Judges 9,

Let me ask you, what would you do to get ahead? You just heard the story of Abba Melech, what he did to get ahead, but I mean, what would you be willing to put yourself through?

A lot of people are willing to spend years in college to get ahead, some career, but what ends would you go to, say, to get wealthy, to get successful, and to get at least, maybe, at least comfortable?

Or maybe if it's a game, a sport, what would you be willing to do to win? Or in your career, or your business, what would you be willing to do to get ahead?

Now, in the famous movie, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O 'Hara is starving in her nearly -destroyed plantation, after Sherman's army has swept through and nearly just demolished everything.

She's so hungry, she goes out to the field, and I believe it's a radish she digs up, and she tries to eat it, and she just, but she's so angry, this is what she's come to, and then as the music rises to this crescendo, and the camera backs away from her, and with this kind of orange sky in the background, and the wind blowing through her hair, she raises her clenched fist and says, if I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, as God is my witness,

I'll never be hungry again. Music gets louder. She'll do anything.

It occurred to me, watching that scene on YouTube just this past week, that the movie director put it right before the intermission.

I wonder, was that to sell more popcorn? I don't know. Anything to make a buck, right?

Never be hungry again, I'd better go get something to eat. What would you do to get ahead? In sports, especially in baseball for some reason, there's a big scandal over steroids.

It's considered cheating, you're supposed to play with a body that nature gave you, not artificially pump it up, but even though it may cause athletes some serious health problems in the long run, and officials are constantly testing for it, and punishing players who get caught, well, they just keep doing it.

They are willing to do nearly anything to make all that money that big time professional athletes can make.

In business, people are willing to do all kinds of things. I'm sure Alan can tell stories. To get ahead, lie, steal, cheat, hopefully not kill, but you gotta wonder.

If not for the government and the risk of being sued, many would, you know, lie. They make promises like bids for a project that they know they can't keep.

They may cheat, you know, they may give you only nine -tenths of a gallon of gasoline instead of a full gallon.

I mean, who stops and tests if that's a full gallon when you're filling up your car? Nobody. They'd probably cheat us all the time if the state didn't send inspectors to check.

In 2004, East Coast Moving Systems took my money and almost all my worldly possessions under contract to move them to Pennsylvania and disappeared.

If not for the FBI, we may never have found our things in a self -storage unit in Detroit, Michigan, of all places.

Some other victims weren't so well off. Some of them never found their things. The fake mover, a man from Israel, was willing to do anything to make money, anything except,

I guess, actually move people's stuff. Now, something that I can happen, that can't happen in the world of religion, you know, in the church.

I mean, what exactly can you do to get ahead? Sure, there are some people, you know, there are big celebrities in the religion business, superstars who speak at conferences and write books, but it takes something really special to do that, to be one of those kind of people.

You can't lie or cheat your way to the top of the church. Can you?

We value truth, integrity, don't we? I mean, you have to be real to make it big, don't you?

Like Ergin Kainer, you know about Ergin Kainer? Kainer rocketed to prominence in the evangelical world after September 11, 2001, because he had an amazing testimony.

He said he was born in Istanbul, Turkey, where he was raised in a very devout Muslim home, trained in a madrasa, that's an

Islamic religious school, in Beirut, Lebanon, trained to do what the terrorists of 9 -11 did. He came with his family, he said, to the

USA, eventually settled in Ohio when he was about 14 years old in 1978.

He said before that he had only seen American culture, but what he had seen a little bit on TV in there in Turkey, like the

Dukes of Hazzard. His father brought with him his plural wives, polygamists, claiming that all the others, except for the first one, were his sisters.

He started high school, he said, with a turban on his head and a prayer rug that he put in his locker and pulled it out in the bathroom and prayed toward Mecca in the high school.

He had broken English, because he was just learning it, and he finally converted to Christianity, he said, after 20 years of being a devout

Muslim, and now, after he's converted, he says, he's been out there bravely debating Muslims, even in their mosque, and even when they throw orange at him and shout in Arabic to shut him up.

It was a great story, and he tells it so well, with lots of humor and a smattering of Arabic phrases to give it some authenticity and just a dramatic flair.

It got him noticed and invited to speak all over, and it finally gained him the presidency of Liberty Baptist Seminary up there in Lynchburg, making him a best -selling author.

There was only one problem with it. It was all fiction. He was actually born in Stockholm, Sweden, to a

Swedish mother and a Turkish father, who had only one wife, by the way. He came to the USA when he was two, not 14, moving to Ohio.

