The first thing I want to bring to your attention today, is where the book of Judges is located in the Bible. We have the first five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy; then Joshua, and then Judges.
God has created, raised up the nations, brought about a people for Himself from one man, a nation through which He would bless the world, first with the revelation of Himself through His word, and then by sending His Messiah through this same nation.
He has delivered them from bondage by amazing miracles, and has kept them through their wanderings in the desert for 40 years, and has given them the land promised to them.
The world itself is still very young. It’s only about 2,580 years old at the time of this writing. This is only the seventh book of the Bible. The people of God, the children of Israel, at this point, have quite a legacy. Abraham. Isaac. Jacob. Joseph. Moses. Joshua.
Great men of God who served faithfully, and served as an example of the blessings of God on the righteous.
God’s promises have always been kept, His warnings have always proved to be accurate, His goodness has been poured out on them abundantly, and His dealings with unbelief and disobedience have been swift and certain, and leaving no room for doubt in anyone’s mind, that the wages of sin is death.
But now we come to this book of the Judges. And it seems to start out very good. Joshua has passed away, so, we’re told, ‘…the sons of Israel inquired of the Lord…’
Now that’s a good start, isn’t it? They could have done many things. They could have inquired of each other. They could have formed a committee and inquired of the committee. They could have cast lots or they could have fought amongst themselves for leadership, or they each could have simply gone their own way and tried to get by on their own.
But they inquired of the Lord, and He gave them direction. He referred to the tribe of Judah, And He said, right there in verse 2 of chapter 1, “…I have given the land into his hand”.
And indeed, we read down through these verses and see the Lord delivering these godless cultures of people into the hands of the sons of Israel. They capture kings. They capture and burn cities. Now I want you to be assured that God told them to do this.
They were to drive out these people from the land completely, as the Lord went before them, and purge the land of all ungodly idols and ungodly people, and dwell in peace and safety in a land that the Lord gave to them. That was the plan.
But suddenly we arrive at verse 21 of chapter 1, and the tone begins to change just slightly.
“But the sons of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived with the sons of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day.”
And as you read down through these following verses, you see the same sad story repeated again and again!
Now before I get too far ahead of myself, let’s back up just for a moment and read some words in the final chapter of the book of Joshua. Just turn back a page or two, to Joshua 24:16, and witness what this same generation of the sons of Israel is saying, in response to Joshua’s challenge to remain faithful to the God of their fathers.
“And the people answered and said, ‘Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed. And the Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for he is our God’.”
Ok, now go back to the first chapter of Judges, and from verse 22, just let your eyes scan down the page to the end of that chapter, and please be cognizant of the grave error that is being made here.
The man from Bethel was allowed to live because he gave them information, and he went to the land of the Hittites and built a city called Luz.
Then Manasseh failed to take possession of Beth-shean and Taanach. And Ephraim failed to drive out the Canaanites from Gezer; and Zebulun kept the inhabitants of Kitron and Nahalol; and Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Acco or Sidon or Ahlab or Achzib or Helbah or Aphik or Rehob.
Naphtali follows suit and keeps the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh, and Beth-anath. And Dan has to hide in the hill country from the Amorites until the house of Joseph becomes strong enough to help, but still, the Amorites are enslaved and kept in the land, just like all the others.
Can you remember a time, when you were young, perhaps still very small, and you committed some act that you knew very well was taboo in your household; and either your mother caught you and said, “Your father isn’t going to be pleased with this”? Or maybe your actions resulted in something being broken or damaged, and you couldn’t hide the fact that you had done it, so for an hour or two or more you sat around, unable to have any fun, because you knew that when your parents came in the door there was going to be a reckoning?
You weren’t thinking of the circumstances when you did it. You were having fun! But when the realization hit you that you’re going to have to pay, the fun was over!
It was that sort of impression I got when I came to the opening words of chapter 2.
“Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim.”
Gilgal is located just north of the north end of the Dead Sea. It is the place the Israelites used as their headquarters during the campaigns to take the land. God met with them there on more than one occasion for encouragement and instruction.
There is only this one mention of Bochim, and it is not on any of the maps I checked, and it appears that it was never a settled city, but just a location that was named specifically to commemorate this single event recorded for us here in these verses.
It means ‘weeping’, we’re told in verse 5. So from this we get a sense of urgency on the part of God, to leave the place of meeting with them as a friend and leader, to a place of meeting with them as a confronter.
I’m not so sure it would be going too far, to say that the use of these two names, although Gilgal really did exist, is to symbolize this shift in their relationship with their God.
They had proclaimed with their own lips that they would serve Him, and Him only, and that they would never forget the God who brought them up out of Egypt.
Yet they move into the land, start feeling the power and liking the thought of having their conquests serve them as slaves, and they disobey His words to them.
So God meets them where they are. And friend, when God, who displays love and patience and mercy and goodness, is forced to meet us in our faithlessness and our place of disobedience because we’ve turned our back on Him, I promise you, there will be weeping. But will it be tears of remorse for being found out, or tears of sorrow and repentance for sin?
