The Book of Judges chronicles Israel's history of failure due to compromise with enemies, highlighting a downward spiritual decline. The sermon explains the book's structure, noting its introduction, historical account of the judges, and appendix, and emphasizes that the term 'judges' refers to a period of time rather than just individuals. Key passages like Judges 2:14-19 reveal that judges were raised by God to deliver Israel, but the people often returned to serving other gods. The core lesson is that compromise leads to spiritual decay, and God's people must actively hold onto their inheritance through faith and struggle, paralleling the church's need to possess its spiritual blessings.
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Amazing dream, shall always be my song of praise, for it was great that for my bitter dream. I do not know just why he came to love me so.
He looked beyond my hope and for my need. my life without me. To build a throne where Jesus died for me. Am I the man, your grace that was, I told you.
He will be on my hope and joy by me. me today it stands today to do my prayer for Christ the Lord and that is right in your ear.
You're walking far before the day of great the day. He stands with mouth and heart to give to me. I shall forever live my night through Calvary, to build that rock where Jesus died. for me. Come on, alas, the grace that was my calling for.
We look beyond my hope. and sorrow by me. Thank you. It's a real pleasure for me to be here, and I trust that something from the Word of God to bring a spiritual blessing and refreshment to your soul. My God is a great God who controls nations and empires and powers. And the nation of Israel seemed deeply aware that even though they were having a history, yet it was a profound history and under the control and influence of God.
I am given to understand that Hebrew scholars include the Book of Judges in their prophetic book, because they seem to perceive that more than just historical actions going on in the Old Testament The nation's history was something of spiritual value, had content and important to it. And I would like to direct your attention to this particular epic in the nation's history. It's called the Book of Judges, and actually it covers a period of time just a little bit longer than the book itself. So won't you turn to the Book of Judges, please, in chapter one. The Book of Judges is the history of failure.
Failure because of compromise with the enemies of God and God's people. Just as far as the actual text is concerned, there are three simple divisions of the Book of Judges. The first two chapters constitute an introduction, we might say, or a prologue. Chapter three through sixteen gives us the body of the historical account itself and the history of these men called the Judges. And then, first, chapters seventeen through twenty-one, give us a little annexation, an appendix, if you would, a closing to the book that's rather unique and special.
The nation of Israel had a very sad history. Their history was carefully chronicled for you and me in order that we might have some spiritual lessons to glean and then apply them by the grace of God to our own heart. And this is my desire that I might share with you some thoughts that would provoke you. We're going to seek to cover the entirety of this book. And if the Lord allow, have something for us, for each of our souls. But maybe just a little introduction to this very important period in the nation's history. The little prologue to the Book of Judges, chapters one and two, is really divided into two sections and the closing epilogue has got two sections as well.
The fact that it's called the Book of Judges is rather interesting. The very word judges is really the same word that it used in most oral way through the Old Testament for the discerning between two situations. The priests were to discern or cast a judgment between right and wrong, and assist people in their scrutiny and their discerning of laws and rules. But when we come to a period of time in the nation's history, the word takes on a different meaning. It starts with a man named Osmey, and it finishes up with a man named Samuel. and that these fourteen persons in between constitute the judges, even though they all do not appear in the Book of Judgment.
The fact that it is a period of time is important rather than just a book. We find a number of references, as we shall see shortly, in this book to the judges, meaning a period of time rather than individual persons. And it's from this period of time that we want to see a rather dark ages in the nation of Israel's history. And from this dark ages, in the error and the failure and the weakness and the inconsistency of God's people, I pray that there should be applied to your life and mine, a tender conscience and an exercise of soul to perceive that God has allowed his people of old to go through some very difficult, grueling, expose of themselves and thus create for you and me an evening in our own personal faith and trust in God.
The nation of Israel has four basic periods of time. They have a family period which would start at Abraham and go to the death of Joseph. And it was approximately four hundred years in rough figures. And then there was a tribal period which started with Joseph and went through the period of the Exodus where God dealt with the tribes. And that was approximately four hundred years. And then there was a theocratic period where God ruled the people directly as a whole nation. And that started with the book of Exodus and goes on to the King Saul. And it's in this particular time that the book of Judges falls. And what makes it more significant and more grieving, I'm sure, to God was it was under his direct rule that the nation hit the spiritual low.
