People Who Made History

People Who Made History
By Roy Clements
IVP. 185 pages. £5.99
ISBN 0 85110 899 7

Another volume of Roy Clements' sermons is a welcome sight for the reader and preacher. Here he takes us through the books of Judges and Ruth in eight chapters, showing how God used frail individuals to achieve his ends.
The first chapter looks at the opening to the book of Judges. There is a pattern to God's history, a loose pattern that Israel 'could recognise with the benefit of hindsight but never presume upon in any crisis'. There is helpful material here on divine providence. The next three chapters look at key individuals in the history of Israel: Gideon, Abimelech, Jephthah and Samson. From them we learn lessons about leadership, guidance, ambition, the dangers of sexual immorality and the sovereignty of God over our weaknesses.
A chapter on the decline of Israel after the death of Samson, for me the best of the lot, looks at the mess the people have got into and looks ahead to Ruth and the coming kingship. Here the purposes of God for Israel are spelt out most clearly, contrasting starkly with the brutal events unfolding at the time. The book concludes with three chapters on Ruth. The chief lesson here is the power of sacrificial love, a love mirrored in the cross, and there are other applications to the role of women and the family, and to God's openness to all races.
Roy Clements' writing is, as ever, full of diverse and relevant illustrations; this preacher will be gleefully pinching them in the months ahead. And there is the usual wide range of cultural references (Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Marx, Darwin, Popper, Carlyle and Bertrand Russell appear in the first five pages). Despite these academic names, however, this is an extremely readable book, clear, pacy, and well-structured. It is written with the general reader in mind and should find a wide appeal. I particularly appreciated the way in which the flow of the stories is maintained as they are explained; a model in letting the form of the book determine how we write and preach.
There has been some debate as to how Christians today are to relate to these characters from Judges and Ruth. Are they intended to act as examples to us, or are they to be understood in the context of salvation history, as the means by which God rescues his people? Roy Clements is, I think, saying that both of these are true.
Chapters 1 and 5 are strong on the place of the judges in salvation history; particularly in chapter 5 our response is to praise God for all he's done to save his people. The treatment of the individual characters in the other chapters focuses much more on what we learn from them as individuals. I found these less satisfying, as I was not clear what criteria we are to use to distinguish the lessons we are to learn from them. For all that, I would warmly recommend this as another stimulating and humbling read from Roy Clements. We continue to be grateful for his ability to show us ourselves, our world and our great God, active for us in history.

Peter Froggat
St. Andrews, Bebington

© Evangelicals Now - January 1999
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Main Articles

• Why forgiveness?
  Consideration of the relationship between chuch and state particularly with regard to the political situation in Ireland
• One little foot
  The story of a doctor's struggle with his conscience as to whether he should allow a deformed baby to die at birth
• Juggling work, family and church
  The difficulties of getting the right balance of priorities in our lives
• Feel good about yourself
  The war over self-esteem and self-control (reprinted from World Magazine)
• Proverbs and the power of words
  How words can powerfully affect our thoughts, beliefs, values and thus our actions
• The axe laid to the root
  An extract from a sermon preached in 1931 on the root of man's problem
• Y2K - don't panic!
  The facts and fantasies of the Year 2000 computer bug
• Y2K - is it doomsday?
  The predictions of social breakdown at the turn of the century

Other articles

• Hope Floats
• Thank You God - A Book of Children's Prayers
• Brief reviews of various books suitable as Christmas presents
• The King's Collection - CD recording of the choir of King's College in Cambridge
• Matters of Life and Death - An extract from the book Matters of Life and Death showing how the Hippocratic - Christian consensus guiding all doctors is being eroded
• God - The Evidence (The reconciliation of faith and reason in a post-secular world)
• Legend - The Genesis of Civlisation
• Interpreting Charismatic Experience
• Behind The Smile
• Awaiting the Millennium - A history of end-time thinking
• People Who Made History
• For the Love of God - A Daily Companion to Discovering God's Word
• 365 Days with Spurgeon