An Overview of the Book of Judges — Judges 1-3

0:00 We we're grateful that you give us this opportunity to gather. We pray that your your word will come through clearly. We pray lord that the message that you have will be delivered today. I pray that the words that I speak, those that are profitable will be remembered and those that aren't will be cast aside. We pray these things in your son's name.

0:21 Amen. Can you all hear me back there? So. Good, good. So we have a little technical difficulty, my little flipper.

0:30 Look, I already messed it up, didn't I? Hold on. All right, here we go. So we're going to try and do a little bit of an overview of the book of Judges, okay. And while you ponder that for a moment, let's just consider, I'm going to just have to flip this way.

0:52 Consider this statement for a moment. If you listen to WCRF, in the evenings, you probably heard this every day for the last, I don't know how many years because this is one of the verses that Janet partial quotes all the time, okay. On the event of the transformation between Saul and David, when David was going to be anointed as king or appointed or recognized as king, they said all the tribes gathered to him and they told about who who they were and what they were known for. What they what they could be remembered as or what they what people saw them as. So this this group here, the sons of Issachar, which we know is one of the tribes of Israel had an...

1:39 They said that he... They had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. Now is there a time in our lives where we would like to know that? I mean, we would always like to know what the times are and what we should do going forward, right? In my fifty seven plus years, I can't think of a time when there weren't more people, more talking heads, more news programs, more Internet services, whatever you want to call it, trying to do just this, to know the times.

2:14 Where are we at? What's going on around here? And what should we do? Certainly in the church, we would wanna know that all times, but today it seems like everybody's speaking to that. So maybe we can talk a little bit about that today.

2:29 Can we really learn from the book of Judges? I mean, there, is this a book you want to skip over? Who's read it recently? Okay, good, good. Is it a book that we should skip over or is it one that we shouldn't?

2:43 Well, I can tell you that we don't want to skip over any of it. Matter of fact, I got a present a couple years ago from my aunt. She gave me what she thought would be something perfect for me, a Bible. It was known as the Jefferson Bible. Does anybody know what the Jefferson Bible is?

3:01 Okay, now Jefferson, it's the Jefferson you're thinking of, Thomas Jefferson. He wanted his own Bible and so he got the Bible that most of us would read and he took it and got a razor blade and actually trimmed out portions of the Bible that he didn't like. Okay. The parts that he didn't think he could believe like the miracles, okay. Like some of the parts of the Old Testament and he kept only the words of Jesus or the parts that he thought were historically accurate.

3:39 Now, however we do it, whether it's with a razor blade or just by flipping on by, I would recommend that you never do that. Okay, this is the word of God, we take it in its entirety and we do our best to learn from all of it. And when some of it doesn't make sense, we look back to try and make it make sense with the rest of the Bible. That's the principle that we try and follow at all times. But still, this book has some, I'll call it cringeworthy.

4:12 I mean, makes me just shiver to think of some of the things that are written in this book. And we would normally spend time here talking about some of the characters, and we'll do a little bit of that, okay? The characters that are here, we like to pick those out, but let's try and look at this from more of an overview and think about the contrast. There's this contrast that happens in the book of Judges where there's this awful walking away from the Lord and then these leaders that bring them back and they go back and forth, and this contrast is really what speaks to us from the book, I believe. So this is a unique historical period in the history of the Old Testament, Okay?

4:52 So we're gonna spend a little bit of time there. If you go back and search through some of the message I've done recently, we've been sort of wallowing around here in the Old Testament, and I want us really hit that hard today, so take that home with you, why the Old Testament is important, okay? We're gonna talk a little bit about the dependence on God, alright? What the sin of forgetting him, okay? And the discipline that the Lord gave the people of Israel.

5:23 We'll talk a little bit about the individual characters. Again, a contrast to where the whole society seemed to be going at the time and what our outlook should be related to that. Okay? And then we'll try and hit a few things for you to take away today, maybe to help us move forward. So why is the Old Testament important?

5:46 Okay, I was told, it was a comment that was made to me the other day, I'm not gonna say from where, but why is history important? I mean really, why do we need to know our history? Well, some people have said that if we don't know our history, we're doomed to repeat it. Okay, well let's talk a little bit about one historian. Okay, this guy is well regarded as very prominent or strong historian if you will because he wrote two books of the Bible and in very, very, I guess you call it doctorly fashion, he was a doctor, Luke, and he really wrote in the Acts of the Apostles several passages.

