Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Greatest Threat to Your Faith | Historical Books | Judges 8:1-21

Episode Date: February 27, 2025

According to the Bible, division is one of the greatest threats to your faith. What leads us to be divisive? How should we react to divisiveness? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Judges 8:1-21 encourages us to live out Jesus's prayer for unity. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Judges 8:1-21

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. What's the greatest threat to your faith? To Christianity, to the church in general. I think that's an interesting question, and I'm not sure that there's a definitive answer, but there's one possible answer that gets repeated throughout the Bible, division and disunity. That might surprise you. Maybe you'd say it's sexual. immorality or addiction or spiritual abuse. But if you read the Bible, division and disunity are one of the most common things that the apostles in Jesus point at when they're talking about

what threatens your faith in the church in general. The Apostle Paul warned the churches in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, and Philippi about division. He told his protege, Titus, that if a divisive person was found in the church, that that person was so dangerous, they should be warned once and then removed from the church altogether. That's how seriously he took it. To the Romans, he wrote this, I urge you brothers and sisters to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. It's a bold statement, isn't it? That division is contrary to the teachings of Jesus, and that anyone who's causing division should be avoided. When he writes to the Galatians, he warns of sexual immorality twice, but he warns of the

sins of division five times. Listen to this passage in Galatians 5. Now the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. did you catch all the warnings against division in that passage? He warns against enmity, strife, rivalry, dissension, and division. Do any of those words ever describe you? Do they ever describe the way that you engage with people at your church, with your Christian friends? Do you ever see fellow believers as enemies? Do you ever have rivals? Have you ever caused dissension? You can do this

in both big and small ways. You can cause dissension through gossip with one person, or you can do it in a small group through pointed questions that attack someone else's respectability. The book of judges, which we're going through right now in 10-minute Bible talks, it shows that dissension has been a problem for a long, long time. When we meet the Judge Gideon, he's supposed to be a deliverer for God's people. At the time, these people called the Midianites were oppressing the Israelites. They were taking their foods and their homes, and they were forcing the Israelites to hide in caves and eventually starved to death.

Gideon and Israelite, he's raised up by God to be a judge, a deliverer, and he gathers together 300 men, and they manage to route the entire Midianite army. When our story picks up, he's chasing after the Midianite kings, Ziba and Zalmuna. Now, surely, at this point in time, the Israelites would be united. They're finally overthrowing their oppressors. They all want the same thing. They want to be delivered.

They want to eat. They don't want to live in caves. but it turns out that division, enmity, strife, rivalry, and dissension, well, these are as old as humanity, and they even happen when we ought to be united. So let's see what happens. So first, Gideon, as he's chasing after these Midianite kings, Ziba and Zalmuna, he encounters a Israelite tribe called the Ephraimites, and they stop him from chasing after Ziba and Zalmunna. This is what happens in Judges 8, verse 1. Now, the Ephraimites asked Gideon, why have you treated us like this? why didn't you call us when you went to fight Midian?

And they challenged him vigorously. But he answered them, what have I accomplished compared to you? Aren't the gleanings of Ephraim's grapes better than the full grape harvest of a bezer? God gave Orab and Zeb the Midianite leaders into your hands. What was I able to do compared to you? At this, their resentment against him subsided.

So rather than thanking Gideon for resisting the Midianites, what do the Ephraimites do? Well, they create a rivalry. Here's Gideon, he's chasing down Ziba and Zalmuna, and instead of stopping to help him along his way, they argue with him. They say, why aren't you sharing your glory with us? Now, of course, they could have come out to help Gideon,

but they don't do it. This is just an example of rivalry. It's unnecessary division. And why does it happen? Well, it's clear in the story. It's because of pride. The only way that Gideon can get them off his back is by massaging their ego and saying, you guys are so great, you've done so much more than me.

Oftentimes pride is at the root of dissension in our lives today, in our Christian communities today. It might be a hurt ego that we feel when we weren't consulted for some big decision, or it might be a hurt ego when we weren't included in some group that we thought we should be a part of. It might be our intellectual pride. Maybe we cause division when anyone disagrees with us. or maybe it's our social pride. We think we're more important than other people and that our opinion and our interests should be put ahead of others.

