Amen.
For our script first scripture reading this morning we turn to Joshua chapter 24 beginning at the first verse. Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem and some of the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel, and they presented themselves before God.
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Long ago your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Tara the father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and led him through all the land of Canaan and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac, and to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau; and I gave Esau the hill country of Seer to possess. But Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.
And I sent Moses and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt with what I did in the midst of it, and afterward I brought you out. Then I brought your fathers out of Egypt, and you came to the sea, and the Egyptians pursued your fathers with chariots and horsemen to the Red Sea. And when they cried to the Lord, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians and made the sea come upon them and cover them, and your eyes saw what I did in Egypt, and you lived in the wilderness a long time.
Then I brought you to the land of the Amorites who lived on the other side of the Jordan. They fought with you, and I gave them into your hand, and you took possession of their land, and I destroyed them before you.
Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and fought against Israel, and he sent and invited Balaam the son of Baor to curse you. But I would not listen to Balaam; indeed, he blessed you, so I delivered you out of his hand.
And you went over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Gurgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I gave them into your hand. And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites. It was not by your sword or by your bow.
I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.
Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the god your father served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods, for it is the Lord our God who brought us and our fathers up from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who did those great signs in our sight and preserved us in all the way that we went, and among whom all the peoples through whom we passed.
And the Lord drove out before us all the peoples, the Amorites who lived in the land. Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
But Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord, for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your transgressions or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you harm and consume you, after having done you good.”
The people said to Joshua, “No, but we will serve the Lord.” And Joshua said to the people, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him.” And they said, “We are witnesses.” He said, “Then put away the foreign gods that are among you and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
And the people said to Joshua, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.”
So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day and put in place statutes and rules for them at Shechem. And Joshua wrote those words in the book of the law of God, and he took a large stone and set it up there under the terebinth that was by the sanctuary of the Lord.
And Joshua said to the people, “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us. Therefore it shall be a witness against you lest you deal falsely with your God.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Lord, we are a people that you chose to enter into covenant with. We did not ask for it, but we received it in grace. Our ancestors promised to obey you, and they failed. We promise to be obedient to you, and we fail. Help us, we pray. Encourage us. Help us to find our hope in you, trusting you to forgive and the forgiveness that you have given us in your Son, Jesus. Let us see him now in your words and in our history working and moving for our good. It’s in his name we pray. Amen.
So we’re now turning to an often neglected portion of the Old Testament, the book of Judges. But before we delve into this ancient text, we need to firmly ground ourselves in the book’s context.
To do that, we have to rewind just a little ways further back to the ending of the book of Joshua. We shall then try to understand some answers to the multifaceted question of why Judges. Why should we study the book of Judges? Why is the book called Judges? Why were these people called Judges?
And why did the Lord use this kind of imperfect and sinful individual during that particular period of redemptive history and not during other periods?
First, let’s answer the question of why we should study this particular book. The primary answer is quite simple: Judges is scripture. Judges is in the Bible as God’s divinely inspired and holy word, given to teach us who the Lord is, who we are in relation to him, and how we are to rightly live. God said it, so it’s important for us to know and understand it.
Now, although Judges may seem to be less theologically weighty than one of the Pauline epistles or one of the prophets, it will still teach us theological truths and show us their practical applications. Ultimately, the overall message of Judges is that God is gracious to redeem his people and sovereign in saving the unworthy and sinful people whom he has chosen.
We believe and know that out of his faithfulness and his great love for us, he is sure to save even the most wicked person if they turn to him in faith and earnestly repent. The stories in this book should still be a source of great comfort for us as Christian believers.
Now, Judges is also important for us because it is history, ancient history but still our history. It’s the history of God’s people, and since human history has a tendency to repeat itself, it behooves us to learn our history to try and avoid making the same mistakes as our forebears in the past.
Repetition in history proves that there truly is nothing new under the sun, and past events can help us to understand later events, even our present circumstances. The book of Judges shines a bright light upon our human character; it’s the very rare individual who does not find themselves personally identifying with at least one of the people written about in this book.
Judges puts the character of the Lord on full display for us. It shows his continuing faithfulness to his covenant and to his elect people despite our continuing disbelief, apostasy, and faithlessness. It shows the Lord’s righteousness and justice because he judges both his elect Israel and the wicked Gentile Canaanites alike.
It highlights his justice when he judges his people for their wickedness, allowing them to be oppressed and conquered by their enemies in judgment. It emphasizes his forgiveness when he relents his wrath and raises up judges to deliver God’s people when they repent and return to him.
