[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:07] It's Rick. Welcome back to the Nomad Pastor Podcast.
[00:00:10] So, you know, we started talking about Judges today.
[00:00:15] We're going to step into the story of the first judge.
[00:00:18] And before we get into the details, I want you to. I want you to notice something important about Judges, because this is the calm before the storms. And in Judges, it's. It is going to get a little bit darker, it's going to get a little bit stranger, and things are going to get harder to listen to.
[00:00:33] But here at the beginning, we're going to see that God shows up and he shows us what leadership is supposed to be like.
[00:00:41] And so today we're going to meet Othniel.
[00:00:45] And if you blink, you miss him, right? He's only mentioned briefly. There's no dramatic storyline, there's no long speech. There's no shocking scandal. But I think that's exactly the point. And the reason that Othniel matters is that it's not memorable because he's flashy.
[00:01:06] He's memorable because he's faithful.
[00:01:10] In a book, in Judges, this book is full of moral collapse.
[00:01:16] Othniel stands out as one who does exactly what God asks, exactly when God asks him to, without trying to make it about himself.
[00:01:29] Judges 3, 7 tells us the problem. First, Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord, their God, and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
[00:01:44] This is the same pattern that we talked about in episode two.
[00:01:48] And we have to remember that the forgetting always comes before the rebellion.
[00:01:55] And you do not fall away from God by accident. You drift from God when you stop remembering who he is, when you stop remembering what he has done for you.
[00:02:07] And because of that drift and because of that rebellion, Israel then falls under this oppression.
[00:02:15] Eight years under a foreign king, eight years of pressure, eight years of frustration, eight years of hardship.
[00:02:22] And it's long enough for them to realize this isn't working, right? This isn't what we want.
[00:02:29] And then verse nine says something that we've already seen, and we will see it again and again and again throughout the book of Judges, the son of Israel cries out to the Lord. And God responds, right? And the way God responds is that God raises a deliverer. And so Judges 3:9 says, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel. For the sons of Israel. Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother.
[00:02:57] And I think that last part where it says Caleb's younger brother, I think that matters more than most people realize, because Othniel came from a godly line. He was connected to Caleb, one of the two men who trusted God when Israel first stood at the edge of the Promised land.
[00:03:18] So this tells us something important, that faithfulness is often passed down through proximity, right? Atia grew up watching someone trust God when it was unpopular and trust God when it was very costly. It could cost them everything.
[00:03:42] So we have to remember that leadership is caught before it's taught, right? He was in proximity, so that faithfulness was passed down. And that matters today.
[00:03:57] And the reason it matters today is who are you watching?
[00:04:02] And not only who are you watching, who is watching you?
[00:04:07] And for those people that are watching you, what kind of faith are you modeling for the next generation?
[00:04:16] That's a question that I think is critically important.
[00:04:23] Well, all three of those questions, right? Who are you watching?
[00:04:27] Who is watching you, and what kind of faith are you modeling for the next generation? If you're consistently watching just horrible things, you're going to drift.
[00:04:42] And if you're doing horrible things, the people watching you are going to drift.
[00:04:48] And whatever you're doing, that's what you're going to pass on to the next generation.
[00:04:55] And then verse 10 says, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Othniel and he judged Israel. He went out to war and the Lord gave the enemy into his hand.
[00:05:07] There's no self promotion here, right? There's no ego, there's no personal agenda. Othniel does not build a platform. He doesn't try to establish a dynasty. He doesn't try to rewrite God's instructions. He simply obeys what God told him to do.
[00:05:23] That is what godly leadership looks like. It's not loud, it's not flashy, it's not about you. It is faithful, obedient and anchored in God.
[00:05:38] And when you do that, verse 11 tells us the result.
[00:05:43] The land had rest for 40 years, 40 years apiece because one man was willing to listen to God and act the way God told him to.
[00:05:59] That is critical.
[00:06:02] Faithful, obedient and anchored.
[00:06:08] What if he would have decided to act?
[00:06:11] Or he listened to God and decided, I'm not going to do it that way, God, I'm going to do it a different way.
[00:06:17] Do you think there would have been 40 years of peace? Probably not.
[00:06:21] It would have been 40 years or something.
[00:06:28] You know, we need to understand what true obedience is.
[00:06:33] We need to understand what truly being faithful is.
