Judges 5:23,  “Curse Meroz, says the angel of the LORD, curse its inhabitants thoroughly, because they did not come to the help of the LORD, to the help of the LORD against the mighty.” 

In Judges 5, Deborah celebrates Israel’s victory over the Canaanites. In her song, she praises certain of her countrymen for doing their parts.

Deborah praises the Lord for the contributions of both the leaders and the volunteers to Israel’s victory over the Canaanites. Each did his job: the leaders led, and the people willingly volunteered. The warriors from the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, who demonstrated extraordinary valor, come in for special commendation. But almost half of the twelve tribes didn’t do anything.

The men of Reuben, Gilead (the tribe of Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh), Dan, and Asher all held themselves back, each for their own reasons. The men of Reuben, for example, searched their hearts, but couldn’t bring themselves to leave their flocks for the sake of God’s flock.

One tribe in particular, that of Meroz, was singled out for doing nothing and had a double curse pronounced upon them by the angel of the Lord. The Hebrew signifies literally "curse cursing" or repeat it, give them curse upon curse, curse them most vehemently.

Note that the curse was not for some great evil that they had done. It wasn’t for idolatry or the worship of false gods, or for some great transgression. The curse was for doing nothing, for their unwillingness to get involved.

There are those today who are as Meroz. They have not done anything overtly evil. They may even stand back and decry the evil that is in the world today, but they do nothing to stand up against the evil. They just do not want to get involved. Some don’t want to get involved in anything because of their theology that they believe separates the world into two parts – sacred and secular. Others don’t want to get involved because of their eschatology which has convinced them that the world will get worse and worse and the quicker it does the quicker they are out of here by way of the rapture.

Someone has said that all that it takes for evil to prevail is for good people to do nothing.

The fact that evil is prevailing in our nation today is due to the fact that good people have done nothing.

Meroz was found wanting in a time of war. We are called to resist evil. If we permit others to be oppressed by injustice and cruelty when we might deliver them by any sacrifice and toil of our own, we bring ourselves under the curse of Meroz. Christianity is aggressive. It is the duty of Christians not merely to promote purity, and charity, and truth, etc., but to expose and attack the vices and wrongs of the world.

It is a very common error for people to suppose that they are blameless so long as they keep themselves unspotted from the world, forgetting that the first duty of religion is the energetic exercise of charity (James 1:27). Better to have some faults and much useful service than to be faultless and useless. The soldier who returns from war with scarred faces and stained garments is nobler than he who fears entering the battle lest he soil his raiment or mar his countenance.

Meroz was unpatriotic. Possibly the men on whom the curse fell were diligent farmers and kind and careful parents. But they neglected their duty to their country. We must beware of the narrowness of the parochial mind. The congregation which studies its own edification alone and has no care for the evangelizing of the nation and for mission work among the heathen, brings itself under the curse of Meroz.

I fear that evangelical Christians are in danger of doing nothing as far as civil duty is concerned.

New research from the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, led by Dr. George Barna, indicates that millions of Christians - many of whom traditionally support conservative candidates - are unlikely to vote.

Barna says this election season is marked by a significant drop in voter enthusiasm, particularly among Christian voters who have historically been key players in determining the outcome of presidential races. According to the research, only 51% of “people of faith” are likely to vote this November, a figure that could have dire implications for President Trump’s re-election prospects.

The results also revealed that large numbers of Christian churches have distanced themselves from the election, refusing to even encourage congregants to vote and avoiding teaching related to many of the key social issues on which the election may hinge. …

“In 2020, the gap between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden was just seven million votes. The real story lies in the margins of victory in swing states, where an average of 60,000 votes per state determined nearly 40% of the electoral votes needed to win,” Barna emphasized. “In this context, the 32 million regular churchgoers who won’t vote in 2024 is a gamechanger.”

