Introduction to Judges (Part A)

This generation, with the exception of the remnant, the righteous remnant that is always there, they opted out.

They got tired of the work. It's so easy to get tired as a Christian trying to do right in the face of so many wrong things, so many temptations and trials, righteous fatigue. Paul warned about that. He says, don't get tired of doing good. Why would he have to say that to anyone?

Because we do get tired. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the Book of Judges.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Judges Chapter 1 as he introduces this book. Book of Judges Chapter 1. We're going to have an introduction and then we'll look at the verse by verse of this first chapter in Judges. Sin has the upper hand in this book.

There's no question about that. And what we're going to watch is this battle between God's commandments and human weakness and disobedience, sin and recovery throughout the Book of Judges. Blood, the sweat, the tears, the fears, all that goes into a life and a world of sin, everything under the sun. This book in some ways is one long parable with a tragic ending. One historian said about history that history is a vast warning system.

Well, it's not much benefit if the warnings are not heeded. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself as to who compiled this Book of Judges, which spans the 325-year period. Samuel is the one that everybody likes to say is the one, and he is the most likely candidate of all that, from the people we know, but it could have been anybody else that we don't know. But if it were Samuel or a man like Samuel, certainly was a man conscious and desiring to please God, that individual is compiling this history of the Jews to warn believers to heed, to listen to God. And it is with that purpose in mind that he is alerting us to what can happen if you depart. Now we might say, well, I know all this.

Do I really need it? Yes, we do. When the Holy Spirit pours into a believer, it's like he's pouring into a sieve sometime. Sometimes we just get filled and it goes right out. How many times in this church you've heard powerful sermons, and just to forget all about it by the time you get to the lobby. I don't know if you're laughing at the powerful sermon part or the truth about we're like sieves sometimes. Now when we study Joshua, we have to put these side by side a little bit. We want to benefit.

We want to squeeze from these lessons as much as we can. And our war, our personal war against the flesh and the world and Satan. Joshua, the book of conquest, a very encouraging book. It says, here's your life, Christian, crossing swords with the enemy to claim what God has given to you in this life. That's the book of Joshua. Have not I commanded you, be strong and of good courage, said God to Joshua.

Do not be afraid or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. And every Christian locks onto that. Judges, by contrast, is the book of failure. And so our trilogy, Joshua Judges and Ruth, conquest, failure, hope. Then we get to Samuel, the heroes come into picture right up front. And we're going to get some heroes and judges, too.

It's not all doom and gloom. But Judges is educational. Look, well, just listen to me as I read Judges 17, verse six.

In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. You read the book of Judges, you read that verse one time, and you got it.

It just fills up more than once. You understand, everybody was doing their own thing, not God's thing. And that's why it was so much trouble and sorrow.

So many enigmas in this book, perplexities. I mean, Balaam and Samson. How do you account for their behavior in light of what they saw? Well, how do you account for what Judas did in light of what he saw? No one saw what Judas saw outside of that group of people around Christ the days he walked.

No one saw that. Yet he betrayed the Lord. Joshua tells the story of the Jews entering the Promised Land. Judges tells the story of them settling the Promised Land after the death of Joshua. These are the blood-stained stories of the lesser saviors.

That's what the judges were. They were saviors in the lesser sense. Let's not lose sight of that. But saviors nonetheless, not from sin on the soul, but sin in life. In a book which records so much sin, so much spiritual failure, wouldn't we expect as New Testament believers to hear the word repentance one time?

We don't hear it. Repentance, that word really is a New Testament word. Jesus is the one that just gave us what repentance really means, what it really involves. Now, that does not mean that confession is absent from the book of judges. It's just interesting that you want to find it more than what we do.

You begin to thirst for it as you read through the pages. I mean, look what Samson had to go through before he finally calls out to the Lord in shame and asks to redeem himself, not his soul, but his life, the history of his life, one more time. And God says yes. The mercy of God is every page of the Bible. It's between every line of the Bible.

