Sunday School: Introduction to Judges (Judges 1:1-2:10)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Judges chapter 2 beginning in verse 1,. Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and he said, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers.

I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land. You shall break down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. What is this that you have done?

So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you. As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept, and they called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord.

When Joshua dismissed the people, and the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.

And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath Hares, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash.

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them, who did not know the Lord, or the work that he had done for Israel. Let's pray once again. Heavenly Father, as we come to your word this morning, I pray that as we see these things that happen in Israel, as we're gonna be reading about a dark chapter of history in Israel's past, that we are reminded of just how easily we can lose sight of God.

It just took a generation for Israel to lose sight of the Lord, and so how easily it could be for us as well. We remember these things so that we would continue to hold fast to your word and pass the truth of God's promises according to the scriptures on to the next generation.

I pray also we would cling to Christ in these days, for we see darkness all around us in the world. This world of unbelief, this world that is very adamantly anti-Christian. Yet we are not intimidated by those people, but we understand that Christ has said that they hated me, they're gonna hate you as well.

We continue to trust in Christ, who reigns supreme over all. You are king, and you will deliver us in these last days. Let us continue to seek Christ in all things. It's in his name that we pray, amen.

Judges as Deliverers, Not Perfect Kings

So the book of Judges, we're kind of going out of order a little bit here. We went through Ruth, and now we come to the book of Judges. And does anybody remember, what was the anticipating theme all the way through Ruth?

Can anybody remember that? What are we looking forward to in Ruth? Yeah, the Redeemer that's gonna come, right? They're looking for a king. We end the book of Ruth with the genealogy of David, which really becomes the genealogy of Christ.

That same genealogy gets carried over into Matthew. So there's this anticipation of a king. We begin on a very high note, or a very low note, I'm sorry. A very low note in Ruth, with the death of Naomi's family, and then she and Ruth returning to Judah with basically nothing.

We begin Judges on a high note, but then it gets dark. So in Ruth, it starts dark, and really picks up with the Lord's deliverance for Naomi, and even through Boaz, and for Ruth. With Judges, we're starting with the people of Israel having inherited the promised land, and then we're gonna see, just as we read this morning, how quickly they fall away from the Lord.

But just as the anticipation in Ruth is for a king. We need to keep that in mind through Judges as well. We've talked about this when we were in Ruth, but in Judges chapter 17 and 21, we see that statement that kind of begins and closes that section, where it says there was no king in Israel in those days, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

But there's still that anticipation, that longing for a king who is going to come and will deliver Israel. Now that word Judges, we use that word to describe the Judges that we read about in this book, but that word specifically means deliverer.

So what we see thematically with these Judges is that they deliver the people of Israel from an oppressor that has come against them. Even though we read here in chapter 2 how the people were disobedient, and God would no longer go before them and drive their enemies out, yet you notice that statement that was in there with God saying, I made a covenant with you.

And I said, you shall make no other covenant with the inhabitants of the land. I will not break my covenant with you. But the people have disobeyed God, yet God remains faithful to them. He remains faithful to a promise that He gave to them, the descendants of Abraham, even though they have not been faithful unto the Lord.

God's presence is still very much with Israel in Judges, though they have turned away from God, though they will turn to false gods, and yet God will have mercy on them and give them deliverers. But those deliverers aren't perfect, are they?

It's kind of like they'll deliver Israel from oppression for a time, but then Israel will go right back to worshiping false gods, and then another oppressor comes as a result of that, as a punishment for the people of Israel.

That's the cycle we're going to see as we go through Judges here together. So notice at the beginning of Judges, let's look at chapter one, very first verse. What are the first five words that we see there?

After the death of Joshua, right? So Joshua's died. That's the way Joshua concluded. So we read about Joshua's death at the end of Joshua chapter 24. Then we have Joshua's death mentioned at the start of Judges, and we're going to see Joshua's death mentioned again, which we just read this morning in that section, verses six through 10, where we read about the death of Joshua.

So it's very apparent to us that Joshua has died. And the events that we're reading about here in Judges all happen after Joshua's death. And for a time, the people are obedient and they continue the conquest of the land of Canaan, just as God told the people to do, and as Joshua instructed the people to do.