The Book of Judges can easily be a rather depressing volume of scripture to study. You don't want it to be that. But it can be such unless we gather from us the lessons and the marked failure of God's people of all. In a very special way, the Book of Judges is applicable to you and me today. Because at the time of darkness, of declension, of failure, and it immediately precedes the monarchical period, for the nation of Israel. We are waiting for the coming of our blessed king, our Lord and Savior. And I am trusting prayerfully that each of you are looking forward to that time, of which we sang, but the nation of Israel looked forward to a king as well.
They chose a Roman and Saul, and then David came, God's chosen king. And that entered a period of about four hundred years that finished up with Zedekiah, the last of the king. The God is divided in history. Then you can see, if you would, just from those four divisions of approximately four hundred years each, the nation of Israel has recorded in the book of Judges almost one quarter and possibly one third of the nation's history. Now, many people know about the patriarchs, and many people know about the king, and most of God's people know very little about the Judges. And it's this particular volume that we want to put up before our thoughts.
Joshua might even be more familiar to us. Joshua and Judges are to be contrasted. The Book of Joshua has an upward thrust in it. And the Book of Judges is a downward, constant, declining spiritual graph. The nation is going downward in all of their experience. The Book of Judges has one man prominent, a dynamic God-chosen leader. The book of Judges has a multiplicity of God's chosen leaders, no one man as prominent, and every one is increasingly marked with failure, weakness, and carnality. The book of Joshua is a book of victory while it's failure and deceit in the book of Judges.
The book of Joshua puts before us the fidelity of God's people, and in Judges we have apostasy. Now I'd like you to turn, if you would, to chapter two in verse fourteen, and we'll read a few verses which I will suggest are the key verses for this book. And interpret the book, or at least make an application for us, give us an insight into the book itself. The book of Judges, chapter two in verse fourteen. The anger of the Lord was caught against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.
With it soever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn unto them, and they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them." Now there's a biblical definition of the judge. He is not somebody that passes or enforces the law, He is a person raised up by the Lord to deliver the land or the God's people out of the hand of those that are their spoilers, their enemies. And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, bowed themselves unto them, and they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandment of the Lord, but they did not so.
When the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For it repented the Lord because of their groaning, by reason of them that oppressed them and wrecked them. And it came up there, when the judge was dead, that they returned and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, and following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them. They ceased not from their own doings, nor from their sovereign way. Here is a concise picture, chapter two, fourteen to nineteen, of a panoramic view of the book of Judges, and it ends the introduction, really.
Now in chapter three, we'll get into the body of the letter itself. They did evil in the sight of the Lord. That phrase appears fourteen times in the book. They did evil in the sight of the Lord. And twenty-two times we read of the Judges. Men raised up to deliver God's people. Now, if there was ever a time in the history of God's people, it is imperative that we recognize now, today, God is still looking for men and women to be raised up, who through the exercise of their God-given gifts, the faithfulness to the Word of God and the purposes of God, and in submission to God's holy purposes, that we become leadership amongst God's own.
By example, by criteria, by the ministry of the Word, God is still looking for men and women to be concerned enough for His people, to be willing to step to the poor and surrender themselves, being useful to God, and thus be a tool to deliver God's people from the oppressiveness of the world, the flesh, and the devil that surrounds us today. he would intensify his attack. And you and I need more than anything else. Good example, exercises of soul, and I know of no better place to draw from the fellowship of God's people. You'd set yourself aside, taking vacation time some of you, maybe at no little sacrifice to be a friend of God's people, looking for fellowship, looking for encouragement, but looking for something from the Word of God, and I know that the servants of God that are here amongst you are seeking to present His Word with this singularly special work in mind, that your heart and soul would be fed.
Your spirit stirs, and your lives find in some clear direction, some spiritual infinite, to move forward and grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Blessed Lord, He looks like. Beloved Christian friends, many of us have never met. And it's quite possible by the time the week is finished, we shall not see each other again. In fact, it's highly likely you might not want to see me again. But there shall be left in your heart short, planted and surrounded and watered by prayer, that I believe can be that which can be used by the Spirit of God to give us guidance and direction.
