Good morning church! I’m thankful for the opportunity to be here this morning and get to share what God has put on my heart. **High School Detention Story**
We’ve been journeying through this series “Wrestling with God” as we’ve traveled through scripture looking at different stories and different characters and seeing the things they wrestle with. Last week Brad walked us through Deuteronomy as we looked at the life of Moses. And this week we’ll briefly touch on Joshua and then we’ll talk about Judges.
Joshua is called into leadership after Moses dies. God calls up Joshua and tells him to be strong and courageous. Which is less about being strong and courageous in Joshua himself and more about Joshua being strong and courageous in God. And he is! He leads the Israelites into the Promise land, remaining faithful to God as they win battles. And when some people don’t remain faithful to God, they correct it because they know that to truly inherit this land, they must be faithful to God. A large chunk of Joshua is devoted to dividing the land as a fulfillment of the prophecy told way earlier to Abraham. After that, is the end of Joshua’s life.
What's important for us in today’s context is to remember a few things. Winning these wars against the Canaanites was not just a random thing they had to do or even a territorial thing. The Canaanites were living extremely morally corrupt lives, and they were practicing child sacrifice to their gods. It had to be stopped. Joshua clearly showed that a life of faithfulness to God is the only thing that will bring life and blessing in the land. Before he died, he said this to the Israelites in Joshua 24:14-15- “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Reaffirming once more to the Israelites that they need to stay faithful to God in this land.
And this brings us to the book of judges. Before we really dive into the book of Judges, I want to paint for you a picture of the cycle of failure and we see. The first thing you’re going to see in this cycle is the corruption. It’s forgetting who God is, forgetting what he has done. It’s worshiping other gods, serving something that isn’t our creator. As we’ll see, the Israelites fall into this over and over again. The second part of this cycle is oppression. It’s being captured or enslaved by a different king. Forced to live under a godless ruler. Out of that oppression, the next part of this cycle is repentance. Which we see over and over again. The Israelites repent of their wickedness and their sin. They cry out to God for forgiveness for what they have done in the midst of their punishment. And God answers, because the next part of this cycle is deliverance. And this is where the judges come in. You see, the judges from the book of Judges are not like the modern-day judges that you’d think of today. They aren’t in a court room swinging a gavel or anything like that. They’re actually military leaders who were quite good at what they did …which is winning wars. And so, you’ll see this over and over again. That God answers the repentance of the Israelites with the deliverance of a judge. And out of that deliverance you'll see peace. As it was meant to be. Harmony between God and his people. So, with this cycle in mind, let’s jump into Judges.
There are six main judges who we’ll glance at this morning. Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. The first three are talked about with minor detail in Judges and the second three have more detailed information. And as you read the book, you’ll see more and more how the corruption not only repeats itself but seems to just continue to get worse. Judges 3:7 says, “The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.” which, don’t forget, is the first step in this cycle of corruption. And so, God hands them over as captives to the king of Mesopotamia. Who is called Cushan-Rishathaim, which literally means a double portion of wickedness. In other words, this captivity was going to be really harsh. And we see the response to this in verse 9, “But when they cried out to the Lord…” The Israelites cried out! They repented, and so God responds with the rest of verse 9, “[God] raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, who saved them.” They were delivered! This brings us to our last step in the cycle which we see in verse 11, “ So the land had peace for forty years, until Othniel son of Kenaz died.” And if you didn’t notice it while I read it, the thing about cycles is that they repeat themselves. That’s what makes them cycles. Notice that it doesn’t say they had peace for the rest of eternity. It says they have peace UNTIL Othniel dies. The peace ends and the cycle starts over.
The next cycle had the Israelites captured by the Moab king Eglon and their deliverer this time was a judge named Ehud. Who is specifically noted as a left-handed man. Why was he noted as a left-hand man? Because it was important for the way that he delivered the Israelites. Ehud had a sword that was roughly a foot and a half long, also important for the way he delivered the Israelites. And I feel like this is the moment I should pause and give a disclaimer. The book of Judges is very gruesome and descriptive. In an effort to keep this somewhat “PG” I’m not going to share most of the details that are given to us, but don’t ever tell me the Bible is boring or lame. These stories in Judges are action packed and full of great detail. The reason I say this is because Ehud delivered the people by killing king Eglon. And the way he killed him was gross. Like I said, I’ll spare you most of the gruesome details, but Eglon was so large of a man that Ehud’s foot and a half sword went entirely in him and never came out. And maybe you’d think, surely the Israelites would stop wrestling with God now after seeing his faithfulness in these crazy ways…but you’d be wrong.
