Introduction to Judges (Part B)

I think that looking, you know, that hindsight thing, looking at this whole failure to settle the land and purge it, they departed from what was succeeding. Don't churches do that?

That's what the problem with Galatia was, having begun in the Spirit, you're now being made perfect in the flesh. You say, in what way, maybe? Well, in this way. How did they conquer all these other big cities, fortified cities, as a nation?

Now how are they fighting as tribes? 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. Today, Pastor Rick will continue his introduction to the book of Judges. 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 the 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 fail 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 1. 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 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 a 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. And as it says here, now after the death of Joshua in verse one, and then it goes on, the children of Israel asked Yahweh, Who's going to go first? They go to the Lord. Obviously, consulting the Urim and the Thunim, the priest held that would give a yes or no answer.

It would eliminate a lot of, you know, human sort of manipulations, yes or no answer coming from the Lord. This is a good beginning, but they won't be thorough. And that's their downfall. It was a half-hearted attempt.

It was some other problems. Let's get it as we go along. Verse two, And Yahweh said, Judah shall go up.

Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand. Difficult to object when God says Judah shall go up. It reminds us that everyone is not to attempt just anything. Asher couldn't say, No, I'll go up. Judah's going up.

It's not for you. And Judah, the prominent tribe, of course, goes back to the prophecies of Jacob. The scepter shall not depart from Judah, the rule.

And rightfully, she's taking the lead. And it continues in verse two, Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand. Joshua has gone up to God, but God has not gone away from the people.

He's still there. It was the same with Moses. Verse three, So Judah said to Simeon, his brother, Come up with me to my allotted territory, that we may fight against the Canaanites.

And I will, likewise, go with you to your allotted territory. And Simeon went with him. Now again, at this point, some of the commentators, you know, how faithless of Judah. Well, you could look at it the other way. How considerate of Judah. I have a third view. I think that looking, you know, that hindsight thing, looking at this whole failure to settle the land and purge it, they departed from what was succeeding. Don't churches do that? That's what the problem with Galatia was.

Having begun in the spirit, you're now being made perfect in the flesh. You say, In what way, maybe? Well, in this way. How did they conquer all these other big cities, fortified cities as a nation? Now how are they fighting as tribes?

That's the cause. Later, when they get defeated by those with iron chariots, the solution would have been bring your nation against them, put a siege around them, starve them into submission. And they don't do that. All we read is they can't beat the chariots. And I listen to this story in the Book of Judges, and I say, Lord, what am I supposed to do with this? And so verse three, so Judah said to Simeon, you come.

Two tribes agreeing to assist each other. Nothing wrong with that, but not enough. And I will not charge them with faithlessness. I think that's a very faithful thing. God doesn't charge it. In fact, God going to give them the early victories. Verse four, Then Judah went up, and Yahweh delivered the Canaanites and the Pezerites into their hand, and they killed 10,000 men at Bezek. So no objection from the Lord here, no criticism. In fact, he blesses them.

But there is still a lot, a lot to do. Verse five, And they found Adonai Bezek in Bezek. Nowhere else would you find Adonai Bezek, but in Bezek. And fought against him, and they defeated the Canaanites and the Pezerites. Then Adonai Bezek fled, and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Well, it wasn't funny to Adonai Bezek, but to us it's kind of, it's almost common, at least to me.

Maybe some of you have a sicker humor than I do, and it's even funnier. But the whole scene is, well, they caught him and they hobble him so that he cannot fight. Okay, but he's a king.

He doesn't really need to fight. Well, all those days they expected the kings to be on the battlefield. They should have killed him. They were not to spare him as a trophy. They were not to use him as a warning by leaving him alive. They were to execute them. God was very clear about this. Deuteronomy 7 24. I'll give you some of the references.

I would love to read them because they're very full of rich information, but they just don't have, we don't have the time. But this opened the door for Israel's disobedience that we're going to get in this chapter in dealing with the heathens in their land. They started walking back from clear commandments. But the warning is, well, what do I do? How am I on the battlefield against the Pezerites in my life, against the Canaanites in my life? Let me just be careful before, you know, the saying, maybe you don't. If you live in a glass house, don't throw stones.

Make sure you always have clothes on too. So, rather than comply and crushing the enemies, only cripple them. That's partial obedience, which is disobedience.