Judges 10, verse 10, and the children of Israel cried out to Yahweh saying, we have sinned against you because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baal's. Baal, Baal, the god of rain, the god of power. In an agrarian culture like this, you need a god of rain. That's the natural man speaking. A history of failure, born of weakness, unto disobedience, unto corruption from the surrounding people's lessons abound for us.

Watch it. If you want to be weak Christian, then let the surrounding peoples influence you rather than you influence them. It's what Jesus said. You're the salt of the earth. You're supposed to be influencing them, not the other way around. You're the light of the world. They're the darkness of the world. Bring the light to them so they can get out of it. A record of God dispatching these lesser saviors rather than abandoning his people.

Instead of saying, you know what, I'm fed up with you. I did all this through Joshua, through Moses, and this is what I get in return, I'll find someone else. God does not do that. Jeremiah pointed to these events in the history of the Jews, and Jeremiah, throughout his prophecies, was saying to the same thing to the people.

God is not giving up on you. That does not mean you can follow other gods and not stand judgment forever for that, but it does mean that God is willing to keep his people, his people, if the people are willing to remain with him. Jeremiah 2, verse 7, I brought you into a bountiful country to eat its fruit and its goodness, but you, but when you entered, you defiled my land and made my heritage an abomination. The priest did not say, where is Yahweh?

And those who handled the law did not know me. The rulers who transgressed against me, the prophets prophesized by Baal and walked after things that do not profit. You can say that to a lot of places that call themselves churches. The apostate church, remember, is gaining momentum. It is not going to diminish. It is going to continue to strengthen. It is like a bad storm out at sea coming towards land.

It is going to gain, and when it hits land, unlike a hurricane, instead of losing strength, it will gain. This is the story of the apostate church in the book of Revelation in the end times. People in the days of the judges were less faithful than their leaders, but by the time we get to kings, it is the other way around.

The kings are less faithful than the people, but in both cases, there is a remnant. There is always a remnant, and so this book of Judges makes us sad when we read it, but glad when we understand that God is saying, the book of Judges is a training film now. It is so you can watch how not to rescue people. You know, maybe if you were, you know, an emergency care worker, you get in your training, you say, this is a rescue gone wrong. Watch this. It is painful to watch, but we can benefit from this. That is the book of Judges for us.

It is actual footage. As I mentioned, it covers a period of 325 years. Twelve judges in this book.

Three hundred and fifty years until the first king of the Jews comes, that rotten Saul, and that adds two more judges to it, Eli and Samuel, both were judges of Israel. And again, God revealing his desire to deliver his people who brought problems, trouble on themselves. Do you know someone, or maybe it is you. Maybe it is you from time to time. It makes, you just make wrong choices. You know, people like that. They always make the wrong choice. And somehow, some way they survive. They make their loved ones hurt, and often pay. And to a life like that, God says, look at Judges.

A whole history, three hundred years of people making the wrong choice. But in that, I still worked. I still blessed.

I still rescued. And that brings us great relief. The format of Judges is thematic, rather than chronological, or strictly chronological. In other words, we like to pick up the book of Judges as it starts off, and we would like it to continue. That, okay, Joshua died, then this is what happened.

But it does not do that. It starts off, Joshua dies, this is what happened. Oh, and look back at this. Okay, let's go back forward again.

Oh, remember this happened? Okay, let's go back forward again. And then, at the end of the Judges, in the last chapters, it puts a collection of stories, from chapter seventeen to twenty-one, of what happened in the beginning of the history of the Jews. Because it's not interested in chronology, it's speaking in themes. The audience, the original audience, would have understood their history. They would have, it would be sort of like writing an American history, and you start off, but you start moving around in the history, because you know your audience understands, you make a reference to World War II, it doesn't belong in the colonial age of our history. And then at the end, you want to sum it up with the forefathers.

