Calvary Church is
dedicated to doctrine, and we want you to
experience a life change that comes from knowing God's Word
and applying it to your life. So we explain the
Bible verse by verse, every chapter, every book. This is Expound. Well, I'll confess
that in one sense, I'd love to completely
erase the Book of Judges from scripture,
because it is the story of the failure of God's people. And it is a sad piece of
history, but true nonetheless. So I say on one hand,
I'd like to erase it. I want to quickly say
on the other hand, I want to elevate it. I want to elevate
it, because there's an old saying that probably
never is proven more true than in the Book
of Judges that says those who fail to
learn from history are doomed to relive it. So we have the history of
the failure of God's people in this book, and it
serves to us as a warning. Now, in my prayer I
mentioned this is not a book that we frequent a lot. If you are depressed,
I would not recommend you go searching
through the Book of Judges to find comfort. There are plenty of other
places in scripture to do that. This is a book that might just
drag you down a little bit further. But there are some vital lessons
to be learned in this book. You see, the nation of
Israel were God's people. They were God's unique
people, His nation. To use the parlance
of Americanism, we would say they were
one nation under God. They had the freedom of having
a unique covenant with God and walking with God
from the wilderness after being
delivered from Egypt, marching across the Jordan River
into a land that was uniquely theirs that God gave
them to inhabit, to be able to
settle in it, raise their families, worship God. But they left that. They strayed from that. They disobeyed the Lord,
even as Joshua had indicated that they probably would. The very last part of
the Book of Joshua, the 24th chapter of that
book, the page or two right before the Book
of Judges, Joshua tells them in
Chapter 24, Verse 14, now therefore fear the Lord. Serve Him in sincerity
and in truth, and put away the gods
which your father served on the other side of
the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. And they kept saying, oh,
we will serve the Lord, we will serve the Lord. And Joshua tells
them in Verse 21, the people said, no, but
we will serve the Lord. And so Joshua
basically says, look, you've got one or two choices. You keep saying you're
going to serve the Lord. If you do, then
turn away from all of those false things and
false gods and goddesses that you and your forefathers
worshiped and serve the Lord. As for me and my house,
we will serve the Lord. But Joshua indicated, intimated
that they would have a tendency to want to go back,
which is exactly where we are taken in this story. The Book of Judges is
a period of history between the entrance of
the land under Joshua and the monarchy of
Saul, David, and Solomon. It's a period of about
350 to 450 years, let's just say a
400 year period. During that period, there
was no central leadership. There wasn't a Moses. There wasn't a Joshua. It had reverted
back to tribalism, the 12 tribes of Israel all kind
of trying to settle and manage their own estates in this land. So during that period, where it
was up and down, up and down, God raises up 13
judges, they are called. Now, don't think
of a judge sitting behind a bench in a
robe with a gavel, not that kind of a judge. Take it out of the
legal parlance, out of that kind of an
idea, and think more in terms of deliverers. These are judges-- let's call
them champions, sometimes political, often military. God raises them up and
uses them to deliver the children of Israel out of
a very specific local problem. There are 13 mentioned
in this book. 12 of them are men. One of them is a very
strong and really cool woman by the name of Deborah. We'll meet here in
Chapter 4 and Chapter 5. Now I warn you, the book
is rated R, for raunchy, for rebellious,
for recalcitrant. And there is material in the
book that makes us blush. It's disturbing. By the time we get
to Chapter 19 and we get the story of the
Levite and the concubine and how he cuts
her up into pieces and sends a piece to
the different tribes, it's like, what, what,
this is the Bible? So it's warning. It's at a very low moral
period of their history, a period of anarchy, which
makes the Book of Judges so contemporary. I found a little piece from a
historian, a Scottish historian named Alexander Tytler in
the 1700s, who wrote this. The average age of the
world's great civilizations is about 200 years. All travel through
the same sequence, from bondage to spiritual
faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from
great courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to leisure, from leisure to selfishness,
from selfishness to complacency, from
complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence,
from dependence to weakness, and then back to bondage. According to his words
and another little article that I was reading,
the final stage in the demise of a culture
is political anarchy. And we see that in
the Book of Judges. We'll get this haunting phrase
toward the end, where it says, and there was no King in
Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. Purely mechanistic,
purely relativistic. They just sort of made up their
own rules as they went along. Everyone one does what
is right in his own eyes. So the theme of