Bear with us. Plume your heart to His Word and learn. These things were written for our learning. There are carefully chronicles for you and me. Great, massive excerpts of God's history brought out to the pages of Holy Writ that you might see the movements of soul in other men and women and grown a better understanding of what God desired for you. The Book of Judges affords for us a picture of failure, failure because of compromise. failure because of an unwillingness on the part of God's people to fact-officially believe what God has for them. Now the land of Canaan was a place of promised blessing for God's people.
We'll know this. I'm sure that most of us are thoroughly familiar with the thought, but we want to put just a little chart up here for us to look at. Maybe you're a parallel for our souls. Now the significance of the book of judges is that the purposes of God for his people are being rewarded, and we need to see where the failure was. The little sketch at the top is a very brief, basic picture. On the left you have the great sea, the Mediterranean.
To see a tannerette at the top, the river Jordan down to the dead sea. And that immediate area is the promised land. And this is at least what the nation of Israel laid hold of. Now there are some parallels between Canaan and the heavenly places. And in order that we might comprehend where the nation of Israel failed, it would be good for us to see and be reminded, for many of us, a simple thought. The thought is that what God has promised for you and me in what is called in the New Testament the heavenly places, spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We have been blessed with all of them. And we might notice that each, both Israel and us, have been predestined by God to inherit Israel, who inherit Canaan, God predetermined that this should be so, and us, God's people, who inherit spiritual blessings, the heavenly places.
We each have this openness. God uses Joshua, a divinely appointed and selected one to bring God's people into a place of blessing. They fail under his immediate leadership, even as the church under the apostolic leadership was able to possess and bless and grow, but the moment the immediate leadership of Joshua and the Apostle passed away, God's people became a downward trend in much of their relationship with God. Each Canaan and the heavenly places was a gift of grace received by faith. They had nothing to do with it. They had still nothing there.
They had no appropriateness to it. There was nothing for them except to walk in and close up Canaan. It was necessary that they believe God. This was a revelation, even as spiritual blessings are a revelation to us. It is important that you know, beloved child of God, that you have been blessed. with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus. God has chosen you in Christ before the foundation of the world, and these blessings are yours, every one of them. Everything that Christ has provided for his people are yours. There is no such thing as a second or a later blessing. The moment you were saved, you were brought into your Canaan for your heavenly places, and all spiritual blessings are yours.
but we must lay hold of them by faith, and in fact we must by conflict make them ours. It means self-sacrifice. It means a struggle. It means some form of discipline or exercise in soul. Now the nation of Israel fails. Let me just make a few more. Basically, that's where they present. Under the leadership of Joshua, they took over and conquered those particular areas in the north by Dan on the eastern side of the River Jordan, a small area towards the north east, and then a larger area not quite reaching the Mediterranean.
And then they began to have the difficulty. To put just an initial and draw this to your attention, On the left-hand side, between the Great Sea and Mediterranean, their possessions were the Canaanites. Down to the left, the Philistines, under the letter E, the Moabites, and the Midianites, down on the lower right-hand side in the upper-right, the Mesopotamians. And as a result, they were being constrained and held in, drawn in, limited, and immediately they have opposition. But God promises God's spiritual blessing. And the blessing of the fullness of God's spirit is available to us if we lay hold of it.
Judges give us a more clear picture of the failure of God's people. Why they did not? Why the inequity, why the misbalance, why the constant failure in their history has a picture there that all the promised land they lay hold of. And we shall see the reasons why in the book of Judges. Now, in Ruth chapter one, the book is stated by saying, in the period of the day of Judges. As later as Josiah, about four hundred years later, there is a statement of the period of the Judges. and talking about a Passover which has not been better since the days of the Judges. The period of the day of the Judges is one that's looked at by the Jewish authors at this time, starting with Israel, ending with Samuel, a day of decline until the time of a coming end.
We want to be able to lay hold of it and take a view of it. Now, you'll notice in chapter one of the book of Judges in verse one, after the death of Joshua, it came the path that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first to fight against them? God's people still have access to God, even after Joshua's death. God's people still have the opportunity to lay hold of things pure to all. They can still get into their inheritance. They still have access to God. But the access and the fellowship to God doesn't seem to carry them far enough or give them enough desire or emphasis, and they back away.
