Bible Survey - Judges

So we are going through the book of Judges. I want to run through a few slides here first. This couple of graphics you have on your handout, and we'll go through those in a little more detail. The big thing is this cycle of Judges. They kept going for a few centuries. through the same thing. It's like, here we go again, right?

And so we'll take a look at that in more detail. Time-wise, this was the time right after the time of Moses and Joshua, and then the Jews fell into this spiritual malaise and confusion, falling into exactly the things that Moses had warned them about. And then that continued until the time of King Saul, who was a one-man, one-hit dynasty. After that it was David. So that's the period we're talking about here.

You also have this in your handout, so we'll go over that in a little more detail. Each of the judges, the passage that goes with it, and then one of the things you'll notice in the column, Enemy, Oppression, Judgeship, and Peace, there's information on all of those, but none of them has all those pieces of information. We don't have all the pieces of information of Enemy, Oppression, Judgeship, and Peace for each of the judges. But we've got something, at least one item, for all of them. Now something just kind of point to a lot of people will say well these are all nice stories because you have things like here's Samson and he's strong and you know events like that but these are I believe intended to be received as historical events.

Here is remember with with Gideon how God had him do a drinking test you know here's how they take the water in and they ended up with 300 that would You scoop the water up and put it in their mouths instead of going down to the water. Well, this is the spring. That's the place, right there, is where they gave the tests. So it was a real place, actual event. Here's another one.

This is the Philistine Plain and here gas, that's where Goliath was from. later in David's time, Ekron, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza. Those were kind of the main Philistine cities and they also had some other smaller places up here. And so we'll talk about some of that. Now one of the things, excuse me, here at Gaza was where Samson had his last day where he pushed down the pillars And Gaza is now all covered with buildings and paving and all that, so you can't go there and excavate except for a few small areas to find out what was there. However, the Philistines did have another place that isn't all covered over. And so we have an example, this is the archaeologist's excavation of a Philistine temple.

And guess what's in the middle? They've got a couple of pillars. And so this would be a similar design, probably on a larger scale, but a similar design where you push those pillars apart and the whole thing collapses. So that was a very interesting find. The temple of Dagon, their pagan god. This was how that temple was constructed in a city nearby. So with that, let's go to our handout.

You have the period of judges and they have on the category focus, you have deterioration, deliverance, and it's actually kind of repeated, deliverance, and then depravity. They stumbled and fell and then fell more towards the end. One of the things that comes out there, and we make note of it at the bullets of the handout there, we have the causes of the cycles, living with the Canaanites, and then we have the middle step there, the curse of the cycles, war with the Canaanites, and then the conditions during the cycles, living like the Canaanites. So what were they supposed to do with the Canaanites?

What was supposed to happen? Drive them out. Drive them out. And so they didn't do that. So they continued to have trouble. In addition to that, they fell into moral and spiritual decay, exactly the thing Moses warned them not to do. They fell into moral and spiritual decay, and instead of driving out the Canaanites, they ended up being sucked into the Canaanites' religion. So this is the pattern of the judges. It shows their location as Canaan. It says 350 years. I'd say that's kind of approximate. It's definitely three centuries, a little bit more. So that's the big picture pattern.

This cycle that you see in the lower left hand corner, they just went through it again and again and again with each judge. And you notice that, we'll look at it in detail, but that table of judges is fairly long. And they just went and fell through it again and again and again. And they would get oppressed by neighboring Canaanite groups, different ones, and we'll take a look. It isn't always listed for each judge who was a Canaanite group, but it was fairly frequently listed. Let's take a look at page 2 here. So we have this table of judges there at the bottom of page 2. And what we find here is, here's Othniel, who was the son of Caleb. Remember Caleb? Who was Caleb? Right, so he had 12 spies that went in, and 10 of them said, oh no, don't go after, you know, we'll be in trouble. But Joshua and Caleb were the two who said, nope, the Lord says we can take it, we should take it.

Okay, what's an example for us old guys? Because you said, I'm 80 years old, I still see well, I still can fight. Give me this land, I'll drive. Let's go, yes. So as a man of faith, you know, and why at an advanced age would he just say, yeah, I'm ready to go?