Secondly, the heroes of this book are called judges because that’s the technical role which they fulfilled. Judges chapter 2, verse 16 says that then the Lord raised up judges. The Hebrew for judges is “shafatim,” from the word “shafa” meaning to decide, to settle, or to get justice.
We find the origin of this role in Exodus 18 back when Moses’s father-in-law, Jethro, saw how burdened and overwhelmed he was becoming settling the people’s disputes and answering all of their questions. He said to Moses, “Look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, and let them judge the people at all times.”
See, judges were men granted a limited legal authority. They dispensed justice to God’s people and on behalf of God’s people. They were afforded respect by the masses, and they were obeyed as if they were Moses, the servant of the Lord, and they served as often as they were needed and for as long as necessary.
Each of the judges described in this book worked to get justice for the Israelites against those who were oppressing them. First, they judged Israel’s enemies; they brought the Lord’s judgment against them, and then they ruled and judged the people of Israel, bringing them times of peace and prosperity.
However, this book is not called Judges only because it is about these certain heroes called judges but also because God judges his own people for their faithlessness and disbelief. The Lord God judges both the house of God and the wicked of the nations. That’s how he was back in the Old Covenant, and that’s how he is even now in the New Covenant because the Lord, who is the God of righteousness, justice, and holiness, will not forever tolerate their negative opposite.
Judgment is coming, but so is the final redemption of God’s elect.
Thirdly, why is the judge used during this one particular time in history but never heard of again in scripture? The historic role of judge was a temporary office used for specific purposes in a very unique time. During this time, when there was no king in Israel, the judges served as the active intermediary for God and his people and a temporary role in tribal Israel’s civic authority.
See, the informal role of judge was helpful because the Israelites had no organized structures apart from their corporate worship. They lived as disparate tribes in a land filled with adversaries and were connected only by their shared ancestry and shared faith in the Lord.
So once God gave the people what they wanted, a human king like the other nations, the role of the judge largely disappeared. But even then, the Lord has always been the true sovereign king as he used different agents like these judges and messengers like the prophets and rulers like the kings to work his will for them in the world.
But the people’s demand of Samuel to give them a king was another act of faithlessness towards the Lord and an act which needed a redemption that was finally granted in King David. We still commit this same sin as those ancient Israelites. Each one of us raises up rulers over our personal lives coming from our own sinful desires, and this continued sinfulness only finds its redemption and restoration through the righteous judge, the true sovereign of our hearts, Jesus Christ, the King of Kings.
Next we need to consider what kind of a book and what genre of writing Judges is. It is one of the historical books of the Bible, the portion beginning with Joshua and ending with Esther. It’s written as a narrative in a storytelling yet still factual style.
But because of its age and the historical period it covers—beginning some 3,500 years ago—many scholars have chosen to consider it as a collection of myths and fables rather than a reliable recording of historical events.
Considering that most archaeological and extra-biblical evidence supports the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, from which time we can calculate the construction of Solomon’s temple being around 959 BC, and then we date the exodus to 480 years before that in around 1446 BC, we remember that the Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness and then about 30 to 40 years under Joshua’s leadership, so that would begin around 1406.
The timeline of Judges then starts around 1376 and lasts to 1042 BC with the crowning of King Saul. The time period of the judges spanned about 350 years—100 years longer than the United States of America has been in existence.
Alternatively, those certain scholars will argue that because there is a lack of physical archaeological evidence supporting the biblical theory of the Canaanite conquest, then the book of Judges simply cannot be true. What kind of physical evidence would you expect to find from nomadic shepherds, hunter-gatherer types? Not much, because they were not producers or builders.
Yet furthermore, there’s no actual widespread destruction of Canaanite property described in the book of Joshua. Yes, some people were killed in the haram, and a few cities like Jericho were destroyed, but generally, property was preserved and claimed by the Israelites during and following the conquest.
Scripture explains that the people lived in cities which they did not build and ate from fields that they did not plant, and these same scholars will then argue that what evidence has been recovered is definitively culturally Canaanite. So that means that the Israelites couldn’t have been there.
But scripture says that some Canaanites remained in the land, that their idols were a snare to God’s people, and that intermarriage between them was a continuing problem. So why would we expect a totally different and unique cultural identity from a disunited bunch of tribes like the Israelites when scripture offers evidence of cultural assimilation and the possession or the repossession of their property?
Don’t forget, scripture itself declares and treats the book of Judges as being true history told about real people. Second Kings 23:22 references the leadership of the judges in the chronology of Israel’s history, while Hebrews 11:32-34 refers to several of the judges by name and by deed, saying, “For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, and put armies to flight.”
