The Philistines & the Fear of God

See if you can name these pairs.

Bit louder, Tom and Jerry, easy one.

Second.

I wasn't sure the Knight would get it, but Wile E.

Coyote and Road Runner.

This one, Sylvester and Toity Bird.

Crash Bandicoot, the Shanks get that one.

Last one, easy one.

Mario and Bowser, the word nemesis comes to mind.

Nemesis means the inescapable agent of someone or some thing's downfall.

It means a long-standing rival, an arch-enemy.

Each of these pairs are nemesis pairs.

Think of Tom and Jerry, eternal enemies constantly fighting.

Crash and Cortex, Mario and Bowser.

Nemesis, well, the Philistines were the nemesis of the people of Israel.

We're in week three tonight of our Kings and Characters series, and the character that we're looking at today, tonight, is the Philistines, the nemesis of the people of Israel.

What we see throughout the story of the Old Testament is the predominant enemy, the main antagonist, the nemesis of the people of Israel is the Philistines.

Jason read out for us, wonderfully, I must say, a very tricky passage, which I think was comical.

I picked it because I thought it was comical in its depiction of the constancy of the battle against the Philistines.

We'll return to it later in the message, but it said, there was another battle against the Philistines.

Next verse, in still another battle against the Philistines.

We're taking, as our subject for this message tonight, the story of the Philistines as a people group.

Can I get a show of hands?

Have you ever heard a sermon on the Philistines as the subject?

One, from Phil.

I've never heard of that before.

So this is an interesting kind of...

Oh, this morning doesn't count, Phil.

This is an interesting kind of topic to look at.

So, without further ado, the story of the Philistines.

Chapter 1, Genesis of the Nemesis.

Genesis chapter 10 gives us the origins of the Philistine people.

Verse 14 of Genesis 10 is in fact the first time that the Philistines appear in the Bible.

Genesis 10 is the table of nations.

It's that part of the Bible that says, from the three sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth, we get the lines of families which spread out across the ancient Near East and become all of the nations that the people who first read this book of Genesis would have been familiar with.

I was tempted to have Jason read out the passage that I'm about to read out, but it's even worse than the other one, so I had mercy on him.

Before we get to Genesis 10, I just want to bring one thing to the front of our minds, one story, and that's from Genesis 9.

So, the page before Genesis 10, we have this story of the family of Noah having just come out of the ark, literally just coming out of the ark, and it says, the scripture says, Noah was a man of the vine, and he got drunk and lay naked in his tent.

And one of his sons did an irreverent thing to his father.

The Hebrew text says one of these sons saw his father's nakedness, but the sense in the Hebrew is, he did more than just look at his naked father.

But the other two sons did not commit an irreverent act, but they walked in backwards with a blanket.

That's a story from Genesis 9, which I just want to put into our minds, because the irreverent son, his name is Ham.

So just hold on to that piece of information.

The irreverent son is Ham.

I'll read from Genesis 10, verse 1.

This is the account of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah's sons, who themselves had sons after the flood.

Verses 2 to 5, I won't read.

It's a list of the sons of Shem.

But one thing I will point out is Shem is the father of the Semitic line, Semite, meaning Jew.

So the Jewish people come from this son, Shem.

Down to verse 6, the sons of Ham, Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.

The sons of Cush, Seba, Havala, Sabta, Rama, and Sabtica.

The sons of Rama, Sheba, and Dedan.

Verses 8 to 12 then follows the line of Cush, but we're going to zero in on the second son of Noah, which is Egypt, in verse 13.

Egypt was the father of the Luddites, Annamites, Lehiabites, Naphtuites, Pathrusites, Kasluites, from whom the Philistines came, and Kaphtorites.

And then finally, verse 32, these are the clans of Noah's sons, according to their lines of descent within their nations.

From these, the nations spread out over the earth after the flood.

So, in case that wasn't clear, and it wasn't, Noah has three sons.

His son Ham, who is irreverent, commits a sin of irreverence.

Noah, Ham, Egypt.

Caslew Heights, Philistines.

The point that Genesis 10 is making when we read it through a Philistine lens is that the Philistines as a people are born out of a family line that is marked by irreverence.

They come from that second son of Noah, Ham, who commits an irreverent act.

And at the same time, the thread that we see from Genesis 10 is the line of Shem, the Semitic line, which will go down to Abraham, the father of Israel and the whole people of Israel.

Later on, we have this tension between Israel and the Philistines, and they come from these two brothers, Shem and Ham.

To start to wrap up chapter one, the Genesis of the Nemesis, for some geographical context, the Philistines settled in Palestine, in an area that had five cities.

They settled in what people call the Pentapolis, meaning five cities, Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath and Ekron.