So after Joshua's death, the Israelites continue that conquest, but it wasn't long for them to forget the Lord and go their own way. The lesson that we're covering today, with chapter one, verse one through 210, this covers the introduction to the book of Judges, and it's going to break up in this way.

So in verses one through 26, we're going to see how the Lord leads the conquest. And then in verses 27 to 36, the remainder of chapter one, we see how Israel does not follow the Lord. They even begin disobeying God, even in the first chapter of Judges here.

And then finally, the third part is the section we actually began with today. The Lord no longer leads the conquest. That's chapter two, verses one through 10. Now what is the central proposition of this book?

We have to talk about that in two ways today. So there's a main theme we're looking at in the text we're reading today, and then there's also kind of a main theme that we're looking at in the book of Judges overall.

And really, we're going to see that those two themes are roughly the same. So in this lesson, the narrative builds to 210. So we begin in 101, we're reading through, we're kind of climbing in the action, and it gets to verse 10 where it says, and all that generation were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.

How quickly did Israel forget the Lord? How fast did that happen? One generation, a single generation. Their children that came after them did not remember what it was that the Lord had done for them.

And this is a people that is in need of a Savior. There's an interesting parallel between the beginning of the book of Judges and the beginning of the book of Exodus, in that in Judges, the people did not remember what God had done for them.

In the book of Exodus, it begins kind of the same way, but it's slightly different. It's that there arose a Pharaoh who did not remember Joseph. So it's interesting how both of those stories begin with somebody not remembering.

This is a generation who doesn't remember what God had done for the Israelites. Exodus begins with a Pharaoh that rises up who didn't remember Joseph, who did all the great things in the land of Egypt, right?

By the mighty hand of the Lord that was with him. We're seeing people forget God. And then darkness comes upon the land and even the judgment of God because they turn away from Him. But still we see this is a people in need of a Savior, right?

Remember that theme about this section we're looking at today. Now in the book of Judges overall, it's in 17 .6 and 21 .25 where we read that statement, in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

At the close of the book, there's still a people in need of a Savior. So we see a people who needs a Savior in chapter 1 and they still need a Savior in chapter 21 and we need a Savior as well. So remember that the book of Ruth anticipates the coming of a king, so does Judges.

There is a longing for a king, the greatest king, the greatest judge, our great deliverer who is Jesus Christ, amen? And we live in a generation, we are one of the most privileged generations in the history of the world.

All of the provision that has been given to us and the blessing that had been bestowed upon the United States of America and yet you don't even have to go far outside this church to encounter people who are going to hell.

It's like they have shovels in their hands and they are just digging a hole and they're saying I'm going to hell boy, I'm going to hell. This is such a dark and twisted culture in which we live and sometimes it's so dark that we would just rather have the blinders on like a horse, right?

Just keep me going my way, I don't want to know what's going on. It's so dark it can be incredibly depressing. And so we live in a generation that is not too unlike the darkness that we see in the nation of Israel.

In fact, now this is an interesting kind of aspect in the book of Judges here, but the events that we read about in 17 through 21 are actually happening at the same time as when we get to chapter 2. There's some out of orderness that is going on there because we're going to read about the judges in chapters 1 through 16.

The 12 judges of Israel that are mentioned at least in this book. There wasn't only 12 judges, there were actually more. Eli and Samuel, for example, they were judges, but we read about them in 1 Samuel.

This book only mentions 12, so we have the story of 12 judges that are given in this particular book. But there's an excursus at the end of the book of Judges that just kind of demonstrates just how evil Israel was.

They had become just like Sodom and Gomorrah, if you know what I'm talking about. If you know the story of what happened with the Benjamites and the Danites there in chapters 17 to 21. That kind of demonstrates to us all the more broadly the kind of evil that Israel had fallen into and how quickly it came into that.

The darkness just gets darker as you go through Judges. But those chapters you get to at the conclusion are still going on even within some of these elements that we're going to read in the first two or three weeks of this study.

So we'll talk about that when we get to chapter 17. There are some things here in Judges that are a little bit out of order. Furthermore, the judges overlap. So it's not like there's a judge and he defeats Israel's oppressor and then they have a time of peace and then another judge comes along.

