Judges 1

The Book of Judges. This really is a companion study to a large degree, I think, with Joshua, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to go right from Joshua into Judges. It's one of those things just like Ezra and Nehemiah, or something like that, where the books just really go well together, and they, it's really a continuation of the story that we've been dealing with in Joshua, and so I think you're going to see the connection here as we go. Let me give you a little introductory material before we get into the Book of Judges. You'll remember that in our study of Joshua, we said probably every week, I don't think I probably missed a week, that the Book of Joshua is there to teach you and I about how to lay hold of the promises of God by faith, as we begin to walk those out. That's what that means to you and I as we read through the Book of Joshua. It's way more than just a historical account of Israel. It's talking to you and I about living out the promises of God. Just as Israel was going into the promised land, you and I are going into the promised land. But for you and I it's not a geographic location, it is literally the promises of God. How do we do those? Well, you walk by faith. You take up, by faith, the promises of God, and you begin to walk them out. And boy we read, we studied through Joshua, and we saw all the things that can come against you as you begin to walk out God's promises and begin to really lay hold of them and say, as a Christian I'm going to stop living in the wilderness and I'm going to start really, truly, hanging on to the promises of God and walking them out. Well, that creates all kinds of issues. Wouldn't it be wonderful if walking into the promised land was a cakewalk, or suddenly all of our problems went away. But just like Israel, that's where the battles really started. It was when they made that determination, we're going to cross the Jordan, we're going to go into the promised land. Oh man, did the battles heat up at that particular point.

And isn't that just the case with you and I? I'm going to walk with God. I'm going to lay hold of the promises that He has for me on a day-by-day basis and just seems like wham, the enemy just comes out of nowhere and just starts hammering us and we find all kinds of things that are standing against us. And you know the enemy in the Book of Joshua, which they were told to unseat or to get rid of completely and utterly destroy, are the things that you and I battle with. Sin in our life. The sins that we all deal with every day all day. We're dealing with the world. We're dealing with the attacks of the evil one, and these are the things that come against us to try to get us to stop laying hold of the promises of God and to turn back and to go back to Egypt. And that's what the enemy would love to do of course. He'd love you to go back to the place of bondage and slavery. But we're not going to do that. And we don't even want to go back to the wilderness. That's not where we want to be. God has provided this place for us to live, and it's called His promises. We want to live there. We want to walk in them, but boy, I tell you we have all kinds of enemies. Well, Judges now moves on after the initial battles have taken place, but there's still a lot of land to be cleared. There's still a lot of issues to deal with and isn't that just a great picture of our lives in Christ? I mean, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands because it would be ridiculous to do so, but if I did say, how many of you have still have issues in your life that need to be cleared? I know, well I'm confident, that if we're all telling the truth we would all raise our hands and we would together say yeah, that's me. There's a lot of things in my life. There's a lot of issues that still need to be cleared. There's a lot of enemies that still rise up against me all the time. And the Book of Judges begins to speak to us about this issue. And we need to really be listening to what the Lord is saying to us in this book. It's going to talk to us here about failure and getting back on our feet again and so forth. The Book of Judges is all about backsliding, and recovery, and backsliding, and we're going to see that there is a cycle that is repeated here in Judges over and over again. In fact, it can get a little depressing going through it, but it's our lives. This is your life and welcome to it. But the cycle that we see repeated here in the Book of Judges goes something like this: First, the blessing of God, and we all love the blessing of God. We pray for God's blessings, don't we? We pray for ourselves, and we pray for others, we pray for our family members, and we pray God bless this. Every time we sit down and eat, Lord bless this food, we thank You for your rich blessings, we pray that they'd continue and so forth. We love the blessings of God, but what we don't often realize is that the blessings of God can be a problem because the cycle we see in the Book of Judges is that when Israel was walking in the blessings of God, they would get lazy, and they'd start to back off in the areas of their devotion to the Lord. And pretty soon they are beginning to willfully disobey and follow other gods, which would, of course, prompt a response from the Lord Himself, who would raise up some kind of an enemy to buffet them and remind them of the covenant that they had agreed to follow and so forth. And the people, of course, in the book of Judges we see that they don't respond to that, and so God then gives them over into bondage. And by the way that's always what happens when we give in to sin in our lives. Bondage is the result, okay, and it's never otherwise. Sin always follows suit with bondage. Jesus said, he who sins is a slave to sin.

