Judges

Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? “Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’ ” When the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they named that place Bochim; and there they sacrificed to the Lord. When Joshua had dismissed the people, the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed. Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.” So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.

Introduction

We are knee deep in a wild time to be alive with so much going on around us.

Our culture has rapidly degraded to the point that up from down cannot be distinguished, much less right from wrong.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone in leadership who exhibits any real understanding of truth or righteousness to be able to actually lead our culture in the general direction of truth and righteousness.

The concept of justice is lost, and our desires have usurped our ability to reign them in with discipline or common sense.

There is a general sense of chaos and uncertainty in our culture.

But we need to realize that this isn’t the first time this has happened in history, and it certainly won’t be the last time this will happen before the Second Advent of our Lord.

All the way throughout modern and ancient times we see this cycle of light and darkness continue. Good times and good men, followed by very dark and painful times, over and over again.

So as we continue our path through the Old Testament, we will see extremely similar times played out throughout the history of the Hebrew people.

And this will be a very important lesson to us.

Right now, in the middle of the chaos of our lives in this nation on this planet, we cannot see the overarching truth that a sovereign God is in control.

But when we look at the scripture we see that when times were darkest, God was still over those times doing His will with His creation.

And that is true all throughout the Book of Judges.

Judges seems to be a very dark book, because it is very dark.

Over and over again, we see the Hebrew forget God and His covenant, show lack of faith, and fall into great sin, but God never forgot them.

His hand was with them and over them the entire time, and He was working, sometimes behind the scenes and other times in the forefront, His ultimate plan.

Judges covers a period of around 350 years, between the death of Joshua and the birth of the prophet Samuel.

It is important to understand the background in order to see what is happening and why it’s happening.

God called a prophet names Moses to free His people from the slavery of Egypt.

After freeing the Jews, Moses leads them to a land that God had promised to give them.

In between their emancipation and their entrance in to this promised land, Moses led them through the wilderness between Egypt and Israel.

During this time, he wrote 5 books, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to give them the Law of God.

Think of this, the Jewish people were in Egypt for hundreds of years, they would have no clue who they were or where they came from.

So Moses writes Genesis to explain where their history to them, and in it he teaches of God’s promises and covenants to them.

He then writes the Exodus to give their children and children’s children a history of what God had done in freeing them from bondage. A constant reminder that God keeps His promises.

He writes Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy to give them God’s law for holiness, for how they are to worship Him, and how they are to govern themselves in the land.

When He was done with these 5 books, he had brought them to the edge of their new country, passes the baton of leadership to a godly man named Joshua, and dies.

Joshua then leads them in conquest of the promised land.

Battle after battle they win under his leadership.

Conquering the wicked nations, and setting up different lands under their 12 tribes.

But then Joshua dies before it is all finished and there is no longer a single man of God that the people all look to for leadership.

Now the tribes themselves have to finish the job.

And some do, but others don’t.

There are places that are left unconquered.

And those places will become a constant thorn in the side of the Jews.

Not only as enemies, but also as wicked influencers bringing them to the idols of their land and away from the truth.

And here we find ourselves with the Book of Judges.

Moses and Joshua are dead, and there is no one to lead the people.

The practices and law that Moses had left, defining who the Jews were and how they were to live and worship, were mostly ignored.

The people did not pass them down to the next generation as Moses had commanded them in

Deuteronomy 31:9–13 NASB95

So Moses wrote this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them, saying, “At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place which He will choose, you shall read this law in front of all Israel in their hearing. “Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, so that they may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God, and be careful to observe all the words of this law. “Their children, who have not known, will hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess.”

And so this 350 year period of the Jewish people forgetting and ignoring the true God and turning to idols began.

God would send the people left in the land to conquer the Hebrew, the Hebrews would cry out to Him, and then He would send a rescuer to free them again.

This cycle would repeat itself over and over again during this time, but the condition of the Jews would deteriorate over time.

This would eventually make the people desire a king to rule over them, realizing that they couldn’t rule over themselves.

This too was promised by Moses.