And it would cost them dearly. Verse 7, and Adonai Bezek said, 70 kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off, used to gather scraps under my table, as I have done, so God has repaid me. Then they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died.

Well, he's hobbled, he's unfit for war and work, but he's still an emblem of disobedience to the Jew, not a victory. And Joshua, what did he do when he locked the kings in the cave, five of them, and he came back. He'd lock them, come back, and he put his foot on their neck, and he executed them. Israel was the scourge of God. They were the instrument of judgment. These mutilations, such as this, were not uncommon.

Historians write about them. In fact, one historian, it became sort of an emblem of cowardice, because there were those in the Roman times, for example, that would cut off their thumbs so they would not have to go to war. And a historian makes mention that those men of Gaul, they all had their thumbs.

In other words, the Romans conquered the Gauls, but the Gauls, none of them were looking to get out of war and hack off their thumbs. In 1969, my brother was in the army at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and he had asthma. It was boot camp for him, and asthma flared up, and of course they're not going to send him anywhere like that, but home. And so my mom and dad, we packed up, we drove down to South Carolina, and there we met with my brother, encouraged him and all that stuff, I guess. I don't know, I was just kind of young, 12 or so. But there was another soldier that had become buddies with my brother, and guess what? He didn't have a thumb.

He cut it off so that he wouldn't go to Vietnam. And so I'm reading this, and I had that flashback. I can remember it too. I mean, you're a little kid, you notice things like that, and you don't unnoticed them for a long time.

And so it's interesting, I don't know, just maybe it makes you think of something, and I'm going to move on now. He said they used to gather scraps under my table. Again, history is filled in its annals with abused, defeated kings that were vanquished, and they were treated horribly in many times, many cases. But we're not to think that all the 70 kings were there at one time.

That would be a big table, and it would be quite, you know, a mess. So, but over a period of time, this man had what we would say notches on his belt. He says, as I have done so, God has repaid me. That's an interesting confession. Not about the God part, because the people believed in gods. But his confession reveals that he was conscious of corruption.

He was saying, I've done things to people that I should have been repaid for, and here I am being repaid for. So he was aware of right and wrong. His sense of corrupted justice is the very thing God is dealing with. That's why the Jews were sent there, because this was one of the least of the corruptions amongst the peoples of the land. Same thing when we get to Romans. And to this very day, people without God can be certainly mindful of corruption, of injustice, of immorality.

In fact, you can be a moralist and go to hell because you've not submitted to the Lord. But Romans chapter 2, Paul talks about this. He says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law, he's talking about the law of Moses, of course, by nature do the things in the law, and of course that law of Moses includes the Gospel in church progression. He says, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness in between themselves, their thoughts accusing or else excusing them. So Paul is saying, people without Christ, they have a sense of law. Use that when you witness to them.

Appeal to that sense of law and justice that comes from God. And so, again, this corruption that existed in the land of promise brought God's judgment through his peoples. Now, verse 8. Now the children of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it.

They struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. Here now from verse 8 through 16 is a break in the chronology. Judah's conquest under Joshua is looked at. It's a parenthesis, you could say. When we get to chapter 17 to the end, it's an appendix, but here it's a parenthesis. In a parenthesis it says, this is something that's important that goes with the other, the major thought that is being laid out before you. And so he inserts the victories of Judah to show that conquering the enemies was doable.

If we keep the momentum, keep the pressure on them. And he's retelling of the past victories in Joshua's day, placing it in sharp contrast to the subsequent failings of the Jews. So here the book of Judges is put together in its final form 300 years later after this event. And the writer is saying to his generation, do you see they started out following God?

Okay, wait a minute. Look back what happened to some of the others that were following God, how they vanquished their enemies. Don't lose that. Learn that lesson. That's the idea behind putting this break in the chronology. Judah won, of course, the city of Jabez, which would later be called Jerusalem, and yet they lost it. And when they lost it from not occupying it, the enemy got stronger. Well, is that found anywhere in the New Testament?

Absolutely. Jesus told this parable about the man who had a demon, and the demon was cast out. And then we pick it up. He says, then he says, after he wanders around looking for a place to inhabit, he says, I will return to my house from which I came.