Well, we would follow that, but people that would come along a couple of thousand years later from a different culture, would get lost. Why are they referencing Eisenhower, you know, at the beginning, in Washington at the end, out of chronological order? But, if you're making a point, then you say, oh, I get it. They referenced Eisenhower because of his ability to work with difficult generals. And then they, so you get the point.

That's why it's sometimes hard. If you're a student of, or a teacher of the Book of Judges, you have to look for that, or else you'll spend a lot of hours trying to figure out how something got mentioned when it was already said in another book somewhere else. So no author is named as I mentioned. But there is internal evidence, and that means just reading the book, you can put the clues together to realize that the book was compiled long after the events took place. For example, when it says, in those days, there was no king.

Well, it's a look backwards from a period when there is a king. That would be Saul. And yet, it speaks of Jerusalem as belonging to Jabez, which tells us that it was before David conquered it, when it says, to this day, the Jebusites live there, then you know that it was before David came and took it. So again, look standing this Book of Judges beside the Book of Joshua, this stark comparison emerges. The Book of Joshua was characterized by faith.

It starts off with God telling Joshua, don't be afraid, be strong, and it continues, and it tells us of the tribes saying to Joshua, we've got your back. We're not going to put a knife in your back. We've got your back. We're giving you the benefit of the doubt.

We're going to follow what you tell us to do, and if anybody gets in your way, we're siding with you. Boy, the church could learn lessons from that, just that. If the church could grab that, how much stronger she would be. I have this joke about a dream I've been telling some folks recently. It's not a real dream that I've had, but it's one I dream about dreaming.

And I dream I'm in this stadium and it's packed, and people are still coming in from all these multitudes of people, and you know who they are? They're people who used to come to the church. Sarcasm, but it's true in spirit, and it should not be. You have people leaving good churches to go to wacky churches and having no problems with the wacks, or wackies, but abandoning the solid ones because there's a little pressure put on them. These are lessons that are all through our scripture. Oh, but the pastors, they don't come across squeaky clean either. How many pastors say, I should have been something else? When God says, don't look back when you're plowing.

But the pressures come and they make you want to look back. And so the lessons are for us to do something with them, not just to be very cozy about, it's so nice to sit down and read a good book of the Bible, and so disappointing to have to go do it. Isn't that chapter of love wonderful? So Joshua is characterized by faith, but Judges is characterized by faithlessness. And yet again, the emphasis that God did not abandon. Clearly the historian again is trying to impress his audience with the need to heed.

And so we have this. Judges is the book of no king, but 1 Samuel, which is the book that comes out of the Judges. The Ruth, the book of Ruth takes place during the period of the Judges. Samuel, 1 Samuel is the end of the period of Judges. 2 Samuel is the kings, into the kings. Well, Judges is the book of no kings, but 1 Samuel is the book of man's king, the king that the people wanted to have. 2 Samuel is the book of God's king, David. There's a lot of prophecy just in that alone. The world today is living in the book of Judges, according to this theme, because there is no king in Israel.

Why not? We will not have this man rule over us. Caesar is our king.

That is what they said. We have no king but Caesar. Next, man's king will come in Antichrist. Saul, the first king of Israel was anti-righteous. He spent his days hounding the righteous man David, the man according to God's heart, the man that was prophesied over and anointed and the prophecies didn't stop. Even Abigail says, David, God has got his hands on your life.

Don't mess it up with this petty vendetta. David got it because all the people understood where David was going. Even Saul understood. And yet, Saul was obsessed with destroying this righteous man. Antichrist will be obsessed with destroying the righteous also. He will hunt and hurt the righteous as did Saul. Remember, Saul had those priests, a whole village of priests wiped out. Then God's king will appear after Antichrist.

In fact, he will deal with Antichrist thoroughly. He will defeat his enemies and establish his kingdom in Israel. Now you might notice that the book of Ruth, which I mentioned takes place during the period of the judges, is a book of hope. It is a book of love. It is a book of harvest. And that's the age we are in, following this track, this microcosm of prophecy just in the outline of these four books counting Ruth.