7:03 The Old Testament was there, we know that, but he preached from the Old Testament. Okay, the scriptures were from way before. Okay, Acts 17, Paul, as his custom was, went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures. So Paul reasoned from the scripture. Philip preached, Paul reasoned, and then later he went to Berea.

7:30 These were more fair minded than those in Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness and searched the scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. Have you ever heard of somebody say you should be a good Berean? Well, that's what this is meaning. They searched the scriptures to see if what Paul was saying was right. I encourage you to do the same today.

7:52 Go home from here and search the scriptures to see if what I say is right. Don't take my word for it. Go home or read it now. That's why I hope you all have your bibles with you. I may not flip through, I may not read all of them, but I want you to make sure that you search the scriptures.

8:09 Acts 18, a certain Jew named Apollos, born in Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly showing from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ, Apollos showed. Bereans searched, Paul reasoned and Philip preached. The Old Testament has a lot for us, don't just turn it away and move on. Scripture, what is the definition of the word scripture? Well, in our dictionary, it usually refers to the Old Testament and the New Testament, but essentially sacred writings.

8:48 The word scripture is used 54 times in the Bible, 53 of them in the New Testament, and many times it's a reference of an Old Testament scripture or the fact that they're using those scriptures, okay, and then the Old Testament or Old Testament is actually quoted in the New Testament most prominently by Jesus himself. So it's a written word. It was a written word. It still is a written word. It was revered.

9:18 It was studied. It was memorized. It was well known. Really important. These scriptures were well known at the time, had been written hundreds of years before, and had been studied and really learned by a lot of people, some very learned people.

9:36 So this is important to know. They were taught, it was a source of hope, gave directions to live, gave a history of the Jewish people, and also made predictions. So I was wondering, who knows if the Browns are playing today? They do. Who's the number one Browns fan here today?

9:56 Okay, so okay boys, I'll let you give the prediction. Are the Browns gonna win today? Go ahead, Conor. What do you think? They're going to win today.

10:07 Why do you know that? Okay. Well, according to the Las Vegas odds, they say that the Patriots are favored to win by 2.5 points. And the over and under on how many total points they're gonna score is 45 and a half. And I don't know how you score a half.

10:26 I know how you score one, two, and all those other combinations, but 45 and a half points. I guess that just breaks the tie. So that means it should be either 20 one-twenty four today or 20 two-twenty six. That's it. That's just the way the score is going to be, right?

10:41 We know that for sure, don't we? We don't know that for sure, but you know what? Conor said it here and you all are witnesses, aren't you? You all heard him say, Browns are going to win today over the Patriots. Now that will be something if he can predict that.

11:01 But if he would have predicted it last week, would that have been a little bit better? If he would have predicted it a month ago, would have been even better. And if he could have called the score, it would have been better. But his brothers would have never paid off on that bet because they didn't hear it or they heard it a different way. So what if he wrote it down and everybody signed it?

11:26 A month ago, 20 four Browns. Would you all have thought that was pretty cool? What if it would have happened hundreds of years ago before there was ever football? Somebody said, on 11/14/2021, two hundred years from now, Conor Bingham predicted that this football game was going to be won by the rounds with this score. Would that have been pretty good?

11:56 That would have been pretty good. Well, that's what we're talking about, but in spades, over and over and over again in the scriptures. That's another reason it's really important that we are able to spend our time being able to preach Christ from the scriptures, from the Old Testament scriptures, to reason through them, to understand them and to learn them. So let's take one overview of the Old Testament scriptures. Now, the reason I call this one overview is it's my overview.

12:27 Okay? You're not gonna find this in a textbook anywhere. You're gonna find probably a mistake that you wish this was in there or you wish that was in there, but this is my overview. Okay? If you look at it, I want you to understand the sweep of the Old Testament scriptures, right?

13:23 Abraham heard him. Okay, he knew the Lord was speaking to him. We move from there to his grandson Jacob, starts the beginning of the tribes that we've spent so much time listing them up and the 12 tribes of Israel, right? They got to Egypt, it was great, then they left Egypt, it wasn't so great, right? Remember Joseph was spoken to by the Lord or from the Lord through dreams.