And we'll find between chapter one, a gradual progression until we come to the end of chapter twenty. If you will, chapter twenty of the Book of Judges. Verse eight E, the children of Israel arose and went up to the house of God and asked, Council of God, and said, Which of us shall go up first to battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judas shall go up first.
They started out against the Canaanites. And they end up at the end of the book in Civil War, a violent civil war that killed thousands and thousands, destroyed the nation, almost completely obliterated the men from the time of Benjamin. So confused, so marked by inconsistency, and it starts in chapter one. The introduction, no doubt, chapter one, through chapter two, verse five, was written after the book, was composed and put together, and a later historian gave us this introduction. It's a review of what has happened to the latter years of the man of Joshua. God's people are interested in growing up and possessing the spiritual inheritance in chapter one and verse one.
Deuteronomy the companionship with Simeon, they attacked the enemy. But by the time we come down to chapter one and verse twenty-two, the house of Joseph went up against Bethel. The Lord was with him, but they sent spies in to find out a way and found out from the enemy how they might attack. Verse twenty-seven, neither did Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of her town. Verse twenty-nine, neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that grew up in Giza. Verse thirty, neither did Zebulin drive out the inhabitants that grew up among them and became tributaries. So they began to figure, Why should we drive these enemies up? God said, Put the enemy out every single one of them. The property is wood.
Evict all of your enemies. They began to reason, Why should we do that? We should use them as slaves. They're using as good workers, they're good helpers to have around. And they began their own human reasoning. Verse thirty-one neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of Jacob. Neither did Nephilim. Verse thirty-three drive out the inhabitants of that command. Verse thirty-four. And the Amorite. Now the other way is around. The enemy has been so allowed to stay in the land. Now they take the initiative and force the children of Dan into the mountains. So they should not suffer them. They come down into the valley. Chapter two in verse one, and the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to focus.
Apparently God is still at Gilgal. The place of self-judgment, the place where God's people often under the leadership of Joshua were seated. The place where the men were circumcised before they ventured into the land for battle and conquest. The place of self-judgment, spiritual circumcision to us, identifying ourselves with the crucifixion of Christ, and Joshua constantly retreated to that place. He fought a battle and he would go back to Gilgall. He fought a battle and he'd go back to Gilgall. But it has been a long time since God's people had ever gone back to Gilgall and reappraised their life and saw their own weakness and failure.
Sentimentally, many of us go back to Gilgall in songs and at the Lord's Supper. Emotionally, many of us go back to Calvary and see the Lord's death and have warm good feelings about the forgiveness of our sins. But that's not what we see here. Gilgall is a picture and an aspect of the death of Christ that's most distasteful to us, God's people. Because at Gilgall, the men needed to be circumcised They were totally incident for three days exposed to their enemy, trusting only God, and it was there that they rolled away the shame of the flesh and the attachment of Israel and their wandering in the wilderness. And it is our spiritual goal when you and I get before God in genuine self-examination and realize that Calvary not only took care of sin in the flesh, and not only took care of you who are believers, your individual sins, but it also is to take care of your old man.
What you are essential, naturally, is very hard for me to honestly accept that in Bob Clark there dwelleth no good faith. I am sure that somewhere along the line there must be some little touch of value in this. And God says, No. The Apostle recognized it. And in Romans seven, he says, And me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing. God was at Gilgore. And he comes up now to the city in which they are. And he reminds them in verses one and two concerning his delivering power out of Egypt. And a remarkable passion in which he could empower God's people and deliver God's people. And then he says, I told you in verse three, I will not drive an elephant before you, but they shall be a thorn to your side, and their guard shall be a snare unto you.