It's because the Lord would be the one who would do the fighting if they would but obey. Right? The Lord would do the fighting if they would obey. It wasn't because Caleb figured, I've got it made, but he says God's got it made. Right? So here's Othniel, who was the son of Caleb, and he's the judge. Ehud was, so one interesting point, he was a left-handed man. Right? And basically by a covert mission, went in and killed the the king of the Moabites, right? Did him in with the sword.

The next one there is Shamgar and you notice Philistia, the Philistines, shows up there and then shows up again under Samson. That was the major enemy during those times. The Philistines, by the way, are a recorded enemy of the Egyptians. The Egyptians, in some of their wall reliefs, carvings, have battles with the Philistines as part of their records. So the Philistines aren't just some made-up people. The Egyptians had trouble with them too. They even became famous in a proverb talking about Philistines, referring to a certain type of person. Yes, yeah, there was a definite cultural characteristic and that proverb you're referring to reveals that.

The next one down, this is a singular thing, we'll be taking a look at it a bit more, is Deborah, and that covers two chapters. Deborah was the judge, however she was not the military leader. The military leader was Barak, and then after that you have Gideon, also called Jerobal, and so we'll be taking a little closer look at him as well since that covers a few chapters. And this was the Midianites and the Amalekites were the ones who jointly suppressed the Jews during that time. Tola, Jeir, and then Jephthah. We'll be taking a look at Jephthah. And then Isbon, Elon, and Abdon, and then finally Samson.

So we have all these judges, again, it's the cycle. You go through the cycle again and again and again. I can imagine for some of them that weren't so caught up in the Canaanite religion, after a while you go, oh no, do we have to go through this again? Don't we ever learn? Yes? They have these judges, but what about the priests? I thought this was a spiritual problem, so why weren't the priests?

Yes, and here were the priests. They were supposed to be instructing the people. The Levites, they were supposed to be instructing the people. I guess that wasn't going on. As a matter of fact, what you find as you read through judges, sometimes the priests themselves were caught up in this corruption. So, yeah, it's like, what about the priests? Yeah, what about them? They didn't do their job, basically, in instructing the Israelites as they were supposed to.

About the only time I mentioned this, toward the end of the book, when the tribe of Dan was wandering around and they came to the house, with the household priests and they took him off as their own. Yeah, and it was a mess. All kinds of corruption there.

Yeah, and you think about it, I think that's something for us to ponder. You know, you say, what about the priests? There are various places, you know, in the church and in homes and families and whatnot. It's something to ponder. There is a role for us to play. And if we don't, what's going to happen, right, for each of us?

Were the judges doing a spiritual work? You know, really, what were the judges doing in great part, they weren't restoring people spiritually, they were simply coming in and giving, one, giving the people relief from their oppressors, so pitch off the oppressors, and then two, to come in and act as civil judges, you know, for the various cases that came up. So, phase one, phase two. And so they would act in that role. That's why the title judges, because actually, initially, there was often a military role, except for Deborah, there was a military role for the judge to pitch off those who were oppressing them. And then there was a judgeship that is deciding cases, you know, you've got this complaint and that complaint and let's carry out justice, etc. So you had that combination going on as well.

All right, let's take a look at page three. And with that here, we have 12 judges' names given. In some cases, we only have a verse or two for the judge, and others will have two, three, even four chapters. The four judges about whom the most is written are Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. So those four. And so we'll take a look at each of those in particular here. Deborah's unique in that not only is she the only female judge, but she's actually a prophetess, it says.

And the military campaign against the Canaanites is led by Barak, Judges chapter 4. And so what you see is the military campaign is Judges chapters 4 and then chapter 5 actually ends up being a song, a battle victory song. What happened is the military leader of the Canaanites, ran off because the rest of his army got wiped out. And so he took retreat in a lady's tent, Jael, and pleaded for rest and refreshment. Apparently wore himself out, but good. At first Jael gives Sisera a covering in milk and then executes him with a hammer and a tent peg.