Sometimes those judges are overlapping. Like there was an oppressor that came to a different section of Israel and there was another judge that kind of helped deliver them from that oppressor. Sometimes it's in chronological order and sometimes we see a little bit of overlap.

We'll recognize some of those things as we go through the book of Judges here. This covers a period of about 300 years. This starts in 1375 BC, beginning in chapter 1 with the continued conquest of Canaan.

And it goes to 1075 concluding with chapter 16 with Samson's defeat of the Philistines. So that's really the last event in Judges. Even though we have chapters 17 to 21, Samson's the last story. And then after Samson you have Eli and then Samuel which were at the beginning of 1 Samuel.

In fact, even there, there's a little bit of overlap in 1 Samuel into the book of Judges as well. Now we have 12 judges as I mentioned and these are their names, Othniel, Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, Japheth, Ibzon, Elon, Abdon, and Samson.

Some judges did right in the eyes of God like Ehud and Deborah. And in fact with Deborah, we don't see anything negative said about Deborah at all. She was a woman, a wise woman who feared God. But then there were others, other judges that we're going to read about who committed really serious sins.

Like Jephthah who sacrificed his daughter and Samson who, I mean, just lived in sin. Yet as imperfect as they were, the judges are actually spoken about in the New Testament as heroes of the faith. Anybody know what chapter that is where we read about?

Hebrews 11, that's right. We read about many of these judges, even Samson, as wicked as this guy was, you see some of the sins that Samson did and yet we have them given to us as examples of faith. This is Hebrews 11, 32 to 34.

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became might in war, and put foreign armies to flight.

Consider also that Boaz and Ruth lived during the time of the judges. That's more toward the end, about that last century of the judges. They were godly people who lived in this time, yet the judges were not perfect, nor were they able to completely deliver the people from their enemies.

In summary, we might consider the judges in these three ways. So let's think about the judges in these three ways as we look at this book. Number one, the judges are examples of faith. So we're going to see a judge be instructed in something by God, and they will obey God.

And that obedience is an example to us that when God instructs us to do something, we do it. Now, it's not going to be like Gideon, and when we get to this story, we'll talk more about this, but a lot of people like to take that story of Gideon and find kind of their own personal fleece.

You know, I'm going to do this test before God. If God will do this with my fleece, then I know he'll want me to do this. And God's not going to communicate to us in that way, if you remember the story of the fleece.

So, God, if you really want me to go up against these armies, let this fleece be soaking wet with the dew in the morning, and then the fleece is soaking wet. And then Gideon realizes, well, of course the fleece is soaking wet.

The water will dry up off the ground before it dries up out of the fleece. So let's do it the other way, God. Make the rest of the ground covered with dew and let the fleece be dry. And then the next morning, the fleece is dry.

So some people take that story and they will say, well, I'm going to put God to the test. I'm going to give God a test, and if this thing happens, then I know that he wants me to do this. But that's not the way that God speaks to us.

He speaks to us according to his word. We have everything that we need from God spoken to us right here. We don't need a fleece to hear from the Lord. And so as God has told us to do here, so we must do.

As an act of faith, as an act of obedience, we do what God has instructed us to do. And the judges serve as that kind of example. They obeyed the Lord. And so we likewise should obey God. They are examples of faith in that way.

So number one, the judges are examples of faith. Number two, the judges were still imperfect. So we consider them in that way as well. Some of the judges committed grave sins and were told in 1 Corinthians 10 .6, these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did.

So even a guy like Jephthah might be an example of faith, but he's also an example of making stupid oaths. So we would not make as foolish an error as Jephthah did. So we consider the judges as examples of faith.

We consider that the judges were also still imperfect. And lastly, number three, we consider that the judges point to an even greater judge. Though the judges were able to deliver the people from their oppression, they did not completely deliver.

The people still went back to their sin and more oppression would come. But we anticipate a more perfect and righteous deliverer who is Jesus Christ. So let's look at our section this morning in Judges 1 as we read through this together and I'll kind of break in here periodically and give some commentary.

The Lord Leads the Conquest After Joshua's Death

Judges 1, beginning in verse 1. And I'm reading out of the English Standard Version. After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?