And it came to pass when the angel of the Lord said these words unto the children of Israel, that the people lift up their voice and wet. And that's where a lot of us love to be. Just here. Feel good. Cry over my sin. Don't ask me to cut anything off. Don't ask me to sit in judgment on my dad. Let me cry and be moved in some way. There was such a weeping and such remorse and such sorrow. They called it bohemian, the place of fear, the place of weeping. But that wasn't what God was interested in. He wanted genuine repentance, active, aggressive, cessation of their own willful ways.
and a submission and a new business of themselves to God. But they went, and they called the name of the place Bohemes, and they sacrificed there unto the Lord. Joshua died. The Lord becomes disturbed and angry with them. He accounted given in the next verse. Verse twenty, in the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he said, Because of his people have transgressed my covenant with thy command and their fathers, and have not harkened unto my voice, I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of a nation which Joshua left when he died. That through them, now this is the purposes of God, that I may prove, test with a view of strengthening, that I may prove Israel whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk therein as their fathers should keep it or not.
Therefore, the Lord left those nations, without driving them out hatefully, neither delivered him into the hand of Joshua. Now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel by then, even as many of Israel had not known all the wars of Canaan, only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to keep them to war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof. The enemies, the five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Zidonians, and the Hippites, that grew up in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-Herman unto the entering in of Hamas. They were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would arson unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
And what was the answer to the children of Israel? The children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Hittites, the Hittites, the Jebusites. Not only did they live with them, They took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forget the Lord their God, and served Balaam and the Grove. What is it that is so markedly active in our lives that rejects the loving, tender overtures of God?
What is it that I have failed to see in my own experience? What is it that I have rejected of the truth of God's word? The Holy Scriptures make it clear. They that are Christ have crucified the flesh. They that are Christ have crucified themselves unto the world and the world unto themselves. They have cast their judicial sentences. Have these? Oh, no. These are profitable people. They know how to fertilize and toil. They know how to irrigate. They can keep this many things. They have weaponry. They have lovely women. They tolerate all kind of weird and exotic experiences in their religious activities.
Let's identify yourself with them. We're still God's people. He's cold at his own. This apparently is a disposition. But God does not lead his people to their own sin and their own willful ways. Now, blessed God, comes in and creates a cycle of activity. Now, I'd like to suggest to you that we might look at this book in a particular fashion, and I'll put up a little picture up here. The book of Judges is not only the history of the failure of the nation of Israel, but I suggest to you just with a few lines up on this graph that will not make too much sense at first, that gradually we would like to divide the Book of Judges in such a way that we might see suggested to us a prophetic history of the Church as well.
Now, if there is value to this outline, and I believe there is, and as we've moved through to be able to state, we've divided the Book of Judges into three sections. Notice that there's little Roman numerals to the left. One, two, and three. The first section is a movement all the way through. There is an irregular line on the right-hand side of the chart. That is going to suggest to us, as we see, the coming of the Lord. If the Book of Judges is indeed a panoramic picture of what is going to happen in the church, then we find that there is three basic movements. The first... A little introduction in chapters one and two.
Chapter three, we're introduced to three of the judges. Their line, if you will allow us to use that, to adapt itself to the charge, their line goes all the way through. They have characteristics, qualities, attributes that are the attributes of all godly people that are going to be useful of God. Chapter four and five is a unique period in the nation's history. Chapter five is the only song in the book of Judges and the first song that the nation or anybody sing since they've been delivered through the Red Sea and Moses and Miriam led the nation of Israel in music. This is the next time we find people singing in such a faeity.
And it pictures a future time after the rapture of the church. Now, with one complete movement, then we go back, and from chapter six to sixteen, we see the next judges, and so put their names in, characterizing certain periods of time that have picked up. Very similarly, that you might have in mind, the seven letters that are written through the churches in the book of Revelation, or the seven letters. parables that the Lord gives, or better the eight parables that he gives concerning his kingdom, as you can see them as suggestive of periods of time. Even so, the men, the personalities, and the women in this book suggestive of periods of time in the nation's history.
And so for this reason, we know that there is real value in studying this book. The challenge is, shall I, as a child of God, respond to the lives that have been lived, the experiences that have been gone through, and be able, by the grace of God, to learn and to grow, to be able to face up to the fact that I am not in the best position right now. There are exercises of soul that I need to go through, ways of sitting in judgment upon myself, allowing the Word of God to affect my life, that I might deepen my hold and my grace on the heavenly places, the spiritual blessing.
As God allows, we should like to progress with our studies and go through this book during this week.