That's nice. So here's Deborah and Barak write and sing a victory song which is found in Chapter 5. So the account is written up in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 is a victory song which gives also some details about that account. Let's ask this question. Here's Deborah as a judge and that's an exceptional thing.

Was there something wrong here? One is that she's a woman and actually the men were supposed to lead. That's part one. And it doesn't mean that she was bad or anything. It just means that the men weren't doing their job. As a matter of fact, Barak, the military leader, said, I won't go into battle unless you come with us. So that's cowardice. That's cowardice.

They were supposed to go and take on the Canaanites and go into battle with the Canaanites. and do it in obedience to the Lord and not make some condition like I've got to have this prophetess here or not going. Doesn't sound like the beginning of the book of Joshua, be strong and courageous. No, strong and courageous, I'll only be strong and courageous if you come, right? So this isn't to point out a problem with Deborah, it's really a problem with the military leader Barak who should have said we're going in to do this because that's what God said to do. So let's take a look. Here's Gideon.

Gideon, also known as Jeroboal, was beating out wheat in a wine press to hide it and himself from the Midianites. Apparently what the Midianites would do is if they come and see somebody with open food, they'd just take it. So you had to do things like hide your beating out the wheat or anything like that in order to have food. The Midianites would just come. Grab it. They saw you. So here he is.

When the angel of the Lord came to Gideon to charge him with taking back Israel from the Midianites, and we'll talk about this angel of the Lord phrase in a minute here. Gideon responded with, O Lord, how shall I deliver Israel? Behold, my family is the least in Manasseh, and I am the youngest in my father's house. You picked the wrong guy. I'm the youngest in my father's house, and our tribe is the least, and so you pick the wrong guy." The Lord says, nope. I didn't make the wrong choice.

Still the angel and the Lord pressed Gideon to take on the military leadership of Israel, knowing that the Lord would be with him. Gideon acted to stamp out idolatry in Israel and to lead a very small army, 300, to miraculously defeat the Midianites. In the end, however, Gideon himself fell into idolatry.

Now, a few things to take a look at. We showed you the picture of the stream where they did their test. It first started out, they had 32,000. That sounds like a pretty fair number. And the Lord says it's too many. What? So, he gets in front of these 32,000 and he says, if any of you is afraid You can go home. So 22,000 are afraid and they go home. And he's still got 10,000, so he's cool. The worst is it's still too many. So that's when they cooked up, I'm going to go back to it. That's the place, right there.

They had this drinking test, and the drinking test was if the guys leaned down, they just lapped directly from the water, just directly in the stream, they're gone. It's only the guys that are up and pick the water up to their face. Now let's ask this question. Why would the person who picks the water up to their face be a better choice?

In other words, the one who goes down like this in a military situation is going to be unaware. Whereas the person who's up looking around and picks the water up, they're going to be alert and aware. That's very important. So then he ended up after 10,000 he ended up with 300.

The Lord says that's good. Cut it down to size now. Now why would the Lord do that? Why would God just dismiss tens of thousands of soldiers and leave them with 300? So that the victory would be of the Lord and not of you. That's right. You could not in any way say that 300 guys pulled this off. You cannot say that 300 guys pulled this off. This has got to be God's victory. And that's why we've got to get rid of all these tens of thousands of soldiers. We've got to make certain that the victory is the Lord's and Lord's alone. So here's Gideon.

And so each soldier was issued a torch, pitcher, and trumpet. That's one little ditty I heard said, not one got a sword whether they liked it or lumped it. Right? So here's the torch, pitcher, and trumpet. That's where you can go find the trumpet. Okay! So what do they do? They hold up the torches, right? And then what? They covered it with the pitcher, didn't they? To keep it darker. What did they do with the pitcher? They broke the pitcher. Smash! Which would have been like a heavy clay pitcher and you just smash it.

You get sudden noise and sudden light. A sudden crash, tinkle tinkle. And then all of a sudden you get light, you know, these torches showing up spread around like an amphitheater type situation. And then they blow on the trumpets, right? And that's all the fighting they did. It's all the fighting they did. What happened? The opposing army got scared and killed each other and ran. That was it. It's a warning to us not to panic when it seems as though the enemy is... The enemy may seem overwhelming, but it's not time to panic.