John Zmirak, in an article in The Stream, challenges believers to at least get involved in civic responsibility by voting for the lesser of evils available to us: “I understand Christians who feel the same sting that I do, who fume and rage and bluster as I do on these subjects. It’s degrading to have to vote for a GOP that’s neutral on abortion, same-sex marriage, and even the transgender madness (except where kids are directly involved). It’s humbling, and we hate that. We know our causes are righteous, that in the long run the country can’t be saved by muttering half-measures and unprincipled compromise.

But when we look at the Democrats, we don’t see fellow citizens with foolish, utopian worldviews. Not anymore, not since 2016 at the very latest. We see a horde possessed by principalities and powers, thundering toward us like the Mongols or Hitler’s panzers. They’re in route to drown in the sea, but they will surely crush us first.

“Do we really have any choice? Can we withhold our votes from the shabby, half sold-out GOP without dooming the country we live in? Maybe our pride is so wounded that we decide it’s worth it. We’re willing to burn down our own house in order to punish the squatters we can’t evict. We’ll let it all crash and burn to keep our “dignity” intact. That will teach Donald Trump a lesson, won’t it? When he loses, and is bankrupted and imprisoned along with his family, maybe then he’ll regret selling our people short and failing to grant us the deference we deserved.”

A true story from history reveals the importance of just one person becoming convinced that doing nothing is not pleasing to the Lord and that such a worldview enables evil to enslave others.

It has been described as “the greatest moral achievement of the British people” and “one of the turning events in the history of the world,” but it almost didn’t happen.

In the sixteen century when William Wilberforce was twenty-five years old, and a young British politician, he experienced a “Great Change.” He heard the Gospel, responded in faith, and was born again. According to Christian essayist Os Guinness, at first the young man wanted to quit his job in politics and enter full-time ministry as a pastor. “He thought, as millions have thought before and since, that ‘spiritual’ affairs are far more important than ‘secular’ affairs such as politics,” explains Guinness.

Fortunately, John Newton, the writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, a pastor, and a former slave trader before his conversion to Christianity, encouraged Wilberforce to pray carefully about this decision. “It’s hoped and believed,” Newton wrote Wilberforce, “that the Lord has raised you up for the good of the nation.”

After much prayer and thought, Wilberforce agreed. He changed his mind and remained in politics as a committed, evangelical member of British Parliament. Shortly after this, on Sunday, October 28, 1787, Wilberforce recorded in his journal the vocation that he felt God had given him. “God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners.”

“So enormous, so dreadful,” he later told the British House of Commons, “so irremediable did the [Slave] Trade’s wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for Abolition. Let the consequences be what they would, I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had affected its abolition.” And he did not rest. At the time of Wilberforce’s conversion and calling, the African slave trade formed a cornerstone of the British economy. Only a few people thought of it as wrong or evil. Powerful vested economic interests viciously opposed Wilberforce, as did a number of British celebrities and most of the royal family.

“When Wilberforce presented his first bill to abolish the slave trade in 1791 it was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88. But Wilberforce refused to be beaten. With his abolitionist colleagues, he continued to press for the end of the slave trade, and eventually, for the full freedom of all slaves.

Wilberforce died on July 29, 1833. One month later, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act that gave all slaves in the British Empire their freedom.” The life of William Wilberforce exemplifies how God can use someone committed to the biblical worldview to transform an entire society. Wilberforce understood that biblical truth isn’t to be confined to the “spiritual” areas of life. It is to penetrate the marketplace of ideas. Had Wilberforce gone into “full-time Christian service” he may have been a fine pastor, but he wouldn’t have served as “salt and light” (Mt. 5:13-16) within British Parliament, and the abolition of the slave trade may not have happened, or at least not when it did. It was a near miss.

No, whom we elect as our representatives is not going to save us. But not exercising a privilege and responsibility of casting a vote – a civic duty that has been given us by Almighty God at the expense of such great sacrifice by our founding fathers - places us in the village of the Merozites!

God have mercy upon us!