13:50 Okay? Then the Exodus, they left Egypt, huge miracles that are associated with that. Moses is a leader, they spend time in the wilderness, bush talks to Moses or a pillar of fire leads them. Okay? Then they enter the promised land with Joshua's leadership.

14:09 They're a time of war, pushing every everybody out of the areas. Okay? And apparently, they're speaking just to... Or the Lord speaking directly to Joshua at that time too. A time of disarray happens, right?

14:24 Where things are scattered, we don't know what's going on. That's a time of a judges and oppression. The enemy action there actually speaks of what the Lord would have. Then the kingdom start, right? There's a king appointed Saul, David, these reigning wonder years.

14:40 There's a split were spoken to at that time through poetry, writings of wisdom. You remember the Psalms and the Proverbs and then the time of the prophets, captivity, silence and prophecy. That leads us to the New Testament, right? Where we have miracles, the disciples were spoken to us through the Son in many various ways, but that time through the Son and then the Holy Spirit's left on our behalf. So it just gives you this big overview.

15:14 Think about it from an overview. And throughout that time, there's triumph but there's tragedy, where the people are following the Lord and there's times where they're not, okay? And there's times of testing where the Lord puts them through tests. There's times of wandering, but in all cases the Lord pursues them, okay? Through that whole sweep when Adam, you know, had to fall and he and Eve did what was wrong, the Lord still pursued it for him.

15:48 He provided for them. When, you know, Moses made his mistakes, he still pursued them. So overview, big overview, trying to get that overview of the picture. This is where we're gonna spend some time today, in this time of disarray, the time of Judges, if you will. So there's this pattern in Judges and we're gonna read chapters two beginning in verse seven and talk a little bit about it.

16:15 So two seven through 10 says, so 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 works of the Lord which he had done for Israel. Now Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord died when he was 110 years old. And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnah Harris in the Mountains Of Ephraim on the North Side of Mount Gash. When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation rose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done for Israel. So there it is, death of Joshua.

16:59 Now it's the third time in the Bible that it says Joshua died. I guess they wanted to make sure we knew that, right? Said in the end of Joshua Judges one:one and then now two:eight. So they leave Egypt, There's a transition from Moses. They conquer and enter the Promised Land.

17:19 All of these were miraculous happenings. Joshua led them through. Joshua dies and it says when Joshua dies, the generation along with him dies and what happens? Everybody forgot. They weren't taught.

18:15 They forsook, that means to quit or leave entirely, abandon, desert. So they completely abandoned the Lord, completely forsook and bowed down to others, provoked the Lord to anger and serve. Now think about those action items. To bow down takes action, to forsake and leave takes action, to do evil is action. So there's action in which way?

18:46 The wrong direction. Okay. And the point was, don't you remember the action in the right direction? Now we can always, and we regularly do this, complain or maybe run down those folks that didn't teach. And we always admonish ourselves to make sure we teach what happened, Right?

19:10 The Lord continues to remind us throughout the scriptures, remember what happened when I brought you out of Egypt. Remember all those things. And that's really important. Okay? But it's important not just to remember, but to be taught to remember.

19:26 Because it's not just about what happened in Egypt, it's to remember what's happened to you. To realize what happened to you that the Lord has done. So we need to be taught, this is what happened to me. And then people can realize, our younger folks can realize, this is what's happening to me. Not to forget, not to think that this is all done on my own.

19:52 Think about this, this is a major transition. When Joshua takes the people and crosses the Jordan and they conquer the land, what's the description of that land? It was a land that was what? Flowing with milk and honey. Where do you get milk?

20:09 From a cow. We don't know how this happens. A brown cow eats green grass and delivers white milk. But that's what happens, right? So you have to have good grass for good cows to produce good milk.

20:24 You have to have lots of flowers for a bunch of bees. Right, Bob? To to make honey. This was a place that was the promised land. It was full of promise.

20:36 It was full. And so think about this like the end of World War two. End of World War two, peace is now behind us. We can now relax. This is a great place to be.

20:48 And and what you you've heard stories of that time. Right? I want my kids and don't we all think this? I don't want my kids to have to suffer through what I went through. That might not be the best strategy folks.

