WWUTT 234 A Study of Judges?

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The book of Judges represents a very dark period in Israel's history. Right after God delivered them into the
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Promised Land, they turned from God and started worshipping after the false gods of the pagans. May we never repeat the mistakes that Israel made when we understand the text.
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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text, promote sound doctrine while exposing the faulty.
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Here's your host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you Becky. Welcome to the Thursday edition of the broadcast, where we will begin a study of the book of Judges.
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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday will continue our Roman study, at least until we finish it. Then we'll move on to another
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New Testament book. Thursday will be our Old Testament study. And the book that I've decided to begin with is
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Judges. The reason being is because on Wednesday night at our church, I've taught from Genesis through Joshua over the course of the last four years.
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And I just finished Joshua a couple of weeks ago. We began the book of Judges on July 20th.
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So it's easiest for me to just take the notes from Judges and carry it over into this broadcast.
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And so that's the book that we will begin with. If you want to open up your Bible to Judges chapter 1, and I'll catch you up on some of the story here, a little bit of the backstory of the book of Judges.
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So at the end of Joshua, God had given the Promised Land to the Israelites. They conquered the cities that they needed to conquer.
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All of their military campaigns were successful. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and he called to him the elders, the heads, the judges, the officers of Israel, and they renewed the covenant there.
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And in Joshua 24 verses 14 through 15, very famous section of Joshua, where he says,
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Now, therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness.
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Put away the gods that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the
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Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the
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Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the
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Lord. And all of the heads of Israel, they agreed with Joshua and they said, yes, we will serve the
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Lord also. So this covenant was renewed at Shechem and the people of Israel worshipped
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God. At least that's the way the book of Joshua ends. But the way the book of Judges begins is with Israel falling away from God.
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Those that had received the Promised Land were faithful to the Lord and his covenant, but it was their children, immediately the next generation that disobeyed
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God and fell away. They forgot God's law. They forgot everything that God had done for their their forefathers, delivering them from slavery in Egypt, delivering them from the wilderness, delivering them from their enemies as they conquered the
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Promised Land. And they started chasing after the false gods of the pagans. And so we're going to be seeing that here as we get into the book of Judges.
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Now, we don't know exactly who wrote Judges. Jewish history says that Samuel did, but we don't know that for sure.
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We also don't know exactly when it was written. It would have been between the years 1350 and 1050
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B .C., but had to have been before a thousand B .C. and could not have been any later than that.
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The reason being is because in Judges chapter one, verse twenty one, it says that the people of Benjamin did not drive out the
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Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem. So the Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.
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However, we read that David drove the Jebusites out of Jerusalem, which happened in like a thousand and three
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B .C. or something like that. I can't remember the exact year. So it had to have been before that that the book of Judges was written, given that statement in chapter one.
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So again, most historians accept it would have been sometime between 1350 and 1050
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B .C. So let's come to Judges chapter one. We're going to catch some highlights through Judges here, and we're not necessarily going to do this whole book word for word like we've been doing the book of Romans.
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Some things I'm going to skip because there's lists of names I simply don't want to go through and have to try to pronounce. Once we get to some of the narrative portions, like in chapter three, we'll definitely go through those stories.
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But here's the highlights of the first couple of chapters. So start with me in Judges chapter one, beginning in verse one.
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After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the
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Canaanites to fight against them? One of the charges that Moses and also Joshua had given to the
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Israelites was once they conquered the promised land, once it had been given into their hands, they weren't to stop.
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They weren't to just rest in the cities that they had been given, but they were supposed to continue to try to conquer the cities that were around them.
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So the Lord said, Judah shall go up, verse two, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand.
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And Judah said to Simeon, his brother, come up with me into the territory allotted to me that we may fight against the
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Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you. Now, these names are spoken singularly,
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Judah and Simeon, but these are the tribes that are being referred to. It's not a man named Judah and a man named
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Simeon. Judah and Simeon occupied the lowest regions of the promised land to the west of the
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Jordan. They had kind of the biggest chunks down there in the south. And so Judah and Simeon were teaming up with one another.
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Simeon was going to help Judah drive out the rest of the Canaanites in their territory, and then Judah would help Simeon in their territory.
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So Simeon went with him in verse four, then Judah went up and the Lord gave the
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Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand. And they defeated 10 ,000 of them at Bezek. They found
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Adonai Bezek at Bezek and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites.
