The Parable of the Trees

Judges 9: 7-20

When you open your Bible to the Book of Judges, you enter a world where people were
a law to themselves resulting in lawlessness and unrighteousness.
In reading Judges, you find mirth, sorrow, revenge, hate, murder, anger, and love of country.
You also find some strange and unforgettable characters such as:
Shamgar, Gideon, Sampson, Deborah, Jael, Jephthah, Jotham.
You will see that Jotham appears on the scene and speaks, and then he is gone;
but his message remains.

We also will read of Gideon's work for God, and the darkness and the gloom in Israel.
Gideon was the hero of the victory over the hosts of the Midianites,
and he became a victim to the glory of that victory.
Out of the spoils of the war which were golden earrings, pendants, crescents, chains, wrist bracelets,
and anklets, Gideon made an ephod which was worship by Israel as an idol.
"And Gideon made an ephod even in Ophrah."

Where was Ophrah?
It was beneath the oak at Ophrah that Gideon was beating out the grain to hide it from the Midianites.
He was filled with anger against the invaders, when the angel of the Lord appeared to him and cried,
"The Lord is with thee, thou mighty man of valor."

It was in Ophrah that God called him.
It was there the fire came forth and devoured the offering on the rocks.
It was there that Gideon pressed the fleece of wool together and wrung out the dew
which filled a bowl full of water.
"Even in Ophrah!"

You would think that if Gideon was going to forget God and worship idols,
he would have set up that idol anywhere except in Ophrah where he had
great and holy memories of his youth.
Yet, this is what we often see in life.

For instance, take a man who has quit claiming the name of God back to the church of his youth,
and to the old family pew, and let him sit there and remember the days and the faces that are gone;
and think of that child who once sat there with a heart that had no bitterness,
and let him compare that child with his sin of worshiping the idols of this world.

For instance, take the husband and wife whose hearts have grown cold, alienated, separated,
divorced, back to the days when they loved each other and sought to make each other happy.
Let them remember those sacred vows they made when they said to each other:
"I promise to be your loving and faithful wife, (husband) in plenty and in want,
in joy and in sorrow in sickness and in health, until death do us part."

Also, take the man who has failed in life and has no more honors,
and does, as a matter of habit, things that he would never have done in the past.
Take that man back to that time in his life when he consecrated himself to God.
Take him back to the days when he had a passion in his heart to serve God
and had compassion in his heart for others.
Now have him contrast his present day where he is disenchanted, disillusioned,
and how he has has lost the principles that he had as a youth.

Think of those abandon and forgotten who sinned against Ophrahs of the past.
Now for them the fleece is dry, and there is no flame coming up from the altar,
and there is no voice of God that makes the heart beat quicker and the eye look up to God.

That was the fate of Gideon.
But he had enough character to refuse the crown that was offered him.
When they said, "Rule thou over us," he answered, "I will not rule over you;
neither will my son rule over you.
The Lord shall rule you."

The family quarrels began when Gideon died.
The memory of the nation was short, and Gideon's service was soon forgotten as they served Baal.

One of the sons of Gideon was Abimelech.
He was a contemptible man.
He was illegitimate in his birth and lawless in his heart.
He also had more ambition than all of the other sons.

He was the son of the concubine, and therefore, had no chance to be king,
should Israel decide to have a king.
So, he went to his mother's friends at Shechem and persuaded them to assist him
in the slaughtering of the 70 sons of Gideon at Ophrah.
Then, they crowned him king by the oak tree that was in Shechem.

But Abimelech was not finished with his killing.
The younger son, Jotham, escaped.
That is always the way it is with evil and evil deeds.
Truth and righteousness are never left without an heir to their throne.
Some youngest son escapes the sword, and comes back to judge.

Evil can build its tallest tower and strong walls, but it will always leave some crevice
which an arrow of judgment will fly through.
Truth and justice may seem to be suppressed with no one left to speak on its behalf.
But then, from some unexpected place will come the voice to assure and to judge.

Jotham traveled to Shechem, and climbed Mount Gerizim's 800 foot slope south of the city.
Then, he then delivers a parable that could be heard by all those in Shechem.
Jotham may have stood on the triangular rock platform that projects from the side of Gerizim,
which forms a natural pulpit overlooking Shechem from which he could be heard as far away
as Mount Ebal across the valley.
God wanted this message to be heard clearly!

At the same moment when the men of Shechem were crying, "God save the king!"
Jotham came to tell them what kind of king they had chosen.
From this place on the top of Mount Gerizim, he told the parable of the trees.

