The book of Judges is a provocative and puzzling book of the Bible. Containing numerous stories of Israel’s repeated rebellion and redemption it can leave you scratching your head as you read the final verse of the book: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” + Judges 21v25
The nation of Israel was a repeat-offender of God’s holy commands. They were continually spitting in God’s face, turning to false idols, and being taken captive by their enemies. Yet Israel was continually being saved and turning back to the Lord. It was a ravenous cycle of insanity.
From the book of Judges we get several Sunday School “R rated” lessons that we tend to filter down to “G rated” stories of heroism – such as Gideon, Sampson, and Deborah. However the book of Judges is not “G rated”; it is indeed filled with things we would never let our children watch or read, were it not in the Bible – such as rape, murder of women and children, and prostitution. And if read a bit more closely, it’s clear that those we deem heroes (a la Sampson, Gideon, and Deborah), are in fact far from heroic.
Judges screams of a broken system with broken leaders leading a broken people.
Much too regularly we look at the book of Judges and point our self-righteous fingers at Israel and wonder how they could be so stupid to continually rebel against God despite his faithfulness to them. We tend to look at the seesaw of Israel and are glad we are not like them.
Similarly, we have an inclination to mold the judges (Sampson, Gideon, and Deborah) into heroes and lift them up to a place they were never meant to be lifted. We then major in gleaning principles from these so called heroes – such as “be strong in the Lord like Sampson.” This is, and leads to bad biblical interpretation.
This is not the gospel. Yet the book of Judges sounds off about the gospel more loudly than the trumpets of all Gideon’s men.
There are two things I would like to draw from this, and that I’ve drawn from the book of Judges.
First, if we look at Israel’s continued failed obedience to God and do not see a reflection of ourselves, we’re looking at Judges with our eyes closed. Everyday, a fatal tug-of-war is waged inside of the believer for the allegiance of his soul. While the believer’s union with Christ ensures the final victory in war, when left to our own devices, we are continually pulled into the deadly mud of sin and rebellion toward God in our everyday battling. We are constantly putting up lifeless idols in our hearts in the place of the living triune God. On our own, we are as despicable as the nation of Israel.
Second, the biblical characters in Judges that we have declared heroes, shake their heads at us and point to The Real Hero. The temporal judges point to the Eternal Judge. Sampson, Deborah, Gideon, and the like, were judges raised up by God to judge and judge for Israel. Being fallen humans, they were crooked and unjust in many ways. Their imperfect justice points to the need for a perfectly righteous judge. It is none other than the God-man from the seed of Israel, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He is just and judges justly. He will set right all that is wrong. He will declare perfect judgment on the evilness of sin and sinners because he was perfectly judged by God for the sins of his elect on the cross. He rules in righteousness. He is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3v26).
In one sense, Gideon and the judges served as temporal saviors for Israel. That was until at the right time, while we were weak, Christ died for the ungodly to be an eternal savior for his people (Romans 5v6). Through the living and dying, and at the raising of Christ (Romans 4v25), “justified!” was declared for those who would put their faith in the Son of God.
Our rebellion and idol worship has been put on Christ, judged by God, and destroyed forever by his just judgments.
Jesus is the Judge.
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