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Adonai Bezek fled, but they pursued him and caught up with him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes.
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Then 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.
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And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. So the beginning of the book of Judges here is just going to show the continued successful conquest of the
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Israelites in the land that the Lord had given to them. In verse eight, we see the men of Judah fight against Jerusalem and capture it.
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And this is Jerusalem that would become the capital city of Israel, formerly under pagan control now under control of the children of Israel.
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But even before the pagans had taken it, it was occupied by the people of God. In Genesis chapter 14, we see
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Abram, who would become Abraham, after he rescues his nephew Lot, he takes a tenth of the spoils of war and he goes to Melchizedek, the king priest at Salem.
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That's Salem that would eventually become Jerusalem. And Abram offers a tenth of what he had earned from his conquest to Melchizedek because he did not want to give that tenth to any false god or pagan king in that particular land, lest they should say that they made
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Abram rich. Instead, Abram was going to swear loyalties to God and to God only. So that's why he gave his tenth to Melchizedek.
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So Melchizedek was a king priest in the service of God there at Salem, which would eventually come under pagan control when they overran the land.
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And then it has been delivered now back into the hands of the children of Israel.
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Now as we go on in chapter 1 here, we'll get to verses 27 through 36, where it mentions that the other tribes of Israel were not successful in driving out the people from their territories that they were supposed to.
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So then we get to chapter 2 and we're reading about Israel's disobedience. Beginning in verse 1 now of chapter 2.
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Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bakim and he said, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers.
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I said, I will never break my covenant with you and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.
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You shall break down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?
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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.
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That's the first three verses of chapter 2. Now, this angel of the Lord, very likely the same angel that appeared to Joshua at the beginning of the book of Joshua and may also have been the very same angel that spoke to Moses through the burning bush, because it says an angel of the
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Lord spoke the words of God through the burning bush to Moses. So it wasn't
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God's actual voice. It would have been the voice of an angel speaking for God.
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So likely it's that same angel that is addressing Israel now with the authority of God.
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So then in verse four, 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
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Bakim and they sacrificed there to the Lord. Bakim means weepers. But this does not necessarily mean that their weeping and their sacrifice to the
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Lord was genuine. Just like we were talking about in the book of Romans yesterday, we were in Romans chapter 15.
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We mentioned that it is the Lord who makes a person's offering and worship genuine.
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And though the people of Israel mourned, it doesn't necessarily mean that their mourning was genuine because we see very quickly that they fall away from God and their unfaithfulness is signified here more clearly at the end of chapter two.
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We read about the death of Joshua in verses six through ten, and this is not out of order from what we had read in chapter one.
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It's merely clarifying some more details about Joshua's death. But Israel's disobedience came after the death of Joshua.
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Joshua's death didn't come after Israel's disobedience. We read further about Israel's unfaithfulness in verses 11 through 15, and I'll go ahead and read that.
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And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the
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Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed down to them.
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And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the
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Baals and the Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them.
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And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.
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Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the
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Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress. And I mentioned this earlier also while we were in a study of Romans chapter 15.
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But when we're talking about God's promises, we don't just mean the promises of blessing.
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We also mean the promise of judgment. So when we read that God will be faithful to fulfill his promises, oftentimes when we read verses like that, we think about the blessings that God is going to give us.
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But we need to understand that God has also promised to judge unrighteousness. So God fulfilling his promises also means that he will judge those who did evil in the sight of the
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Lord instead of feared the Lord their God. And so this is the case here, as the
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Lord had warned to them and had sworn to them, he would judge them if they broke the covenant that they had with God.
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And they were in terrible distress. So then we move on here to where the book of Judges clarifies the raising up of judges as a blessing to Israel to protect them from their enemies.
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So in verse 16, the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.
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Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them.
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They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.
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Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge.
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For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.
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But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to the false gods.
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They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the
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Lord was kindled against Israel, and he said, Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice,
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I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, in order to test
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Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not.
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So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua.
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And talking about giving them into the hand of Joshua, this is not Joshua directly because Joshua had already passed away by this point, but merely the children who had been led by Joshua into the promised land to take it.
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Now we have a basic pattern of judges set up for us here at the end of chapter two. As we go on and we read this story, what we're going to see is like a four -step process here.
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Number one, the people abandoned the Lord. That's what we're going to see first. But then, step two,
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God will raise up a foreign power to oppress them because they abandoned the
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Lord. Step three, the people will cry to God for deliverance. And then step four, God will send a judge to deliver them.
