Messy God

Judges 1:4 NASB1995

[4] Judah went up, and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands, and they defeated ten thousand men at Bezek. 

This is a lot of death. It would have a lot of collateral damage. Dead bodies would have littered the ground. This happened at many points in history actually. This is also an example of why at one point the Lord said He would not destroy them all at once. Scavengers feast, prosper, and grow plentiful, it's a form of pollution, and a mess that has to be dealt with. The area becomes less useful. Plus, even seeing the destruction of an army is actually a traumatic event and losing family in a slaughter like this is hard on survivors. Great cost, great loss, and far reaching ramifications but here the ten thousand lost lives is just a line in a history. We can glance over it but we certainly wouldn't if we were living it. This same disconnected mindset can affect us when we hear about tragedy in others' lives. God's heart of compassion is even bigger than ours many thousands times so imagine how He sees it and how severe the sin of man was to bring Him to initiate a flood or declare the wiping out/casting out of an entire region's population. But it's true that while they were dealing with all that they probably didn't have time to be burning their children in the fire or visiting Temple prostitutes, etc. In some sense this tragedy brought peace or at least restrained wickedness. If there were men who had reached a height of wickedness so that every thought of their heart was wickedness all the time then this was ten thousand instances of stopping greater evil. In any case, He is just and this is the outcome so there you have it. God is willing to make a huge mess in order to deal with evil.

Pastor Daniel Stevenson Southside Life Station-Director
New Heights Fellowship Baptist-Pastor
amaldaninc.com-Light and fun stuff