And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand. Who is the commander of the armies of God right at the beginning of the book of Judges? Is it Joshua? No, it says Joshua's died after the death of Joshua.

So who's commanding the armies of Israel? The Lord. That's right. They inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? God. Commander. General God. Who shall go up?

And Yahweh responds to them and says, Judah shall go. I've given the armies into their hands. What would that be like? We go out into battle and, well, we don't have a general. God, what should we do?

The voice of God comes and tells us exactly what to do. So they don't have Joshua anymore. Joshua's died. The Lord himself is leading. And how is Judah's response? Verse 3, Judah said to Simeon his brother, come up with me into the territory allotted to me that we may fight against the Canaanites.

And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you. Now is that what God said? So we already have an instruction right at the beginning of the book of Judges. One instruction. One instruction that was given to Israel.

Judah's the one that'll go up, for I've already given their enemies into their hand. And what does Judah do? Simeon, come on with us and we're going to go conquer these enemies. That's not what God said.

Now that might seem like a minor infraction. But just consider that Adam and Eve were put in perfect paradise. And how many rules did they have? One. How many instructions of God were they given? Did they break?

Just one. And all of creation came into chaos because of that one sin that was committed there in the midst of paradise. Where is Israel? Where are they? The promised land. We read at the conclusion of Joshua that land has been allotted to the different tribes and they've all settled in their respective territories.

The instruction that was further given to them is that this land has not been completely conquered yet. There are still these pagans that live among you, so you have these lands, but you must continue to drive them out.

So that's what they're supposed to be doing here. And they have God as their leader, God as their commander. After Joshua has died, the Lord commands them and it's the very first command and already Judah's doing something else.

Now, we might look at that and we might say, hey, Judah's just being friendly, right? Hey, come on up with us. Let's go conquer these people together. But it demonstrates that Judah did not really trust that God had given these enemies into Judah's hand.

This was all about the glory of the Lord. That God would be glorified in seeing God has given these enemies over to us into our hands. But Judah doesn't follow that instruction. They grab another army and say, hey, come with us so that we might come against them.

And then we'll kind of share duties here. We'll come down to where you are and we'll drive out those enemies too. So Judah is becoming a commander in themselves rather than following the instructions of the rules of their commander.

Now the church that I served in before I came here was a military church, 60 military, either active duty or retired veteran. And if we went through something like this and I said, Judah disobeyed the rules of their commander.

I've done this lesson before and you can see all those army guys in there going, Judah disobeyed a command that was given to them. Somebody who serves in the army understands. Somebody serves in the military.

You cannot disobey the orders that are given by your commanding officer. And here, this is Yahweh who has instructed Judah in this way and they did not follow it. So already we're starting to see patterns of disobedience right from the very beginning.

So we continue on into verse four. Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, just as God said that he would. And they defeated 10 ,000 of them at Bezek. They found Adonai Bezek at Bezek and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites.

Adonai Bezek. What does Adonai mean? Somebody know? Where have we heard that word Adonai before? It's the name of God. Yeah, that's a Hebrew name for God. What is Adonai Bezek? Means he's the God of Bezek.

That's how this king had positioned himself. I'm the God over Bezek, right? So they find Adonai Bezek at Bezek and they fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Verse six, Adonai Bezek fled, but they pursued him and caught him.

This is just the wonderful graphicness that we will have in the book of Judges. And they cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Now you might think, well, that's kind of brutal. Why? Why would that be necessary to do?

Well, we actually have an explanation to that if you keep going. Verse seven, Adonai Bezek said, 70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me.

And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. So Adonai Bezek is being repaid in the same way that he treated other people who were under him. Just to kind of show he was God and he was in charge of everybody else that was under him.

He would, the lords of his land, he would cut off their thumbs and their big toes. How much of a struggle, you don't think of how hard your life is without thumbs and big toes. But this is what this cruel dictator did to people who were under him just so he could show them who was boss.

And so as he did to other people, so was also done to him. So one of the things that we need to recognize, even as we read about the conquest in Joshua and we'll read about some of these dark things that happened here in the book of judges, this was an evil, evil, wicked land.

I mean, you think about the fact that they were evil at the time that God told Abraham, I'm going to give you their land. This was 400 years ago, right? God says to Abraham, this land that you see is going to belong to your descendants.