To give you a visual sense, the land of the Philistines was south and west of the land of Israel along the Mediterranean Sea.

Unfortunately, I think we're probably familiar with maps of Gaza in these days.

Gaza was a Philistine town even those thousands of years ago.

So historically speaking, that's where the Philistines come from.

And narratively speaking, they come from the line of Ham, which is marked by irreverence at the start.

Chapter 2, The Nemesis Test.

The people of Israel, who come from the line of Shem, after they entered the promised land under Joshua, were never able to fully defeat the Philistines, to fully wipe out the Philistines because God would not let them.

God had a plan for the Philistines.

It says in Judges Chapter 3 that God allowed the Philistines to remain in the land to function as a test, what I would call the Nemesis test.

Judges 3, 1 to 4 says, These are the nations the Lord left in the promised land to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan.

He did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience.

The five rulers of the Philistines, we're talking about people left in the promised land.

The five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians and the Hivites, living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal-Hurman to Lebo Hamath.

They were left to test the Israelites, to see whether they would obey the Lord's commands, which he had given them through their ancestor Moses.

The Nemesis test is that the Philistines would stay in the land as a test to see if Israel would be faithful.

And over the course of the Old Testament, we see the outcome of this test.

Judges 331.

After Ehud came Shamgar, son of Anath, who struck down 600 Philistines with an ox goad.

Israel won, Philistines zero.

Judges 10, 6 to 8.

Because the Israelites forsook the Lord and no longer served him, he became angry with them.

He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites, who that year shattered and crushed them.

Israel won, Philistines one.

Judges 13, 1.

Again, the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.

Israel won, Philistines two.

Judges 15, this is the time of Samson, if you import that whole story into our memory now.

Judges 15, 3.

Samson said to them, this time, I have a right to get even with the Philistines.

I will really harm them.

So he went out and caught 300 foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs.

He then fastened a torch to every pair of tails, lit the torches and let the foxes loose in the standing grain of the Philistines.

He burned up the shocks and standing grain together with the vineyards and olive groves.

Israel, two.

Philistines, two.

Judges, 16, 21.

Then the Philistines seized Samson.

I took out and gouged his eyes out, because I thought that was a bit much, but now I've just given him back to you.

And took him down to Gaza.

Israel, two.

Philistines, three.

Last one.

Judges, 16, in Gaza.

That city of Gaza, verse 28.

Then Samson prayed to the Lord, Sovereign Lord, remember me, please God.

Strengthen me just once more.

And let me with one blow get revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes.

That's the context for the eyes.

Then Samson reached toward the two central pillars on which the temple stood.

Bracing himself against them, his right hand on one and his left hand on the other, Samson said, let me die with the Philistines.

Then he pushed with all his might and down came the temple, on the rulers and all the people in it.

Thus he killed many more when he died than when he lived.

Israel, three.

Philistines, three.

On and on and on across the story of the Old Testament, Israel and their nemesis Philistines are in battle.

Sometimes Israel wins, sometimes the Philistines win, but it is this constant nemesis battle.

Jason read out for us a passage in 2 Samuel 21 that I think kind of makes fun of how pervasive a threat the Philistines are.

It says in 2 Samuel 15, this is what Jason read for us.

Sorry, 2 Samuel 21, 15.

Once again, there was a battle between the Philistines and Israel.

Down to verse 18.

In the course of time, there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob.

Verse 19, in another battle with the Philistines at Gob.

Verse 20, in still another battle, which took place at Gath.

Nemesis.

The Philistines are the nemesis of the people of Israel.

But what we read in Judges 3 is a surprising twist, that God allowed them to function as a nemesis test for the people of Israel.

And we see that when Israel are faithful to God, they're winning.

They're beating the Philistines.

But as soon as they turn from God to worship other gods, the Philistines start to win.

And so what is made so clear, I think, from the narrative of the Philistines is that the axis on which the battle against the nemesis is won or lost is the fear of God.

When Israel fear God, which means not to be afraid of him, but to worship him, to treat him seriously as the god of the universe, when Israel fear God, they gain ground against the Philistines.

But when they swing away from the fear of God, the Philistines start to gain ground.

So the axis on which the battle against the nemesis is won or lost is the fear of God.

The opposite of the fear of God is irreverence.

Irreverence was the prototypical sin of Ham.

The Philistines are the archetype of this sin of irreverence because they come from the prototype of irreverence, Ham.

It's the family pattern that they were born into is committing sins of irreverence.

Right from the moment in Genesis 9 when Ham saw his father's nakedness and didn't respect him, didn't treat it as a serious thing, from that line of Ham come the Philistines, who are marked by irreverence for the things of God.

Throughout the long history of the battle between Israel and the Nemesis Philistines, the theme of irreverence and the fear of God plays out.