This cycle repeats itself again with the Judge, Deborah. And while I’d love to share with you the whole story of Deborah and how a tent peg led to the deliverance of the Israelites, I think it’s pretty important that we notice something. This whole time, all the way from being delivered from Pharaoh in Egypt, the Israelites have been wrestling with the need to have a king, a judge, a ruler who would lead them. It started with Moses, then Joshua, and now is cycling through these judges, but what we’re about to see is that the more desperate these people get for a king, the further from God that person seems to become.
The first of these judges who you’ll notice is Gideon. And this is where these stories start to get longer. Othniel and Ehud both are about half a chapter long, while there are three chapters about the story of Gideon. And you may know this story well, or at least you think you do. If not, let me fill you in. Once again, with no surprise, the Israelites fall into a life apart from God and are overtaken by the Midianites. Judges 6:6 says, “Midian so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to the Lord for help.” Hopefully by this point you are really seeing this cycle of corruption. The Lord responds and queues up Gideon for the deliverance. But Gideon has some trust issues it seems because he puts a test out there for God. He lays a fleece on the ground and says that if that fleece is wet from dew and ground dry, then he’ll for sure know that God was the one getting him ready for this deliverance. And the next morning, it was so. Perfect! Right? Well, not enough for Gideon. He wants to make sure it’s really God and not just a crazy dew night. So, he says the reverse. If the fleece is dry and ground wet, then he’ll know. Sure enough, it happens. And so, Gideon was ready. Gideon and his 32,000 men were ready for battle. But God had a bigger plan than just to outnumber Midian. So, he dwindles his number through various tests, and eventually the army comes down to just 300 men. They circle Midian and win the battle by blowing trumpets and lighting torches in the middle of the night. The lord used the confusion in the camp to have the Midianites turn on each other. And for the children’s Sunday School bible lesson, that’s where this story stops, but in our search for good men, we must read on. Gideon used some of the gold taken from their victory to create an Ephod, which would be like a ceremonial shirt, that the Israelites would worship. This is clearly not something God has called him to do. So, it makes sense that Judges 8:33-34 says, “No sooner had Gideon died than the Israelites again prostituted themselves to the Baals. They set up Baal-Berith as their god and did not remember the Lord their God, who had rescued them from the hands of all their enemies on every side.” You’d think that eventually they’d stop turning back to these wicked ways. But again, they don’t get it.
So, the next delivering judge is Jephthah and he is the one to deliver the Israelites from the Ammonites. The way Jephthah comes into the story is interesting because we are told from the beginning of his life his brothers ran him out of the house because their father had Jephthah through a prostitute. So, when they reach out to Jephthah for help, there is some family feuding that happens before Jephthah finally agrees. And when he does, Jephthah makes a reckless vow with God. He says, (Judges 11:30-31) “If you give the Ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” No other time has someone needed to make such a vow of burnt sacrifice like this and this would be no exception. And spoiler alert, it wasn’t a good vow to make. God uses Jephthah to once again deliver the Israelites and we read this in Judges 11: 34, “When Jephthah returned to his home in Mizpah, who should come out to meet him but his daughter, dancing to the sound of timbrels! She was an only child. Except for her he had neither son nor daughter.” Sounds a lot like the Canaanite way of worship. Thankfully it seems that Jephthah didn’t actually sacrifice the life of his daughter, but he did sacrifice the continuation of her bloodline. It would seem that the sacrifice that they made was to keep her a virgin, never to marry. Do you see how corrupt this all is? And it’s not just the Israelites! In the search for good men, the Israelites have progressed further and further from what a “good” leader would be, further from a leader faithful to the Old Testament law. And all of this brings us to the last judge we’re going to talk about…Samson.
Samson, once again, is often portrayed as this hero, this perfect man who had the power of God in his wonderful hair. Something I know little about. And while God did use Samson for great things, it’s not hard to see the brokenness and corruption in his own life. While we don’t have time for all the details, just know that Samson seemed to live a promiscuous life and a harsh life toward others. Once again, I’ll keep this PG, but Samson stayed the night with a prostitute and escaped the Philistines, then he stays time and time again with a women named Delilah as she tries time and time again to figure out where his strength comes from so the Philistines could take him out. After many nights, Samson finally tells her. So, Delilah shaves his head and gives him over to the Philistines. When they took him to the temple to offer him to Dagon, who they worshiped as their god, he sacrificed his life to kill them all by bringing down the temple. Once again showing that the Israelites search for good men had failed.