Deuteronomy 17:14–15 NASB95

“When you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, and you possess it and live in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations who are around me,’ you shall surely set a king over you whom the Lord your God chooses, one from among your countrymen you shall set as king over yourselves; you may not put a foreigner over yourselves who is not your countryman.

He gives further instructions on what they king should be like ending with the king should copy the law on a scroll with his own hand so that…

Deuteronomy 17:19–20 NASB95

“It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.

The Jews would fail at this in choosing Saul, and eventually would come to King David.

But even King David, the man after God’s own heart, had failings that would point them to their need for his promised Son who would sit on the throne in righteousness forever.

This is what the history of the book of Judges is teaching us as well.

As we look around at the chaos in our nation and world, we must seek the same King that the Hebrew were to seek, the True King of the world.

Every believer must see their need for the true king.

I. By recognizing that we do not have the strength to obey on our own. v. 1-5

Judges 2:1–5 NASB95

Jesus tells the story of a rich man who had everything he could have wanted in this life, but didn’t have Christ, and a poor beggar named Lazarus who had nothing in this life, but had Christ.

The rich man after he dies, went to hell and had a conversation with Abraham.

In that conversation, he asks Abraham to have Lazarus resurrected and sent to his family to warn them of the punishment he has received, because he says they will believe if they see someone come back from the dead.

Abraham tells him that they have all that they need to believe in God’s word, and if they do not believe that, they will not believe, even if someone were to be raised from the dead.

This is an amazing story of how hard our hearts are before the Holy Spirit softens them to the truth of the gospel.

And this is the way men’s hearts have been since the fall of man into sin in the garden by our first parents.

And the Hebrew were no different.

Those who took part in the Exodus were witness to the mighty hand of God in all of the plagues that were sent on Egypt.

After the last plague where the firstborn of all of the Egyptians were killed and Pharoah finally let them go, Pharoah again changed his mind and began to pursue them.

Blocked from escape by the Red Sea, the people immediately began complaining

Exodus 14:11–12 NASB95

Then they said to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you dealt with us in this way, bringing us out of Egypt? “Is this not the word that we spoke to you in Egypt, saying, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

God parted the sea and they escaped, but soon after that they became thirsty in the wilderness.

Exodus 15:24 NASB95

So the people grumbled at Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”

He provided sweet water for them to drink, but then they got hungry

Exodus 16:2–3 NASB95

The whole congregation of the sons of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The sons of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

And this happened over and over again through out there trek through the wilderness.

People today claim that they would believe in God if they just saw some evidence, but the reality is that the reason they don’t believe is not for lack of evidence, the evidence is all around them.

They don’t believe because they are sinners, and are sinners because it is part of our deepest nature to be sinners.

There has to be a change.

We have to be converted by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here in our passage we see the problem all throughout the ups and downs of the book of Judges.

Judges 2:1–2 NASB95

How in the world could they have disobeyed?

Will all of the evidence that God had given them, with their history of God’s miraculous hand saving them and protecting them, how could they not keep up their end of the bargain?

And we see that every time they cried out to God and God would send a Judge to rescue them, they would quickly turn back to their idolatry.

So God would teach them with the reality that they couldn’t do it themselves.

Over and over again he would teach them, until 70 A.D.!

Judges 2:3–5 NASB95

“Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’ ” When the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they named that place Bochim; and there they sacrificed to the Lord.

They named the place where God told them this Bochim, which means weepers, because they wept over the consequences of their sin of not driving out all of the idolatrous enemies that God had commanded them to.

And God was teaching them that it is outside of their power to do so.

And God is teaching us throughout the Book of Judges that relying on our own strength, our own will, and our own righteousness is not enough.

We need to look outside of ourselves to the King that He sent in order to succeed in this life and the next.

All our own strength and understanding bring us to is sin and chaos, as we see all around us when our culture does whatever is right in its own eyes.

Secondly, we see the need for a King in our lives…

II. By realizing the need for godly leadership. v. 6-10

Judges 2:6–10 NASB95

When Joshua had dismissed the people, the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.

