Sin is So Unproductive
Judges 6:1-4a
The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. And … because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land … and leave no sustenance in Israel.
Like the slow, painstaking tunnelling of prisoners through thick cell walls, such is the joyless travail of trying to carve out an existence in a failed, godless state.
Listen, friend, past the distant clanking of hammer on chisel that rumbles on through these Israeli nights to the emptiness all around. Where are the sounds of youths playing football in the valley at a homecoming parade? Or the sounds of men building patio furniture for their thriving small business? Or the cheers of fans at horse races on the hills? Or the rising of Thanksgiving hymns around a campfire after a potluck? Or the string-plucking of songwriters by the riversides? Or the laugher of wives and husbands on their date at the stand-up comedy event? Or the whisks of painters’ brushes painting a Sunrise over Galilee at the break of dawn? Or the recreation of former generations?
“There’s a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death,” wrote Solomon in Proverbs 14, and that death casts many shadows along the route. Godlessness is tasty fruit at first. The tree always satisfies while the fruit is ripe. But soon the fruit dries up. Soon, the sickness sets in. Soon, the laughter ceases and the merriment disappears and the music stops. Soon, you throw away your instrument and your canvas and your workshop just to chip away at the mountainsides. Soon, the scorched landscape of your town mirrors the scorched landscape of your own spirit, and all of life lacks sustenance.
Ah, but if we’ve learned anything from the LORD’s redemptive working in the world from Genesis 1 to Judges 6, it’s that these are the dog days when godless men, in their bewilderment, cry out to Almighty God. And God, in His pity, sends a hero to strike up the band anew.