You see, the judges were numbered among that great cloud of witnesses who testify to the saving power of God and his faithfulness. Later, the Jewish historian Josephus even accepted and used the testimony of Judges when he recounted Israel’s history.
So since the anti-Christian and anti-scriptural bias of these liberal scholars is so clear and evident, I’m going to make my bias quite clear as well. I believe that the Bible is clear, it is true, and the authoritative word of God.
I believe that it is true history occurring just as the scriptural account records and must be treated as such. I admit and agree that it is difficult for us to precisely date these historical events, but I believe that they surely happened.
So as we study this book together, we will be using the true history perspective.
Finally, what is the historical context of the book of Judges? It covers the period following the exodus when the Israelites were living in the promised land but had not yet brought it entirely under their control until the time when Israel had a king.
The story of Judges is our story as God’s people, and it continues to be told. The Lord promised through Moses that God would give them a land flowing with milk and honey—the same land which the Lord had promised to their ancestor Abraham.
Moses then brought them to that land, but because of their fear of the inhabitants and their lack of trust in God’s promise, they disobeyed God and turned aside and were condemned to wander in the wilderness for 40 years until that whole generation had died.
Next, under the leadership of Joshua, the Israelites entered the land and defeated many of their enemies. They drove them out before them and took possession of cities and fields to live in. But during this time of conquest, even then, the people disobeyed God and allowed some of the Canaanites to remain.
Joshua made a treaty with the deceitful men of Gibeon, and then the others did not drive the other nations out of the land, nor did they capture and hold Jerusalem of the Jebusites. God’s people were in the promised land, but they did not possess the whole of it.
Then, after Joshua and all this generation died, the Israelites resumed and continued the same cycle of disobedience, judgment, repentance, and divine restoration as before. The cycle continued until the time of King David when it was paused throughout his reign and the reign of his son Solomon, but then resumed.
The nation divided, and the cycle culminated with the judgment of the Babylonian exile and the people’s return 70 years. But that was not the end of the cycle, for even though the temple was rebuilt, because of their intermittent obedience, God’s people continued to be regularly conquered and rescued, first by the Greeks, then the Seleucids, then Rome, and then finally the civic independence and identity of the Jewish people ended with the destruction of the second temple in 70 A.D. as the remaining Jewish people were scattered across the world.
Many people, both Jews and pre-millennial Christians alike, consider and observe that this very same cycle appears to continue with the Jews throughout our modern era. They remember the Russian pogroms of the Tsars, the Nazi Holocaust, the establishment of the modern Israeli state, and the continuing threats of Iran. So they look forward to, and hope in, the construction of a third Jewish temple in Jerusalem as being the final end of the cycle; they believe that that event will usher in the arrival of the long-awaited Jewish messiah.
But to other people, this same cycle continues into the modern era, and it also affects the church. They see a similar cycle of faithfulness, then apostasy, then oppression followed by a divine restoration over the entire history of the Christian church: The rise of the Holy Roman emperor to the sack of Rome by the barbarians, the Islamic occupation of Jerusalem and the Crusades, the reformation against the papacy in Rome, the fundamentalist modernist controversy at the end of the 19th century leading to the rise of the false Christian liberalism, or the success of the Moral Majority to the downfalls in our modern political evangelicalism.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Still, we’ll explore some of those ideas more at a later time, but the context of the book of Judges is set at the beginning of this cycle before everything escalated so extremely.
Lastly, as we begin to study the book of Judges, we need to look at the why of it. Why did the events of this book occur, and why did the Lord God respond in the ways that he did?
To begin understanding that, we turn to this final chapter of Joshua. So when Joshua neared the end of his life, he summoned all the tribes of Israel, their representatives, the elders, the heads, the judges, and the officers of Israel to Shechem, where Abraham first received the promise of the land and built his first altar to the Lord.
There, Joshua spoke the word of the Lord to the people one final time. He recounted all the deeds that the Lord had done for his chosen people Israel: the calling of Abraham, the promise of a homeland, the smiting of Egypt with ten wonders, the dramatic events of the exodus, and a reminder of all the different kings and nations who were defeated by God’s providence.
He recounted all the foes that the Lord gave into their hand and he brought to mind front and center all the grace, the providence, and the many blessings which God had given them, saying, “For the Lord, I gave you a land on which you had not labored, in cities that you’d not built; and you dwelt in them; you eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant.”
Then Joshua turns towards the people’s response and choice. Now, after having received God’s grace, he offered them two options: fear the Lord, serve him, and put away the gods and idols of their ancestors, or choose to serve the gods whom their ancestors had worshiped or the gods of the Amorites in whose lands they dwelt.