This was the first parable in the Old Testament:
"The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said to the olive tree,
"Reign thou over us."
But the olive tree said to them, "Should I leave my fatness, where by me they honor man and God,
and go to wave to add fro over the trees."

And the trees said to the fig tree, "Come thou and reign over us."
But the fig tree said to them, "Should I leave my sweetness and my good fruit,
and go to wave to and fro over the trees?'

And the trees said to the vine, "Come thou and reign over us."
And the vine said to them, "Should I leave my new wine, which cheereth God and man,
and go to wave to and fro over the trees?"

Then said all the trees to the bramble, "Come thou and reign over us.
And the bramble said to the trees: 'If in truth ye anoint me king over you,
then come and take refuge in my shade; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble
and devour the cedars of Lebanon.'"

So, all the trees said to the bramble, "You come, reign over us!"
The bramble not only produced nothing of value, and was quite worthless as timber
it was also a menace to the farmer who had to wage continual war against its encroachments.
Its carpet-like growth was especially a menace in the heat of the summer when scrub fires,
fanned by the wind could travel at incredible speeds along the tinder of dried branches.

Jotham's point in this fable or parable which in fact was really a prophetic curse is
that only worthless individuals seek to lord it over others.
Worthy people are too involved in useful tasks to seek such rulership over others.

Jotham's prophecy was full of scorn for Abimelech, whom he compared to the bramble
accepting a position declined by the olive, the fig-tree, and the vine.
It is noticeable that these were the three symbols of the national life of Israel.

In the course of his parable, he indicated the way in which judgment would fall upon them,
if they committed this wrong.
Abimelech would be the destruction of the men of Shechem, and the men of Shechem
would be the destruction of Abimelech.

That prophecy was literally fulfilled.
The nation was chosen to reign over nations, under the rule of God.
It lost its power to reign, when it ceased to yield its allegiance to its one and only King.

Abimelech and his supporters saw the point of the parable.
The people had rejected the sons of Gideon who would have ruled them with justice and equity,
and chose the most wicked of the sons, as the bramble among the trees.
So, now they must serve Abimelech with slavish fear, or he would burn them in his wrath.
And this proved to be true.

"Jotham's theme is the foolishness and peril of accepting clearly, unqualified leadership.
Brambles make good fuel, but poor kings; they burn better than they reign.
People have a strange tendency to accept bramble – leadership, a fact which continues to baffle us."
(Ralph Davis, D., Focus on the Bible: Judges)

Jotham was not only a satirist, he was also a prophet.
After three years, the men of Shechem got tired of their bargain and rebelled against their bramble king.
Abimelech came with his army, and took the city by storm, and killed the people and beat down the walls,
and sowed the place with salt.
If any of the men of Shechem were left to tell what had happened, they remembered the word of Jotham,
"Fire shall come out of the bramble and devour the cedar of Lebanon."

The trees had voted and elected a bramble to rule them.
Their forest government was what they made it -- nothing more and nothing less.
They elected and crowned a bramble, and the bramble ruled them like a bramble.
God often gives people the leadership they deserve.
A wicked and ungodly people will often have wicked and ungodly leaders

Life is what you make it.
You choose your own king, and you chose who shall govern you.
At first, you may feel tempted to challenge the proposition that life is what you make it.
You might answer that life was already made for you.
For you came into the world by no wish or plan of your own.
You were born into a home where you had certain examples and thoughts and life placed upon you.

As soon as you breathed your first breath, you were formed, molded and colored by that thought.
You were given that mysterious thing called heredity which guided you along paths
that your people walked before you.
You can no more throw off your past than you can blot out your present.
You were given a intellectual and moral and maybe a religious view of life by no desire
and by no protest of your own.

You will travel your threescore and ten along this path of life.
You will come to rough places where the stones will bruise you and you will come to deep places
where floods will overwhelm you.
You will also come to pleasant meadowlands where the fields will be peaceful and bright with flowers.
And at times you will come where there are exalted spiritual places where the winds will be fresh
and the air will be clear, and you will think that you can see the land to which you are traveling.

Now as you make your way back down the path that leads you into silent, mist-filled valleys,
and look back over the long journey where you had joys that were so real and so divine,
and where you had sorrows that were so penetrating, and gains that were indefinable and losses
that were irreparable that tempt you to say that life was not so much what you made it,
as what you found it to be and were compelled to take it.

"Ah, love! Could you and I conspire
To grasp the sorry scheme of things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits,
And mold it nearer to the heart's desire?"

We think of things that we might have done differently, and things that we would change in life
if we could turn back the years, and other things that we can never change -- all this comes to mind
when we think very seriously about our life.
But when we get above the incidents of existence, and come to the issues of the soul,
regardless of the environment into which we were born, and regardless of the place
which we now hold, it still remains true that life is what we make it.