the Book of Judges is from conquest to compromise. They conquered the land. Joshua led them into it. They sort of settled
it, but not completely. They didn't possess
their possession. They didn't really take it. They still allowed enemies
to come and populate, and it became a problem. In Chapter 1, Verse 1, it says
now after the death of Joshua-- I pause, because that is how
the book of Joshua opens up. Different name, now
after the death of Moses. And then we're
introduced to Joshua. Here we are in this book. It says now after the death
of Joshua, and there's no one. There's no strong successor
that will follow Joshua. And there won't be until we
get to the monarchy written about in the Book of
Samuel, with King Saul, then King David,
then King Solomon. Now after the
death of Joshua, it came to pass the children of
Israel asked the Lord, saying, who shall be first to go up
for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? Now just a little background
on the term Canaanite. Canaanites were inhabitants
of the area called Canaan. There were different groups. It is a catch all phrase to
describe numerous indigenous populations within
that landmass. Some were Philistines, some were
Amarites, some were Jebusites. There's a whole bunch of
different people groups, because the way the land
was divided in those days is that there were regions,
but there were city-states. And every city called a
city-state had its own king. And so they had people
groups in areas, but they had city-states that
were managed in those areas. So it's a generic catch
all phrase, Canaanites, of those peoples who lived
west of the Jordan River. But they said, who will go up
for us against the Canaanites and fight against them? And the Lord said,
Judah shall go up. Indeed, I have delivered
the land into his hand. Now, I don't know if you do this
when you read the scripture, but I like to ask
questions of the text. You know, we read and
it says the Lord said, and we just sort of
take it for granted. But the question is,
how did the Lord say? How did they ask the Lord? Was it just one dude just
kind of lifted his head up toward heaven and go hey, God? You up there? I've got a question. Well, we're not told. In this case, it just
says, they asked the Lord and the Lord answered. Now, my belief, because it
was in vogue at the time, was through a very
interesting manner that God had set up
in the Pentateuch. There was the priest, and
there was a high priest. And the high priest
wore a special garment. He wore a breastplate with 12
stones, one representing each of the 12 tribes of Israel. And in a pouch behind the
breastplate were two stones-- do you remember what
they were called? You are Bible scholars, man. The Urim and the Thummim,
the Urim and the Thummim, a black stone and a
white stone, some think. The words Urim and Thummim
mean lights and perfections. And it is believed that the
priests, the high priest would discern the will of
God using these two stones. So there is no Joshua,
there is no Moses. There are still these people. What do we do? Let's ask the Lord. The only way they would
have known to ask the Lord is find the high priest. He would have used the
Urim and the Thummim. Now, we don't know
how it worked, but it seemed to be a very
straightforward binary system, where they
would ask a question and they get a yes or no
back, a black or a white back. And so do you want us
to go up and fight? Yes. OK, so should Reuben go first? No. Should this tribe go first? No. Should Judah to go first? Yes. So the Lord said, yes. And probably the next
question is, will we win? I'd want to know that I
wouldn't stop with that. Will you deliver
them into our hands? Yes. OK, good. That's-- now we're good to go. So they asked of
the Lord, probably through the Urim and the
Thummim through the high priest. The Lord said go. He said, Judah shall go up. Indeed, I have delivered
the land into his hand. I like the fact that
Judah is going first. I like the fact, because of the
prophecy in Genesis Chapter 49 that says that the eventual
King and leader of the tribes will be Judah. Our Lord Jesus Christ came
from the tribe of Judah. So the firstborn doesn't go,
but the fourth born tribe from the lineage of
Jacob is the first tribe to go to war in
the Book of Judges. Also, what I like about it is
the name Judah means praise. And if you fight
a battle, that's how you start the battle. That's how you enter into
the battle, with worship, with praise. You want to bring
that up to the front. You don't want to-- you don't want to
succumb to fear. No matter what is going on
around you in the world, Christians do not
give in to fear. And the best way to
conquer fear is faith. The best way to engender
faith is the Word of God and praise, worship. So praise led the procession. But Verse 3 says, so Judah said
to Simeon, his brother, come up with me to my
allotted territory, that we may fight
against the Canaanites, and I will likewise go with
you to your allotted territory, and Simeon went with him. Now, a lot of commentators see
this as a wonderful exercise in cooperation. Maybe. Or it's an exercise
in cowardice. Because after all, if
the Lord said Judah, you go and I'll deliver
them into your hands, that's all you need to know. If the battle is won because
God has given us the victory,. I don't need backup It could be that he said, you
know, I just want a buddy. But they had an army, right? But the Lord just