And those exact circumstances where it looks overwhelming, where it's daunting, is exactly the circumstance where we can say, only God's going to pull this off. Actually, what's going to happen at the end of the tribulation period, the Jews are going to be at a place where they're going to see the whole world coming against them. And Israel, which is now largely atheistic agnostic, will come to a place of saying, only God can pull this off. Only God can pull this off. Reminds me of the time when Elijah told his servant to look up at the hills and get a true picture of the situation. Yes. The Assyrians were heading us around. Yes. Yep. Pat?

What did you say Israel is largely... Atheist agnostic. The people in Israel are largely atheist agnostic. There are some Christians, there are less than 10% Hasidic observant Jews, the vast majority atheist agnostic. Are the Jews, are the Israel as a whole hostile towards the Christian group?

On the one hand, the Christians bring in a lot of tourism, right? So there's a lot of accommodation to that. But in terms of, you know, they'd rather discourage evangelism and that sort of thing. So, yeah, in other words, they're glad to have the Christians come in and spend the tourism dollars. They don't want a lot of evangelism going on.

OK, so here's Jephthah is the next one. Jephthah was a valiant warrior, but the son of a harlot. Alienated and driven from his family, Jephthah gathered a band of worthless fellows about him. I think this is kind of like a game, right? The Jewish version of a game. And when it was time to take on the Ammonites, the elders of the tribe appealed to him to help fight against the Ammonites. Jephthah agreed on the condition they would become head of the tribe. So Jephthah at first sent an appeal to the king of Ammon through messengers, but the king of the Ammonites ignored Jephthah's message. Just disregarded it. Nothing. So Jephthah went to attack the Ammonites and then made a foolish vow on this way.

Judges 11.30-31 Jephthah made a vow to the Lord and said, if you will indeed give the sons of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me when I return in peace from the sons of Ammon, it shall be the Lord's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offer. Question, did he have to make this vow? No. He didn't have to make the vow. There was really no need to make it.

And as we'll see shortly, it was a very foolish one. Let's look at page 4. Jephthah did defeat the Ammonites, but the first thing he saw was his daughter and only child coming out to greet him. She asked for two months of mourning, at the end of which he sacrificed his daughter for a burnt offering. So, foolish vow. In the beginning of Judges chapter 12, Jephthah got into a needless argument and then battle with the tribe of Ephraim, the civil war, and killed 42,000 of the tribe of Ephraim using the criteria that they could not pronounce Shibboleth but said Sibboleth. When God had held Jephthah to death, the vow of sacrifice of his daughter, is that not characteristic? No. Think about it. One, the vow itself was not valid. Right? The vow itself was not valid.

What is killing his daughter and offering her as a burnt sacrifice? It's like Molech. Yeah, this is not different from Molech. Where is it in the Jewish law that someone like Jephthah, who's not of the tribe of Levi, can do a sacrifice. And where among the sacrifices do you have a burnt offering of a human being?

So this is corrupt. This is Canaanite, not something to the Lord. So it really mixed up Canaanite religion and the religion of the God of Israel. What makes the vow not Well, one is, was he a priest? No. He wasn't qualified as a priest, so he couldn't offer up an offering.

Where are you supposed to offer up offerings? At the tabernacle, right? At the tabernacle, because they haven't built the temple yet, but the tabernacle. And who's supposed to do it? The priest. Did the priest ever sacrifice a human being in any of the Law of Moses?

No. So there's nothing about it that was right. I mean, so much for him wanting to keep his vow, but there was nothing else right about it. It wasn't right at the beginning, and it wasn't right how it turned out. Yes? She led a life devoted to God, kind of like Anna in the New Testament. Yeah, I've heard that. But there's no scriptural follow-up to say actually what happened.

Well, there's also a prohibition against her doing that, and that is that they were prohibited for ten generations. Once you had an illegitimate child, and remember he's an illegitimate child, son of a harlot, Once you had an illegitimate child, it was ten generations before you could have any temple entrance, even entrance into the temple or the tabernacle or anything of the sort. Prohibited for ten generations, so he's the first, she's the second, right? That's not ten.

