40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Judges 2:1-23 (Episode 199)

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

The children of Israel are on the fast-track to bondage. What is so tempting about foreign gods and why do the people turn to them so quickly? The cycle of idolatry, slavery, and deliverance is laid out and God shows Himself to be a good repenter. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Houston City Event Las Vegas City Event Great Freedom Conference in Germany Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast, check out all the other podcasts that are over there. And while you're over there, you can check out the events page because we've got events coming up in February and in March. In February, we're going to be in Houston, Texas at Matt Popovich's church, St. Mark, Houston. Chad will be there because Chad's in Texas. And why would we do an event in Texas and not invite him out unless we were mad at him or didn't think he had anything good to say? We almost didn't invite him because it's really a New Testament kind of thing.

It's about what happens when people encounter Jesus. so there was a debate but we decided that he's probably read the New Testament at least once so we invited him out you can come hear what he has to say about that by signing up, it's free if you don't think Chad has anything to say about the New Testament

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We're going to be talking about the entire book of Galatians. Eric Sorensen will be there, Scott Keith, Adam Francisco, Cindy Koch, Blake Flatley, and myself. So, hey, we'd love to hang out with you if you're in either of those areas. Also, if you're out in Europe, particularly in Germany, we'd love to hang out with you at the Great Freedom Conference. People are signing up for that. We'll be out there in May. You can get all the information on the site, or you can click on the link in the show notes.

I know we've got listeners out there in Germany. We'd love to meet you. I mean, we love meeting listeners to the show, but there'd be something real special about meeting people from a different country that speak a different language that listen to this show for some reason. That would be great. So love to see you out there. It's going to be a great time.

We're excited to hang out with our friends out there in Germany. Chad, where are we at in Judges? I believe we got through Introduction and Chapter 1. Yeah, we did. We covered that material last time, so we're at the beginning of Chapter 2. That first chapter was a good intro into kind of the overall picture of what's happening in Israel at the time of the Conquest, as well as right away we kind of have that weirdness of the Judges coming out. You know, we had a guy with his thumbs and his big toes cut off. So, you know, you don't get very far into Judges before things get really strange. And so we have Adonai Bezik or whatever his name was that was captured.

And we had mutilation right away in the book of Judges. Imagine that. Yeah. We're here at the beginning of chapter two now, and we're going to have an appearance right away of the Malak Adonai, the angel of the Lord. So we'll have a hear, a listening as to what he has to say to Israel. Right on. Let's do it. So at the beginning of chapter two, I'll read these first five verses, this version that

we're going to encounter. And this is the same angel, same messenger that we envoy, maybe you could call him, we've encountered several times. We'll talk a little bit more about his identity once I read these verses. Now, the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and he said, I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I swore to your fathers, and I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.

You shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed me. What is this you've done? Therefore, I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you. And it came about after the angel of the Lord spoke these words to the Israelites, that the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they named that place Bochim, and there they sacrificed to the Lord. So this is probably Bethel, actually.

Bochim is probably just kind of a nickname for this place, because Bochim is from the Hebrew word for to cry or to weep. so actually bokeem is weeping or crying so this is the response of the people to to what the angel of the lord has to say so uh yeah let's talk a little bit about who this this envoy is uh if you're a long time listener of the show you know that we have discussed him multiple times already back in the early chapters of genesis the very first time that this angel makes an appearance is to Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah, after she runs away when Sarah begins to mistreat her. So this envoy or messenger appears to her there. The most famous appearance is at the burning bush

when the envoy speaks to Moses. And he comes in various manifestations too. Most of the time, he's called in Hebrew, the Malak Yahweh, the angel or the messenger of the Lord. Sometimes it's called the Malak Elohim, which is the messenger of God. And then there's other names too, like in Exodus 23.20 or Exodus 23.21, he's just called the angel, but there's a specification because it says that my name is in him. So the divine name is placed into this angel. And then we also ran into him, or Joshua did, in the early chapters of Joshua. And there he's called the commander of the lord's armies so he's like a heavenly general and as we talked about multiple times this is this this appearance is you got all sorts of things going on so he's called first of