There are all kinds of trees in the forest, and there are all kinds of desires and emotions
and considerations, vices and graces, possible for the human soul.
Only in a parable, only in imagination, can the trees choose a king.

But man is above the trees of the field; he can, and does choose his king.
You have chosen your king for today.
When this day with its privileges and duties is passed, some will go to their beds tired in body,
but not in heart, for they have scattered the seeds of light and love about them.
They have thought of others; they have worked for others; they have spoken the word in season;
they have instructed many, and they have lifted up the fallen.
They have wiped away the tears from those who wept; and they have left behind them a path
that is bright with love and honor.

Others, with the same opportunities and the same temptations will go to their beds weary and sick,
dissatisfied, fretful, unhappy because they gave themselves over to the dominion of their own desires,
aims, appetites, worshiping their own dislikes, prejudices, and other self-centered values.
Instead of the fig, the olive, the vine, they have made the bramble to be king over them
and rule them like a bramble.

If you want, you can be miserable, wretched, contemptible, defeated, depressed,
but don't blame it on God or your lot in life.
You make your own king!
Often in our folly like that of the fabled trees, we are the deliberate electors and architects
of our own unhappiness and distress!

Many have decided that they don't need God -- so they have become their own god.

"I am the Master of my fate;
I am the Captain of my soul."

Many live so that when they come to die that life was nothing but regrets and bitter memories.
Others lived so that when they come to die, they can say that they had lived,
and that life was what they made it.

When Pilate brought Jesus out before the people, he cried to them, "Behold your king!"
They answered, "Away with him, away with him! Crucify him, crucify him!"
Pilate said, "Shall I crucify your king?"
They cried, "We have no king, but Caesar!"
That was their choice, and as their choice, it was also their doom.

Seventy years after Christ died on Calvary, Titus came with his army, and after a siege of three years
and of unparalleled suffering and ferocity, the walls of Jerusalem were battered down.
A legionnaire, standing on the shoulders of one of his fellow soldiers,
put a torch to one of the golden windows of the temple.

The Jews rushed in to save their shrine, and died by the thousands until their blood
ran down the steps of the holy place like a river.
No king but Caesar!

On that day the Jewish people saw an end to their nation as they knew it.
Ashes, blood, carnage, piles of slaughtered people, fallen walls, desecrated shrines.
"No king but Caesar!"
And fire came out of the bramble.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee,
how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold your house is left to you desolate."

"And ye would not!"
Over how many cities must Christ utter that lament?
They refuse His olive branch of blood-bought peace and the shelter of His vine,
and accept the bramble of unforgiving, unregenerate, implacable self for king.

"If thou hadest known who it is that saith to thee, 'Give me to drink,' thou wouldest have asked of him,"
Jesus said to the woman at the well.

If you and I knew the difference between the reign of Christ in our lives
and the reign of our own bramble selves, we would not even hesitate in our choice.

What difference you see in the the characters of Gideon and Abimelech applies to men in every age.
The wise and good are unambitious.
If clearly called of God to any office, they undertake it, as Gideon did, for the Lord's sake:
but they do not seek advancement for themselves: they do not affect situations of dignity and power:
they cultivate an humble and contented mind; and study rather to be good than great.

We must learn to be unambitious in prosperity.
Gideon had a great opportunity to latch on to the power and prominence,
but he chose not to do so.
He preferred to have the Lord to reign in his life, and accept the place in life that God had given.

To many, the acquisition of power is the acquisition of ease.
The increase of comforts by means of it bears no proportion to the increase of cares.
Solomon in all his grandeur found nothing but "vanity and vexation of spirit."
Jeremiah's advice to Baruch is worthy the attention of all:
"Seekest thou great things unto thyself? Seek them not."

We must also learn to be patient in adversity.
The complaint which Jotham had both against Abimelech and the Shechemites was justified,
yet he hurled no invectives against them.
He simply declared his testimony against them in God's name.
This is an example that we shall do well to follow.
Let us therefore "not render evil for evil, or railing for railing,"
but "commit ourselves to Him who judgeth righteously."

We should also expect a future time of retribution.
Some may appear for to succeed for awhile, and to reap pleasant fruit from the iniquities they have sown.
We must remember how Abimelech's success come to judgment at the end of three years.
Now what does he think about all of his murders?
Some may appear to succeed in the acquisition of unlawful pleasures or dishonest gains:
but at some point they will reap what they have sown.