So there's no way that she could have gone there and been dedicated. That's how they get around the idea that, well, Jephthah wouldn't have done something quite so vile. But, well, I'm afraid he did. And we find other vile things. And the idea that she didn't die, but was dedicated to temple service Sounds nicer. Yeah, it sounds nicer, but there's nothing to back it up. And it would actually be against the law of Moses.

It certainly gives us a warning to be careful about doing things in the heat of the emotion, even when they seem like good ideas at the time. Well, and I think also, this says be careful about what you promise. Be careful about what you promise. Think about it. Don't just start making promises. God's the promise keeper, by the way, right? God's the promise keeper. So, other questions, thoughts? Okay, let's take a look.

Samson now. Samson, the last of the judges and famous for his great physical strength, fought against the Philistines who held onto territory along the southern coastal areas of Israel. Now, like you see in this drawing that's on page four, You see Samson depicted as this muscular guy.

Was he necessarily muscular? No. Not necessarily. And really, what would clue you in that he might not have even been muscular? Did the Philistines know why this guy was so strong? The Philistines couldn't figure it out. Why is it this guy is immensely strong? He might have been a string bean for all we know. And the Lord did something miraculous rather than say, boy, this guy is buff like nobody's ever seen. If he was buff like nobody's ever seen, they would have no question about why is he so strong.

But instead, they had no answers to it. They couldn't explain it. Why is this guy, who may well have been a string bean, why is this guy going and slaying hundreds and fighting a lion and breaking his mouth open and all these things? They couldn't figure it out. And I think it's because you couldn't look at him and say, man, that guy is strong as an ox. You'd be baffled. Why is he strong?

It's the same thing as with Gideon. It's the Lord's doing and not according to human wisdom and human perception. Yeah. And I think sometimes we can easily kind of jump to conclusions. And again, I put the drawing in here on purpose. It shows something that I believe took place.

But all the muscles and all that may not have been visible. As a matter of fact, the text would indicate that probably not. that the source of his strength was puzzling to the Philistines. They couldn't figure it out. So they got some ladies to try to get it out of him. So he asked his parents to get him a wife from among the Philistines and one of the things we'll find out is this guy had a real weakness and it was women.

He killed the young lion with his bare hands. Later he got honey from the lion's carcass. He put forth a riddle for the Philistines with an obligation to answering or not answering. In other words, whoever answers the riddle or doesn't answer is going to end up paying. He told the answer to his wife upon her pressing him.

We're not told her name. Paid the Philistines his obligation to them, but slew 30 Philistines in Ashkelon. That was one of those cities we looked at on the map. And then in Samson and Judges chapter 15, he burned the Philistines' crops on learning that his wife had been given to another man.

We have a proverb that we've had based on his response. You would have known the answer, you haven't plowed my heifer. Yeah, you haven't plowed my heifer. Yes, this was the term that he used there. He killed a number of Philistines for burning his wife and her father. The Philistines burned the wife and the father. They said, okay, that's the reason that we're having this crop burning here. Interestingly, they didn't try to go after him. It's like, no, let's not do that. That didn't turn out so well, right?

So then he allowed the men of Judah to bind him and present him to the Philistines. He broke the ropes and then slew a thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone. And then in chapter 16, we have this. He ripped up the gates from Gaza and took them to a mountain opposite Hebron, which is quite a bit to the east. Dragged them there.

He took up with Delilah, who was not his wife. And by the way, after his wife, that first wife is the only wife that's described. So he had basically illicit relationships with these Philistine women. He took up with Delilah, who was bribed by the Philistines, and I looked at that, and they paid her a lot. They paid her a lot, so this must have been really worth it to them, to betray him. Finally, after a couple of falsehoods, he said, you know, do this, do that, it's got to be new rope, you know, different things like that, and that didn't work. Finally, after a couple of falsehoods, he told Delilah how to take his strength away. What was that? Remember? Cut the hair. He had taken a Nazirite vow which included don't clip the hair.