21:02 It might be best for them to suffer through because otherwise they forget. We all forget if we don't. Let's move on to 14. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, so he delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them and he sold them into the hands of their enemies all around so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity as the Lord had said and as the Lord had sworn to them and they were greatly distressed.

21:40 He was really hot, angry hot, hotly angered, whatever you want to say. Delivered them to plunderers. What does a plunderer do? He plunders. Thank you very much.

21:55 Plundering means he goes in and he takes everything that's good, right? He took the milk and he took the honey, he took the cattle, they took everything and enslaved the people. So the Lord was refusing to honor their actions. Verse 16, Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods and bowed down to them.

22:56 When they were oppressed, they cried out to the Lord. They cried out so much that He had pity on them and He went back to seek them as well. That's what He does for us to do. But remember that if things, if you let things continue to drift, things escalate. Okay?

23:16 I think about this like a river. Have you ever seen a fish in a river? A fish in a river, if he doesn't do anything, what happens to the fish in the river? He ends up in the ocean, right? Or a lake, whichever, right?

23:31 So the fish has to swim against the current. This is an active effort to remember, to know, to understand, to fight against forgetting. Otherwise, things just drift down the way. Verse 20, then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he said, because this nation has transgressed my covenant, which I commanded their fathers and has not heeded my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died. So that though...

24:12 Or that through them, I may test Israel whether they will keep the ways of the Lord to walk in them as their fathers kept them or not. Therefore... So he left those people there to test them. To test, will they follow me? To test them so that they will eventually know to follow them.

24:35 So can we give them a pass or a fail? Probably a fail so far from what we've talked about, but if you look at some of this, this is like the whole group of judges, okay? You're probably gonna look at that and those of you who've read recently say, wait a minute, those folks here are not part of in the book of Judges, but do you remember in Genesis 18 when it says Moses judged the folks? He brought everybody to him, they were there day and night. So that's sort of where I would say when that pattern started, but really this is the portion that we're dealing with in the book of Judges from Othniel to Samson really are the judges.

25:20 If you look at these folks, these are who we normally talk about. Who's heard a story about Gideon or maybe Samson, right? Everybody has. We sing songs and that sort of thing. This is something to refer back to before.

25:35 These folks were from different tribes. It wasn't one tribe that was better than another, he used all of them in one form or another, but he oppressed them for years, sometimes generations, and then they had times of peace. So oppression and peace, oppression and peace. The different oppressors were were varied. Okay?

25:57 I'm moving through this quickly, but you can see all these that we're we're doing that. We certainly know about Moses, Joshua, Caleb. We should probably spend a little bit more time talking about Othniel and Jephthah, I think. And these are very good studies too, Samuel, Manoah and his wife, Elkanah and Hannah, all good studies that we should talk about. So moving quickly, we're gonna have a little quiz here.

26:27 Where would you find in the book of Judges where it says that the Israelites did evil, they forgot the Lord, they served other gods, they were angry, they were sold into slavery, they cried out, leader was raised up, he was in dwelt with the Holy Spirit, had victory, then they had rest. The leader died and they forgot about him. Where would you find that? The whole book. It's repeated over and over again, okay?

26:58 But it's really well done in Chapter three, Othniel is the first one. He's a brother of Caleb. Deborah was a judge at the time. So this woman tries to gather people around and she's got a... I'll call him a general.

27:12 The guy who's gonna lead the troops, Barak, that she has to kick in the pants and say, let's go man, get out there. And he says, well, I don't know if you'll go with me, I'll do it. And she says, there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking for the Lord will tell or will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman. And it it Deborah is referred to there, but I think also it's the other woman that drives a a tent peg through Sisera's head. That's a little grizzly.

27:46 So I told you it was cringe worthy activity here. So I'll move on through these, we can tell what Gideon did. Gideon was good in the beginning and didn't do so well in the end. Said that he got proud at the end and built this ephod, became the snare to him and his household, and then his son rises up and what's he do? He kills 68 of his brothers so that he can take power.

28:15 Cringe again. Jephthah was a raider, cast off, but they brought him back to fight for him. Minoh and his wife has a wonderful story about their dedication of Sampson prior to his life. Sampson again started off well or into a bad spot and then ended much better. Micah hired his own priest to do his own bidding and that wasn't so good.