The Shechemites were ruined by Abimelech; now he who was their leader in evil is reckoned with.
In verses 25-49, we read the details of the judgment of the city of Shechem.

The men of Shechem no longer have confidence in Abimelech, so they choose a new leader named Gaal,
the son of Ebed
They are so confident that Gaal can protect them against Abimelech that they start throwing
drunken parties, and openly cursing Abimelech

Zebul, the "city manager" on behalf of Abimelech, tells Abimelech all about Gaal and this rebellion;
Zebul advises Abimelech to come and attack the city
Zebul deceives Gaal, allowing Abimelech's troops to take position; then Abimelech and his soldiers
drive out Gaal and his men

Then Abimelech turned his fury against the people of Shechem, and killed as many of them as he could,
and demolished their city
This is the problem of appointing a man who comes to power through violence;
it is only a matter of time until that violence is turned against him and those who supported him.

The only survivors in the city of Shechem take refuge in a tower.
Abimelech burns them out and kills them all -- about a thousand men and women.
Even a secure tower could not protect them

In contrast, "The name of the Lord is a strong tower; The righteous run to it and are safe." (Proverbs 18:10)
"For You have been a shelter for me, A strong tower from the enemy." (Psalm 61:3)

Then in verses 50-55, we read the details of God's judgment on Abimelech.
After his destruction of the tower at Shechem, Abimelech probably thought he was an expert
at "tower attack."
Then, from that tower, a woman drops a millstone on Abimelech's head which mortally wounds him.
This was probably a stone that people used to grind by hand.
Such hand-stones averaged ten to fourteen inches long and weighed five pounds or more.

Then, Abimelech considers it more "manly" to be killed by his own armor bearer
rather than people knowing that a woman killed him.
So, he asked his armor bearer to put a spear through his heart.
In Judges 9:54, he called quickly to his armor bearer, and said to him,
"Draw your sword and kill me, lest it be said of me, 'A woman slew him.'"
So, the young man pierced him through, and he died.
So, he is dead, and had to answer to God for his wicked actions

In verses 56-57, we read of the certainty of God's judgments.
We can be certain that God will repay wickedness; either in this life or the life to come
- and usually, He will do it this life and the life to come.

Remember, God had warned the men of Shechem through Jotham,
but they rejected the warning of God,
and had to suffer the consequences of following a bramble king instead of the King of kings.

What warning from God are you rejecting today?
Consider the ruin you will bring to your life if you do not heed God's warning
Evil pursues sinners, and sometimes overtakes them, when not only at ease, but triumphant.
Though wickedness may prosper a while, it will not prosper always.
The history of mankind, if truly told, would greatly resemble that of this chapter.

Their time of judgment will come!
"When God's time is come!
Know ye, Beloved, that "evil pursueth sinners;" and "though hand join in hand,
the wicked shall not be unpunished." (Simeon, C. 1832-63)

What a valuable lesson for us Christians!
The world is to the church, what the nations were to Israel.
If we yield to its solicitations, we abandon our oil, our fruit, our new wine - that is to say,
our spiritual power, the works which God has prepared for us. (Ephesians 2: 10)

Are we able to respond to all the offers of the world;
Should I leave that which is my happiness and my strength, for fruitless turmoil,
or to satisfy the lusts and ambitions of the heart of men?

Jotham, like his father Gideon (Judges 8: 23), appreciates these treasures of the Israel of God,
and set himself apart on Gerizim, retaining his blessed position.
In the presence of all this apostate people, he is the true and last bud of faith, the sole witness for God.

Jotham was spurned by all, his lot was the only enviable one, for he glorified God in this sorrowful world.
May we too, like him, be found in the path of separation from evil
There we shall taste all that the trees of God yield.
He who has enjoyed these things exclaims: "Should I leave them?"

God has given us a way of escape.
No longer do we have to dwell in the shadow and shade of the bramble and the briar and the thorn.
We can dwell underneath the shade of the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
Oh bless His name that bore the crown of thorns for us.

Will you take Christ for king, and commit all your interest and all your destinies to Him?
Or, will you be your own king?

"Jesus is Lord of all, Jesus is Lord of all,
No sin is too big, no problem too small,
Jesus is Lord of all.

Jesus is King of Kings, My Lord is King of Kings,
Presidents, princes, paupers will sing,
Jesus is King of Kings.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all,
King of King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
You know He's Lord of all.

Jesus is coming soon, Jesus is coming soon.
Just look in your heart and see if there's room.
Cause Jesus is coming soon.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all, yes, yes, yes.
King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
That's all, there is, that all.
My God is Lord of all."


This sermon was based upon a sermon by Clarence E. Macartney and many other sources.