Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Do Disasters Happen? | Historical Books | Judges 6:1-10

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Is all our hardship a consequence of our sin? What about natural disasters? Disabilities? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Judges 6:1-10 reminds us that we are not God and encourages us to repent and heal. 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 6:1-10

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. Sometimes in the aftermath of war or natural disasters, I'll have people come to me and ask whether or not it's an act of God's judgment. Was COVID God's judgment? Or the L.A. fires God's judgment? Were the wars in Ukraine God's judgment?

And of course, people wonder the same thing on a personal level. What about my personal sickness? What about my mental illness? Are those? God's judgment? And my answer is almost always the same. I don't know. There are some things that are gods to know and there are some things that are ours to know. And disasters are gods to know. They're not mine. I say that because sometimes disasters are the results of sin and sometimes they're not the result of sin. In today's passage in the book of judges, we learn of an awful disaster that was the result of human. sin of human idolatry, of human injustice. That tells us that these kinds of things do happen. Judges 6 verse 1. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive, the Israelites

prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves, and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land, and they ruined the crops all the way to Gaza. And they didn't spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count them or their camels. They invaded the land to ravage it. Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.

When the Israelites cried out to the Lord because of Midian, he sent them a prophet, who said, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says. I brought you up out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. I rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians, and I delivered you from the hand of all your oppressors. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. I said to you, I am the Lord your God. Do not worship the gods of the Amarites in whose land you live. But you have not listened to me.

Most of us have never lived through anything like this. Hiding in caves, watching in horror as raider steal and destroy your only source of food. For seven years, this goes on. People are starving to death. And the reason? While the author's clear, it's because Israel did injustice and worshipped idols. They rejected God. they refused to listen to him.

And so God said, if you don't want me, then you don't have to have me. But life apart from me is a disaster. And so again, this leads to the obvious question. Are all disasters, all hardships, all suffering a result of God's judgment against us? Well, I don't think the answer to that question is yes. The Bible is clear that sometimes there are disasters, both personal and communal, that are just the result of living in a broken world. One of the consequences of Adam's first sin is that the world itself was left chaotic.

You see, God designed humans originally to bring order to the chaotic world around them. That's what God did. He brought order out of chaos. They were supposed to spread the Garden of Eden to bring God's good order and justice to cover the entire earth. But they refused that calling. And that means that the earth remains in a state of chaos, in a state of curse. the world itself is malfunctioning, and we were designed to deal with that problem, but we didn't deal with it. And so things happen in this world that shouldn't happen. That can't be explained simply because of sin, simply because of disorder. They're just a form of unorder, a form of chaos. In John 9, we read this,

verse 9, as Jesus once along, he saw a man blind from birth. So you can pause here and you can say, well, is this an example of God's judgment? Or are people born blind as a result of the unorder, the chaos that's just in this world as a result of Adam's refusal to bring order, to bring God's goodness. Well, let's listen to what his disciples ask. His disciples asked, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Now again, Jesus's followers are under the impression that all suffering could be explained by human sin and failure. But Jesus has a more complex view of reality. He responds, neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happens so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Jesus goes on to heal the man, which not only shows the power

of God, but it shows that he is a new Adam who's able to bring order where there is unorder, who's able to bring cultivation and goodness where there's disorder in the world. But I want you to note one lesson here. The only person who knows whether hardship and disaster are a result of human sin or the result of a malfunctioning creation, well, the only person who knows that is God. After all, think about judges. It's God who sends the prophet to tell the people that their suffering was a result of his judgment. And then in the Gospel of John, it's Jesus, who is God, who tells the disciples that they've got it all wrong, that the blind man isn't blind because of his sin or his parents. And then, in the gospel of Heronson. The only one who knows is God. So the question we face when we face disaster and suffering

isn't, is this God's judgment? Because the truth is, you're not God. You don't know. What should we do when we hear stories of disasters, of wars, of sickness, of suffering? Well, I think the first answer is that we must never, ever, ever take God's role. We must not try to explain the cause. I'll never forget after 9-11, a very famous Christian pastor named Jerry Falwell went on TV and said that the 9-11 attacks were an act of God's judgment. Now, I think the minute he spoke those words, he committed a form of idolatry because he put himself into the place of God. He thought that he, like God, could determine the cause of the 9-11 attacks. But that's something only God can do. So what's our part when we face disaster? Well, I think it's twofold.

First, disasters war and suffering should lead us to repent of our own sin. Consider this story from Luke 13. Now, there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood pilot, he was a Roman ruler at the time, had mixed with their sacrifices. So let's just pause for a Jew to have your blood mixed with sacrifices. That was sacrilegious. It was awful, okay? Let's pick it up in verse 2.

Jesus answered, Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those 18 who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no, but unless you repent, you too will all perish. Here's what's interesting about Luke 13. Jesus doesn't actually answer the question.

He doesn't tell us whether or not the Tower of Siloam fell as an act of God's judgment, nor does he explain why the blood of the Galileans was mixed with the sacrifice. He doesn't let us know, is this a malfunctioning creation or is this an act of God's judgments? Instead, he leaves both as a mystery. He's telling us it's only gods to know

why these things happen. But then he gives a lesson. And what's the lesson he wants his disciples to take away? He says, quote, unless you repents, you too will all perish. You see, when we see disasters, we are not to judge others and think, oh man, they must have been so bad that this happened to them. We're supposed to turn the mirror on ourselves.

We're supposed to realize that our sin deserves far worse than what they received. We're supposed to realize that God's mercy protects us from far more than what we deserve. We should recognize that the world is broken because of human sin, and we've played a part and that brokenness. And so we should mourn our sin. We should learn to hate it. We should seek to kill it by the power of the spirit. But that's not all that we should do.

The second thing we should do in the face of disaster is to seek to console, to heal, and to help those who are hurting. Jesus shows us this time and time again by healing people regardless of the cause of their ailment. Likewise, in judges, we know that it is Israel's sin that led to their suffering. But God doesn't abandon the people.

As we'll learn tomorrow, God sends another judge to rescue them. And in this case, it's a judge named Gideon, and he sets the people free from the awful oppression of Midian. But here's what that teaches us. It doesn't matter whether or not you know the cause of a disaster. Your response is to be the same. You're to repent of your own sin, and you are to help the hurting.

You are to mourn the consequences of your own sin and seek to heal those who are mourning. You're to hate the evil that makes our world malfunction and seek to make the world a better place.