they look, regardless of how powerful the gates of hell seem, the gates of hell shall not prevail.”
And we need to look for and we need to celebrate those glimpses of God’s grace being successful in our culture and take great comfort in those. Not because they are what we believe in for salvation, but because they are evidences that God’s promise is true. I am building My church.
So we’ve seen Ibzan, the Unifier. We see Elon, the Anonymous. And now Abdon, the Flashy.
ABDON THE FLASHY
Verse 13:
“After him, Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Parathenite, judged Israel. He had 40 sons and 30 grandsons who rode on 70 donkeys, and he judged Israel eight years. Then Abdon, the son of Hillel, the Parathenite, died and was buried at Parathon in the land of Ephraim in the hill country of the Amalekites.”
Abdon is a little questionable here. Yes, he judges Israel for a period of eight years and we see this transition period of 23 years between Jephthah and we’ll pick up Samson after the first of the year. But Abdon, he’s contrasted with Gideon.
Whereas Gideon had 70 sons, Abdon has 40 sons and 30 grandsons, but it still adds up to 70, so there’s a contrast with Gideon there. And whereas Gideon really only set up one of his sons to be king, it seems as though Abdon is setting up all 70 of his descendants, his children and his grandchildren, to be rulers in Israel. It’s almost as if Abdon is establishing or at least trying to establish a dynasty in this place.
And it points us to the truth that we have one true king. This whole section really points us to look forward to a king that God is going to send. We’re told in v. 8 that Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel.
We have Bethlehem mentioned here and in the next chapter we’re going to have Philistine. The Philistines mentioned. And who was it that came from Bethlehem that finally, once and for all, defeated the Philistines? It was David.
Israel was supposed to have a king. Israel was going to have a king. But we need to be pointed to the true king that God is going to raise up. And that is David. One of the interesting truths about the book of Judges is Samson is not the last judge. Samuel is.
Samuel is raised up much like Samson is. But instead of leading the country in military conquest, he is used by God to anoint the first two kings of Israel. The second king that he anoints is the one that finally, once and for all, establishes the nation of Israel free from attack and oppression.
And Abdon tries to set himself and his family up as the king, whereas he should have been looking for the king that God sets up.
And we should too. Too often we look at the kings of this nation, or we don’t call them kings, we call them senators and congressmen and Supreme Court judges and presidents.
When we should be looking to the one true king who was born centuries after David in that same town of Bethlehem, whom we celebrate at Christmas because he took on flesh to dwelt among us so that we might have salvation. And so we need to make sure that we are not looking at false kings, but we are looking and following the one true king.
CONCLUSION
So Ibzan, the Unifier, Elon, the Anonymous, and Abdon, the Flashy.
What does this have to do with the importance of nobodies? Well, as I mentioned before we read the Scripture, most of the commentators on this passage just give a paragraph or two and then lump them in with either Samuel or the end of the Jephthah account. And yet God cared enough about them to list their names in His inspired Scripture. God uses nobodies.
God uses “also-rans” to build His kingdom. There are a lot of very famous pastors on the television, on the radio, on the internet. Some are well worth following.
If you come across some, you need to turn them off and you’re probably better off listening to secular music than some of them. But those famous pastors who are on the radio, who are on the television, are a drop in the bucket compared to the pastors in churches that will never get a spot on the television. That will never get a radio spot.
That will never be asked to speak at conventions or at pastor’s retreats or things like that. And yet that is who God uses to build His kingdom. But let’s go beyond that.
You know, most of us could list most of the six major judges if we were asked. Some of us could list the six minor judges. But do you know the name of any of the 300 men that Gideon took with him to defeat the Midianites? Do you know the names of any of the 32,000 men that he gathered before he whittled it down to 300? Do you know the names of any of the soldiers in the army that Ehud or Othniel or Barak or Jephthah or Gideon or Samson? Do you know any of those people’s names that were part of those armies? No.
And yet God used every single one of those men to protect Israel and to build His kingdom. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12, he’s talking about spiritual gifts and he talks about spiritual gifts in the church in the context, in the metaphor of a body. He says:
“…For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.”
No gift is more important in the church than any other. Pastors come. Pastors go. Elders and deacons come. Elders and deacons go. But there are always church members. Yes, different people will sit in your spot in another few decades. Another man will stand in my spot in another few decades.
Another elder will be in the session meeting in another few decades. Another deacon will be in the deacon’s meeting in another few decades. But there are always men and women who are in the church, many times working namelessly, sometimes working thanklessly, and yet they are necessary for the life of the church.
Can you see my appendix? No, you cannot. Many people think that the appendix was something that’s just a leftover from a previous form of humanity and evolution, and yet recently we have found that the appendix has a very important filtering function within the body.
Kevin DeYoung says we look at church treasurers and church secretaries and church administrators as just another person who is on the payroll of the church sometimes. And yet, he says, that is a spiritual work, a spiritual gift from God to do those things. The church needs nobodies. The church needs “also-rans.”
Let’s pray. Father above, we do thank You for the truth that You have gathered us together according to the grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Lord, help us not to despair the day of small things. Help us not to despair being also rams. But help us to rest in Christ and to see His glory through us. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
BENEDICTION
That is a reminder that the field is ripe for harvest, and God is the one who brings the harvest. As we go this week, whether it’s to hunt, to work, to celebrate Thanksgiving, please go with this blessing from God.
“To God’s elect who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood: Grace and peace be Yours in abundance.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
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