[00:06:37] And so before we move on, we need to kind of pause and sit in this a little bit.
[00:06:43] Otheo is the standard.
[00:06:45] Everything that follows in Judges slowly drifts Away from this model.
[00:06:51] Some of the later judges will be impulsive, they will be violent, they will compromise, they will be emotionally driven and morally broken.
[00:07:03] But not right here, not yet. Not with Otniel.
[00:07:10] God starts judges by showing us what leadership should look like before showing us what happens when that leadership collapses.
[00:07:21] Because that's exactly how the decline works. It doesn't start with chaos. It starts with quiet faithfulness being replaced by convenience.
[00:07:33] And in our world today, that convenience, I believe that's what people fear losing the most.
[00:07:46] People fear losing their convenience. And they will let everything else slide so that they can maintain the convenience in their life.
[00:07:58] It's not convenient to go to church, to go to small group, to go to Bible study, to get up and spend time in the Word every day, to spend time talking to God.
[00:08:13] It's faithful, but it's not convenient. And when that convenience starts to diminish, I think is the right word, or if our convenience is tested, how faithful do we stay?
[00:08:37] You see, this is leadership without a spotlight.
[00:08:41] Othniel reminds us that the most important leaders are often the least remembered. If I asked you who were some of the judges, Most people wouldn't even even recognize his name.
[00:08:55] There's tons of leaders throughout history that you will. You don't even know who they are.
[00:09:00] They don't leave monuments, they leave stability.
[00:09:04] They don't chase recognition.
[00:09:06] They simply create peace.
[00:09:09] And that is true in our families, that is true in our workplaces, that is true in our ministries, and it is certainly true in our churches.
[00:09:18] Strong leadership does not draw attention to itself. It points people directly back to God.
[00:09:28] So if you're a leader, a church leader, a ministry leader, whatever it is. This is where I want to speak directly to the leaders listening today. Parents, pastors, managers, elders, small group leaders, ministry volunteers, whatever it may be. If you're in some type of leadership role, you might feel like what you're doing doesn't matter because no one applauds it, no one sees it, and no one celebrates it.
[00:09:52] This story tells us something completely different.
[00:09:57] It tells us that faithfulness brings rest.
[00:10:01] His faithfulness brought 40 years of peace.
[00:10:06] Your obedience may be the reason someone else finds peace.
[00:10:11] So don't get hung up on, you know, somebody celebrating what you did or somebody recognizing what you did. Just do what God wants you to do.
[00:10:21] The rest will take care of itself.
[00:10:25] Your faithfulness can bring rest. Your obedience can be the reason that people find peace.
[00:10:34] So if we bring this into our world today, we live in this culture that celebrates charisma over character.
[00:10:46] We celebrate volume over wisdom, right? How many TikTok videos can you put out?
[00:10:53] How you could do all these dances or sing or just be the most energetic person in the world? But what is your character?
[00:11:02] What is your wisdom behind doing it?
[00:11:08] We celebrate confidence over conviction.
[00:11:12] And we also, as terrible as this is going to sound, we celebrate influence over integrity.
[00:11:22] Because somebody may have influence, whether it's an actor or a star or a musician or whatever it may be, and they have absolutely no integrity. But we are going to celebrate their influence. We are going to listen to their influence instead of their integrity.
[00:11:38] We don't reward the people anymore that are like ocnio.
[00:11:42] We reward attention, we reward likes, we reward the viral video sensation.
[00:11:50] And because our culture does that today, we are suffering the consequences of that.
[00:11:59] We have leaders who know how to speak, but they have no earthly idea how to submit.
[00:12:07] And there are tons of people who have voices with various platforms. We have tons of people who have voices on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or whatever the next thing is, but they have no spiritual authority.
[00:12:25] We have movements without repentance, and we have lots of passion with zero obedience to God.
[00:12:37] And the result of that we see in the news every day.
[00:12:40] The result of that is unrest.
[00:12:42] It's anxiety, it's division. And culturally, today in our society, division is running rampant.
[00:12:51] But we also have burnout.
[00:12:53] And so Judges reminds us that peace follows obedience. It does not follow popularity.
[00:13:04] And one of the most important lessons in this episode is simple, right?
[00:13:11] Othniel's leadership delayed the deeper Collapse of judges.
[00:13:19] 40 years of rest is not some insignificant amount of time.