But the evil, their evil has not yet come to fruition. Like it hasn't reached a head yet for them to be punished in this way. That was 400 years ago. So how much more evil they've become over that period of time.

You've got idol worship that involves all kinds of manner of sexual immorality, even worse than what they did at Sodom and Gomorrah and would even involve the sacrifice of children. And that frankly is not too unlike our culture today, where the LGBTQ movement is the movement of Sodom and Gomorrah and abortion is the sacrifice of children to the sex gods of this culture.

And so as that was going on around Israel, this is what they were sent into the land by the hand of God to punish. This land is being given to them. But as God said to Israel in Deuteronomy chapter nine, do not think that you've done anything great to deserve this land.

It's not because of you that you're receiving this land. It's because of the evil of the people that inhabit it, that I am driving them out before you. And you're going to inhabit their land. You're going to get to live in their cities that they built before you got there.

And it's not because of anything great that you've done. It's because of their evil. God was using Israel to punish the wickedness of this land and drive them out. And as a result, because of the promise that God had given Abraham, they will inherit this land, the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on the entire globe at this particular time.

And Israel is blessed to be the occupants of it. But they are to be holy. Remember God's call to them for holiness and to not live as the pagans did in that land. Don't go after their gods. Drive them out.

Tear down the high places so that you'll not be tempted by their gods. And so Israel obeys for a time, but we'll see periodically as we go here, they become more and more disobedient. So here's the wickedness that Adonai Bezek had done and God repays him in kind.

Verse 8, and the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and they set the city on fire. This is Israel's first occupation of Jerusalem. And afterward, the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country in the Negev and in the lowland.

And Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Keriath Arba. And they defeated Shechei and Ahaman and Taumei. From there, they went against the inhabitants of Debir.

The name of Debir was formerly Keriath Sefer. And Caleb said, he who attacks Keriath Sefer and captures it, I will give him Achish my daughter for a wife, or sorry, Aksa for a wife. And Othniel, the son of Canaz, that's an important name because that'll come up again later.

Caleb's younger brother captured it and he gave him Aksa his daughter for a wife. And when she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey and Caleb said to her, what do you want?

And she said to him, give me a blessing since you have set me in the land of the Negev. Give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. Now, does anybody know right off the top of your head who the significance of Othniel is where we're going to see his name again?

He's one of the judges. That's right. The first judge. Yep. That's in chapter three. So we get to that next week. We'll read about Othniel again. Verse 16, and the descendants of the Kenite Moses, sorry, the descendants of the Kenite Moses father-in-law, this is Jethro, went up with the people of Judah from the city of Palms into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the Negev near Arad.

And they went and settled with the people. And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, just as they had pledged. And they defeated the Canaanites who inhabit Zephath and devoted it to destruction. So the name of the city was called Hormah.

Judah also captured Gaza with its territory and Ashkelon with its territory and Ekron with its territory. And the Lord was with Judah. And he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.

Now remember that God said, I'm with you, you'll be able to drive them out. That was at the start of judges, but here Judah has gone into the plain and they're not able to drive out the people there because they had chariots of iron.

If God is their commander, if God is going before them and driving the people out, then why wasn't Judah able to drive them out? Because they disobeyed. Yeah, because of their sin, right? So we, we are seeing consequences from that.

Well, Judah didn't obey. So how were they able to be so successful? Because God was still with him because he's merciful and gracious. But because Judah had disobeyed and did not follow that first instruction of the Lord, the way that he gave it, they were not able to take everything that God told them that they were going to take.

So in verse 20, and Hebron was given to Caleb as Moses had said, Caleb and Joshua, of course, if you remember, were the two faithful spies who said that we will be able to take the land. All of their generation of Israel was not allowed to inherit the promised land, only Joshua and Caleb.

So we see Caleb's inheritance as Moses had promised him that he receives. He drove out from the three sons of Anak. He drove out from it, the three sons of Anak, there you go. But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived at Jerusalem.

So the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. Was Benjamin supposed to drive out the Jebusites? Yeah, they were supposed to, but didn't drive them out. The house of Joseph also went up against Bethel and the Lord was with them.