Judges Intro
Judges (Prayer Meeting) • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
We are going to be studying the book of Judges together in the evenings so let me take some time to introduce it to you.
In the timeline of the Bible, the book of Judges occurs immediately after the book of Joshua, where Joshua faithfully leads the Israelites to take the Promised Land and they begin driving out the people who were there, the Canaanites. The book of Joshua is filled with victory after victory as Joshua faithfully leads people to follow God. Joshua shows us that since God always keeps his promises, his people can boldly follow and worship him.
At the beginning and end of Joshua, God gives a kind of measuring stick that tells the people how great the Promised Land is supposed to be and God reminds them that they simply must obey His commands for them to see the final fulfillment of the promises.
But Joshua dies before the completion of the conquest of Canaan and there is still much to be done. The current inhabitants must be pushed out and God makes it clear that the Israelites are NOT to make covenants with them, marry into their families, or worship their Gods.
The people of Israel must still bravely trust and obey God! and they must be aware of how dangerous the spiritual influences of the Canaanites can be on them Joshua 23:5-6
5 The Lord your God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight. And you shall possess their land, just as the Lord your God promised you. 6 Therefore, be very strong to keep and to do all that is written in the Book of the Law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand nor to the left, 7 that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you or make mention of the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them, 8 but you shall cling to the Lord your God just as you have done to this day.
God is calling his people to brave spirituality. True discipleship is bold, radical, and willing to take apparent risks because of faith that God is who he says he is. God was calling the Israelites to that 3,000 years ago and he is calling us to it now.
So then, the book of Judges then opens by looking backwards and it closes by looking forward. It begins with “After the death of Joshua...” and closes with a longing for the monarchy “In those days Israel had no king and everyone chose for themselves what was right.”
So why are we studying the book of Judges? For a multitude of reasons, but the first is that the Israelites in the time of the Judges were faced with similar issues as we are today. They were forced to reckon with a society that sought to lead them to other gods! While we may not face as much threat from foreign gods, we face the threat of the American gods of wealth, celebrity, achievement, and pleasure. Our culture can be easily summed up in the repeated line in Judges “Everyone did what was right in their own eyes”.
So we too are faced with a choice, are we going to press on in brave spirituality or will we turn aside? The sad repetition of the book of Judges is that the Israelites continuously choose to turn aside and the stories get darker and darker as they continuously get further and further from God.
So Judges could be described as “terrible people doing despicable things” and as the history unfolds, even the heroes (the Judges) become more and more wicked. It is a dismal story and it is all history. So then we might ask, “What in the world is this doing in the Bible?”
And the answer is because it proclaims the gospel! The book of Judges makes it clearer than any other book that the Bible is not just some collection of morality tales, or a book of virtues full of inspirational stories. It really is the Word of God, showing us the truth of our situation, and the truth of our situation is that we’re in a terrible place if we think that we can be half-hearted servants, or spiritual cowards.
It shows that God is patient and longsuffering and that he often allows discipline to draw us back to him!
Some themes to be aware of as we study Judges.
God offers his grace to people who don’t deserve it or seek it, or even appreciate it after they have been saved by it.
God wants lordship over every part of our lives, not just some.
there is a tension between grace and law
There is a need for continued spiritual renewal and a way to make it happen
We need a true savior and all human saviors point to him either by their flaws or by their virtues
God is in charge, no matter what.
The book of Judges is a book that is often depressing and shocking, one that is frustrating and maddening, but it is one that is a marvelous instruction to us in how seriously we need to take the threat of sin. May the Lord bless our study of it in the coming months.