[00:13:25] His obedience did not permanently fix Israel's heart, but it gave him space and it gave him time.
[00:13:35] You see, faithfulness does not always change the world forever, but it can slow the fall.
[00:13:43] And maybe if we were more faithful today and cared less about likes and clicks and videos and viral this or whatever it may be, maybe it would slow our fall too.
[00:13:56] Because it matters.
[00:13:58] Your obedience matters. And your consistency matters.
[00:14:03] And your refusal to compromise, your integrity matters.
[00:14:10] And even if other people walk away, you being faithful still counts.
[00:14:19] You know, I've seen this in ministry and in my life. You know, some of the most impactful people that I know will never be invited on stage. They'll never be quoted, right? But their faith, their steady faith kept families together.
[00:14:38] Their integrity kept organizations healthy.
[00:14:42] And their obedience kept their churches grounded.
[00:14:46] They were the modern day Othniel. They were the modern day deliverer, the modern day judge.
[00:14:55] But I've also seen what happens when Those modern day othniels retire when they step aside, or even worse when they. When they're ignored.
[00:15:07] Chaos doesn't show up immediately.
[00:15:10] It does take time.
[00:15:12] But eventually the absence of a faithful leader will show itself.
[00:15:19] And Judges is teaching us that leadership gaps do hurt.
[00:15:26] They may not hurt immediately, but they hurt generationally.
[00:15:34] And here's why I think this episode is so important, right? This is our baseline.
[00:15:40] This is, you know, othniel is the baseline. Every judge after him will deviate from this model in some way.
[00:15:49] And it might be slightly or it might be drastically, but they will deviate.
[00:15:55] And so what we're going to do is in the next episode, we're going to talk about Ehud and the story changes completely.
[00:16:03] That tone of the story is going to change. It will become uncomfortable, it will become violent, intentional. I mean, basically it is going to become strange.
[00:16:14] God is going to still deliver his people, but the tools that he uses will reflect the spiritual condition of the nation.
[00:16:23] To me, when you think about our spiritual condition of our nation today, that's a pretty sobering thought.
[00:16:32] As the people drift, the deliverers, excuse me, become more extreme.
[00:16:41] That should make us pause and ask ourselves, where are we today?
[00:16:48] If God was to send a deliverer for us today, how extreme would it be?
[00:17:00] Because how far have people drifted?
[00:17:06] You know, as we try to close this out, I'm going to ask, you know, I'm going to leave you with this question.
[00:17:12] Are you trying to be impressive?
[00:17:15] Like, are you trying to impress everybody around you by what you're doing, the ministry work you're doing, or are you trying to be faithful?
[00:17:29] I know that that might be a hard question to ask, but I think everybody listening needs to really think about that. It's easy to just right off the bat say, I'm being faithful, but are you? Or are you trying to impress people?
[00:17:45] I've had to ask myself that question a lot, in a lot of different things.
[00:17:50] And there have been times in my life and even in my ministry when I've asked that question, I've said, man, I think I'm doing this wrong.
[00:17:59] I think I'm doing this. I'm not doing this to be faithful.
[00:18:03] And this could be anything, right?
[00:18:09] So you really got to be able to answer that question. Are you trying to be impressive or are you trying to be faithful?
[00:18:15] You see, God used Athiel not because he was this extraordinary person, but because he was available and obedient.
[00:18:26] So if you want peace in your life, if you want peace in your home or in your ministry.
[00:18:32] It starts right there.
[00:18:35] Not with influence, not with recognition, but with obedience.
[00:18:41] And as we go through judges, it's going to get darker.
[00:18:45] The leaders that are raised up, the deliverers, the judges that are raised up will get more flawed and the stories are going to get harder to talk about.
[00:18:57] But today, God shows us the standard.
[00:19:03] So next time, we're going to see what happens when those standards begin to slip.
[00:19:09] Hey, I want to thank you for listening. This is Rick with the Nomad Pastor podcast.
[00:19:13] Remember, you know, subscribe like it, share it, tell your friends if it, if it meant something to you, I'd really appreciate it. If there's something you want to hear about, send me an
[email protected] you can subscribe on any podcast platform of your choosing. We're on just about all of them, so I'm not going to sit and try to list them.
[00:19:37] But as. As we get ready to close, I just want to remind you to love God and love people.
