“And after him was Shamgar the son of Anath, which slew of the Philistines six hundred men with an ox goad: and he also delivered Israel.” (Judges 3:31)
In Judges 2, it says that there arose a generation that didn't know God or His works that He had done. Because of this, they did evil in the sight of God. And when they did, they got in trouble. They called for help, though, and when they did, God started raising up deliverers. The thing about these deliverers though, was they used some of the weirdest methods to destroy the enemy you've ever heard of.
In Judges 3:21, a left-handed man took a dagger and stuck it into a fat man's belly so hard that it went all the way inside and he couldn't even get it back out. In Judges 4:21, a woman came up to one of God's enemies while he was asleep, took a nail and a hammer and drove the nail through his temples until he was fastened to the ground. In Judges 7:20, Gideon delivered Israel with 300 men while blowing trumpets and breaking pitchers. And in Judges 15:15, Sampson took the jawbone of an ass and slayed 1,000 Philistines. And on and on the list goes. Over and over again God used unlikely men using unlikely instruments to destroy the enemy.
What I want to bring to your attention though right now is just one of these unlikely men, Shamgar, and talk about his unlikely weapon, an ox goad. For those of you that aren't familiar with ox goads, let me tell you a little about it. In the farming industry of Israel, many times oxen were used to do plowing. The only thing was that sometimes oxen will become very stubborn and not want to move. Because of this, the ox goad was invented. The ox goad was approximately 6 to 8 feet long. On one end of it, there was a small shovel-like instrument for removing excess mud off of the plow. On the other end of that ox goad was two things; one was a very sharp point, and the other was a carved-on ball that had razor sharp spikes sticking out of it. This would be what the farmer would hit the ox with to get him to move. He would take that ox goad and hit him right in the back of the legs, and when he did that, that ox jumped. If that ox, though, decided he was going to be stubborn and kick against it, he would hurt himself and cause himself a lot of unnecessary pain.
Now that's interesting, because that's exactly what Jesus told Saul on the road to Damascus. He said, “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” I looked up that word pricks in the original Greek and guess what? It means an ox goad. Jesus had an ox goad in His hand and He was shoving that old boy Saul saying, “You might as well quit fighting against it. You're going to preach, you're going to serve Me”. But Saul was kicking and saying, “But I hate Christians. I persecute them.” But Jesus was saying, “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” And you know what happened? That good old boy Saul got saved and his name was changed to Paul.
Now, back to Shamgar. One day, Shamgar is out in the fields, minding his own business, when here comes a group of 600 Philistine raiders. It is reported that they would come in right at harvest time to steal all the food. So here they would come, right at harvest time, ready to take the harvest you had worked so hard for, and steal everything, and leave you with nothing. Ain’t that just like the devil? Just when you think everything's going well, here comes satan, ready to steal, kill and destroy everything you've worked so hard for. And this is exactly what these Philistine raiders would do.
When you read your Bible, you quickly find out that Israel had some bad problems with these Philistines. And when they did, all those Israelites would take off running and screaming, “Oh, here comes the devil. Here comes the devil. Let's get out of his way.” Ain't that just like a lot of modern Christians? The devil comes up to them and says, “Boo!” and they take off running like a scared jack rabbit. He says jump, and many ask “how high?” It's time to quit that junk. One might ask right here, but what can one man or woman really do against the enemy? Well, one Elijah called the fire down on Mount Carmel. One Joshua prayed and the sun stood still. One David killed a giant named Goliath. One Jesus turned the world upside down. One man and God make a majority any day.
So here is Shamgar out in the middle of his field, and he hears the Philistine army coming. He sees others around him fleeing in terror, running for their lives. But here he stands, all alone, thinking, “I'm tired of these Philistines taking everything we own. As a matter of fact, it makes me mad.” When you get mad enough at the devil, something's going to happen. And it did to Shamgar. All of a sudden, I see the Spirit of the Lord come upon him, and now under the anointing of God he looks around for something to fight with, and there he sees it–the ox goad. Shamgar picks up that ox goad under the anointing of the Holy Ghost and starts bashing heads and stacking bodies. Bashing heads and stacking bodies. I like to call this devil bashing faith. And praise God, within the space of a few minutes there were 600 dead bodies laying around. Don't tell me that one man with God can't defeat the enemy. Meet Shamgar, the bold one.
Wherever the anointing is flowing, that's where I want to be. I want to flow under a Shamgar anointing. I want to move out in boldness. We need a spirit of boldness to come upon the Body of Christ again. We've been weak long enough. We've been putting up with the devil's junk long enough. It's time to get bold and stand up to satan, look him square in the eyes and say no more, devil, no more. We're not just going to lay down and take it any more. We're tired of running. We're tired of being defeated. Get behind me, Satan. I'm going forward.
We have people in our churches, though, that are afraid to get bold, because they are more of a wimp than a warrior. I'd like to know what they're scared of. I mean, think about it. We've got God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost on our side. Not only that, but we've also got two-thirds of the angels still on our side. We've got the majority anyway you look at it. When you know whose side you're on, you can be bold and not worry about what the devil even thinks about it.
For those who would like to know how to receive a bold Shamgar anointing, here's what Acts 4:29-31 says, “And now, Lord, behold their threatenings: and grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.” If you want to receive a spirit of boldness, get full of the Holy Ghost. When our churches get full of the Holy Ghost, the devil had better watch out, because we're going to become bold. And when we get bold, we're going to pick up our ox goats and we're going to start bashing some devil's heads and we're going to start stacking some devil bodies.