I suspect it was more the former than the latter for them, because as we go on you will see that they did not change for the better. They cried, and they sacrificed to Him there. But to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.
(I Sam 15:22)
Now at verse 6 of chapter 2 the writer of this book backs up in time, actually taking us back to the last chapter of Joshua. “When Joshua had dismissed the people, the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land.”
In doing this, the writer has very effectively reminded all who will read his words through the course of history, that Joshua challenged the people to remember the God of their salvation, to completely reject the gods they worshipped in Egypt and to reject the gods of the lands they were about to possess, and purge the land of them, and serve only God.
He has reminded the reader that the people swore to do those things, and made promises to serve the Lord God in righteousness. And then he says Joshua died, they buried him with his fathers, and that generation passed away, and a new generation came up,…
…and what do we read of this new generation? What is the very first thing we see written down to characterize an entire generation of a nation?
“…who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.”
And the result of course, the only result that could come of this, is that they did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the demon gods of the Canaanites, and ‘forsook the Lord of their fathers’ and provoked Him to anger… and the account of the Judges begins in earnest.
Now what nuggets can we glean today from this account of the spiritual decline of the people of God?
I don’t know who it was who first said, “Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it”, but the words are true. Unfortunately, and I think it’s just one of the characteristics of the sin nature, we can take that a little farther and say that even though we know history there is no guarantee we will not repeat it. There is a very strong likelihood that we will repeat the mistakes of those who have gone before us, unless we have learned to trust in, and give control of our lives very completely to, Christ our Head.
It is only then that these tendencies to regress and fall into error and finally into sin will be checked and avoided, you see, because only a life of faith can avoid them, and that life can only be lived in Him.
Listen to His chief complaint again, as He confronts His people at Bochim.
“I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ but you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done?”
What is this you have done?
Like any good father, and being the truly Good Father of His people, He makes them look at their own mess and asks the question He already knows the answer to. But it’s for their sake, not His. “What is this you have done?”
You had my promise, and you had my instruction, and ignoring both, you demonstrated unbelief, and disobedience. Just look at this mess.
He comes to us in the same way, Christians. This isn’t a message for unbelievers. They don’t have this relationship. They don’t have His promises or His instruction. For them there is only the gospel message, and the call to believe and be born again.
But we have His promises. “I will never leave you, nor will I ever forsake you”.
And how often, by our actions and by our responses to our circumstances, do we falsely declare that He has indeed forsaken us? Failure to go to prayer for a need. Failure to pray for a friend in a time of trouble. Refusal to hear His voice through His Word, or through another Christian, or directly from Him during a time of quiet; choosing to run our lives in our own strength and wisdom, as though we really do know what is best? That is unbelief.
Now what does unbelief breed in our lives, Christian? Self-Pride? Fear? Worry? Dependence on the flesh? Yes! All those things.
The sons of Israel neglected to purge the land of the enemy, as though God’s promise to care for them was not true, and sought to provide for themselves by keeping slaves and the worldly treasures of the land.
The very things which became a snare to them. And the very things which become a snare to us, when we neglect to drive the things of the world and the flesh out of God’s territory.
We think they’re here to serve us. We think we keep them around to make our lives easier and better; but they are a snare. And Christian, I have to tell you that clinging to them will eventually turn the heart to idolatry.
Having said that, I want to take you back a step and let’s be reminded of what the real error was. I didn’t list things, you may have noticed. I am deliberately steering clear of listing habits or attitudes or possessions or philosophies or anything else that might come under the heading of ‘things of the world and the flesh’.
The reason is that in themselves, these things aren’t evil. At least not for the most part. Just like the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, they aren’t intrinsically much of a threat to us.
The error, the thing that led to sin, was in not heeding the voice of God.
The next little nugget I want to dig out of this for you, is to direct your notice to the fact that they were not ignorant. They did know of all the things God had done for them and for their fathers. They did know the history of the Jewish nation from Abraham on. And we know that they knew what God’s instructions to them were, because Joshua had made them clear, and they themselves had verbalized their recognition and their intention of being faithful.
So you see, whatever is going through your own mind; whatever your baser nature tries to come up with to justify you, it just can’t stand up. You can’t say, “I didn’t do that thing or think that thought or indulge in that, so I’m safe”, because somewhere along the line the Holy Spirit would put His finger on something in your life and say, “Ah, but there is this”. And the fact of the matter is, that God has promised this and He has said that, and you have disbelieved and disobeyed, and there are consequences. What is this you have done?
And while I’m saying ‘you this’ and ‘you that’, let me remind you that when the angel of the Lord came to them, no one was specified. He came to the entire nation. No one escaped His reprimand, no one escaped the circumstances. So this message is for all of us, people; all Christians.
It is a warning, that comes to us as a type through the history of the Jews here in Judges, but it comes to us directly by the Holy Spirit through the writer to the Hebrews, when he says:
“For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” Heb 2:1,2
The next thing I want you to be observant of, and then I’ll bring this to a close, is the long-range effect of their failure to believe and to obey.