He never went to a madrasa. He wasn't trained to be a terrorist, and if you see his yearbook pictures from high school, he appears like a normal American teenager.

He doesn't speak Arabic. The Arabic he was claimed to be quoting was absolute gibberish.

It totally made up. You know, it'd be like me saying, hey, I lived in Singapore for five years.

I can speak Mandarin, you know? Gong xi fa cai, xin yi kuai lai, xie xie ni, hao su, ni hao ma, ping pong, and that may sound very impressive to some of you, and if not for Mary and Joyce and a few others,

Nancy and Meilin, I could get away with that, but that's just nonsense.

Now, imagine the audacity, the audacity. He would stand before large audiences on at least one occasion, a large conference on Islam at a major seminary.

He gave his fictitious testimony spouting his fake Arabic. It's so audacious.

I mean, you almost have to admire him for the sheer courage it takes to do that. Now, wouldn't he be afraid he would be caught?

But he got away with it for nearly a whole decade until some Muslims caught on to him, you know, and put

YouTube videos out there, and then even that didn't get into the Christian community until Christians started finding out, until a

Reformed Baptist named James White, who runs an apologetics ministry out in Arizona, who knew some of those

Muslims because he actually debated them, really debated them. By the way, there's no proof that that Caner ever actually debated either.

He finally found out from them that Caner was a fake. He looked into it, he verified it, he put the proof out there on YouTube for anyone to see, and now don't you think that that would be the end of Caner's career in the religion business?

But just last December, Ergin Caner, the proven fake, the man with no integrity, was selected as the president of a

Baptist college, Bruton -Parker College in Georgia. You cannot make this stuff up.

You know, if that was fiction, it would just, no, that would never happen. What were the trustees of Bruton -Parker College thinking when they selected him to be their president?

Now, I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that part of what they were thinking was, eh, you know, he did what he had to do to get ahead.

Some break contracts, some take steroids, some make up testimonies, eh.

Don't give me this airy -fairy, otherworldly, totally impractical verbiage about integrity.

Live in the real world. You know, you gotta do what you gotta do. Abba Malek believed that.

Integrity, truth, love, faithfulness, the Lord, what's any of that got to do with anything?

I need to get ahead. You know, if I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, I gotta do what

I gotta do. And here we see what happens in Judges chapter nine when integrity is thrown out the window and the

Scarlett O 'Hara philosophy takes over. We see that in five parts. Integrity rejected, integrity recalled, integrity ruined, integrity requited, and integrity restored.

Expect some appreciation for that. It took me a while to get a few of those R's. First, integrity rejected.

The story of Abba Malek flows naturally out of chapter eight, so just a little review. Abba Malek is the son of Gideon from the concubine that he had up in Shechem.

Gideon was offered the kingship, but declined, saying what all true Israelites were supposed to say at this time and believe.

He said, the Lord will rule, chapter eight, verse 23. The Lord will rule, not me, the

Lord. And that's their great ideal, direct rule by God through his word, with every

Israelite believing and following the Lord themselves, not because a king forced

God's laws on them, but because they just really loved the Lord and wanted to obey him. Gideon said the right words, affirming that.

But there's evidence that part of him didn't really believe it. At least part of him wanted something else, that he wasn't fully integrated of one mind, because part of him apparently wanted to be king, kind of live like a king, lots of wives, lots of children, and the evidence is even clearest,

I think, from Abba Malek's name. You see, it means my father is king.

Notice chapter eight, verse 31, specifically tells us that Gideon named him, my father is king.

Didn't leave that to the concubine. Gideon named him himself. Now, what do you think a father is saying when he names his boy, my father is king?

And so there's a little bit of hypocrisy with Gideon, isn't there? Who is going to be called Jeroboam through all of chapter nine.

Now, after Gideon dies, the people, as Israel says, the ESV, whored after the

Baals, they prostituted themselves. That is like in prostitution, they gave away for material gain what is only supposed to be given for love.

Our hearts, our worship, our lives are supposed to be given to the Lord out of love for him.

Instead, they gave it to the Baals for what they promised, the fertility gods.

In their day, that's what Baal was, he's a fertility god, promises fertility, and they're like the prosperity gospel today.

You know, it promises you that your business will boom, your love life will be fulfilling, your family will be protected, your bank account will be growing.

Just give the right sacrifices, the right seed faith offering, and you'll get ahead.