Then he had his eyes gouged out and was cast into prison because he was now weak. They had him doing some grinding work there in the prison. brought down the temple on himself and the Philistines in the house of Dagon. And this was a similar, though smaller, temple that I showed you in the picture that the archaeologists found out. So what happened is, here's Samson, he's blind and they're basically throwing a victory party over Samson.

So he goes over there and gets his hands between the pillars that you see and forces out, because the pillars were often large in diameter, but there was not necessarily any reinforcement between them. So if you could push the pieces out, you could have the whole thing come down, which is what he did. He got in between there and just shoved out the middle pieces on the pillar, and then the whole roof structure collapsed. And in those days, the roof structure, you'd have people on it, right? So you had people on the roof, and you got people underneath the roof, and then you got the walls that are attached to the roof, and those come down.

So at any rate, it was... a great day of disaster for the Philistines, but that it was also Samson's last day, right? Because he was right in the middle of this mess. Isn't it interesting that God told the parents that Samson would be a Nazarite? Yeah. They were aware of that, but it seems as though Samson never really Yeah, he didn't embrace it. He didn't really follow through and think about his obligation as a man. That's right.

I think with these judges, we've gone over some of their downfalls and shortcomings. How is it possible that God can use these judges to restore Israel when some of the judges themselves were not all that great morally or spiritually? How can that be? God is able to use a rusty tool. Yeah, it's interesting. If you think about it, they certainly didn't you know, live lives in many cases that you'd say are exemplary. Yeah.

You think of what Moses said about Israel, about God choosing Israel. He didn't choose you because you were the strongest, the most populous, or the most righteous, or anything else. It was a sovereign act on the part of God to use instruments. I mean, the prophet complained of How can you choose the Assyrians to use as a judge against us? Look at how wicked and evil, they torture people, they're cruel. How can you use them? And God says, well I'm going to use them to judge you, Israel that is, but I'll judge them too. Between Esau and Jacob, Was Jacob a good guy?

Often not. Often not a good guy. Here he, by deception, got the blessing of his brother. He had his brother sell his birthright just because he was hungry. Was he the older or the younger? The younger. He was the younger, so I mean, his character, the sequence?

All the things that play bad. Yeah, I mean, would you have picked Jacob? Would you have picked Jacob? And by the way, that's after some time ago with Isaac rejecting Ishmael, right? Pick this one, not that one. So would you have picked Jacob? No. And Jesus is of the tribe of Judah. Was Judah a good guy? No, he's the one that had Tamar illegally, and eventually that produced the lineage of Christ. Yes.

So what you find is the Lord frequently does not pick the ones that we would pick. So what does that say about us and our reverence for the canonical saints? Yeah, if you think about it, here God chooses frequently, I mean almost as a pattern, somebody we wouldn't pick. Here's a rejected prince of Egypt, yeah he's an Israelite, but here's Moses and God says, I want you to go and take back Israel out of Egypt and he says, pick somebody else. And here's Gideon. What does he say? Pick somebody else. Right? So you've got these guys that are kind of cowards and really don't want to be out there and up front and figure out all the reasons why they can't do it. And he says, you're the one.

Paul writing to the Corinthians, God has not chosen you. the strong things and the wise things, he's chosen the foolish and the weak to put to nothing the wisdom of the world, so that your faith might stand in God and not in the wisdom of man. So the same principles are in New Testament times for us to think about, but in our life it is according to men's wisdom about planning for retirement and building up this and that in terms of resources and safety nets and threats. We are supposed to use our brains for planning and doing good things. But we're supposed to look to God for the wisdom as to how to do it and when to do it. I think as we look at this and we look at the history of how God worked with Israel, let's pick another one. Here's Jesus. He picks twelve disciples.

Who's the worst of them? Judas, okay? Did he know that Judas was going to be a bad guy? Yes. So here's Judas, he picked Judas, deliberately. And even then you look at, okay, who's the guy who's outspoken and always got hoof and mouth disease? Here's Peter, right? Always sticking his foot in his mouth. He'll speak up, and then it's like, why did I say that?