The stories of the book of Judges are placed in an order to show a progression.

And by the way, it’s not a progression of bad to better and chaos to utopia.

The first story of a Judge rescuing the people is only a couple of verses long.

Judges 3:9–10 NASB95

When the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the sons of Israel to deliver them, Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother. The Spirit of the Lord came upon him, and he judged Israel. When he went out to war, the Lord gave Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia into his hand, so that he prevailed over Cushan-rishathaim.

By the time we get to the end of the book, it’s 5 chapters of pain and in the rescue it’s still not that great of a situation.

This is on purpose.

The farther we get away from godly leadership, in family or church or nation, the worse we get.

Joshua led the people as Moses did before him, but when he had aged 110 years, he died.

After he died, the people stopped passing on the stories of God’s power to their children and when the next generation came up, they didn’t know the Lord.

Had the men of the families been godly leaders, their children would have learned their history.

Had the tribal rulers been godly rulers, the people would have followed God’s civic law.

Had the Levites who were called to be priests been godly leaders, they would have remembered the worship of God and kept His festivals which were designed to teach them the truth.

But without godly leaders, they each went their own way and did what was right in their own eyes.

Joshua told them they were going to do this and what the result would be.

In the end of the Book of Joshua, the people make a promise that they will remember and follow the Lord.

Joshua 24:19–21 NASB95

Then Joshua said to the people, “You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins. “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.” The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.”

Judges is proof that they didn’t keep their word!

Our culture hates godly leadership.

Fathers are seen as not necessary, and portrayed as stupid oafs in our entertainment.

The culture cries out for unrighteousness and mocks the truth, it couldn’t stand a godly leader.

The church is full of goats and confused believers that seek for life coaches and entertainment.

We find the truth to be boring.

And our next generation is being brought up by the immature and ignorant, the flashy and the celeb, and the government that hates truth and good.

Are we seeking the righteous King? Do we seek for godly leadership, in our homes, our government, and especially in our churches?

Do we seek to change our culture by worldly means? Do we look to our politicians for real change, and give up hope when they fail us?

Let us pray for God to change the hearts of our countrymen to seek the true King of Righteousness!

Let us be witnesses to His truth that makes righteous leaders of homes, churches, and states!

We need godly leadership, and when we realize that need, it causes us to look to the High King of kings!

Finally, we see our need for the true King…

III. By repenting from the sin of idolatry v. 11-23

Judges 2:11–15 NASB95

Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.

This is the repeating theme of Judges.

A time of peace and repentance, followed by a time of sin and idolatry, then a time of war and enslavement, and finally a time of rescue.

Each instance of good times came with a fall into idolatry.

They would worship the gods of the surrounding people, and that brought all kinds of sin with it.

The two false gods mentioned in our passage are Baal and Ashtaroth.

Baal was the storm bringer, who was responsible for the rain.

In the worshippers minds, when pleased Baal would bring rain and therefore good harvest.

He was also considered the god of fertility for the crops, animals, and people.

The worshipers of Baal would set up temples for him and perform sexual acts that were supposed to boost his prowess and therefore boost the fertility he would give them.

Ashtaroth was the goddess of hunting and war.

She was a consort of Baal and would supposedly bless her followers with success in battle.

A little bonus here that I found is that in the literature from the surrounding nations her name is actually Astarte.

The authors of scripture added vowels to her name that made it easier to pronounce for the Hebrew speaker and they are the same vowels in the word bosheth, which is the Hebrew word for shame.

This was no doubt done on purpose and the dictionary that I found this said that Hebrew readers took delight in the double meaning.

But in the end it doesn’t matter, if the surrounding unconquered nations would have worshipped the false god of donkey ears, the sinful Israelites would have worshipped them as well.

The issue wasn’t the validity or utility of the false god, it was that the Hebrew people were by nature idolators.

And this is the problem we find ourselves in today.

Man by nature will always seek an idol.

Luther said

Man must have a God or an idol.

Calvin said

Every one of us is, even from his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.

