“Judges: The Rise and Fall of Judges" Judges 2: 6-23

I was a freshman in college the first time I read the Bible the whole way through. When people tell me that they are going to read the Bible from cover to cover, I tell them that people often give up around Numbers because it just seems to be a list of, well, numbers. People, dimensions, but to keep going, because it will pick up.

But as I get older, I often wonder if that isn’t the word of encouragement I should be giving. Instead, maybe folks a warning of what’s going to come just a few chapters later in the book of Judges. Because nothing can prepare you for it. 

And perhaps that is our own fault as a church. We rarely hear sermons preached from the book of Judges. There is only one passage from Judges in the three year cycle of scripture readings - the Revised Common Lectionary and that is the story of Debra. Sometimes we hear a few other stories, like Gideon or Samson, but they are often divorced from the context of what is happening in the book as a whole.

So for the next few weeks, I want to take time to dig into some of the stories from Judges. Maybe some that you have heard before. Maybe some that you are not familiar with at all. But this comes with a warning. Judges is a hard book. But if we honest, the world that we live in today is hard as well. So maybe we are in need of a book like Judges to be opened up before us as a reminder. 

The book of Judges starts out in a difficult place. The Israelites failed to conquer the land of Canaan. Things were looking pretty good at first, but by the middle of the chapter each tribe was listed followed by the statement “did not drive out”. It was not looking good for the Israelites. In fact, in many ways it looked like they had simply given up.

What happened? When you read the book of Joshua, that which comes right before the book of Judges, it looked like the people of Israel were settling into the Promise Land. Well two things took place, almost simultaneously. The first is that Joshua and his generation is dead. Joshua was the leader who followed Moses and took up the mantle to lead the people out of Exodus and into the promise land. Joshua was known as a man of faith. In fact, when others doubted that they could conquer the peoples in the lands around them, Caleb and Joshua stood alone trusting in the promise of the Lord. 

But the people didn’t have the same faith as Joshua so upon is death a second thing took place in abundance, the people of Israel went astray. God at the beginning of chapter two, right before the verse that we read today, is reminding the people that it was him who brought the people out of the land of Egypt. It was God who promised to never break covenant with the people of Israel. But they were told to not make covenants with the people of the lands, and here they were cozying up with the Canaanites. And God said that this would be their snare. 

And that snare came in the form of starting to worship other gods. We’ve been working our way through the minor prophets in Bible Study, which start with Hosea. Now Hosea has an interesting call of God upon his own life, but the message itself that he is bringing is not unique. The people have failed to live in the covenant, a covenant akin to a betrothal and marriage covenant, with God. They instead have strayed and have become unfaithful by worshipping other Gods.

That going astray didn’t start with the people Hosea was talking to. In fact, we’ve seen several examples of the Israelites going astray in the handful of books prior to Judges. But here, in Judges its becoming prevelant. Its becoming a way of life. In fact its becoming a whole cycle.

Judges as a title refers tot he people that God raised up to deliver the people of Israel when they found themselves facing an enemy. This was prior to the time of Kings. The Israelites found themselves in a cycle again and again and again that went something like this:

The Israelites did what was evil in the sight of God, so the Lord handed them over to an enemy. They cried out to God and the Lord relented and raised up for them a judge, or a deliverer, who went out to defeat the enemy. And then the land had rest (at least for the deliverer’s life time). 

But then there was always a next step in the cycle. The people would stay again! As soon as they forgot how God had delivered them. As soon as they forgot that it was God that defeated their enemy, they went right back to their former ways - worshipping other gods. 

Why in the world were the people of God, the chosen people!, behaving in this manner. 

First, this generation did not know the Lord. At least not in the same way that Joshua, or Moses, or their previous leaders had known God. See for too long under the leadership of those individuals, they trusted on the leader to be the mouth piece for God. Fast forward to the time of the minor prophets, like Hosea, and they were trusting the priests and the prophets to be the mouthpiece from God. But they themselves didn’t have that solid relationship with the ultimate deliverer, the Lord God.

We have a gentleman in this parish who always says that someone else can’t have your relationship with God for you. Now folks can pray for you. And for many of us, we came to know Christ because the seeds were planted by folks down on their knees praying for us. But in order to have a relationship with God we have to know God for ourselves. Not know facts about God. Not known stories from the Bible. Know God. 

Not only do the Israelites at this time not know God because they’ve relied on other people to be the conduit instead of seeking God for themselves, they also are going astray with the freedom that God has given them. We find at the beginning of the book of Genesis that human beings are given free will. In a perfect world, what are we to be doing with our free will? Choosing to love God. Choosing to worship God. But all too often, people choose sin over obedience, and to love other gods instead of the God. 

When you combine the Israelites wandering hearts with a lack of a grounding relationship with a Holy God, is it any wonder that they are chasing after other Gods?

Friends, can we see ourselves, see our world, in chapter two of the book of Judges? How many folks do we know that don’t have a relationship with God? Never had their heart changed or in Methodist terms their “heart strangely warmed”? Now, we need to be careful here, because it is not up to us to judge other people’s relationship with God, but we can certainly ask if they have a relationship with the lover of their soul. And if they answer is no, we can help shepherd people from a place of head knowledge to a place of heart knowledge. 

And one of the ways that we can do that is joining the generations who have come before us, back on our knees, praying for folks. Praying for a change to come. Praying for a generation to come and know the Lord. 

Friends, it is time to stop chasing after everything around us, and instead, renew our relationship with the Holy God, living by faith, and breaking the cycles of violence and pain that swirl around us. It is time to cry out again and then not go back. It is time. Are we ready? Amen.