Serve Yahweh or serve false gods, defeated gods, idols, and fantasies. Worship the Creator or worship the creations of men; we Christians—we’ve been saved by God’s grace just like they were.
Would expect that to be an easy decision: either I serve and worship the only God who has given me so many blessings that I can name them one by one; who’s greatly blessed me and my family, who’s provided for all of my needs and many of my desires; worship the God who’s rescued me from the bondage of slavery, who has given me freedom in my own land, or I can serve and worship the impotent or uncaring entities which could not help those who were driven out and which my ancestors had abandoned for the truth.
It’s a no-brainer question, right? Joshua, Moses’ right-hand man and one of the only two spies who trusted God to give them the land, a man who saw the mighty power of God save and deliver an unrighteous, undeserving, and faithless people from the hand of Pharaoh; who met the commander of the Lord’s armies and saw the walls of Jericho tumbled down at the shout of the people, he and his family—they were all in for the Lord.
Proclaiming, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Then the Israelites said, “Therefore we also will serve the Lord, for he is our God.”
But Joshua didn’t believe them. So he rebuked them, saying, “You’re not able to serve the Lord.” He knew just who and what these people were: unholy and faithless sinners. Yet they insisted that they would be faithful.
A second time, “No, no, we will serve the Lord.” And he warned them, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord to serve him.”
And agreeing to his terms, saying, “The Lord our God we will serve, and his voice we will obey.” For the third and final time.
See, these ancient Israelites declared that they chose the Lord God in response to his sovereign choice of them. They swore that they would serve him alone; they swore that they would obey his voice and that they would keep all of his commandments.
They did this because of what he had already done for them, what he was doing then on their behalf, and because of their hope in his promises for the future.
Way back before the foundation of the world, way back before the beginning of history, the Lord foreknew all Israel. He sovereignly predestined Israel to be his elect people knowing that he would need to and that he would save them. He called them to be his chosen people; he pulled them out of Egypt and settled them in the land which he had promised them.
The Lord gave them his holy law to keep, to recognize the impossibility of self-righteousness. He instructed them to sacrifice for the forgiveness of their sin, to be justified by faith in him, to trust in his mercy and grace for forgiveness, and to receive an atonement paid for by the blood of the lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world.
And the Lord glorified them. He gave them victory over their enemies; he gave them peace in the land; he gave them homes and cities which they did not build, fields that they did not plant, and the Lord did all of this by sovereign grace alone.
Three times Israel committed themselves to the Lord. Three times they declared their fidelity and swore to obey the sovereign God. They chose to serve him freely, placing themselves under the obligation of obedience for which the stated penalty of failure was that he, the Lord, will turn and do you harm and consume you after having done you good.
There is the why of the book of Judges: why the Lord raised up judges in Israel. So Joshua made a covenant with the people that day, for the third time they had affirmed the covenant with the Lord which he had first made with them at Sinai and which Moses again reaffirmed before they crossed the Jordan River into the promised land.
Joshua set up a stone under a tree near the tabernacle as a witness to this covenant. It was a monument and a memorial, an Ebenezer, a stone of help raised up to remind them of their obligations. Not only would the stone serve to remind them but would stand as a witness against them whenever they broke faith with the Lord their God.
Then Joshua died, and Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and had known all the work that the Lord did for Israel. Then they did not continue to serve the Lord; they broke his covenant; they worshipped other gods.
So the Lord judged them; he gave them into the hands of their enemies until they remembered him, repented, and returned to him in faith. And the Lord raised up judges, men and a woman, who brought God’s judgment against the foes oppressing his people and established justice for God’s people.
This is the why that the Lord raised up the judges: his people violated his holy covenant over and over again, so they needed restoration and justice. Did the divine role of judge really end when Israel received a king?
No, because they—and we—still need justice to be done. The purpose of a king is to rule over God’s people justly, to give them justice. But ultimately all of their human kings failed until King Jesus.
And King Jesus, he is the true and final judge. He alone is the righteous one that judges sinful mankind justly. He alone has satisfied the justice which God’s elect are due through his death on the cross, and now he gives us grace and mercy instead of the justice we deserve.
So why Judges? To remind us that we always need God’s grace and mercy. To remind us that even after we sin—even after we sin in the worst ways imaginable—if we earnestly repent and trust Christ in faith, then the Lord is sure to forgive us and will restore us to a favorable place in his presence.
That is the why of Judges. So take heart and be comforted; our God is sure to save, and he always redeems his people so long as we believe and trust in him alone. Amen.