And we see that in the Book of Judges here. And eventually the people are placed under such a heavy sort of a burden that they begin to cry out to the Lord. We're going to see this repeatedly again here in the Book of Judges. And after a time, and sometimes it takes even years of just them crying out to God, the Lord responds and He raises up a deliverer, or if you will, a judge, which is what this book is named after. These individuals that God raised up to deliver His nation from their bondage, they were referred to as Judges. And usually for the lifetime of that judge the people would do pretty good. They would walk with the Lord, and they would continue to serve the Lord, and then as soon as that judge passed from the scene the people would slip back into disobedience and the cycle would begin over again. But if there's one thing that we learn, and we learn it repeatedly, and by the way, repeating a lesson is a great way to learn it, isn't it? You keep getting it over and over again. If there's one thing, we learn from the Book of Judges it's that whenever we compromise obedience to God, it always leads to defeat, and it always ultimately leads to bondage. And that is what the Book of Judges teaches us over and over again. So, it stands for you and I as a kind of warning. Don't compromise. Don't compromise obedience to the Lord. Don't let sin just live in your life. Deal with it. Deal with it in the power of the Spirit. Don't learn to be good friends with your sin. Don't learn to be a friendly neighbor with your sin. We're going to find out that the Israelites did that very thing. Don't intermarry with your sin. That’s something else they're going to do, and they will pay dearly for it. But again, compromising in the area of obedience to God always leads to defeat, and it always leads to bondage. And the key, of course, to breaking the cycle that we see in the Book of Judges, of sin and bondage and deliverance, and sin and bondage and deliverance, and so forth are the very principles that we looked at in the Book of Joshua about continuing to walk in the victory. Continuing to walk by faith, continuing to keep our hearts soft and pliant before the Lord and so forth. All the things that we dealt with. If you missed the book of Joshua then I would encourage you to get on our website and go through it and follow that study and it's a wonderful study. But there are the answers for you and I. The Book of Judges takes us through the lives of these 12 individuals who, it tells us, were raised up as judges during this period from Joshua's death up until the time of the raising up of Samuel. And none of these judges were national leaders in the same way that Moses and Joshua were. These men and in one case of a woman, also in there they were more like regional leaders. They never had the national influence that Moses and Joshua had. They were more limited in their effect to the nation, but so this book chronicles the history again, of the nation of Israel from the death of Joshua up to basically the birth of Samuel, who is the last judge to serve in Israel and really the first of the prophets. And it covers a period of about 325 years. All right? Judges is the trial period for the theocracy of Israel as it was meant to be. Israel was meant to live under a theocracy. They never did it very well at all, but that's what it was meant to do.

--- • Democracy – Ruled by the people • Theocracy – Ruled by God • Monarchy – Ruled by a King • Anarchy – Absence of government or authority (Judges 17:6) Let me just show you quickly on the screen, the different kinds of government that we know of and that we also see in the Bible. We don't see this first one in the Bible, but it's the one we live under supposedly. But that is Democracy. And of course, you know what a democracy is. It means essentially, Ruled by the people. Our government is in a by the people, for the people and so forth. That's a democracy. That wasn't what God intended Israel to live under, okay? Israel was meant to live under a Theocracy, which is the next form of government, and that is essentially Ruled by God. That's where essentially God is king, and God is ruling the people, alright? Now, they went through a theocracy during the period of the judges, but eventually you'll remember during when Samuel was old, they clamored for a king. And Samuel was extremely disappointed. God was disappointed too, but He said, give them what they want. And so, they entered a new time period in the history of Israel, and that was the Monarchy, which of course means ruled by a King. • Democracy – Ruled by the people • Theocracy – Ruled by God • Monarchy – Ruled by a King • Anarchy – Absence of government or authority Now what we're going to also see in the Book of Judges is that because the people threw off the theocracy and would not obey God and they didn't have a king that they ended up with the last form of government, which is no form at all. It's Anarchy. And it is the Absence of government or authority. • Democracy – Ruled by the people • Theocracy – Ruled by God • Monarchy – Ruled by a King • Anarchy – Absence of government or authority

And what you see in Judges 17, and what you see, in fact it's repeated throughout the Book of Judges, is a statement that basically says, and in those days there was no king and each man did as he saw fit. It was just everybody for themself. In fact, what's really interesting about the Book of Judges is that it begins and ends with these bookmarks to tell you exactly what's going on in between. Let me give you an example. Verse 1, as we get into the text. Look with me in your Bible. It says,

