Study of the Book of Judges

I feel sad that many Christians know so little about the Bible. They may be familiar with the stories of the New Testament - the parables, the miracles, events in the life of Jesus, but are quite ignorant of the rest of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament which is looked upon as too long and uninteresting.

I've been conducting Bible Studies for many years since 2002 when the William Booth Corps commenced. Previous to this we were known as the Pasir Panjang Corps and shared the premises with Haven Children's Home. It was Major Allen Satterlee who requested me to undertake this responsibility. The Major is himself a great student of the word of God and we used to enjoy his teaching and preaching from the platform. He was most encouraging and supportive. About once a month he would sit in at my Bible class. He even loaned me a lap top so that I could take it to the library or sit in the corps office to prepare my studies.

Sometimes we are invited to preach at the other Corps in Singapore. Major Satterlee arranged for Mrs. Lim Li Ching a school teacher by profession and student of the word, to fill in for me in my absence. The arrangement still works today. And today, I have also Corps Secretary Terence Tan to call on to fill when I am away. He is a keen Bible scholar and communicates well the word of God.

We have a group of people who attend the class regularly every Sunday morning 9.30- 10.30 a.m. For the last one of a half years, I did Revelation at the request of one of our members. Another member requested that I teach the Book of Judges.

We have had two lessons this year. Lesson 1 was an introduction. Yesterday Sunday, we had our second lesson on the Canaanites. It was interesting to look at the origin of the Canaanites as recorded in Genesis 9.

Christians are uneasy with the fact that God commanded the Israelites to exterminate and annihilate the Canaanites. Today we live in a different dispensation and this command does not apply directly to Christians today. We have civil government responsible for the execution of evil doers. (Rom. 13: 1-7)

However we learn a principle from this important injunction. We are to be merciless when it comes to sin in our hearts and in the church. There should not be 'co-existence' with sin. We certainly read the stories in Judges as historical, but they are also parables to teach us important lessons.

We live in dark and uncertain days in some ways similar to the days depicted in Judges. God provided the Israelites with Judges or deliverers, but they died and the Israelites went from bad to worse. What Israel needed was a king to rule over them. What we need is the Lord of lords and the King of kings - Jesus Christ to reign in our hearts.

The hour passed very quickly. We had plenty of questions and discussions and I myself have benefited from the feedback from the participants.