said, Judah should go. Judah wasn't happy with that,
so he got the tribe of Simeon to go, as well. Then Judah went up
and the Lord delivered the Canaanites and the
Perizzites into their hand. And they killed
10,000 men at Bezek. Bezek is a town probably
south of Mount Gilboa. I realize not everybody
knows where that is, but I also know that those who
have been to Israel with us know exactly where that is. You can see it in your mind. By the way, whenever we
take a tour to Israel, people who are our
Wednesday night regulars get far more out of a tour
to Israel than anybody else, because you know
the words so well. You know the story so well. Whereas people who are just kind
of the Sunday morning crowd, they don't kind of know the
history and the background the geography. But those who are
Wednesday nighters, it's just so enriching. So Gilboa, just a little bit
south of Gilboa, was Bezek. And they found,
Verse 5, Adonai-Bezek in Bezek, which is
where you would expect to find Adonai-Bezek, in Bezek. Because Adonai, even though you
are familiar with that Hebrew word Lord, Adonai can
mean Lord of Bezek, or in this case, just
simply the King of Bezek or the Prince of Bezek,
the leader of Bezek. That's the idea. They found the leader
of Bezek in Bezek. They fought against him and
they defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. And Adonai-Bezek fled,
but they pursued him and caught him and cut off
his thumbs and his big toes. I told you it was rated R. What I like about the Bible is
it doesn't try to kind of paint a little flowery picture. It just tells you
what really happened. It's honest. So the idea of cutting off
thumbs and big toes, that sounds really
barbaric, and it is. But it's also
pragmatic in battle, because in battle, you
can't grasp a sword and you wouldn't be able
to run and have stability, so you wouldn't really
be good in a battle. So it incapacitates a person. That was the idea of doing that. But this is sort of
interesting to me. Adonai-Bezek said after they
did that to him, he said, 70 kings with their
thumbs and big toes cut off used to gather
their food under my table. So he said, yeah,
I've done that too. I did it 70 times. As I have done--
now watch this-- so God has repaid me. Then they brought him to
Jerusalem, and there he died. There is a law in the scripture
that whatever you reap, or whatever you sow,
you will also reap. Be not deceived, Paul
said, God is not mocked. For whatsoever a man sows,
that will he also reap. And if he sows to the flesh,
he will reap corruption. If he sows to the spirit,
he'll reap everlasting life. So here's a guy who
said, you know what? I'm guilty, and this is payback. I did it to 70 other dudes,
so now God is doing it to me. Now, I'm not going
to try to examine his theology and
his superstition, but that happens to
be a spiritual law. You've heard it before,
that you reap in kind. If you sow wheat, you're
not going to get lemons. You're going to get wheat.
s Whatever seed you sow, you're going to reap in kind. So if you sow to
the flesh, you're going to reap of the
flesh corruption. It's going to come back to you. Now unfortunately, you
hear that scripture quoted in a negative sense. Oh, you better watch it, man. You're going to
reap what you sow. Well, it's true. You are. But it can also be positive. If you plant, if
you sow good things, you can expect good
things to come back. Give, Jesus said, and
it will be given to you, pressed down, shaken
together, running over, shall the Lord give
into your bosom. Be generous. God will be generous back
to you, reaping and sowing. So yeah, you should shudder
if you do bad things and you are cantankerous and
mean and you sow bad seed. But if you sow love
and kindness and mercy, you're going to get back
love, kindness, and mercy. You're going to
reap what you sow. Same principle. They brought him to
Jerusalem, and there he died. Now, the children of Judah
fought against Jerusalem and took it. They struck it with
the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. Now hold that thought,
because Jerusalem won't be totally conquered
for another 400 years. They conquer it, but they let
the Jebusites hang out there. They don't really do
much except burn it up. They settle sort of in
it with the Jebusites, but it won't be until
the time of David when David will take this
city from the Jebusites by crawling up the water
shaft-- he won't do it. A guy named Joab will do it, so
hold that thought, if you don't mind, for a couple of books. And afterword, the
children of Judah went down to fight
against the Canaanites who dwelt in the mountains
in the south, or in the mountains,
comma, in the south, comma, and in the lowland. Now, do you see
those three phrases? Those happen to be the three
main topographical geographical areas in Israel today. The mountains is
the central spine. One thing you
notice in Israel is there's this spine
of mountains that runs from north all
the way down south. Judah is down south. Samaria is in the middle. Of the Galilean
mountains and Ephraim mountains are up in
the north, but there is a central spine of mountains
that runs all the way from north to south. Then you have the south area. It says in Verse
9, in the south-- the Hebrew word is the Negev. The Negev is the desert. From Hebron down,
it's all desert. Once you get down past Hebron,
which is up in the highlands in the mountains, it goes
down into the desert. It's just a vast,