They were unfaithful to God, unfaithful first to God, and so in chapter eight, verse 35, they neglected to show that loyal, steadfast love to Gideon's family, as chapter nine shows.

When you forget God's faithfulness, you soon reject those that the Lord used to give you his faithfulness.

We are never more, less like God than when we are unfaithful.

Now just here, you'd expect this cycle that we've been seeing all through Judges, this sin cycle, to kick in, right?

This is the sin. We've already described. Next, normally, is the punishment.

What kingdom will oppress them next? And then they will, as in the cycle, cry out to the Lord, and the

Lord will hear them, and send another small -ass savior to save the day, give them peace, until the small -ass savior, the judge, dies, and then the whole thing starts all over again.

But is this really a cycle here in Judges that just continues, or is it really more like a spiraling downward that will end when they finally crash and hit bottom?

After Gideon, the cycles end. There's no more rest in Gideon, or in Judges.

From here to the end of the book, it's one problem, one war, one apostasy after another.

They've now hit bottom. They've hit bottom because they've rejected integrity, faithfulness.

Abimelech is born and raised in Shechem, is separate from Gideon's legitimate children, but Abimelech is ambitious.

He doesn't just wanna be the son of a wannabe king, he wants to be king himself.

And like Scarlet O 'Hara, he doesn't care what he has to do to get it. And so he goes to his mother's family in Shechem, people who normally should be royal to Gideon, because he had rescued,

Gideon had rescued them from the Midianites and gave them 40 years of peace. But you know, like a lot of people today, you know, their opinion, their idea is, hey, what have you done for me lately?

Besides, Gideon is dead, so why should we have one of our own as king?

Abimelech plays on that. At the end of verse two, remember also that I am your bone and flesh.

In other words, blood is thicker than integrity, than faith, than faithfulness.

I know of a lady who often pledged that nothing except the voice of God himself would separate her from her church.

She would stay loyal to her covenant commitment to her reformed, outreaching church, unless she said the

Lord spoke to her otherwise. And she said it with such meaning and with such passion, I'm sure she really believed it when she said it.

But when her daughter said, hey mom, come to my church instead so we can have a family reunion every Sunday, she said, okay. And that's all it took.

And when her friend at her former church told her, you said so often you'd never leave unless the

Lord told you to, but now you're leaving. I can't trust you anymore. What can

I trust that you say? She was indignant. How dare you question my integrity?

But you don't have any integrity. You've rejected integrity. You've used words, you've used pledges of loyalty, you've used them for effect, not for really believing them.

You've had family over faith. Now here, Abimelech appeals to their family ties here to cut their faith ties.

They said in verse three, he is our brother. So we're going with him. So they gave him some money in verse four, actually from the temple of the pagan

God, whatever. They gave it to him to go hire some thugs as his henchmen.

And he used them to kill 70 of his brothers, all of them, it says, murdered on one rock, not caring what he had to do to get ahead, even if it meant butchering the sons of the man who had bravely rescued them from oppression and gave them 40 years of peace.

That was the past. And for people without any integrity, you know, what they've said in their commitments, what's been done for them by you, by someone else in the past, that matters not at all.

They don't care. All that matters is what I have to do now to get ahead.

For Abimelech, it's clear. The other 70 brothers, because they're legitimate children, sons, they're ahead in the line to be king.

So if he's going to get ahead, he's gonna have to cut off their heads.

And so, you know, he says, you gotta do what you gotta do. And the irony here, he appealed to get support from Shechem by using his family connections.

And he used that family connections to kill other family. It's not as though he really believed in family.

He's just using the words of loyalty to be disloyal to part of his family. People without integrity are completely arbitrary.

Their words really don't mean anything. Ah, but one, one of the brothers,

Jotham, hides himself and gets away. Integrity, the covenant, will be recalled in chapter nine, verses seven to 21.

Jotham crashes the big coronation. He stands on top of Mount Gerizim, which is this mountain right by Shechem, the town, that the

Lord, same mountain, same Mount Gerizim, that the Lord had told Joshua, some generations before, to do the covenant renewal ceremony on, in Joshua chapter eight.

Israel in there, in Joshua chapter eight, was to come into this valley, just as Moses had commanded them to, where Shechem was coming to the valley there in between two mountains, between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim.

And the curses of the covenant were to be read from Mount Ebal. But the blessings were to be read from Mount Gerizim.

And there between the two mountains, the blessings and the curses, they would renew their covenant with the Lord. And now here,

Joshua, or Jotham, I should say, has returned, the only survivor of 70 murdered brothers, all because Abimelech and the men of Shechem had rejected their commitment to the covenant, had rejected integrity.