28:52 This this Levite story, I don't even wanna say the words. It's awful story. We can talk about that more there. And then Alkena and Hannah, which are parents of Samuel. It says that Samuel in first Samuel, he judged Israel until Saul became king.

29:35 Does anybody think that we might be there today? It wouldn't be hard stretch to say that. Let's read this, it says, And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord saying, we have sinned against you because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baals. So this is the point of desperation. Have you felt desperate ever?

29:57 We may feel desperate as things go forward here, who knows what's going to happen, but the real important point is, what's it going to take for us to feel desperate? We can get there on our own or we can wait for the society go on by and we may feel desperate. And then they had an admission, we have sinned. Sin is sin. There's just no way around that.

30:25 Okay? It's all or nothing with God. So the Lord said to the children of Israel, verse 11, did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites and from the people of Ammon and from the Philistines, also the Sidonians and the Amalekites and Maanites oppressed you and you cried out to me and I delivered you from their hand, yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore, I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen, let them deliver you in your time of distress.

31:00 So they cry out and this is the response they get, didn't I do all this? And it's not just looking back to the Egyptians, it's looking back to all these others that they had pushed out of the land. So you folks, you that are crying out to me now, you should know what I did. This is not just your fathers and your grandfathers, you should know what I did. This is recent history.

31:24 So they had to recognize who is God? What has he done? And more importantly, who am I and what can I do? It's a good recognition of where we're at. We're not above God.

31:37 He's above us. Verse 15, and the children of Israel said to the Lord, we have sinned, do whatever seems best to you, only deliver us this day, we pray. So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord and his soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel. So they submitted. They submitted to whatever needed to be done, whatever outcome was possible, willing to do whatever was necessary.

32:08 So what gods were they serving? It was these Baals and Ashura, it all comes down to the same thing. Money, pleasure, looking away from the Lord of the universe and serving that or them. I'd like to point out that they were persistent. You know, they cried out and the Lord pushed back and they said, well, they cried out again and said, please Lord.

32:40 And they threw themselves on his mercy and grace. So now if it looks like I'm pointing my finger at you, what you just heard was my toes getting stepped on because I have to think about this carefully. Where am I? Sin is sin and we all need to cry out before the Lord. So here's what I can hope you can take away today.

33:43 We have the opportunity to swim against the stream and to remember what the Lord has done. It's easy for us to read the book of Exodus and see that those miracles happened. But it's not so easy to tell about the failures that I have had. It's not so easy to remember those victories that the Lord has given. The miracles that he's done in each one of our lives.

34:18 That is just as important. So that when you hear those young people, you can say, wow, he failed too. He's seen a miracle in his life. I hope you can then realize that when you fail, the Lord can do a miracle in your life too. We all have that opportunity.

34:45 And our attitude that we should have is the most important thing. We need to have desperate admission. Lord, I am who I am, and you are who you are, and we need to recognize that. And then persistent submission. Lord, I submit to your will and what you would have me do.

35:08 So I hope now maybe we have an opportunity. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm not tell you here to tell you who to be, but I hope we have a little bit of understanding of where we're at in these times. Anytime, particularly one of great societal change. It requires an individual struggle, each one of us every time.

35:34 I'm not sure it's this different today than it was yesterday. I'm not sure it's gonna be different tomorrow than it is today. We each have the opportunity to to struggle with that, and we each have the opportunity to know that God is working just as he was in the time of the judges. Okay? We can say and and it repeatedly said it happens over and over again.

36:20 No matter what happens out there, we say out there. No matter what happens around us, we still have the opportunity to cry out before the Lord and have that attitude of submitting to what he would have us do. And that's an individual thing, right? There might be a corporate wide or a societal wide change, but we individually, just as the individuals that that became the judges that the Lord used in great ways, he can use each one of us in a great way. So let's pray.

36:56 Father, we're thankful again that you have not hidden some of the failures of many in the scriptures from us. Lord, some of these things are hard to read, and yet what is easy to read is just how faithful you are. So Lord, we we are grateful for that. We're grateful for the reminder of it, and we just ask you, Lord, to lead us as we go forward. It's in your son's name we pray.

37:24 Amen.