open, Rio Rancho-like desert down in the south. And in the lowland-- another term for
that is the Shfela. The Shefla is between the
mountains and the beach, and it's a set of
rolling hills where there were a lot of settlements. And most of the battles
in the Old Testament took place in the
lowlands, in the Shefla. So you have three
geographic areas all set out in that verse. Then Judah went against the
Canaanites who dwelt in Hebron. Now, the name of Hebron
was formerly Kiryat Arba. Now, I hope you don't mind me
explaining some of these words to you, but Kiryat is a Hebrew
word for town or village, still commonly used
in Israel today. Arba means four in Hebrew. Arba, that's how you say four,
Akhat, Shta'im, Shalosh, Arba. Arba means four. So it literally
means the village or the town of the four. Either it was named after a
coalition of four leaders, four kings, or it was named after a
guy who founded the city named Arba, because he did. So there's a dispute as to that. I don't think it's
important to us that we understand
which is which. That's just the background. And they killed Sheshai,
Achiman, and Talmai. Now, Hebron is an important
city for you to remember. Some of you already remember it. You go, yeah, I remember Hebron. Abraham dwelt by a
terabinth tree in Mamre, which is in Hebron, in
Genesis, Chapter 15. Genesis, Chapter 18,
he's there again. His wife, Sarah, dies in Hebron. And he buys-- Abraham buys a cave called
the Cave of Machpelah, and buries Sarah. And Abraham is buried there. And by the way, you can
go to Hebron today-- it's a little dangerous,
but it's good to go see it. And you can see the
original cave of Machpelah, where Abraham, the patriarch,
Sarah are all buried. And there's even
a walled enclosure built by Herod the Great
himself 2,000 years ago, well-preserved, to guard it. So Hebron became very
important to Abraham, number 1. Number 2, it becomes
very important to David because it becomes the
center of David's throne when he rules the
kingdom for seven years. he first made Hebron the
capital before Jerusalem. So it will eventually
be Jerusalem, but at first, for seven
years, it was Hebron. But before David got
there, Caleb got it. Remember Caleb? There was Joshua and Caleb. Those were the two spies
that believed that God would give them the land. So Caleb is the one
that gets Hebron. From there, Verse 11, they
went against the inhabitants of the name of Debir, was
formerly Kiryat Sefer. Now, Sefer in Hebrew means book. So it's the village of the
book, or the village of writing, some translated. It could simply
be that there was a collection of books there, a
library there, a local library. So it was the village
where the books were kept. And Caleb said--
now, this is Caleb. He's old, right? When he's 85 years
old, he's the guy who said, give me this mountain,
and he took it, Hebron. Caleb said, he who
attacks Kiryat Sefer and takes it to him, I will
give my daughter Achsah as wife. So it says in Verse 13,
Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother,
took it and he gave him his daughter Achsah as wife. Othiel is introduced. He's introduced here,
because in Chapter 3, he becomes the first
judge, first deliverer, the first champion. It's Othniel. It's a little
interesting story here that we have a guy offering
up his daughter-- you know, whoever takes over that
town and wins the battle, you can have my
daughter as wife. You might think
that's a little odd, but it's really not,
culturally speaking. Here's the simple background. In those days,
when your daughter got to marriageable age,
you want her to get married. And they were looking
for the right husband. Now typically, a husband
would enter into negotiations with a father of
a bride, and they would negotiate over the
bride price, it was called, the dowry. The dowry was money or
goods given to the father of the bride for his daughter. So the young man would say,
hey, I've got a few camels and I've got a bunch of sheep,
and I'll give you the camels and sheep for your daughter. Good, good deal. They'd shake on it. Deal was done. You say, well, that's kind
of crude and mean to women. Actually, it was a form of
protection for the woman. Because you see, in those
days, women had no rights. And if a man wanted to divorce
his wife, all he had to do was write a certificate of
divorce, go to the city gate, bring a couple witnesses, and
it's like hit the road, chick, and she was gone. So that's where
the dowry came in. It was paid to the father
of the bride in case a jerk like that let his
wife go, divorced her, and she had nothing. She could always go to dad,
who had kept the dowry for her. And if he was a smart dad, he
would have invested the dowry and it would have grown. So it would be sizable for him. So really, a dowry was
simply alimony in advance. It was to protect
the woman from that. But in a case where you
couldn't have a dowry, like if the guy was a
poor kid, so he would go, I guess I'm going to be
single my whole life, well, he could perform a feat like
this and dad would say, you can have her. So Othniel did that. Now, Verse 14. It was so when she came
to him that she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted
from her donkey and Caleb said to
her, what do you wish? The Septuagint version and
translates it a little bit differently. Our version says, she urged him
to ask her father for a field. In the Septuagine,