And Jotham speaks to them from one of those two mountains, from Gerizim.

Oddly enough, the mountain of blessing. But what he says from it, this parable of a prophecy, or this parable,

I should say, but it becomes a prophecy, and it really becomes a curse. A curse comes to them from the mountain of blessing.

Well, the trees were looking for a king, like Israel was, because they had broken faith with the Lord. And they asked for the olive tree to be their king, but the olive tree is busy.

He likes his job anyway, producing olives, and he'd rather do that. He doesn't wanna be king. So they asked the fig tree to be their king, but the fig tree would rather produce sweet figs that people enjoy instead of being king of the forest.

So they asked the grapevine to be their king, but the grapevine would rather make grapes that makes wine that people enjoy to be their king.

And so finally, they come to the bramble, mostly the thorns, the undergrowth, shrubbery, all that kind of stuff.

And they asked the bramble to be the king of the forest, and the bramble answers in verse 15, if truly, and that's one of our key words in this chapter, with sincerity, with integrity.

If you're asking me to be king because you think I really should be king, you are anointing me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade.

How much shade does bramble give? But it makes them kowtow. Trees, imagine trees bowing under bramble.

Even though it doesn't give them a shade, but if not, let fire come out of the bramble.

Bramble can easily, of course, catch fire. Fire can start in the thin, dry thorn bushes and then spread to the trees.

Jotham's parable is that they had made a deal with the devil, basically, and he will come back to bite them.

They rejected integrity to their covenant with the Lord, and so rejected faithfulness to the man who at last delivered them and gave them peace.

Now, Jotham, though, recalls their covenant, standing on Mount, remember, again, Gerizim.

Supposed to be the Mount of Blessing. He recalls integrity. Notice verse 16.

Now, therefore, if you acted in, notice verse 16. Acted in, the

ESV has in good faith, or it could be translated literally, it's in truth.

It's the same word in verse 15. If in truth you are anointing me king, there in verse 15, it means sincerity that your words mean what they say.

In other words, if you've acted with truth and integrity. Truth and integrity here in verse 16.

The only other places outside the book of Judges where these two words appear together is in Joshua chapter 24, verse 14, where Joshua's calling the people, just before he's old and he's conquered most of the land and he's calling the people of Israel to one last challenge, to be faithful and to serve the

Lord, to be true to their covenant. And he does that, Joshua does, in the city of Gethsemane, Shechem.

The same place that Jotham is standing over here. Joshua challenges them there and he says, now therefore fear the

Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness.

In other words, not just with fakery, with empty words that sound good, but you have no idea that actually keeping them, just gonna say them, you're not really gonna be bound by them, not just emotional pledges that you'll always be loyal, but then leave the first time you get an invitation elsewhere.

The truth and integrity. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.

John chapter 14, verse six. He is the one, he was saying, who is sincere.

He speaks in good faith. He's not a fake who sounds good. He's the real thing, who speaks with absolute, perfect integrity.

He doesn't say one thing and mean something else. He's not just saying the words you wanna hear that entertain you, like a lot of people do.

We believe, so that means we believe his word because it is an expression of him who is true, of someone who means what he says and says what he means.

Someone with integrity. And so someone we can trust. Now for these people though,

Jotham makes this conditional statement. Notice conditional means based on something. Verse 16, if, if you acted with truth and integrity.

There's those two key words again. If you acted in truth and integrity when you made Abimelech king, you, in other words, you really think this

Abimelech guy is the man to be king. He's, as to all the qualifications, someone worthy of submitting to and following instead of just doing it because he's related to you.

He'll help you get ahead. You know, we have family connections and he'll give me those plumb jobs in the government.

And if you have dealt with Jeroboam, that's Gideon, and his house, that's his family, and have done to him as his deeds deserve, have they?

Have they treated Gideon, like his family, as they deserve? And in case they've forgotten what

Gideon did for them, he recalls it in verse 17. For my father fought for you and risked his life and delivered you from the hand of Midian.

Now, were they faithful to Gideon's family for all that he did for them? Were they?

Well, quite the opposite. They killed nearly all his sons to make this one illegitimate son king.

And they did that for no other reason than because at the end of verse 18, he's your relative.

Blood is thicker than faith. So again, in verse 19, our two key words, if you have acted in good faith, truth, literally, and integrity with Jeroboam and with his house.