And if they're not, then we cause division and rivalry and enmity. Is pride causing any division in your life right now? In your relationships? Is pride causing any rivalry between you and a fellow Christian? Repent from the sin of pride and from the sin of division before you destroy those relationships and hurt Christ's church. After the Ephraimites, Gideon continues on his journey to get Ziba and Zalmunah, and he encounters more Israelites, and he asks them for help. But again, he encounters division instead. Judges 8-4 says this.

Gideom and his 300 men, exhausted, yet keeping up the pursuit, came to the Jordan and crossed it. He said to the men of Sukhoth, give my troops some bread. They're worn out. And I'm still pursuing Ziba and Zalmuna, the kings of Midian. But the officials of Sukkoth said, Do you already have the hands of Ziba and Zalmuna in your possession? Why should we give bread to your troops? Then Gideon replied, Just for that, when the Lord has given Ziba and Zalmuna into my hand,

I will tear your flesh with desert thorns and briars. From there, he went up to Penao, and he made the same request of them, but they answered as the man of Succoth had. So he said to the men of Penao, When I return in triumph, I will tear down this tower. We'll talk more about Gideon's response in just a moment, but I want to start with the people of Sukhoth and Peniel.

They actually mock Gideon and they refuse to feed him. They treat him with enmity, a sin that Paul warned against. Now, why do they do this? Well, it's because they're afraid. They're afraid that if they feed Gideon and his 300 men, well, then Ziba and Zalmuna will escape and they'll be in a world of hurt as a result for, aiding and abetting their enemies. And fear is still a frequent cause of division today. When the Bible takes unpopular stances on important cultural issues, a lot of Christians feel fear.

When their church stands behind the Bible or their Christian friends stand behind what the Bible says, well, sometimes we feel fear. We think we might have to pay a cost for following Jesus. Maybe we fear that it will hurt our reputation. Maybe I fear that I won't get a promotion because I'm associated with the bad kind of people. Or maybe I just fear it'll hurt my relationship with someone I care about. And so what do we do when we feel fear in Christian community? Well, maybe we gossip about the people who are taking a stand for the Bible in public. Maybe we disagree with them and we even disagree with the Bible behind their back or in a small group.

Or maybe we just try to avoid the topic at hand, but we talk bad about those people who are making our lives more difficult, who are making us feel afraid. But it's not just those kinds of fears that cause division. Sometimes it's the fear of missing out that causes division. Sometimes it's the fear of being misunderstood by fellow Christians that causes us to stir up division and create rivalries. Is fear causing you to create division right now? Repent of that sin, of fear and of divisiveness.

The story ends with Gideon catching and killing Zeba and Zalmuna, just like he said he would. But the tragedy, is that he holds to his oath. He goes back to those two cities and he whips the men of Seckoth with thorns and briars, and then he tears down the Tower of Penial

just like he said, and he kills a lot of the people who live there. He's transformed from a deliverer into a murderer. And that's also a temptation for us, but maybe not to murder, but more like this, when someone else causes division and rivalry

and it hurts us in the process, it's really tempting to get angry. because in a real way you may have been wronged. Maybe they gossiped about you. Maybe they hurt your reputation. Maybe they misunderstood you and spread wrong things about you. So how will you respond when your Christian brothers and sisters do wrong to you? Will you respond by creating more division?

Will you respond in anger? Will you ramp up the division and divisiveness by self-righteously fighting back? Or will you walk in the way of Jesus by confronting the wrongdoing and love, confronting it with kindness and with humility, and also confronting it by forgiving sins, by showing mercy and grace when people repent. You see, unity matters to Jesus. Unity in his people, and his church matters to him tremendously. That's because division is not a sign of his kingdom. It's a sign of hell. And at the end of Jesus's life, he prayed this for all of us in John 17. He prayed, quote, that all of them, you and me, may be one, father. Just to be one. Just

as you are in me and I am in you. He continues, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Is Jesus' prayer for unity unanswered in your life? Is his prayer for unity unanswered in your church? I invite you to pray that he would answer that prayer for unity by leading you, by leading me, by leading us all into repentance. He tells us the reason why it matters so much to him, because our unity and our love are the sign that God uses to bring people to himself. So pray he'd answer his prayer, bring unity in your life

so that people would come to know him around you.