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And as it says here, God is with that judge for as long as that judge ruled over Israel.
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But once the judge died, then the people turned away from God again. Once they no longer had that leadership, they turned from the
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Lord and they would follow after the false gods once again, and God would turn them over to their enemies.
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And we'll repeat this process once again. So let's continue going here into chapter three, and we'll get through chapter three today.
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And that's as far as we'll go. Chapter three, verse one. Now, these are the nations that the Lord left to test
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Israel by them. That is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before.
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These are the nations, the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the
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Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Hermon as far as Lebo Hamath.
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They were for the testing of Israel to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the
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Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. So the people of Israel lived among the
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Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites and their daughters.
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They took to themselves for wives and their own daughters they gave to their sons and they served their gods exactly what
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God told them not to do. And they did it anyway. And in fact, as the book of Judges go on, we will watch
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Israel fall farther and farther away from God. In fact, by the time we get to the end of the book of Judges, they will have transgressed against the covenant that God had made with his people in every way possible.
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So the first judge that we have listed here is Othniel. It'll begin with Othniel, it'll end with Samson, then
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Samuel will become the final judge and Samuel will appoint the first king of Israel that will become
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Saul. But the first judge that's mentioned here has actually already come up. He was in chapter 1 verse 13,
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Othniel, the son of Canaaz. So the same Othniel that was mentioned in chapter 1 is the first judge listed in chapter 3.
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Beginning in verse 7, the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the
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Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he sold them into the hand of Cushon Reshathim, king of Mesopotamia.
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And the people of Israel served Cushon Reshathim eight years. But when the people of Israel cried out to the
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Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel. Who saved them? Othniel, the son of Canaaz, Caleb's younger brother.
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The spirit of the Lord was upon him and he judged Israel. He went out to war and the
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Lord gave Cushon Reshathim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. And his hand prevailed over Cushon Reshathim.
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So the land had rest forty years. Then Othniel, the son of Canaaz, died.
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Othniel mentioned as Caleb's younger brother. This was the same Caleb that went with Joshua into the promised land and came back with a good report that it was a good land and that the people of God would be able to take this land because God was with him.
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But the other ten spies did not see it the same way that Joshua and Caleb did.
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And those ten spies, because they rebelled against God and did not trust in God, God had them destroyed.
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But Joshua and Caleb would receive great inheritance in the promised land. And it's Caleb's younger brother,
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Othniel, who would become the first judge in Israel. Now the second judge is
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Ehud. And this is a particularly gory story. So preparing you for that, in case you're not familiar with this story.
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But here's the narrative that we read, beginning in verse 12. And the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the
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Lord. And the Lord strengthened Eglin the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done what was evil in the sight of the
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Lord. He gathered to himself the Ammonites and the Amalekites, and went and defeated Israel.
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And they took possession of the city of Palms. And the people of Israel served Eglin the king of Moab eighteen years.
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Then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. And the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gerah, the
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Benjamite, a left -handed man. The people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglin the king of Moab.
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Now before continuing with the story again, Ehud is mentioned as a Benjamite.
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And any time we, most of the time, when we see Benjamites mentioned in the scripture, a person who is called a
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Benjamite, you know, so -and -so from the tribe of Benjamin, more often than not, that person turns out to be a very violent man.
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Ehud, of course, this is going to be a gory story as we go on here. Saul, who became the first king of Israel, was also from the tribe of Benjamin, and he was a man of war.
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Saul, who would become the apostle Paul in the New Testament, he was from the tribe of Benjamin. And before Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus and he repented of his sins and became the apostle
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Paul, he was a murderer of Christians. So he also was a very violent man. And this goes back to Genesis chapter 49, where before Jacob's death, he had blessed his sons.
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And in those blessings also were, it was kind of a prophetic thing that he would say what would become of his sons in the future and what they would be like.
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Well, Benjamin, according to Jacob, was mentioned as a very violent man. And so we see that fulfilled in Benjamin's descendants, that they tend to be listed as violent men of war.
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And so Ehud, being one of those people, Ehud made for himself, verse 16 now, Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, which would have been from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow.
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That would have been the length of a cubit. And he bound the sword on his right thigh under his clothes and he presented the tribute to Eaglin, king of Moab.
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Now, Eaglin was a very fat man. And when Ehud had finished presenting the tribute, he sent away the people who carried the tribute.