This is what we all are when left to ourselves and our natures, apart from the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

Our world is full of idolatry.

We idolize possessions, people, and ideas.

Paul explains that the natural progression from denying the one, true Creator is to turn to an idol created from our imagination.

Romans 1:21–23 NASB95

For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

And this is exactly what we see in our culture, and we are bearing all the consequences of it.

Do they worship Baal the storm bringer?

Not by name, but we have to bring our devotions and offerings to Mother Earth or we will lose our crops and all perish in a rolling 12 years.

And don’t think for a second that behind the sterile godless veneer, that the powers and principalities of the prince of the air aren’t directly worshipped behind the scenes.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is the real battle we are facing.

And just like the Jews in the time of Judges, we fall after these false gods in the presence of the truth that is right before our faces and all throughout history.

But we, we who are changed by the truth, we see the need to bow the knee before the King of the universe.

We see the pattern set before us in Judges, that men worship the false over the true naturally, and praise God that our natures are truly changed.

Ephesians 2:1–5 NASB95

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

Therefore by His grace we were changed so that we no longer have to be idol factories, we now worship the true King over all.

The things that the Hebrews continuously failed at, we no longer have to fail at because we have been given new natures in Christ.

Conclusion

We have been seeing in John the absolute hard-heartedness of the Jewish leaders when confronted with the Son of David that they had been waiting for to take the throne of Israel.

They thought very highly of themselves.

They thought of themselves as righteous, but they had made an idol of their ability to keep the law.

They were very familiar with the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the First Book of Moses.

You remember what happened.

The two angels came to visit the city of Sodom to see how much their wickedness had grown.

They found Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who convinced them to stay with him that night.

Moses narrated the story in

Genesis 19:4–11 NASB95

Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them.” But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, “Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. “Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof.” But they said, “Stand aside.” Furthermore, they said, “This one came in as an alien, and already he is acting like a judge; now we will treat you worse than them.” So they pressed hard against Lot and came near to break the door. But the men reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. They struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.

God would destroy the city for the absolute wickedness they displayed that night.

The very last narrative of Judges tells a similar story.

A Levite priest took a concubine and made a journey.

He found a town of the tribe of Benjamin.

Judges 19:22–30 NASB95

While they were celebrating, behold, the men of the city, certain worthless fellows, surrounded the house, pounding the door; and they spoke to the owner of the house, the old man, saying, “Bring out the man who came into your house that we may have relations with him.” Then the man, the owner of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my fellows, please do not act so wickedly; since this man has come into my house, do not commit this act of folly. “Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish them and do to them whatever you wish. But do not commit such an act of folly against this man.” But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine and brought her out to them; and they raped her and abused her all night until morning, then let her go at the approach of dawn. As the day began to dawn, the woman came and fell down at the doorway of the man’s house where her master was, until full daylight. When her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, then behold, his concubine was lying at the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up and let us go,” but there was no answer. Then he placed her on the donkey; and the man arose and went to his home. When he entered his house, he took a knife and laid hold of his concubine and cut her in twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout the territory of Israel. All who saw it said, “Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day. Consider it, take counsel and speak up!”

The terrible consequences of every man doing what is right in his own eyes had come to the nation of Israel.

Their spurning of God’s law and sin of idolatry had made them just like Sodom and Gomorrah.

This terrible story set the scene for the tribes to wake up and realize that they needed a king, one that would lead them in righteousness.

They would find a king in Saul, but again they looked for what the other nations looked for in a king, the outside appearance of strength.

He was replaced by David, a man after God’s own heart, who performed much better, but still fell short.

What they really needed is what we really need, what our culture and world really need, to bow before the One true King of the universe.

The ups and downs of the Book of Judges is a mirror that forces us to consider, “Is Jesus my King?” and do we live by faith according to His word.

This is the only way that our homes, our nations, and our churches will be able to truly prosper.

This is the truth behind the success of our culture, the next election won’t fix it, only as more and more people bend the knee to the true King will our culture not be thrown into chaos and become like Sodom and Gomorrah.

This is our only true hope.

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