1. Book of Judges - FNG, Friday, Aug 3, 2012
Intro to the book
As we journey through the books of the Bible this month we come to the book of
Judges. If this book were to be rated like movies are, I’m sure it would have an R rating.
It has many shocking stories of violence, betrayal and intrigue, capped off by a
gruesome story of the Levite and his concubine which we actually talked about some
time ago. And yet it is also home to some of our favorite stories from Sabbath School
and Sunday School classes - stories about Samson and Gideon.
(Show modern map) Geographically we are still in the same area of the middle east as
we have been for the past couple of books. (show old map) In the book of Judges we see
a continuation from the book of Joshua, as the tribes battle it out to clear their allocated
territories. The book covers the period from the death of Joshua, somewhere around
1380 BC to just before king Saul in 1050 BC, so we are zooming over about 300 years
worth of Jewish history in this book. Over that span of time we get to see a lot of back
and forth, as the Israelites win more land, and then have parts of their land conquered
by other nations.
Israel had no king at this time. The nation was supposed to be a theocracy, meaning it
was governed by God. The idea was to have God leading the nation, making His will
known through the priests. I’m not sure if judges were part of the original plan, and it is
not clear if the judges actually did much of what we see judges do today. Only Deborah
is cited as actually holding court. The rest of the judges we are told led or judged the
nation, but apart from their military exploits we are not told much about what that
looked like.
God of Freedom
Many of the critics of the Bible would point to Judges and cite it as one of the most
blatant examples of a tyrannical God. A number of people have taken the crazy and
violent stories, many of which are found in the book of Judges, laid them end to end in
all their gory detail and asked a pertinent question: would you let your kids read this?
And this is not a bad question to ask. Those of you who have had a chance to read the
book, let me ask you: if it wasn’t in the Bible, would you let your children read
something like this?
If the only thing you read from the Bible was the horrendous stories, it would certainly
be a mind-twisting exercise. It would be like taking a medical book and only laying out
all the symptoms and photos of diseases end to end for no other reason than the sheer
gore factor of it all. But what makes a medical book worthwhile, and what also makes
the Bible worthwhile is the fact that all this gore is set in the context of remedy. These

2. are the problems that need healing, and just like the medical book will help you
diagnose the problem and recommend the right treatment for it, so it is with the Bible -
it openly exposes the illness of the selfish, depraved and broken human mind and shows
us the way to healing.
As we ask our crucial question: “what does this book tell us about God?” I will submit to
you that this book is one of the most important books of the Bible when in comes to
understanding the way that God works. Sure, it doesn’t contain many, if any, of our
favorite texts about God’s love for us, but actions speak louder than words, and that is
why we have so many stories in the Bible. These stories are the body of evidence as we
consider the question of what God is really like. Is He the kind of person you would want
to spend an eternity with?
And when you strip the book of Judges to its core, the picture of God that you are left
with at the end may surprise you. God does not feature particularly prominently in the
book of Judges. What does feature prominently in the book of Judges is how scary it can
get when each man does as he sees fit. In Judges I do not see a scary God, but I do see a
lot of scary people. The Bible repeatedly tells us that in the days of judges each man did
as he saw fit, and what we see from the stories is that God let them!
You may remember a few months back when we looked at the book of Deuteronomy
that we had the law repeated and then had all the blessings for following it and curses
for failing to follow it. The book of Judges are what those blessings and curses look like
in practice. In the past, God used a good deal of imposed discipline to help teach the
Israelites to follow the laws. In Judges, God lets things run their natural course and lets
the Israelites experience the intrinsic consequences of their actions.
Allow me for a minute to set up a few pieces of the puzzle and then bring the whole
picture together here. Last time we met here and examined the book of Joshua we saw
how God was essentially using the nation of Israel to establish His street-cred, as it
were. In a culture where each nation had their own god or gods, the power of a god was
directly proportional to the strength and prosperity of the nation that worshipped them.
And so God, as the patron of Israel, impressed the surrounding nations by the way He
got the Israelites out of Egypt.
As the Israelites were poised to enter the promised land this is what God told them
through Moses in Deuteronomy: “If you carefully observe all these commands I am
giving you to follow—to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold
fast to him— then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you, and you will
dispossess nations larger and stronger than you.” (Deut. 11:22-23 NIV)
It is crucial to understand this point - Israel was surrounded by nations larger and
stronger than them, the only way they would be free, safe and prosperous is if God
protected them. Their continued existence in the midst of the nations that surrounded