If you have, you've acted in sincerity and truth and good faith and integrity.

If you have, well, be happy. Enjoy your coronation parties. But if somehow you can see that killing most of them was not acting in truth and integrity, you can imagine that in verse 20, then let fire come out of Abimelech, the

Bramble King, and devour the leaders of Shechem and Beth Milo, another town nearby, and vice versa.

Otherwise, fire will come out of those cities and devour Abimelech. So he speaks a curse from the

Mount of Blessing because having broken their covenant, rejected integrity, that's all you get.

Now, with integrity rejected and recalled, integrity is ruined.

From verses 22 to 49, Abimelech is king, having established a kingdom without truth. And like many people today, they think they can live a life without truth based on whatever gets them ahead, like Scarlett O 'Hara, whatever it takes to prosper.

You have to take steroids. You have to speak gibberish for Arabic. If you have to kill 70 -year brothers, you know you gotta do what you gotta do.

The problem with that is that it is integrity. It's loyalty.

It's staying true to what you believe that holds us together. It's God's integrity that holds us to him.

That is, he holds us to himself because he is faithful. And if truth is not in the center, then things fall apart, like those who get tired of one spouse, won't keep their vows, go chasing after another honey.

Chances are that won't hold together either. God won't allow it. Notice in verse 23,

God sends in an evil spirit. Whether you want to believe that's a demon or just a bad attitude, a disrupted relationship like relationships get sometimes when you don't seem to be able to get past whatever this thing that's in the way that's between you two, whatever.

Here, there's a problem between Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem. Notice first about that, don't get distracted by the evil spirit part.

Notice the point is who sent it, where it came from. God is responsible for it.

God sent it. God sent, it says, the evil spirit. Was it just something that God kind of let happen?

Let them reap the bad fruit of their bad choices? It says, no,

God sees Abimelech and the people of Shechem act treacherously and so God sends them treachery.

Whatever it is that spoils, whatever it was that spoiled that relationship and so starts this chain of events that will lead to them both being destroyed.

Whatever that was, God sent it. And God sends the cause of the bad relationship and the leaders of Shechem and they choose to be treacherous in verse 23.

Treachery is the breakdown of truth and integrity. And now here, they've tried to establish a kingdom on the foundation of faithlessness, of no integrity.

Now, what did they get? In verse 23, God sends an evil spirit and in verse 24, I should say this is the reason, in verse 24, so that,

God sends the evil spirit, so that, in verse 24, the violence done to the 70 sons to undermine

Abimelech. Notice what they do, they hire some hooligans. Remember how this started?

With the help of the men of Abimelech, of Shechem, they hired some hooligans to go to kill

Abimelech's other brothers. Now, the leaders of Abimelech are hiring other hooligans to go out and ambush people, rob travelers in the hills around the city and that's so they can say, hey, look,

Abimelech can't keep us safe, not able to enforce law and order, he's a bad king. And then a man named

Ga 'al moves to Shechem. Now, Ga 'al sounds to me like he must've moved from the United States, sounds like an

American. He moves into town with his family, first starts with a big party, well, it's a party, and then talks big, talks about politics.

They're sitting around and Ga 'al starts spouting off about Abimelech in verse 28, who is

Abimelech? And who are we of Shechem that we should serve him? We're better than him, in other words.

Oh, he really gets going and his audience is just eating it up and he's probably had too much to drink.

Would that this people were under my hand, he says, then I would remove Abimelech and I would say to Abimelech, increase your army and come out and I'll beat this guy.

He's talking big, isn't he? But can he back it up? Does he have any integrity or is it just words for effect?

Well, Zibal, who's Abimelech's agent in charge of the city, overhears him and Zibal gets mad.

He shouldn't though, he shouldn't really be surprised. I mean, Abimelech got power by appealing to these same people, to their egos, to their connections with them, their self -interest.

Did he really think someone else wouldn't come along and do the same thing? I mean, come on. C .S.

Lewis wrote, we laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. They built this kingdom on treachery.

Yeah, typically, they're shocked to find a traitor plotting against them and so they plan an ambush and when

Ga 'al, who thinks he's the big shot, he goes to the city gate, that's where the leaders sat and he's there and he looks out and he sees men coming toward the city.

Maybe he was nearsighted or something because he's like he's not sure the first time and Zibal at first assures him, lying.

Everybody's lying in this chapter. You mistake the shadow of the mountain for men. Don't worry about it.

That's to delay Ga 'al from preparing his men for attack. A little while later, Ga 'al is a little more sure.