Here he is, he's taken all the effort. John has gotten him into the courtyard of the high priest. And here, within view and earshot of Jesus, at least at one point, Peter says, I never knew it, and swore. And swore. I never knew him. So the Lord comes to Peter afterwards and says, sorry Peter, you're just terrible and I've got to fire you. Is that what he does? Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.

So the Lord is amazing in his selection and appointment. He does not select and appoint as you and I would. We go through interviews and say, okay, this guy is showing himself valiant in battle, and this person is showing himself virtuous with consistency and things like that, and that's not what you get. Sometimes we, in the church, right now, when we see something that's a need, we think, well, I can't do that.

Well, God puts it in your heart and mind to do it. God provides the motivation and the will and the strength to carry it out. Whose job is it to pull it off? It's His. He has prepared the good works that we should want. Yeah, and if we say, oh, not me, pick somebody else. God says, no, you. When Jesus was asked, what is the work of God that we should do? He said, believe.

So here is at the bottom of page 4, Judges 17.6, and then a very similar statement, different only by a couple of words.

Judges 21.25, In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And the next one, In those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

What does that mean to you? When you hear that everyone did what was right in his own eyes, what does that mean to you? What does that convey to you? Chaos. First, no leadership, and of course you get the signal from that, no king, right? No leadership, that's part one. And then what's their perception of how do we get things done here? Yeah, if this guy wants to do this one, that guy does what seems right to him, and this other guy does what seems right to him. So, no leadership, no direction, everybody's just doing their thing. Sounds like today's advertisement, if it feels good, do it. If it feels good, do it. Do your own thing. Some things that came out of recent decades.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes instead of whose eyes. God's eyes, right? Yeah, Pat? That wasn't an idiom, was it? I mean, if everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and what was right in their own eyes happened to be right, then it must be right. Yeah.

I'm just, was that an idiom, or was that a literal, just a literal statement? Well, we see it here a couple of times, and it may well be that that was kind of how people expressed things. You know, we certainly have it twice here. Whether that became some kind of a saying or something, I don't know, but it's quite possible. It's quite possible. Let's take a look at the top of page 5.

This is where we look for the Son of God in this mess. What's interesting, we bring up the same slide, why the angel of the Lord is not the same as an angel of the Lord. An angel of the Lord appeared to Mary. The angel of the Lord doesn't appear anywhere in the New Testament. which is one of the reasons why we say that the Angel of the Lord is a pre-incarnate Son of God expression. Theophany, as Stan put it last week. So, the Angel of the Lord, whom we have previously identified as the pre-incarnate Son of God, is mentioned 19 times in the book of Judges, starting with Judges chapter 2 verse 1. So the last use of the term the angel of the Lord is in chapter 13.

What's interesting is when Joshua entered Israel before they attacked Jericho, an angel appeared to him, the captain of the Lord's army, and it meant there were other angels there as they went in and conquered. What's interesting here is that the angel of the Lord never shows up in Joshua, but now here you find the angel of the Lord appearing repeatedly, all the way up to chapter 13, repeatedly in the book of Judges, but not a bunch of other angels.

Can you think of a reason why? Why would God choose to not have the angel of the Lord appear at all during the time of Joshua, but you would have a band of angels led by a captain of the Lord's army. And then now, here in the book of Judges, you don't have that captain of the Lord's army, but now you've got the angel of the Lord appearing at different times. Would it have anything to do with the fact that during Joshua's time, they were basically following the Lord's command, and the Lord was just reassuring them of his presence in power, but in judges they were looking to do things more on their own and like the people around them and they needed a reminder of the presence of God.

Let's think about this. The angel of the Lord showed up in the burning bush to Moses. Moses was the deliverer, God's appointed deliverer. And so the angel of the Lord made the assignment to Moses to be the one to deliver them from Egypt. So now they're going to be repeatedly delivered. And so what happens again is that the angel of the Lord is involved with the appointments. The angel of the Lord is involved with these appointments of a deliverer.

