10 March 2008 Devotion for Today “Pride and Ambition” Judges 9:52-57

10 March 2008 Devotion for Today “Pride and Ambition” Judges 9:52-57

When my boys were 3 and 5 years of age, I took them fishing for the first time. We had planned to spend a nice afternoon by a lake and I would teach them to cast their line with their little fishing poles that I bought for them. I wasn’t expecting to do any fishing at all since I would be busy baiting hooks and reeling , untangling, and de-rat’s nesting fishing reels and lines. I also had the video camera ready just in case one of the boys caught something. The first thing Jared declared was, “I’m gonna catch a whale!” I smiled at his ambition as he did a very good job of casting his line out into the water. Then John, my oldest son, got a bite and then a huge tug on the line. “Help me, Daddy! I can’t reel it in!” Together we struggled to pull in what looked like a huge lake trout. As we pulled it into shallow water, I reached for the video camera. At the same time, Jared thought he should be reeling in his line also, despite my objections. He then decided to cast his line back out again. That was when I felt something hit me in the back and then, “Ouch!” Jared had caught me with his hook right in the middle of my back. The hook embedded and went deep. Meanwhile, he kept trying to yank the line to get the hook loose. Meanwhile, John started yelling because the fish he had caught was starting to get away and I could not help him because Jared was, by this time, reeling me in! I dropped the video camera in the dirt, desperately trying to grab Jared’s line and stop the grueling torture. The man we went fishing with was further down shore and came running to see what all the commotion was about. In fact, half the lake came over to assist me. People started laughing and snickering at the mishap. I think that hurt worse than the hook itself and admittedly I was in no mood to be good natured about it. No one could get the hook out of my back, and it hurt as it was pulling constantly against my shirt. Finally, a trip to the emergency room cured me. The whole time I could not help but hear Jared’s words of ambition, “I’m gonna catch a whale!” ring over and over again in my mind.

Pride and ambition. Separately they are a pretty good thing. But used together they combine to a destructive, even deadly force. Abimelech found this out in Judges 9. Abimelech was the son of Gideon who was so ambitious and hungry for power that he arranged to murder all of his seventy brothers so that no one in his family would be left to challenge his right to judge Israel. Actually, Abimelech had no redeeming qualities of his own to offer Israel. He was only trading off of his father’s name that people esteemed so highly. He was not much of a politician. And in this chapter he shows that he was not much of a warrior either: “And Abimelech came unto the tower, and fought against it, and went hard unto the door of the tower to burn it with fire. And a certain woman cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all to break his skull.” vv52-53.

For all of Abimelech’s pride and ambition, he showed that he didn’t really know all that much about what he was doing. He thought he was invincible, and instead of using his head and shoot a flaming arrow or two at the wooden door of the tower, somebody used it (his head) for him to break a millstone in two. He thought he was so clever to have eliminated any rivals for the position by murdering his brothers. But even there he was not very careful because one of the brothers escaped.

In our pride and ambition, we create so much stress for ourselves that we begin to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, and actually start believing the adulation people give us. When we do that, we get ourselves hooked. It won’t be long until we leave something undone or forget about a crucial pitfall that will lead us to disaster. Abimelech shows his real character in v. 55 “Then he called hastily (Abimelech was always hasty) unto the young man his armour-bearer, and said unto him, Draw thy sword, and slay me, that men say not of me, A woman slew him. And his young man thrust him through, and he died.” His pride dictated that he would rather he died a suicide than to have it known that he died, not because a woman dropped a millstone on his head, because of his own stupidity.

Be careful today that you do not conspire with pride and ambition to get you somewhere in life. You may likely find that these two will conspire against you. Have a blessed day!