Again, the major battles had already been done under Joshua, but now they had to go in and do the cleanup work, and they had to clear the land of the rest of the Canaanites. But I want you to notice what's going on here as we start the Book of Judges. It says that the people, now Joshua has passed away, but the people of Israel gathered together to do what? To inquire of the Lord. Well, that's good. We're happy about that. It doesn't last very long, but you can see that after the death of Joshua, people were still focused on following God. And that's the attitude that you and I are supposed to have about life. We're supposed to inquire of the Lord, right? In fact, I love that passage in the Book of Isaiah that says when people are telling you to consult mediums and spiritists who mutter and this and that, should not a people inquire of their God, it says. That's the question asked. Should not, shouldn't people inquire of their God? This is the attitude you and I are to have. We're to say, God what's going on here? What do you want to do? Lead me in the way that I am to go. We're to be searching out the Word of God. We're to be seeking the face of God. This is good stuff. But Judges ends the very last verse of Judges. Let me read this for you. It's the one I've already referenced. It says,

That's the end of Judges. So here we’ve got the first verse that says they're inquiring of the Lord, we have the last verse that says they're doing what's best in their own eyes. ---

Now let me ask you a question. When you think about this country as a whole, the nation of the United States of America, I know our money says in God we trust. But put that aside for a moment. What do you see happening in a practical sort of a way? Sure. You see people doing what's right in their own eyes, don't you? Sure, that's the way you and I were raised to do what's, well some of you may have been raised in a strong Christian home and that's wonderful, and maybe you were raised from the very get go to inquire of the Lord. Wonderful! But the vast majority of us were raised without any kind of Christian values, or at least any Christian devotion to seeking the face of God. We did what was right in our own eyes, and we were taught that was good. We write songs about how I did it my way. And that is lifted up and exalted as independent and full of self-esteem and things like that, and the world loves that. But that attitude is what brought the downfall of Israel. This first verse of Judges is what you and I ought to be doing. We ought to be saying, Lord, what would you have for us? Which way would you want us to go? Show me, direct me, guide me, help me to understand your ways and so forth. It goes on, and the Lord responds, they come to Him, and they say who's to go up first? “2 The LORD said, “Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand.” And then I want you to notice here, it says in verse 3 that, “And Judah said to Simeon his brother, “Come up with me into the territory allotted to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you.” So Simeon went with him.” Can you stop there for just a moment? This is really interesting. You might think well this sounds like good solid cooperation between tribal units. Judah gets the word from the Lord to go into the land and begin the work, God says, I've given them into your hands, and right away, what's the first thing we see Judah doing? We see him going to the tribe of Simeon and saying, tell you what, let's band together, and let's go up against the enemies of the Lord, these Canaanites, and you’ll help us clear the land, and then we will in turn help you clear the land. And it sounds all good, but it's not exactly what the Lord told him to do. And it's very subtle. And you might even be thinking to yourself right now as you're listening to me, you might be thinking. Paul, aren't you picking nits here?

I mean, that sounds like an awfully small thing. Well, you know what? Disobedience begins with really small things. It begins with very subtle changes and weaknesses in our faith that we may not notice even at first notice. But it's just a small little area of compromise. Do you think people just wake up some day and just decide to completely fly off the handle as it relates to walking with the Lord? It doesn't happen. You don't see people who have a heart for God that just they want to live for Jesus with all of their hearts up until 6 p.m. and then 6:01 they decide to go out on a bender, or rob a bank, or commit adultery, or murder someone. You don't see that happening. What you see in a person's life is a very small incremental move toward disobedience that begins very subtly, very, very small. There's a wonderful verse that I was recently made aware of in the Proverbs again. Let me show you this on the screen, Proverbs chapter 14. Look at this. It says,