3. them was a continual testimony of God’s power - which was all that mattered in the
world 3 millenniums ago. If you wanted to know who the true God was in that world,
who was the God who delivered results, you had to look no further than the un-
harassed existence of Israel in the midst of other strong nations.
But the Israelites were also free to choose which way they wanted to go. Yes, God
outlined a law for them, and He spelled out the blessings and curses for them, but they
were still free to choose what they wanted to do. And the Israelites evidently
consistently chose to accept gods and worship practices of the surrounding nations. This
meant that God could no longer protect them where they were. Had He continued to
provide the security and prosperity of the Israelite nation, the very people enjoying the
benefits of His patronage would credit the non-existent gods of other nations for their
good fortune. This scenario would not only completely marginalize God, it would set up
a false system of values where not just the Israelites, but the surrounding nations would
come to believe that these non-existent gods were actually rather good and useful!
What is truly astonishing about God in the book of Judges is that He lets the situation
develop in the first place. People complain about God being a tyrant in the book of
Judges. Yet a tyrant would clamp down hard at the first sign of mutiny. What God does
in the book of Judges is let the Israelites go. He lets them go the way they have chosen,
He lets them worship the gods they have made for themselves - they were completely
free to do as they please. What the book of Judges also shows us, however, is what the
consequences of those choices were. God simply let them go their own way. When they
didn’t like the consequences and decided to come back, God gladly took them back,
even though they were still far from perfect. For God, the commitment to freedom of all
His beings is not just a mere rhetoric, to be employed when it is convenient. It is a
complete and all pervasive.
What gets people is this word “anger”. But watch carefully what God does in His
“anger”. “In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who
plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they
were no longer able to resist.” (Judges 2:14 NIV). “The anger of the LORD burned
against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram
Naharaim, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years.” (Judges 3:8 NIV). “Again
the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. So the Lord sold
them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor.” (Judges 4:1,2 NIV) I
can go on, but you get the picture - in His “anger” God lets the Israelites go their own
way and lets the militarily superior nations conquer them. After the Israelites feel the
pain of reality they come back to God and God raises a judge to rescue them. This goes
on back and forth so much that at one point God tries to really drive home the point.
“Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They served the Baals and the
Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the
Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. And because the Israelites forsook the Lord

4. and no longer served him, he became angry with them. He sold them into the hands of
the Philistines and the Ammonites, who that year shattered and crushed them. For
eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites on the east side of the Jordan in Gilead,
the land of the Amorites. The Ammonites also crossed the Jordan to fight against Judah,
Benjamin and Ephraim; Israel was in great distress. Then the Israelites cried out to the
Lord, “We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals.” The Lord
replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the
Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for
help, did I not save you from their hands? But you have forsaken me and served other
gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them
save you when you are in trouble!” (Judges 10:6-14 NIV)
Have any of you ever seen an episode of Dr Phil? It may be a bit of a stretch, but imagine
with me for a moment God as Dr Phil, and for those of you who haven’t seen him, just
imagine a wise, balding, middle aged gentleman. And imagine God saying “you keep
choosing to reject me and follow these other gods.” And in that trademark Dr Phil way
then lean over and ask the obvious question: “How’s that working for ya?” God was
willing to use these teachable moments, but at no point did He take away the ability for
the nation to choose their own way.
God had so much at stake here. He had staked His reputation on this nation, to whom
He often referred to as “a stiff necked people”. This nation was a long term project for
Him - starting clear back with Abraham somewhere in the 1800’s BC, and the book of
Judges brings us to around 1050 BC. If you had invested so much into a project, over
such a long period of time, would you not be just a tad aggressive if anyone threatened
to derail the whole thing for you? And yet God let them go, even if it meant that all His
efforts over all those centuries were for nothing. In His anger, God gave them up to the
consequences of their choices, and allowed the nations who were stronger than them to
occupy and oppress them.
I believe this is the way God has acted throughout the history of this world, and will act
to the very end. We have been and always will be free to make our own choices. God
will pursue us and point out to us the intrinsic blessings and curses of our choices, but
the choice will ultimately be our own. And if we reject God, in His anger He will let us go
to follow our choices to their ruinous end. Listen to what Apostle Paul said in his letter
to the church in Rome:
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and
wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be
known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the
creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—
have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are
without excuse.

5. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,
but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they
claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for
the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for
a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever
praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. …
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so
God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. …
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve
death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who
practice them.” (Romans 1: 19-26,28,32 NIV)
That is the wrath of God - He lets us go and reap the consequences of our actions. Paul
spelled it out in the New Testament, but it is in Judges that we see the clearest example
of how this all works. The Israelites had all the evidence that Yahweh was the true God,
they had the law given to them spelling out what they should and should not do, and
the consequences of following the law and failing to follow it. They had no excuse. Yet
they chose to engage in destructive behavior and God was so angry with them that He
let them go their own way.
God truly is a God of freedom. We will always be free to choose which way we want to
go. All God ever desired from His people is love, and such love has to be freely given,
otherwise it is not genuine. But this freedom also leaves open the possibility of rejecting
God, and God does indeed let us do that. What the book of Judges teaches us with all of
that R-rated content is that God really is a God of freedom. If we reject God’s council we
may become monsters and do horrendous things to one another, but we are free to do
so. But that also leaves us free to choose to genuinely reciprocate the love that God has
shown to us.

6. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him,
but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they
claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for
the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for
a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever
praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. …
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so
God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. …
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve
death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who
practice them.” (Romans 1: 19-26,28,32 NIV)
That is the wrath of God - He lets us go and reap the consequences of our actions. Paul
spelled it out in the New Testament, but it is in Judges that we see the clearest example
of how this all works. The Israelites had all the evidence that Yahweh was the true God,
they had the law given to them spelling out what they should and should not do, and
the consequences of following the law and failing to follow it. They had no excuse. Yet
they chose to engage in destructive behavior and God was so angry with them that He
let them go their own way.
God truly is a God of freedom. We will always be free to choose which way we want to
go. All God ever desired from His people is love, and such love has to be freely given,
otherwise it is not genuine. But this freedom also leaves open the possibility of rejecting
God, and God does indeed let us do that. What the book of Judges teaches us with all of
that R-rated content is that God really is a God of freedom. If we reject God’s council we
may become monsters and do horrendous things to one another, but we are free to do
so. But that also leaves us free to choose to genuinely reciprocate the love that God has
shown to us.