it says, he asked her to ask her
father for the field. So we don't know. It could have been both. It could have been
simply, hey, Othniel, you're a mighty warrior. You got that village taken
care of and squared away. Ask my dad for a field. Ask my dad for something. No, I don't want to do that. Your dad's intimating. You ask. Which it could have
been that simple. And by the way, it's much wiser
for her to ask her father, because any father would
give his daughter something way before he'd give
his son-in-law anything. It's my daughter, man. So she dismounted
from her donkey and Caleb said,
what do you wish? So he said, give me a blessing. Since you have given
me land in the south, give me also springs of water. They're down in the desert
and they need water rights. So Caleb gave her the upper
springs and the lower springs. Now, the children of Israel,
now the children of the Kenite, Moses' father-in-law went
up from the City of Palms-- the City of Palms is the
ancient name for Jericho. Jericho really was the
Palm Springs of Israel. Well, tomorrow the high
in Jericho in Israel will be 112 and then
113 the next day. So it's like Phoenix,
or like Palm Springs, below sea level and very hot. So the children of
the Kenite, Moses, now do you remember his
name, Moses' father-in-law? Jethro. Jethro was a Kenite. The Kenites were an ancient
nomadic desert-dwelling people, go all the way back to Genesis. I think Chapter 15,
they're first mentioned. So they're dwelling with
the children of Judah. They went up from Jericho,
the City of Palms, with the children of Judah to
the wilderness of Judah, which lies in the south near Arad. Arad is down by the
Dead Sea, about 15, 20 miles away from it. And they went and
dwelt among the people. And Judah went with
his brother Simeon, and they attacked the
Canaanites who dwelt in Zephath, and utterly destroyed it. So the name of the
city was called Hormah. Also, Judah took
Gaza, which is still a city in that
part of the world, with its territory Ashkelon,
with its territory, and Ekron with its territory. Now, look again at the
name of those three cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron. They're going to keep coming
up in the Old Testament books, Samuel and Kings. And those three are
part of a-- will be part of a coalition of
five Philistine cities. This is where the Philistines
will inhabit the land later on. So it says Verse 19,
the Lord was with Judah. And they drove out the
inhabitants of the mountains, but they could not drive out
the inhabitants of the lowland, because they had
chariots of iron. Now hold that thought-- not for two books, but
just for a few verses. Chariots of iron, man,
they had the technology that the children of
Israel did not have. A chariot in those
days was like a tank, and a chariot of iron, right,
is like a Merkava tank, man. It's like vicious. Chariots of iron. And they gave Hebron to
Caleb, as Moses had said. They expelled from there
the three sons of Anak. The three sons of Anak. Anak was a person
who lived there. He had three sons. If you have a whole
bunch of those relatives, they were called the Anakim. That's the plural in
Hebrew, -im ending, Anakim. Now, the Anakim, or the sons
of Anak, the relatives of Anak, were the ones that when the
12 spies in Numbers 13 and 14 came to the land to spy it
out, they came to Hebron, they came to this area. And it's what intimidated
10 of those spies, right? They had a little
recon mission, and 10 saw the giants, these
big, tall dudes, and said, man, there's
some big dudes over there. And they're huge, and we're not. And. And we were grasshoppers
in their sight that's what they said. That wasn't the truth. The truth was, we were
grasshoppers in our sight. And with their sight. They weren't considering
how big God is next to the children of Anak. They only measured the
difficulty of the situation by the size of the
inhabitants of the land rather than by the
size of their God. So the 10 said, they're huge. And Joshua and Caleb
said, they're not huge. God is way bigger than them. God gave us the land. Let's take it. This will be fun. But the one report
that prevailed was the one of unbelief,
and so they wandered around, as you know, for 38 more years. Verse 21, but the
children of Benjamin did not drive out the
Jebusites who inhabited Jerusalem, so the
Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin
in Jerusalem until this day. And the house of
Joseph also went up against Bethel,
middle of the country, and the Lord was with them. So the house of Joseph
sent men to spy out Bethel. Now, the house of
Joseph is whom? Two tribes, Ephraim and Manassa. The name of the city
was formerly Luz. And when the spy saw a man
coming out of the city, they said to him, please show
us the entrance to the city and we will show you mercy. So he showed them the
entrance of the city, and they struck the city
with the edge of the sword. But they let the man
and all his family go. And the man went to the land
of the Hittites, built a city, and called the same Luz,
which is its name to this day, the day of the
writing of this book. We read these verses. They sound a little odd, because
the entrance to the city, all you have to do is look
at any old walled city, you would think and see
a gate that goes to it, there is the
entrance to the city. But they weren't looking
for the main entrance. They were looking for
a hidden entrance. You see, when cities