It's the axis on which the battle is won or lost, and there's one battle which, more clearly than any other, articulates the axis of irreverence and the fear of God.

Chapter 3, David vs.

Goliath.

1 Samuel 17.

Now the Philistines gathered their forces for war, and assembled at Sokho in Judah.

They pitched camp at Ephes Damim between Sokho and Azekar.

Saul and the Israelites assembled and camped in the valley of Elah, and drew up their battle line to meet the Philistines.

The Philistines occupied one hill, and the Israelites another, with the valley in between them.

A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp.

His height was six cubits and a span.

He had a bronze helmet on his head, and wore a coat of scale armor.

Verse 8, Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, Why do you come out and line up for battle?

Am I not a Philistine?

And are you not the servants of Saul?

Choose a man, one man, and have him come down to me.

If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects.

But if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.

Then the Philistines said, This day I defy the armies of Israel.

That is an irreverent act against the God of Israel.

Give me a man, Goliath says, and let us fight each other.

On hearing the Philistines' words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

Down to verse 16.

For 40 days, the Philistines came forward every morning and every evening and took his stand.

And then down to verse 26, young shepherd boy David comes onto the scene.

David asks the men standing near him, what will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel?

Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?

Verse 32, David said to Saul, let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine.

Your servant will go and fight him.

Saul replied, you are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him.

You are only a young man, and he's been a warrior from his youth.

But David said to Saul, your servant has been keeping his father's sheep.

When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, says David, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.

And when it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.

Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear.

This uncircumcised Philistine will be just like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.

The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of the Philistines.

Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you.

Verse 40, then David took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd's bag, and with his sling in hand, approached the Philistine.

Meanwhile, the Philistine with his shield bearer, going before him, kept coming closer to David.

He looked David over and saw that he was little more than a boy, glowing with health and handsome, and he despised him.

He said to David, Am I a dog that you come at me with sticks?

And the Philistine cursed David by his gods, the Philistine gods.

Come here, Goliath said, and I'll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals.

David said to the Philistine, You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I'll strike you down and cut off your head.

This very day, I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel.

All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves, for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give all of you into our hands.

As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.

This is a battle of ideologies.

I don't think the text could be more clear in that point that it makes.

It's a battle of ideologies.

The text says that there's no army, there's no great battle.

It is one person from the Philistines and one person from Israel who step forward to embody the ideology of their people.

So in one corner, Goliath steps forward to embody the ideology of irreverence for God, irreverence for his name, for his power, irreverence.

And in the other corner, David steps forward as the champion of Israel to embody the ideology of the profound fear of God.

The idea that his name matters.

This is a battle of ideologies in David and Goliath.

Chapter four contains irreverent humor.

We live in a battle of ideologies.

We live every day in the sanctity of our heart and our minds in a battle which is the fear of God versus what I think is the nemesis of the spiritual life of faith in the 21st century, irreverence.

We live in this battle between the fear of God and irreverence.

The nemesis of the spiritual life of faith in the 21st century.

And so much of our life, our faith, the life of faith is contingent on the battle between the fear of God and irreverence.

We live in a battle of ideologies.

We live in a highly irreverent culture.

Did you know that Netflix has a category of movies and TV shows called irreverent?

You can search, I want to see something irreverent.

Give me all you have.

Contemporary Australian culture is like a Venn diagram of death when it comes to irreverence.

On one hand, one Venn diagram circle, we have the tall poppy syndrome thing.

Australians like to cut down their leaders, to make jokes about them, to bring them down to our level, to show irreverence to those in positions of authority.

Secondly, we live in a deeply postmodern city, and postmodernism wants to deconstruct anything that takes itself seriously.

And thirdly, our sense of humor, the things we find funny, is to mock and tear down people who think that they're something great and who take themselves seriously.

So, we have this Venn diagram of death living in Australian culture for irreverence.

We have been formed into irreverent people.

And I think that tide of irreverence in our culture, which is rising, has seeped into, or can seep into, but I think it has, has seeped into the life of faith.

And this is a problem.

Irreverence in our hearts is the nemesis of the spiritual life of faith in the 21st century, because irreverence is fundamentally counteractive to faith.

And faith is everything in the spiritual life.

Hebrews 11, verse 6 says, Without faith, it's impossible to please God.

And we would say, okay, just unpack that for me.

Help me understand how in some invisible kingdom economics, God chooses to be pleased by faith.

It's not even confusing.

The next line of Hebrews 11, 6 says, Because, this is why it's impossible to please God without faith.

Because, anyone who comes to him must believe he exists.

I think that's the bottom line of relationship with another person is believing that they exist.

And yet, irreverence as a posture of the heart erodes faith.