Now first, notice that I did not say, their clinging to the comforts of the flesh or their subsequent turning to idols. Those things played a role, and a very significant one to be sure, but where the rubber meets the road is that fundamentally, in their hearts and minds, they disbelieved, and their disbelief was manifested in disobedience.
And the long-range effect was that it carried over to the next generation. Their children. And once more, no one is specified here. The writer says “…there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord…” and in verse 11, “Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals…”
People I want you to understand, whether you have children in your home or not, because the spiritual fulfillment of this type is not necessarily our own children of the flesh, although it is them too, but it is those who will become new Christians after us.
If indeed we are doing our duty before God and bearing spiritual children and populating the Kingdom, what then are we teaching them?
What example is the church today setting, for the babes and those who will be born in future months and years?
We have His promise and we have His instruction; and those things have been made abundantly clear, and repeated to us over and over in scripture and over the pulpit and in books and oh, in so many ways; not the least, but the greatest of all, by the indwelling Spirit of Christ in our hearts.
But are the children, the babes, seeing faith and obedience and blessing? Or are they growing up witnessing faithlessness and worldliness and the sad consequences that effectively erase any difference in appearance between us and a fallen world?
We have a responsibility toward them, you know. The way we relate to God and the way we respond to Him now does not only effect us, believers. We don’t live in our own little bubble with God and only have ourselves to answer for.
Do you think, even after making their error, if their weeping and their sacrifice had come out of true repentance that the next generation would have stood a much better chance of being a Godly one? I do.
Well, there. Some nuggets to glean, some things to think about. Let me close this today by approaching this from a slightly different angle; let the light hit this area of scripture just a little bit differently before we go.
You may be familiar with the account of the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt. With the events that took them there in the first place, and how they found themselves in bondage and in sorrowful conditions under an evil Pharaoh, and the ten plagues and the Passover, and the crossing of the Red Sea.
And in the past I’ve taught those things and brought out the types, or the foreshadowing of what was to come in Christ. How Pharaoh would be the type of Satan, and their slavery in Egypt a type of our bondage to sin, and Moses a type of Christ, who led us out of our Egypt of sin and through the waters of death and into a new life in Him.
Now in the past I’ve heard taught that following this type, the promised land becomes Heaven. Joshua, who bore the Hebrew name equivalent of Jesus, both names meaning ‘salvation’, led the sons of Israel across the Jordan River into the promised land and this is a type of Heaven.
But I assure you that is not the teaching of the scriptures. Turn with me to Hebrews 4 for a minute, and let’s read some verses there. I want to read verses 1 through 13, which is rather lengthy for a passage that is not our primary text, but it’s worth the time and I promise I’ll be as brief as possible in my closing remarks.
This passage is referring, not to the generation that entered Canaan and captured its cities, but to the generation that preceded them. That wandered in the desert for 40 years. The writer has said in chapter 3 that they did not enter the land because of unbelief.
“Therefore, let us fear lest, while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also; but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard. For we who have believed enter that rest, just as He has said, ‘AS I SWORE IN MY WRATH, THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST’, although His works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, ‘AND GOD RESTED ON THE SEVENTH DAY FROM ALL HIS WORKS’, and again in this passage, ‘THEY SHALL NOT ENTER MY REST’. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, He again fixes a certain day, ‘TODAY’, saying through David after so long a time just as has been said before, ‘TODAY IF YOU HEAR HIS VOICE, DO NOT HARDEN YOUR HEARTS’. For if Joshua had given them rest, He would not have spoken of another day after that. There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.”
The rest that they were not permitted to enter because of unbelief, was not typical of Heaven, believer. The message for us, and being related by the writer to the Hebrews here, is that there is a place of rest in Him now, for us, through belief and obedience. It is the place He has led us to after bringing us up out of Egypt and through baptism in the cloud and in the sea. We are His purchased possession, the apple of His eye, and He takes us to the border of our place of rest. Rest from works, rest from the pressures of sin, a rest that comes to the soul who believes His promise and obeys His instruction. And He invites us to enter in. To take that land.
Where are you today? You may have been a Christian for many years, but have you ever entered the Promised land? Or have you wandered in the wilderness and not experienced His rest, because of unbelief?
We’ve had a glimpse of three generations today. One never entered His rest, the next entered but then through the same example of unbelief disobeyed and subsequently had their hearts turned to idolatry, and the next just rejected Him altogether.
What generation are we? What legacy will we leave for the next generation of Christians?
Can we learn enough from history, and take it to heart to a degree that will bring about in us a determination not to be swayed to that same path?
Let me finish Hebrews 4 for you:
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need.”
Have you been in Bochim, believer? Don’t make Him come up to you to confront. Go back. Go back to Gilgal where He meets as a friend and counselor. Don’t cry vain tears and offer empty sacrifices. Go back in faith and obedience, and find rest there. Trust Him to go before you to drive out the enemy within, tear down the idols that would pose a snare, and rest.
Not only for you, but for the generation to come.