were built back then, the problem was
often a water supply. So when they would
find a water supply, they would often quarry right
through the rock from the water supply to an area within the
city, build a well at that site so they could within
the city walls get the water, whose spring
may be outside the city walls. And then they would
cover over that site. So for example, when you come
with us on a tour to Israel, we'll take you to Megiddo. And you'll go to Megiddo and
you'll see these civilizations, but you'll come to this place
where they dug the spring out outside the city walls, and they
have a rock shaft that we walk through from inside the city
all the way to the outside of the city, and
then we walk out. So they would dig
that shaft, and then they would cover it over,
the well part of it, the source of it with
rocks and then bushes, so it looks like nobody
knew where it was. But if you could
get to that spring, you could go right into
the city and take it over. That's how Jerusalem
was taken by David. David said to his men, whoever
climbs up the water shaft will be commander of my forces. Joab said, I'll do it. And he scurried up the water
shaft, got into the city, and helped the children
of Israel overtake it. So they're looking
for the secret way in. The guy tells them
how to get in. They conquer the city. Verse 27, however,
Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of
Beit She'an and its villages. Now, Beit She'an is up
north, a little bit northeast of Mount Gilboa. I keep mentioning Gilboa. Gilboa is where
King Saul will die and the people
will hang his body from the walls of Beit She'an. We always take people
to Beit She'an, because today you can
see the New Testament city, the Roman city, and
then in the background, the Old Testament
city, all still there. So the Manasseh did not
drive out the inhabitants of Beit She'an and its villages,
or Ta'anak and its villages, or the inhabitants of
Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of
Eblaim and its villages, or the inhabitants of
Megiddo and its villages, for the Canaanites
were determined to dwell in that land. Notice that phrase,
the Canaanites were determined to
dwell in that land. Your flesh, your old
habits is determined to dwell in that land. It doesn't go easily. It came to pass when
Israel was strong that they put the
Canaanites under tribute, that is, they taxed them. They had to pay a fee, but did
not completely drive them out, nor did Ephraim drive out the
Canaanites who dwell in Gezer, so the Canaanites dwelled
in Gezer among them, nor did Zebulon drive out
the inhabitants of Kitron or the inhabitants of Nahalol. So the Canaanites
drew all among them, and were put under tribute. Nor did Asher drive out
the inhabitants of Acco. I wish I could tell
you about Acco. One of my favorite places to go. We never take tour groups there,
though I used to hang out there when I lived in Israel. It's a old Phoenician seaport
on the upper coast of Israel, but we have to move on. Or the inhabitants
of Sidon, this is all the Phoenician
territory in the upper coast of the land, or of
Ahlab, or Achzib, Helbah, Aphik, or Rehob. I have no idea exactly
where those are. I just know the general area. So the Asherites dwell
among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land,
for they did not drive them out, nor did Naphtali drive out the
inhabitants of Beth-shemesh-- It's down south--
inhabitants of Beth-anath. They dwell among the Canaanites,
the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the inhabitants
of Beth-shemesh and Beth-anath were put under tribute. Now we have a series
of defeats, or a series of almost taking the land,
but settling for less. So God gave them
the land, but they let the Canaanites
live in the land. They didn't kick
them out of the land. And Joshua had told
them, the Lord told them, and in the Pentateuch, and
then Joshua reminded them, if you let them
stay in the land, they're going to become
thorns in your sides, and snares to you. Well, you say they had excuses. They have chariots of iron. We don't have chariots of iron. Wait a minute, didn't God say to
Judah, I'll give you the land, just take it. Now, you can stand
there and go, yeah, but they've got
chariots of iron, sort of like your forefathers said,
there's giants in the land. If God said take the
land, take the land. He wouldn't tell you
to take it unless you could have the victory for it. And by the way, by the time we
get to chapter four and five, the only strong
one among them is a woman named Deborah,
who becomes a judge and defeats the enemy with
who have 900 chariots of iron, but she knew the Lord. Oh you cowards, you
guys, you won't do it. I'll do it. Takes a woman to do this,
I'll do it, me and the Lord. And she let that brigade,
900 chariots of iron. By the time we get a few
chapters ahead of that, or after that, there's
a guy named Gideon. He has 300 men against
135,000 Midianites. He starts off with 10,000, and
God says you have too many men. He said, too many men? We have 10,000 and
there are 135,000. Yeah, but there's
still too many men for me to deliver
them into your hand, because if 10,000 men
take over 135,000 people, you're going to say, boy we're
really a good fighting force. But if 300 men wipe
out 135,000, you'll be forced to say
it was the Lord. So there's too many. So God gave the victory,
though they were outnumbered. Psalm 20 says, "Some trust in