The backslider in heart will be filled with the fruit of his ways, and a good man will be filled with the fruit of his ways. Where does backsliding begin? In the heart. It begins by cherishing some aspect of sin. It begins by just giving in, in the small things, and we just pass it off, we justify it and we say well, it's really not that big of a deal. But it begins small, and it grows from there. Let me show you how it grows. Verse 4. “Then Judah went up and the LORD gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand, and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. 5 They found Adoni-bezek at Bezek (and Adonai, by the way, is a title. It means Lord. So, this was the Lord, or the king, if you will, of this region, this city state called Bezek. And it says) and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites.” But it says in verse 6 that, “Adoni-bezek fled, but they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes.” Now let me explain a little bit about what that, it sounds pretty gruesome and cruel, and I grant you that it is. But it was the human form of hamstringing a horse. When they would catch horses from an army that they would conquer, in order to eliminate the possibility of someone taking hold of those horses and being strong because horses in those days were, I mean, that was equal to strength to your army, that and chariots. So, they would hamstring the horses and basically put them out of service so that they could no longer be used as weapons of war, literally. Well, this was the human version of that. By cutting off a man's thumbs he was no longer able to grasp a sword. By cutting off his big toe he was no longer able to walk appropriately, moving appropriately in battle and so forth and it was basically a way of incapacitating somebody. Again, same thing that they would do to a horse and so forth, and it's interesting how it goes on. You’d think Adonai Bezek would be pretty upset about this whole process, but you look what he says in verse 7. It says, “And Adoni-bezek said, “Seventy 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.” And they brought him to Jerusalem, and he died there.” And it's all an interesting story. But what you and I see here is the subtle move toward compromise, and disobedience is growing. They weren't told to cut off anybody's thumbs and big toes and bring them back and just let them die a natural death while they gloated over this conquered king. They were told to eliminate them. Because remember, this is a picture of sin in your life, my life. We were never told to go a different way than just to eliminate it. Get rid of it. How did Jesus refer to the things that cause us to sin? As something that needed to be gouged out or cut off, He used very graphic language. That's fairly gross to think about as far as like gouging out an eye and cutting off a hand, obviously not speaking literally, but symbolically to help you and I understand the radical sort of measures that we are to take to distance ourselves from those things which cause us to sin. And so, we see here this subtle move toward compromise, this attitude that says I can obey when I want to. Or we pick and choose the things that we're going to obey, and we choose to disregard the Word of God when it's not comfortable or we don't want to follow after it or whatever the case might be. The problem with that is that it doesn't end with just cutting off thumbs and toes. It always grows, it always continues, and compromise always moves forward. And when we find an area in our life that we have simply decided, I'm not going to change that. I'm not going to. And we're talking about a willful attitude here, okay? We're not talking about making mistakes. We're talking about a willful decision to say, essentially, to the Lord, I don't care. I don't care what your Word says. And you might not say those words, but in a practical way, because you're continuing on with an area of sin, you are saying that. I don't care. I'm going to do this. We all know people who used to go to church or who used to walk with the Lord. We all know them. We all know people who went to church for a while. They were sitting right there, maybe in that seat you're in, Bible on their lap, listening to the study, worshipping the Lord, and now they don't go anymore. In fact, you see them at Walmart, and they usually turn around and try to walk the other way, or when you do talk to them they have this very quick sort of hi-bye, and they're down the road, because they don't really want to meet with you anymore. And you wonder, what happened? What happened in their life? What's going on that this thing just came over them and they're not walking with God, they're not worshiping the Lord, they're not attending church, they're not reading their Bible, they're not praying anymore. They used to be strong prayer, and maybe somebody used to go out and witness and now they don't even go to church. What happened? Well, it's very possible that they came up against an area in their life that they simply chose to make friends with instead of getting rid of, in terms of sin. Something small, and it might have started very, very small in a very subtle way. I'm just going to let that one go. And it grows. And it grows in everybody's life. And eventually that compromise grows to the point where we are defeated, and then ultimately, we are in bondage. How many times have you met someone and found out later that they used to pastor a church? Boy, if we could fill a room with former pastors, former Sunday school teachers, former Bible study leaders who aren't even going to church anymore, let alone reading their Bible or anything else. We would have this graphic picture of just the toll that this takes on people's lives when we refuse, when we begin to buddy up to sin and we stop dealing ruthlessly with it. And that's what we're called to do, is deal ruthlessly with our sin. There was a blog post. I shared with my staff yesterday morning. We talked a little bit about this, but there was a blog post that got noted, linked on Facebook that I read, it was very, very short, and it was quite good actually. The author simply was making the point that Christians are very lackadaisical these days about the consumption of alcohol. Born-again believers who have absolutely no problem with posting pictures on Facebook or other places with a wine bottle or a bottle of beer or something like that.

And you might say, well, Pastor Paul, do you want to put people under bondage and legalistic sort of requirements related to that? No. But we are being very public, aren't we? And the Bible says, and if you want to read it, read it for yourself. Go back to Romans chapter 14. Read what Paul has to say about how we should care about the weaker brother who may be tuning in to your lifestyle on their newsfeed on Facebook, and finding out the kind of things that you do in your spare time, and Paul says that we ought to care about those people. In fact, Paul's conclusion is if it's going to cause my brother to stumble, I won't drink or eat meat or do anything that's going to be a problem for my brother. If that's what's going to be the issue, I'll give it up. Christians have lost that sense of what it means to sacrifice for others. But this whole thing of just being lax, kind of lax about certain things. Not that big of a deal. Or posting things on Facebook with crude language. That one really shocks me sometimes. I mean, somebody puts a post on there and there's vulgarity and obscenity in that. And I'm thinking, is that okay? Is that really, okay? So, there's this subtle thing that just somehow, some way, we give ourselves permission to not care about certain things. To just not care. It's okay. And it grows. Verse 8 says,

Now, it says they captured the city of Jerusalem, but they didn't retain it, because it's not going to be until the ruler of the reign of King David when that city is actually taken for good. And David takes it, and calls it the city of David, captures it, and makes it the capital.