It wants to make jokes and make a mockery of anything which takes itself seriously.

And it is eroding our faith, and eroding our spiritual life as a consequence.

Faith is the foundation of the spiritual life, but irreverence in our heart towards the things of God is eroding the foundation of faith.

Consequently, the spiritual life of faith in the 21st century is hard.

It's counter-cultural for so many reasons, and part of that is in a post-modern, secular society like we live in here in Sydney.

Irreverence is seeping into our churches and in our faith, and it's eroding our faith.

And when faith is being eroded, it's kind of hard to read the Bible.

It's hard to pray.

It's hard to engage in relationship with a being who reaches out to us in love in Christ, and yet who we cannot touch, we cannot actually see.

Irreverence erodes the very fabric of our relationship with God, and it's making the life of faith hard.

When you read the Bible, when you pray, there is a baseline of faith that has to be there to believe that you are engaging with a being who loves you.

But irreverence is eroding this foundation of faith.

It's making jokes about things which shouldn't be made jokes about.

It's twisting us and changing our perspective towards the things of God, moving away from the fear of God to a posture of irreverence in our heart.

The solution in the battle against this nemesis of the spiritual life of faith in the 21st century is the fear of God.

The fear of God pushes back against this cultural tide of irreverence.

The fear of God says, no, this is real.

God is real.

He is holy, just, loving, fearsomely glorious.

I don't make jokes about that kind of stuff.

When it comes to God, I might not take myself seriously, and that's a good thing.

Let's not take ourselves seriously, but we take God seriously.

With the fear of God is the cornerstone of a life of faith.

Is anyone reading Revelation with us in the Revelation Bible loop?

Quite a few.

I've been struck this week as I prepare this message and read the first few chapters, that Jesus takes himself extremely seriously in those chapters of Revelation.

You read Revelation 1, 2, 3, 4.

It is not messing around.

There's no cheeky, irreverent wink, like a self-deprecating moment.

It is deadly serious, because what we're talking about is life and death.

That's what the story of the Bible comes to speak into.

Is life with God, or eternal life without God?

And yet irreverence would erode the entire construct.

Irreverence in our heart is eroding faith.

But the fear of God will keep us in good stead against the tide of irreverence.

In the battle of ideologies, it was the fear of God that won the battle between David and Goliath.

That's what David stood for.

He didn't stand for himself, for his might, his skill.

He stood for the name of God.

He took that seriously.

The fear of God compelled him to stand up to that Philistine who was irreverent.

And 1 Samuel 17, 48-50 gives us the end of the story, if you didn't already know the end of David's story.

Verse 48.

As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him.

Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead.

The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground.

So, David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone.

Without a sword in hand, he struck down the Philistine and killed him.

David knew that the battle is the Lord's.

It says that earlier in 1 Samuel 17.

The battle is the Lord's, and he will defend himself.

But I take him seriously.

I'm not irreverent.

Because David is not irreverent in his heart towards the things of God.

And ultimately, we know that David won the battle, the Lord won the battle through David because of the fear of God.

But ultimately, the battle, the battle of all battles, was fought by Jesus on the cross, where he disarmed all of the powers and authorities of the world, the flesh and the devil.

He won that battle on the cross.

Because he rose again three days later, and he left those things in the grave behind him.

And out of the victory of the cross and the empty tomb, the fear of God gives victory in the battles that we fight, the battle against irreverence, the battle against whatever nemesis we feel coming at us.

The fear of God relies on the finished victory of the cross to make a way forward, because the battle is the Lord's.

And maybe sometimes we get knocked back.

We don't live in a world where the kingdom has fully come yet.

But the victory was won on the cross, and it will be won in the future.

And the fear of God holds us in the victory of Christ.

And building on the fear of God, let us be a church that have faith in the finished work of Jesus, who take the cross and the resurrection, who take God seriously, who stand up for him, who draw a line and say they might be irreverent out there towards the things of God, but not in here.

We don't make jokes about those things.

We take God seriously, because he took us very seriously when Jesus died for us.

There was no irreverence in his heart.

So the fear of God, I think, is the story of the Philistines.

Let me pray as the band comes up.

Our Lord Jesus, as we think about battles that we fight, we are so grateful to look back at the cross and believe by faith that you won every battle when you rose again from the dead.

You disarmed the powers and authorities so that we can live in freedom and victory, your victory.

And so I think of my brothers and sisters here in this room and joining us online.

Many of us are fighting battles of many kinds.

Help us to see in the cross and the empty tomb, the victory that would help us see a way through it by your grace.

Help us to overcome irreverence and the cultural tide that would push against our life of faith.

Help us to take you seriously, because you took us seriously when you died for us.

We thank you for the cross in Jesus' name, Amen.

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