chariots, some trust in horses, but we will remember the
name of the Lord, our God." That's a principle
in spiritual warfare. Verse 34, "Then the
Amorites, and the Amorites forced the children of
Dan into the mountains, for they would not allow them
to come down into the valley. The Amorites were determined to
dwell in Mount Heres in Aijalon in Shaalbim. Yet, when the hand of the house
of Joseph became stronger, they were put under tribute." Now the boundary
of the Amorites is from the ascent of that name
from Sela and upward, Akrabbim. Dan didn't even take
any of their territory. They just hid it in the
mountains till later on. We get to chapter 18, and
they scurry from the allotment that God gave them down
south all the way up north. We'll get to that later. I won't even tell you the story. We'll get to the
story, so don't worry. But look at chapter 2 verse 1. "Then the angel of the Lord
came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And said." Now, notice it's not
an angel of the Lord, it's the definite article "the." The-- and then is "The Angel"
capitalized in your Bible? That's mean to give
a commentary on it. It's because the
translators are identifying the Angel of the Lord
with the Lord himself. Follow me here. So the angel of the Lord says
'this, "I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land
which I swore to your fathers. And I said, I will never
break my covenant with you, and you shall make no
covenant with the inhabitants of this land, but you shall
tear down their altars. But you have not
obeyed my voice. Why have you done this?" Or it could be translated,
look what you've done. "Therefore, I also said,
I will not drive them out from before you, but they
shall be thorns in your side, and their God shall
be a snare to you. So what was when the
angel of the Lord spoke these words to all
the children of Israel, that the people lifted up
their voices and wept." Now, the angel of
the Lord, I believe, is what theologians call
a theophany, a theophany, an appearance or a Christophany,
an appearance of Jesus Christ before his incarnation. Whenever we read of
the Angel of the Lord in the book of Genesis,
and a couple of times, even in this book, the language
that the angel of the Lord uses is the language that
only God himself can use. I delivered you. I am the one who did this. So here's a messenger,
that's with the word angel means, a messenger of
God, but the messenger of God says I'm the one who did it. I'm the one who delivered you,
when the Bible says God did it. So we're forced to make
an interpretation, who then is the Angel of the Lord? Well, it's the
same as in Genesis chapter 18, when three
visitors came to Abraham. We find out later on
two of them are angels. One of them is the Lord himself,
but they're in some human form. It's the same in the
book of Joshua chapter 5, when Joshua sees the
commander of the Lord's army. He sees a guy with a drawn
sword, a man, a soldier, and says, are you on
our side, or their side? And that person says,
I'm not on either side. I'm the commander of
the Lord's armies. You better get on my side. That was the Angel of the
Lord at the burning bush. The bush spoke and
it was an apparition, and it speaks of
the Lord's Angel. The Angel of the Lord
speaking to him there from the burning bush. So I believe it's a
pre-incarnate form of Jesus in the Old Testament. It is the Lord
Himself showing up. So if you wonder where Jesus
is in the Old Testament, many scholars will point to
this christophany or theophany, that this is one of them. But notice what the people do
after the angel of the Lord says this. It says, "They lifted up
their voice and wept." They got all emotional. And they call the name
of that place Bochim. Weepers. And they sacrifice
there to the Lord. Boy, that sounds promising,
but they cried, oh they cried, oh, they had a deep
emotional experience, and a wonderful worship
service, but they did nothing to change their behavior. They'll leave the
worship service. They'll leave their
emotional experience, and they will not
trust the Lord. They will not take the land. They will revert
to disobedience, and the rest of the
book from this point on shows how it goes
from bad to worse. Now, oftentimes, when
Lord deals with us, when the Lord deals with
a person over an issue, it can become a very
emotional thing. You know, we feel it in the
core and in a person will weep and cry and go,
wow, what happened? Well, the Lord touched me. Did you change? No, I'm still doing the same
behavior, but boy, did I have a good cry. Sometimes you can weep away the
conviction of the Holy Spirit. And you just get satisfied with
having an emotional experience with no heart change, with
not putting into practice the principles that
change behavior. That's what the Lord is after. Later on, God will say, book
of Joel, "Rend your hearts, and not your garments." You rip your-- oh, I'm having an
emotional experience with God. Rip your heart, man. Get changed deep down inside. Rend your heart,
not your garments. "When Joshua dismissed the
people, the children of Israel when each to his own
inheritance to possess the land. So the people serve
the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all
the days of the elders who outlived
Joshua, who had seen the great works of the Lord,
which he had done for Israel. Joshua, the son of Nun, the
servant of the Lord died when he was 110 years old.