And then we have a section here that is repeated from our study of Joshua talks about.

She must have been a very beautiful young woman to be a prize for going in and risking it all to take a city.

--- “3 And (it says) Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, captured it. And he gave him Achsah his daughter for a wife. 14 When she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey, and Caleb said to her, “What do you want?” 15 She said to him, “Give me a blessing. Since you have set me in the land of the Negeb, give me also springs of water.” And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.” Once again, he had given as a marriage present this city, and so she says I want water to go along with it. “16 And (we're told) the descendants of the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up with the people of Judah from the city of palms into the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the Negeb near Arad, and they went and settled with the people. 17 And Judah went with Simeon his brother, and they defeated the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath and devoted it to destruction. So, the name of the city was called Hormah. 18 Judah also captured Gaza with its territory, and Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory.” But they weren't able to maintain those either. Because you probably recognize those names as Philistine territories. Today we still call this place the Gaza Strip, but it was the land of the Philistines and we, it says they took them, but they didn't keep them. Okay. Then we come to a really interesting verse in verse 19, “And the LORD was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, (but look at this) but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain (Why?) because they had chariots of iron.” Now, God told Judah when he sent him out to clear the land, he says, I've given them into your hands. Okay? That's a promise. I have given them into your hands. What is required for you and I to take a promise and walk it out? It's faith, isn't it? Well, sometimes our faith gets assaulted by something that looks bigger than the power of God. And in this case, it was chariots of iron. They had chariots of iron. And so, the Israelites, from the tribe of Judah said well we can't do that. We can't take that land. They're too strong for us. You know what, though? God told them, before they went into the land, they were going to meet up with people that had chariots of iron. He didn't hold it back from them. He didn't say, well good luck when you get there. You can see what they he told them ahead of time, listen, they're going to have chariots of iron, but don't worry about it, because I will go before you, I will give them into your hands, and you are to utterly destroy them. Do you know, God never promised us that there would not be chariots of iron in our lives. ---

He never promised us that. It grieves me every time I see it, this thing, whether it's on Facebook or on a website or somebody says it or sings it for that matter. It's been written into songs that God will never give you more than you can bear. It's ridiculous. Bible doesn't say that. And yet people believe it and they echo it. God never promised He wouldn't give you iron chariots. What He told you was, I'm enough and I've given these things into your hands, and you can defeat the enemy. And there are going to be situations in our lives that we are going to be fabulously outgunned and outnumbered and we're going to look at the situation and we're going to say there's just no way. It's going to happen. But God's promise remains that you and I can be victorious as we take hold of the promise by faith, that God is able. And the mantra that you and I ought to be saying over and over again is, I can't, but God can. I can't do it, but God can. That was the statement that Caleb said, remember way back when he was one of the spies that went into the land. God can do this. God is able. Verse 20 goes on, it says,

That's interesting. He told him to wipe out the people. And they made a deal. They made a deal because they wanted to go wipe out the city of Luz. And what did they get? They let a guy go who went and started another city called Luz. It's crazy, isn't it? “Manasseh (verse 27) did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shean and its villages, or Taanach and its villages, or the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of Ibleam and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages, for the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in that land. 28 When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely.” This is another compromise, forced labor. We're not going to destroy them. God told them to wipe them out, but they said, you know what? You know what? Wait a minute here. If we take these people and we make them into slaves, we can get a lot of stuff done. Think of the cities we can build, the roads we can build. Wow. So, this is the temptation of the businessman. That forward thinker, the visionary. This is their temptation. They realize that what if I disobey God in this one area, there's a lot of money to be made here, potentially. Goes on to say in verse 29 that,

Again, a compromise. “31 Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco.” But they continued to live among them. Verse 33, “Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh.” But they continued to live among them. Verse 34, “The Amorites (look at this, look at verse 34. The Amorites) pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain.” Now, you not only have a situation where the Israelites couldn't force the Canaanites out, you've got the Canaanites turning and forcing the Israelites out. Forcing them back up into the hills. Does sin ever do that in your life? Does sin ever force you back? Do you feel like sometimes you take a step backwards instead of forward when it comes to sin? It says in verse 35 that,,

And that's a simple way of saying they stayed in the land. They stayed there. And this is our lives. This is our lives. Giving in to sin and allowing, you know courting sin, making friends with sin. Compromising on our obedience to the Lord and allowing sin to live in our lives, and then starting to get pushed around by sin. Where sin begins to take land from us.