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But he himself turned back at the idols near Gilgal and said, I have a secret message for you,
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O king. And he commanded silence and all his attendants went out from his presence. And Ehud came to him as he was sitting alone in his cool roof chamber.
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And Ehud said, I have a message from God for you. And he arose from his seat and Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh and thrust it into his belly.
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And the hilt also went in after the blade and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull out the sword from his belly and his dung came out.
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Then Ehud went out into the porch and closed the doors of the roof chamber behind him and locked them.
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When he had gone, the servants came, and when they saw that the doors of the roof chamber were locked, they thought, surely he's relieving himself in the closet of the cool chamber, which means that the servants thought that that Eaglin was going to the bathroom, basically, and they waited until they were embarrassed.
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So kind of waiting around like he sure is taking a long time on the john in there. But when he still did not open the doors of the roof chamber, they took the key and opened them.
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And there they found their Lord, the king dead on the floor. Ehud escaped while they delayed.
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So while they were waiting around thinking that the king was using the bathroom, Ehud took off and he passed beyond the idols and escaped to Syrah.
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When he arrived, he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim. Then the people of Israel went down with him from the hill country and he was their leader.
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And he said to them, follow after me, for the Lord has given your enemies the Moabites into your hand.
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So they went down after him and seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over.
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Then they killed at that time about 10 ,000 of the Moabites, all strong, abled bodied men and not a man escaped.
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So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel and the land had rest for 80 years.
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That's a good period of rest. And the people remain faithful to the Lord during that time under Ehud's command.
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So there you go. Very, very gory story. Very descriptive of Eaglin, a very fat man getting stabbed in his belly.
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The fat closes over the blade and he pooped himself because his death had relaxed his bowels.
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And that's what happens. You soil yourself, I guess, when you die. So anyway, verse 31. We're going to look at verse 31 and this will be our conclusion.
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Shamgar, the next judge of Israel, right after Ehud, and he gets one sentence. That's it.
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After him was Shamgar, the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad.
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And he also saved Israel. And that's the extent of Shamgar's story.
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An ox goad would have been a tool that was used to herd ox, but probably also would have been a farm implement that had other usage as well.
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It was with a farming tool that Shamgar killed 600 of the Philistines. Thanks to one of my deacons,
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Aaron Dunn, for a history lesson on what an ox goad is. Now, the name Shamgar is actually a pagan name and he is descendant from Anath, which likely refers to the
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Canaanite warrior goddess Anath. So what's the deal with this pagan who becomes a judge in Israel?
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And already it's been mentioned to us that God was with the judges. So God was with a guy who was a pagan that led
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Israel and they followed him and received peace and blessing. Well, likely Shamgar was a convert, basically.
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He was among the Canaanites who surrendered to the Israelites when they came in and conquered the promised land and feared the
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Lord God. Just as we read in Exodus that after the Israelites left Egypt, there were many
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Egyptians that went with them. So we also see that there were some Canaanites that surrendered to Israel and they received the promises of God.
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So though they were not direct descendants from Abraham, yet they were accepted among the people of Israel because they did not follow the false gods and feared the
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Lord God. Shamgar did fear God and he trusted God. And so it was under the leadership of Shamgar that God delivered the
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Israelites from the hands of the Philistines. And that's as far as we are going to read. We'll pick up in Judges chapter four next week, where we'll be reading about one of the most famous judges, probably second famous judge after Samson, and that would be
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Deborah. Our Lord God, we thank you so much for these words that have been written down for us in the scriptures that we might read them and know and see the promises that you have fulfilled through your people throughout history.
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But we also see from this people a stubbornness in that they did not hold to the covenant that you made with them.
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Instead, they turned from God and followed after false gods and your judgment, your anger was kindled against them.
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So Lord, may we learn from this and not repeat the same mistakes that they made instead.
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Lord, we pray that you would keep us steadfast in the faith by the power of Christ, that we know the salvation that has come through Jesus Christ, our
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Lord, his death on the cross for our sins, so that all who believe in Jesus will never perish.
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We have nothing to fear of the wrath of God, but we will receive eternal life. So keep us true to these words.
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Let us not chase after the pattern of this world. But just as you called the Israelite people to holiness, you called them out of slavery into your righteousness.
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So you have called us out of sin, our slavery to sinfulness into the righteousness of Christ.
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Keep our eyes fixed upon Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith.
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And we pray and ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.