Now they're getting closer, he can see them better. Look, people are coming and Zibal knows now, hey, it's too late, get your guys together.

So he tells him in verse 38, where is your mouth now? Ha, big talker. Abimelech chases

Ga 'al away, destroys Shechem, kills many of the people there. Now some flee to this tower, there's a stronghold in the temple of the pagan god

El Barith but Abimelech gathers wood, it says in verse 48, a bundle of, guess what, brushwood, bramble and stacks it at the base of the tower, setting on fire.

Fire is coming out of Abimelech, just like Jotham said. Kills 1 ,000 people in it.

They laughed at honor and got burned. Integrity is ruined.

But integrity is requited. The people of Shechem who betrayed Gideon have already paid the price for their treachery but they have set in motion what will pay

Abimelech back. He thinks he's gonna stamp out all oppression. He's got his guys together, let's go, let's wipe them out.

When integrity is ruined, there's nothing restraining people from doing whatever it is they want.

So he goes to the town of Thebes and just as in Shechem, the people retreat to a tower for protection and just as in Shechem, Abimelech is going to set fire to its base but a smart woman brought an upper millstone with her, kind of a heavy flat stone, not so heavy though, it would be impossible, you could carry it up the stairs.

Flat stone, probably about 18 inches long that they used to grinding the weed into flour and she aims it, drops it right on his skull and he's conscious long enough to ask his armor bearer to do him in so he can avoid the shame of not being remembered or avoid the shame of being remembered as the guy who was killed by a woman.

It really doesn't work though, right? He's still remembered, Abimelech is, remembered as the usurper who killed his brothers and had his head bashed in by a woman.

That's the way he's remembered. And he's remembered because God saw to it by inspiring these words.

God saw to it also, it says, by doing it. These aren't just random events that God kind of,

God had to let free agents do whatever they chose with their free will to do. The last two verses of the chapter explain exactly what was behind all this happening.

Verses 56 and verse 57. Why were 1000 people burned to death in the tower in Shechem and why did

Abimelech have a millstone fall on his head? In verse 56, God returned the evil of Abimelech on him.

In verse 57, God also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads.

God destroyed the destroyers. Integrity is requited.

Well, finally, integrity is restored. The first five verses of chapter 10 really continue the story.

God does not abandon his people to their Abimelech's. Notice chapter 10, verse one.

In ESV, I believe it's just literally in Hebrew, it's after Abimelech, it comes the next judge.

Now, that sounds like it's meaningless, but remember the previous judges before this. Before, it was always after they cried to the

Lord, after they repented, but this time is simply after Abimelech, the

Lord raised up Tola. And it says specifically, what for? To save Israel.

After Tola came Jair, who led them for 22 years. Apparently, he was a man of peace because all his sons rode donkeys and not war horses.

God saved his people and not because they caused him to do so. Like he's got some great vending machine in the sky, you put in the right coins and you're always gonna get the right reaction out of him.

You say the right words, you will get him to deliver you. God saved his people from their, not because they prayed the right prayer or experienced the right amount of pain and cried out in desperation.

There's no more cycle here. The spiraling downward has hit bottom, but God will see to it that his people will not be destroyed.

God saves his people because of his integrity. No matter how bad things get, whether we're being destroyed by a treacherous king or we're being deceived by con men or false teachers or weakened from within by people who have no integrity, no matter how bad things get,

God keeps his people from utter destruction. Jesus said the gates of hell will not prevail against his church.

That's because God has made a covenant, a commitment to his people and he is faithful.

God saves us not because of us, because of our prayers or even our needs, but because of his faithfulness.

For God so loved the world, his people, from all kinds of people, that he gave his one of a kind son for them.

In the cross, God showed that his loyalty to his people, his commitment to covenant with them, his integrity, that that was greater even than family, what we would call family.

You know, God shows in the cross that he will sacrifice whatever is necessary to save his people because he's committed himself to them.

He'll sacrifice even his son. And on the cross, the son too shows, even though his father really is king, in the cross, the son shows that he's the very opposite of Abimelech or of Scarlet O 'Hara or of any other cheats and liars and murderers who will do whatever it takes to get themselves ahead.

Jesus was already ahead. He was the king of the kingdom of God. And Jesus showed that he'll give up.

He'll give up whatever he has to give up, the glory of heaven, the privileges of being

God, even life itself. He'll give up whatever it takes to save his people.

He was willing to give up whatever he had to give up to get us ahead.