Even if they're reluctant, like Gideon and Moses. Even if they're reluctant. So the Lord's involved in delivering, and that's one of the significant reasons why the angel of the Lord appears here. Even appointing reluctant leaders to deliver them, if that's what's necessary. Now, here's the next one. Oh, excuse me, last part of that.

Judges is among those books referenced in which those who see the angel of the Lord say that they have seen God. And Gideon is one. Gideon himself is one of those. The judges were sent to deliver Israel for a time, but Christ is our deliverer forever. This is from the book of Acts and the book of Romans. We give the references there.

So, you can have a temporary deliverer, but the permanent deliverer is Christ. the forever deliverer of Christ. Bethlehem and Judah is mentioned 15 times in Judges chapters 17 and 19. The word pair in Judah is to distinguish from the Bethlehem in northern Israel. You know that there was another Bethlehem near Nazareth. It's a different one. So what you will find often Not always, but often, is that the Bible distinguishes which Bethlehem.

When it talks about the one in Judah, the one in the city of David, Bethlehem Ephratah is what Micah 5.2 has. So you see that. Now here's Luke 2, 4 through 7. Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.

Because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was with child. While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Hebrews 7.14, as we looked at some weeks back here, for it is evident that the Lord was descended from Judah. So that's made clear.

And then in Revelation 5.5, behold the lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the root of David has overcome. So there's anticipation here of the importance of Bethlehem, which is otherwise somewhat of a minor It was not on a main international trading route. It was about six miles away from Jerusalem, which it was on an international trading route, and where you'd actually be more likely to have an inn being in a place kind of like a motel, a place to stay. So you begin seeing Bethlehem noted, not because it's a major city, but because of its significance as the birthplace of Christ.

So here's Judges, you look at it, all kinds of almost depressing events and the fact that the Jews became so corrupt and immoral and just lost spiritually. As you brought up earlier, here the priests weren't doing their job. They were supposed to be instructing the people, and they didn't. And so you find all that, and yet in the midst of it, we see Christ. In the midst of that, Christ. What was going on? Did God give up on these people?

Was God not working? Why were things so dismal? For centuries, why were things so dismal? Maybe because of the weakness of the law? Yeah, I think a part of it is exactly that, is the law It says things that are good and right and holy and just, but there is no empowerment. One of the problems was the weakness of the law, and the weakness of the law is not the law, the weakness of the law is human beings. There's no empowerment for this. And that's a very good point.

Can you think of other reasons? You know, one thing I was wondering, you know, why did God let the people sit in Egypt for 430 years and listen to him cry all that time? What was he waiting for? Maybe in looking at the past, it just shows his sovereignty, and that's all, it just shows his sovereignty. I don't know. Why did he wait so long? Well, one of the things, he says, the wickedness of the Amorites is not yet full. He was also waiting as a matter of patience with the Canaanite people.

Will these people turn around? And it's not because he didn't know, but just offering every opportunity for these people before he sent in the Jews essentially to judge them. It's an interesting thing that God gives us time to consider our actions and to come to a correct understanding.

I think of the Revelation passage with the saints under the throne saying, how long, how long until you judge? And he talks about the cup of his wrath isn't full yet. So, like you say, how long? It reminds me of some parent who says, just keep it up. Yeah, giving them time.

I think there's also one other thing, and that is to have the depravity and the deficiency of people themselves become quite apparent. The Lord will allow us to get into something and realize, hey, we haven't got it in ourselves. Yes. And I think if you look at it, if he had just gone and kind of preserved them from everything at every corner, then you wouldn't see sin for what it is, and you wouldn't see here the need for God for what it is. So like a parent who provides everything for the child, you're not doing them a favor by coming to the rescue every time something doesn't work out. That's right.

They need to realize there's a world there with consequences and all that, and make the connection. So here God did send judges But it wasn't like, we're just going to make everything all right. You need to go through this first. We have people pressing the back door, so let's pray here.

Thank you, Lord, for the lessons here, sometimes even hard ones. Even in the midst of that, we see multiple evidences of your love and care for these people, of your showing mercy. We do thank you for that. Thank you for the lessons learned. You hear it in the book of Judges. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.