And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. And then he brings seven more demons with him, and the man stayed the seven times worse. Well, we're seeing that in some of the cities in the promised land. The Jews conquered the city, and they moved on to the next objective, and they did not leave an occupying force there. And so the people who escaped would come back and regroup and fortify themselves and then be almost impossible to dislodge.

And that's what we're going to read in certain parts of Judges as we move through the book. In verse 9, and afterward the children of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who dwell in the mountains in the south and in the lowland. Then Judah went against the Canaanites who dwelt in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Kerjeth-arba, and they killed Shisei and those other two guys. Verse 11, from there they went against the inhabitants of Deber. The name of Deber was formerly Kerjes-Sefer.

It was a library evidently in Kerjes-Sefer. And anyway, while the tribes are fighting these other places, the Jebusites are likely coming in and rebuilding what was conquered until David came and took it for good. Verse 12, then Caleb said, whoever attacks Kerjes-Sefer and takes it to him, I will give my daughter Aksar as wife. And Athnael, the son of Knaaz, Caleb's younger brother, took it, so he gave him his daughter Aksar as wife. Now we read that in Joshua 15, so I'm not going to comment.

What a beautiful story. So remarkable is this story of Athnael, Aksar, and Caleb that not only is it recorded in Joshua, but it's repeated in Judges. This man, Athnael, he will be the first judge, first of the judges when we get to chapter 3.

We'll come back to him. Continuing with this little story, it says, now it happened when she came to him, that is the daughter of Caleb, the wife of Athnael, whom he won in war. She, through war, she urged him to ask her father, verse 14, for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey, and Caleb said to her, what do you wish? So she said to him, give me a blessing, since you have given me land in the south, give me also springs of water, and Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. A good dad, Caleb, a man with a sharp sword and a tender heart.

Couldn't say no to his little girl, even though now she's married. He says, yeah, I'll give you the springs, you have water, and all that land I gave you, and I'll give you another spring too, because I love you. Verse 16, now the children of the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up from the city of Palms with the children of Judah into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the south area near Arad, and they went and dwelt among the people. Now, the city of Palms is usually, well, that's what Jericho is, but Jericho was destroyed, condemned, and cursed, so the Kenites moved on to another land and under the protection of the tribe of Judah.

The Kenites were a nomadic people historically. They come from Moses' father-in-law, Jethro, and now, so now the parentheses ends here at verse 16, the look back, the highlight of their victories, and he now goes back to present time. He says, and Judah went with his brother Simeon, because remember, we read that after Joshua had died, where Joshua was alive when that last paragraph we just read took place, and so Simeon and they attacked the Canaanites and inhabited Zephath and utterly destroyed it, so the name of the city was called Hormah.

I like Zephath better personally, but no one asked me. Anyway, again, the story resumes, but this is an interesting note. Here he says, and utterly destroyed it. Simeon and Judah utterly destroyed this, the resistance. That phrase, utterly destroyed, only shows up twice in the book of Judges. It shows up 11 times in the book of Joshua. What dominant word we find in Judges is delivered.

That shows up 28 times, because as I mentioned, they kept making bad choices, and God would send a deliverer, a mini-savior, to get them out of it. Verse 18, also Joshua took Gaza with its territory. I'm not struggling with the word territory. I can read the word territory.

It's that cough. Anyway, and Judah took Gaza with its territory. Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory. Some of you might hear the word Ekron. Oh, never mind.

Let's just stay focused. We have too much information here. These are three of the five major Philistine cities that would be a problem for the Jews for a long time. Ashtad and Eglon are the other two that are not mentioned here, and these peoples in the Promised Land, they had been warned of God's judgment coming their way, and they knew why. They knew that it was because of their corrupted lifestyles as well as their fake gods. They had Egypt to remind them. They had Jericho. They had the nations on the east side of Jordan. Word had reached them all.

They had over 40 years to be ready for this. We learned that just from the story of Rahab, and what big thing out of the story of Rahab is that God was ready to accept any of these people if they would turn to him. That's the big part of the story of Rahab. It's sort of like when the Jews were conquering Jericho, God says, Oh, by the way, look at this.

And there coming from the story rising out is this woman that has nothing about her that is considered righteous to a Jew, and yet she's brought in like she's family and her family with her. 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.