After Samson there are still 4 more chapters of Judges. I’ll leave the stories for you to read, but don’t be surprised that they aren’t pretty. It’s fitting that these 4 chapters have their own bookend. Judges 17:6 says, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” and Judges 21:25, the last chapter of the book, says, “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.” Which is surprising, because while they didn’t have a human king, Israel did have a King. The one true King. A King who delivered them time and time again. But they kept turning their backs to Him. Potentially, the best human “deliverer” that the Israelites saw over this 400-year span, was Joshua. He was faithful to God in battle and in leadership. He was able to lead the Israelites into the promised land and that’s not because he was the best military leader. Joshua was the most faithful to God. But Joshua still wasn't the final plan. Because Joshua wasn’t perfect.
Friends don’t miss this. The entirety of Scripture. The whole book that we have in front of us, is pointing us to Jesus. Moses delivered the Israelites from captivity; but wasn’t faithful enough to bring them into the promised land. Joshua brought them into the promised land through victorious battles, but still fell short in his own faithfulness when it came to handling the Gibeonites. The judges over and over again delivered the Israelites from captivity; but they all fell short of perfection.
And this cycle of corruption that we see in the book of Judges is not a cycle that we just see in scripture but it’s a cycle that we see in our own lives. We are broken people. We are sinful. We fall short. We judge, we lie, we cheat, we steal, we lust, we hate, we murder, we boast, we covet, we curse, we gorge, we’re apathetic, we’re lazy, we’re prideful, we’re greedy, we’re deceptive, we are sinful people. And so, we are captive to these sins. You can’t help but continue to lie to keep the cover on the little white lie you started with. You don’t love your enemies, but you hate them and do harm to them. You are so captivated by your addiction to what you do alone with your phone that just closing your eyes can be enough. You curse and speak hate without a second thought. You think, as long as I’m not sinning as bad as that person, I am loved by God. And when we realize that the short satisfaction that we get from living a life captive to the things of this world is not enough.
When we realize that we can no longer live without a King of our lives, we can no longer just live by doing what is right in our own eyes, we cry out. We repent. We realize our need for a king, our need for a deliverer, for a rescuer. And this is the beautiful part of the cycle today. The Hebrew word for Joshua is Yehoshua and the Koine Greek word for Jesus is Iēsous. Yehshua in Hebrew and Iēsous in Greek both mean, “Yahweh Saves” “The Lord your God saves”. Joshua is the IMPERFECT example of a faithful deliverer for the Israelites. Jesus is the PERFECT deliverer for the world. Jesus was faithful to what God had called him to. Joshua victoriously defeated the Canaanites so the Israelites could live in the promised land. But Jesus was victorious over death so we can enter the eternal Promised Land - Heaven.
And this is where the cycle no longer becomes a cycle. God sent his son, as deliverance from our sins. Inviting us into the last part. Peace. And while we obviously aren’t able to be in Heaven on this side of life, we get to experience his goodness, his hope, his presence, and so much more because of what Jesus did. How do we live in that peace? Joshua told us at the beginning, be Strong and Courageous. But not in yourself! Be strong and Courageous in who God is. Be strong in the Word. Be in the Word. Read it, memorize it, talk about it with your friends. *Francis Chan story* And be courageous in God’s name. Tell someone about it! Be bold! Live a different way than the world lives. Walk in goodness and in the light. Stay away from darkness. Church, I hate to be a broken record, because I say this a lot, but if you’re just sitting here on Sunday mornings and maybe attending a weekly small group, I think you’re missing something. I think that God is calling you to more.
I’m not asking you to drop everything today and become a missionary in a country hostile to Christianity, though we see that example in Scripture. I’m asking you to take a step outside of your comfortability into a faithful life to God. - Start a reading plan. Do it with someone. - Serve. Don’t just show up. - Share the Gospel. Jesus could not have made this clearer. This is what we’re called to do. If you’re sitting here this morning and want to know more about this peace, please find me or someone at the Welcome Center in the lobby and we’d love to tell you more! For you, the next step would be to find a Bible, I’ll give you one for free, and read the book of John.
Church, if I could ask you one thing this morning, it would be to not live like the Israelites. As if we have no king, doing what is right in your own eyes. We have a King. He was faithful and he is faithful. A King who was obedient to death, even death on a cross. And we remember this, through communion. On the night that he was betrayed, the day before he was crucified, Jesus was sitting around a table with his friends, his disciples. He took bread, and broke it. Saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” He then took a cup and said, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” Amen