S5: Day 70: Judges 1–3

Hey, this is Shelby and CJ. We are taking you through the Bible in a year. And today we

begin the Book of Judges. CJ, I'm so excited that you're co-hosting for the Book of Judges.

My voice.

Should I be excited to read the Book of Judges? So this can be a little bit of an intimidating

book.

Yeah, Judges is a fun book. It's also there's a little bit of blood and guts in the Book

of Judges, a lot of war, a lot of things like that. But yeah, I think it'll be a good time.

Yeah, I think so too. We're going to learn a lot. That's for sure. What are some things we can keep

in mind as we read the Book of Judges? Yeah, so it probably will help to think about where we are

in Scripture. Israel has left Egypt. They've been wandering in the wilderness for a while.

Moses has given them some laws in the wilderness. And then we had Joshua who helped them

enter into the Promised Land and begin the conquest. And then we have Judges. And where Joshua

left off is the conquest has been going really well. And Israel's been doing everything they need

to do to get into the land. And towards the end of the Book of Joshua, he divvies out the rest of

the land and essentially he encourages Israel to finish the job. And then Judges starts and Judges

is sort of the foil to Joshua. If Israel was doing well in Joshua, they start to not do so well

in the Book of Judges. And we've kind of seen that pattern throughout Scripture. We've highlighted

so many times the faithfulness of God as God's people waver between being faithful and being

rebellious and disobedient. So today's chapters were Judges 1 through 3. Can you begin to take us

through these chapters? Yeah, so Judges 1 through 3 set the tone for the rest of the book.

And again, we pick up where Joshua left off. So he's died, he being Joshua. The tribes are now

trying to take the rest of the land. Judah is successful and drives out a lot of the people in their

territory or the remaining peoples in their territory. But the other Israelite tribes fail.

And Judges 1 says this explicitly, things are so bad in fact for the Danites that the Danites

themselves are actually removed from the territory that they should have been in. And that's going to

be a key plot point that we're going to see at the end of the book. So hold tight for that.

And then as we get to Judges 2 and 3, in Judges 2, the angel of the Lord comes and rebukes the people.

And the angel of the Lord says, essentially, you were supposed to drive out these people,

just like Joshua told you to do. But because you didn't listen to my voice, now I'm not going to

drive them out for you. And they're actually going to sort of be a thorn in your side. And they're

going to be there to test you and essentially cause you to stumble. And we see this pattern in the

book of Judges as we continue. And in Judges 3, it shows us the basic pattern that we can expect as

we move through the book of Judges. And I call it the four S's. So Israel is going to suffer

or they're going to sin. They're going to commit idolatry. They're going to essentially rebel against

God. And then they're going to suffer at the hands of the Canaanites. And then they're going to

make supplication, which is just a fancy word to say they're going to call it to God and pray to

God for deliverance. And then there's going to be salvation where God's going to sin some sort of

judge or military commander or leader to save them from their oppression. So again, sin, suffering,

supplication and salvation. Okay. And I'm just if you're just taking those four S's for the first

time, like write them down somewhere, make note of that because we're going to talk about that a

lot as we go throughout the book of Judges. And we kind of see that pattern even play out

at the end of chapter three, right? This four S pattern. Yeah. So we see a few minor judges and

they're called minor judges because they're just not given much space in scripture. But then we see

our first major judge. And his name is A Hood. And Israel sins by worshiping false gods. And then

they suffer under a guy named egglone, who's the king of Moab. He's just a Canaanite guy. You

can think of him that way. And then Israel supplicates God for help or they cry out to God for help.

And then God raises up this guy named A Hood and he's a Benjamin Knight. And commentators,

they disagree about what what is exactly is wrong with him or what exactly his unique feature is.

He's either has some sort of deformity in his hand or he's just left handed in general.

But this sort of ambiguous quality of his is going to be important moving forward because we're

going to see that each of the judges are sort of unexpected figures. So keep that mine also as we

move forward. But regardless, this guy named A Hood, he's raised up by God. And he sneaks in

with a gift or a tribute to the king of Moab. And he stabs him on the way out and through blood and

guts and war and all those things. He ends up saving Israel. Yeah. So that was a great example of

kind of what we're going to see throughout this. Let me ask this question. Do we see the gospel?

Do we see Jesus in judges? You've talked about blood and guts. I'm thinking we do because

one of the forests is a salvation. But can you just maybe spell that out for us of it?

Yeah, I think even though judges is a little jarring at times because of the blood and guts and

all the war and the things that were hopefully we're not as familiar with, I think we still see

ourselves in this book. We see sin. We see our suffering. We see ourselves crying out to God and

then we see salvation, which is obviously the gospel. And despite our sin, Christ came down and

saved us from our sin because, well, God wants to save his people. So we see that in little form,

in little repeated form in the book of judges, but that really speaks to God's ultimate plan of

salvation for his people. Yeah. Yeah. We'll be on the lookout for that as we go throughout the book.

As we start judges, I think my big takeaway, we're going to see a phrase all throughout in

that people did what was right in their own eyes. And we're going to see things descend

like further and further into chaos throughout the book. And so a takeaway for me is that when I see

chaos and calamity in the book of judges, I am not viewing that as something that God desires.

This is actually what happens when people don't live according to his ways. And so I'm going to

keep that in mind as we read. Thanks for giving us a great intro to the book of judges. We're going

to talk to you the next few chapters tomorrow. Awesome.