The Judges

Welcome

Good morning everyone and welcome to church. Last week in our Gospel Story series we left off with Israel beginning to take over the promise land. Joshua is their new leader and after talking with the commander of the Lord’s Army and hearing God’s battle plan, the people are able to defeat the city of Jericho. This is a big victory for the people and a real high point for their faith. They were told to march around the city and they did just that. God knocked down the walls of Jericho and ultimately gave them the victory. And so, we would think that this would lead the people of Israel to remember God’s faithfulness and remain obedient to him. But, if you know the Israelites, you know that doesn’t happen.

Prayer

Engage / Tension

The rest of the book of Joshua covers Israel taking over the majority of Canaan. There are still some Canaanites that must be driven out of the land, but overall they do a decent job. Before Joshua dies though, he tells the people to not let the Canaanites stay in the land. They have to get rid of them fully and make sure they don’t take after their practices.

Joshua 23:9–13 NIV

9 “The Lord has driven out before you great and powerful nations; to this day no one has been able to withstand you. 10 One of you routs a thousand, because the Lord your God fights for you, just as he promised. 11 So be very careful to love the Lord your God. 12 “But if you turn away and ally yourselves with the survivors of these nations that remain among you and if you intermarry with them and associate with them, 13 then you may be sure that the Lord your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the Lord your God has given you.

Joshua tells them that if they let the Canaanites stay in the land and begin to take on some of their practices, then things won’t go well for them. Joshua is essentially telling Israel to not hang out with the people of Canaan because if they do so, they will begin to do things they do. They will worship pagan gods, they will disobey God and turn away from him. And you can probably guess, that is exactly what happens. In the beginning of the book of Judges the people do well. They conquer the land and follow God’s orders. But eventually they begin to stop driving the people out. Instead, they take them as slaves and allow them to stay in the land. This eventually leads them into pain.

Judges 21:25 NIV

25 In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. This is the theme of the book of Judges. It is not hard to see the relevance of this book today since this is the motto of our society. “Do what seems right to you.” “Follow your heart.” “Do what you think is best.” We’ll touch a little on this way of thinking. Judges also reveals to us that we can be our own worst enemies.

God has to save us from ourselves. This could be the motto of this book. Judges points out to us why God has to save us from ourselves. When left to our own devices and doing what seems right in our own eyes, disaster happens.

Judges is a book that often times, isn’t really preached out of, it isn’t usually someone’s first choice for a small group. Judges is puzzling and violent and often, we don’t know what to do with it. One author describes judges as “embarrassing scripture.” That is because what happens in it is so different than what we are used to reading out of our Bible. We’re used to talking about Jesus’ parables and the letters of the New Testament, but these stories of cutting off thumbs and big toes, a judge stabbing a rather large man with his left hand, driving a stake through somebody’s head, often we don’t know what to do with these stories. The book of Judges is narrative history, it covers historically, what happened to God’s people during this time. Through this book, we get to look through a window and see just a glimpse of Israel’s rocky history with God.

Bible

Judges 2:11–3:6 NIV

Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant I ordained for their ancestors and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their ancestors did.” The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua. These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience): the five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal Hermon to Lebo Hamath. They were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses. The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

This begins the cyclical pattern of Judges. The Israelites end up abandoning God and following pagan gods, this leads to God allowing these nations to oppress Israel. Israel eventually cries out to God and God raises up a Judge, a leader who will save the people. Israel follows God until that judge dies, and then the cycle starts all over again.

Think about the book of Judges almost like the movie Groundhog day. Groundhog day is a movie about a tv reporter who keeps living the same day over and over and over again. And in a way, that is what Israel is doing throughout the book of Judges. They follow God and have peace, the recognize the goodness of God and seek to serve him. Eventually, they are influenced by these other nations and take on their beliefs and forsake God. Because of this, God punishes them. The same people that they wouldn’t drive out of the land now oppress them and cause problems for them. And just like when they were in Egypt, they cry out to God for help. They need saving. God then picks someone who is referred to as a judge to save them. And as I mentioned before, the people do well until that judge dies. Then the whole cycle starts over again. Israel keeps going through the same cycles because they cannot remain faithful to God.

This leads us to one of the first things Judges teaches us. That sometimes, following our heart is not always the best decision. There are times when we feel something, we feel a desire to cheat, lie, disobey God, and it feels right to us. We think it is in our best interest to do what our heart is telling us. This is what was happening to Israel. They were doing what seemed right in their eyes. If they wanted to do something, they didn’t stop to think if it was right in the eyes of God. They just considered if they wanted to do it, and if that was what their heart was leading them to, they followed it.

At times in our life then, we have to examine what we think we want. Do the things I want line up with God’s word? Am I following Jesus’ teachings by doing this or that? Or am I following my own heart? Another way to think of it is following our own selfish desires. All of us have them, but the test is whether we act on them or not.

I think it is easy to read Judges and think that Israel is so crazy for doing what they do. How could they forget about the God who led them in the wilderness, who led them across the Jordan, who helped them enter the promise land? But Judges can be used as a mirror for ourselves. In what times of life do we go our own way and neglect God? What times in our life have we turned our back on God, only to run back when we face some kind of trial in life. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, to turn back to God, but ideally we wouldn’t do that in the first place.

But that is the human condition. We all do this in our life. We all go through these cycles of obedience and disobedience, of following God and ignoring God. And while that isn’t exactly uplifting to hear, Judges points us to a God who is extremely merciful and remembers his promises.

Application

God keeps his promises. Even though the people utterly fail in keeping the commands of the Lord, notice what God says in Judges 2:1. “I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.'” This is God’s gracious covenant. Even when we exhibit a lack of faith God does not break his covenant. God continues to call his people to faith and obedience, even when they repeatedly fail. Think about how this was shown at Mount Sinai. The people are worshiping the golden calf while Moses is on the mountain receiving the 10 commandments. Moses breaks the two tablets of stone when he sees the people’s disobedience, symbolizing how the people broke the covenant with God. What does God do? God gives them the covenant again. God gives the two tablets again, maintaining his part of the covenant. The New Testament declares this same truth to us.

2 Timothy 2:11–13 NIV

11 Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; 13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.

Illustration

Imagine someone asked you to pick them up for work each morning and you agree to do it. They were ready the first few mornings you pull up, but one day they don’t come out. The next day they don’t come out. They don’t call you or text you, they just don’t show up. Eventually the reach back out and want you to pick them up again. Would you do it? Would you go out of your way to pick them up when they had let you down multiple times? In a way that is what God does for Israel, but he also does it for us.

God remains faithful to his promises and to his covenant even though we are faithless. God is gracious with his covenant and calls us to return to him and enter into a relationship with him again. He is faithful to his covenant. When we remember who God is and the grace he continually shows toward us, then we will serve him wholeheartedly and joyfully. Seeing the amazing love and faithfulness of God will move us to full faith in his promises. This display of grace leads to our obedience.

Prayer