" That's about time. "And they buried him within
the border of his inheritance at Timnath-heres, in
the mountains of Ephraim in the Northwest
side of Mount Gaash. When all that generation had
been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after
them who did not know the Lord, nor the work which he
had done for Israel. " Now, remember I
said this is the end of strong central leadership? It was Abraham. There was Isaac. There was Jacob and
then there was Joseph that the Lord raised up. Then they went into Egypt,
when the Lord raised up Moses. And after Moses, Joshua,
and after Joshua, you got like 400
years of floundering, and now the author
of this book, whom I believe is Samuel by the
way, the prophet Samuel, gives a summary of
the rest of the book. In the verses that
follow in chapter 2, he gives a summary of
what I call the sin cycle. Seven cycles of behavior
that take us downward. It's like they served the
Lord while Joshua was alive, and while those elders
were alive who experienced that firsthand
experience of greatness with God in the wilderness,
and crossing of the Jordan. But once that generation
died, the next generation didn't follow. And it's an interesting
thing, revival rarely makes it into the
next generation, unless those children themselves
have their own personalized encounter with the Lord. You can never live off what your
parents went through and saw and did. You have to have your own. Christianity is always
one generation away from total extinction. We see it all the time. Children who are raised in the
church, but they go to college, and you know, all they got was
a couple of youth group jubilees from time to time,
and great experience. But then they get into the
real thinking environment, they walk away from the faith. So it's incumbent upon
the older generation, as best they can to
live it and pass it down to the next generation. But the sin cycle is like
this, rebellion, first phase, after rebellion
comes retribution. God allows them to suffer at
the hand of their enemies. They become enslaved by
the enemies whose gods they worship to begin with, because
they were tired of the Lord. And then, there's
repentance, they call out, oh, God, please forgive us,
and then there's restoration. God hears them. Sends them a judge, a champion,
a deliverer, delivers them, and they're back
on top with God. And then it goes all through
the same cycle again. Seven times outlined in this
book with different judges. "So when all that
generation had been gathered to the fathers and
another generation arose after them who
did not know the Lord, nor the work which he
had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel did
evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals." I'll explain that next
week, who they are. "And forsook the Lord God of
their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt,
and followed other gods from among the gods of the people
who were all around them, and they bowed down to them,
and they provoked the Lord to anger. " "They forsook the Lord and
served Baal and the Ashtaroth." Again, I'll explain
who they are next time. "The anger of the Lord
was hot against Israel. So he delivered
them into the hands of plunderers, who
despoiled them, sold them into the hands of their
enemies all around, so they could no longer
stand before their enemies." This is the second phase
of that cycle, retribution. "Whenever they went out,
wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was
against them for calamity. As the Lord had said, and
the Lord had sworn to them, and they were
greatly distressed." After that, comes
repentance and restoration. "Then the Lord
raised up judges, who delivered them out of the hand
of those who plundered them. They would not listen
to their judges." Again, judges,
these are like guys and a gal who went on
military expeditions, they were champions. "They would not listen
to their judges, but they played the
harlot with other gods and bowed down to them. They turned quickly
from the way which their fathers walked in obeying
the commandments of the Lord. They did not do so. And when the Lord raised
up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge
and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies. All the days of the
judge for the Lord was moved to pity
by their groaning, because of those who oppressed
them and harassed them. And when it came to pass,
when the judge was dead, that they reverted
and behaved more correctly than their fathers,
by following other gods to serve them and bow down to them. They did not cease
from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way,
and then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and He
said, because this nation has transgressed my covenant, which
I commanded their fathers, and is not heeded my
voice, I will no longer drive out before them
any of the nations that Joshua left when he died. So that through them,
I may test Israel, whether they will keep
the ways of the Lord to walk in them as their
fathers kept them or not. Therefore, the Lord left those
nations without driving them out immediately, nor did he
deliver them into the hand of Joshua. " Last week when we
gathered together-- and this is all recovering
this chapter 1 and 2-- Last week we told
you that originally, the map of the land that
God granted to Israel was 300,000 square miles. And that at their peak
under King David and Solomon they only occupied
30,000 square miles. They only took a tenth of what
God really wanted for them. That's because they
were promised the land and they conquered the land, but
they never occupied the land. They didn't possess
their possessions. So the corollary is this, we are
given the Bible says Ephesians chapter 1, "Every
spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus in
heavenly places." I am convinced there
is so much more God wants us to experience than
we are presently experiencing. You say, well,
what's the problem? The problem often is we
let the enemies, the flesh, dwell in the land. The flesh is determined. The bents, the
habits, the old ways of doing things and, we
make excuses for them. Oh, I'll just make a
covenant with them. Look, I'm just Irish,
man, I'm hot headed. That's just who I am. You don't like it, tough. Or I'm Hispanic,
man, I'm a scrapper. If you start making
those kind of excuses, you're simply saying,
I'll let the propensities, the proclivities, the
bents of my flesh live, take root, and flourish. God wants you to live
not by the flesh, but in the spirit to
conquer those propensities, proclivities, bents
of your flesh. You and I are to be
more than conquerors. And so that's why I
say the Book of Judges will prove to be
very contemporary, but we're out of time, more to
be said, save it for next time when we cover the
next couple chapters. Father, thank you
for the opportunity to be able to look through the
lens of Old Testament history and find how honest this
report is of your people. Your covenant people, the people
of God, the chosen people, who made the wrong choices. What they chose was not what
you had in mind for them. And they never took all that
you really wanted them to enjoy. Father, I pray that
those enemies, those sins of the flesh, that we may
find victory for a while, but we give into them, and
they can dominate our lives, would be subdued by a powerful
work of your Holy Spirit, moving in and through
us your church. Thank you, Lord, that we are
saved completely by grace through faith not of ourselves. We don't work for it, you
accept us the way we are. But it's also true
you love us too much to leave us the way we are. You want us to grow and
you have so much for us. I pray we would apprehend
that and occupy. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's all stand. For more resources from
Calvary Church Skip Heitzig, visit calvarynm.church. Thank you for joining
us during this teaching in our expound series.