And so, in this sense, living in the book of Ruth, we are sharing in the harvest. And what are we waiting for? The wedding. The wedding.

The bridegroom, the Lord himself. So we ask these questions looking at this book. Did the older generations fail to tell the following generations, their children, about God and all that he did in the conquest of the land?

Well, you cannot charge them with that. Because when we finished Joshua, we covered all the monuments they built. What was there, like 12 of them? They had monuments everywhere. Remember what the Lord did. Remember how he slew these kings.

Remember how he did, you know, and all of these things were all around. No, this generation, with the exception of the remnant, the righteous remnant that is always there, they opted out. They got tired of the work. It's so easy to get tired as a Christian trying to do right in the face of so many wrong things, so many temptations and trials, righteous fatigue. Paul warned about that. He says, don't get tired of doing good. Why would he have to say that to anyone?

Because we do get tired. Now, the first time I went through Judges, I pretty much got in step with the commentators, and they're pretty harsh, many of them, on the Jewish people at this time. Now, some of it's deserved.

They're certainly on squeaky clean. But this time, looking at the story, I'm approaching it this way. Yeah, this generation, after Joshua, began to fail, and it just continued. And God would raise up a deliverer, smooth it out, they'd fail again. I'd like to see the church do better, but she has not. Church history is shameful. You read church history, you say, you know what, I'm going to go read my Bible, because it's quite disgusting. And not only, you don't have to wait to get to church history before you understand the corruption that sin has caused, even amongst the righteous. And we should get strength from this.

And it's a paradox, seems to contradict, but it does not. We get strength from this. Galatia, that church in Galatia, it was bewitched. Paul said, who's bewitched you? Begun in the Spirit. Now you're trying to be perfected in the flesh. You come to the Lord with your heart wide open. If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation.

And then the next thing you know, you're telling the Holy Spirit, I really don't need you, I can do this myself. And that's what legalism was doing to them. Ephesus was seduced. Jesus had to say to them through John, you left your first love. You've been seduced away. Pergamos consented to Balaam, that greedy prophet that wanted to curse God's people, but couldn't do it.

So he came up with other bad ideas to hurt them. Thyatira, they accommodated Jezebel. Come on in, Jezi, have a seat, join us. You're one of us, Jezebel.

What can we do for you? Sardis died on the vine. Still connected, you have a name that you're alive, but I say you're dead. Scathing. Then there's Laodicea. One word sums up Laodicea, and sickening is part of it, but that's not the one. Wretched. I say to you, Jesus said, you are wretched. So before we start piling on against the Jews, the Hebrews that failed to live up to the standard and obey the commandments and grab hold of all that God had for them, before we pile up against them, let's remember ourselves a little bit. And maybe in that, that exercise of grace, the lessons can be sweeter, more effective for us.

So their story is remembered not for us to mock them or belittle them, but to be built up because of them, to skip that step. Well, that's my introduction. Now would be a good time for the standing ovation.

Kidding, kidding, kidding. All right, we've got too much to cover to be fooling around with you. Let's go to verse one. Now after the death of Joshua, it came to pass that the children of Israel asked Yahweh saying, who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? Well, the heathen would be very much made stronger in his heart when they heard the news that the mighty Joshua, the captain of the Lord's armies is dead. That would have put a little pep in their step and they did recover strength and they did fortify themselves and they did become stronger and they did become a problem because the people did delay before they got down to business. They made some other mistakes, I think, as I, as I look at this and I've been, you know, going over this over and over in my head, you know, I'm shaving and I'm thinking, oh, I don't have a pad to write that. It's a good thought and I still can't remember what it was.

So we all kind of missed out. But anyway, the Canaanites evidently assumed threatening posture at this point in their history. The Jews got word that they were fortifying themselves.

So without Joshua, they did the right thing. They went to the Lord. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross Reference Radio.