all a malak is the is kind of the general word general hebrew word for messenger or envoy and i wish we wouldn't translate it as angel but that's kind of what we're stuck with and i think all english translations bring that into into uh translation as as angel but it's misleading because malak can be a human messenger a heavenly messenger or like a prophet or it can be the word himself it can be the son of god and everything points to the fact that this is in fact an appearance of second person of the trinity this is the logos the word of god who doesn't wait until his incarnation to visit his people he is constantly sent by the father in order to do what he is. He is the Logos, and so he speaks Logoi. He speaks words to the people. He's always

communicating to them about what the will of God might be. And he's not only communicating, but like in Exodus 3, he's actually called God. So you have this multidimensional identity to him. So he's a messenger. He speaks for God, but he also speaks as God, and he's called God. This the Old Testament way of describing who this Son of God is. And of course, we have more of clarification once we get to the New Testament, but already in the Old Testament, we have all the Christology laid as a groundwork for what's going to be made more explicit once the Son of God takes on our human nature. Yeah, so there's a distinction that you make then. Not every angel is uh or messenger is this messenger uh there's a distinction between a messenger and the messenger

these are these are not the same so there's a messenger that could be an angel or or a prophet or whatever but the messenger uh is singular it's about it's about a specific person so i mean it's not a general it's the general yeah that's a good way to think about it uh so anytime that you have that definite article the especially in context like this where it's it's clear as to what who he is then yeah i mean it's it's it's not an ordinary angel but it's the messenger of the father and then sometimes like in exodus 23 uh even though he's not called the angel there is a specification because he's described in even more heightened language as the one who bears the divine name The Hebrew there is kishmi b'kirbo.

So my name is inside him, or it's placed in him, or he bears it. And that is the way the Old Testament is saying that this one bears the divine nature. He's not just some sort of created messenger, but he's God himself. So all that is an introduction to this. Now, it's kind of interesting the way this is phrased, because usually he just appears. He just shows up. he's at the burning bush or he just pops up somewhere this particular language is interesting because i think this is the only time when there's actually an indication that he goes from one place

to another so it says that this messenger of yahweh came up from gilgal to bokeem feels like he's traveling and i think i think the reason why gilgal is mentioned here is because gilgal if you think back to joshua was the base camp of the israelites this is where they would leave from Gilgal on their various missions. It was at Gilgal that they had the circumcision and the celebration of the Passover. By mentioning that particular geographical location, this is the writer's way of reminding us of where it all started and how good it all started and now how bad everything has become. So we go from Gilgal, which is synonymous with obedience to the words of god and the conquest and the leadership of joshua and fidelity we go from that particular

geographic location to the exact opposite to a place called bokeem where there's weeping and there's weeping because of this stern rebuke from the messenger of the lord of hosts so the geography here as is almost always the case the geography is is significant it's theologically traded so he goes to bokeem and he says basically listen i am the one and here we have the identification right he doesn't say the angel the messenger doesn't say that god brought you out out of egypt he says i so there's an identification that he is this one who has freed them from slavery in egypt led them through the land which he swore to their fathers and he and he's the one also told them not to break his covenant and not to make covenants with the the inhabitants of the

land but instead they're supposed to destroy all their places of worship here in verse two we only have one one specific kind of destruction the tearing down of their altars usually there's a three-fold kind of destruction that's commanded tear down their altars and smash their uh their sacred stones their their matzah vote as they were called and then to cut down their asherah poles these were poles that were connected with the goddess asherah and we'll talk more about here her and just a few more verses but anyway not only are you not supposed to make a covenant with the peoples of the land but you're also supposed to completely demolish anything that is part of their particular idolatry and instead he says you haven't obeyed me you haven't listened

literally in hebrew you haven't listened to my voice so to to listen to the voice is to do what one speaks so it's usually translated obeyed but it's literally listen you haven't listened to my voice and it says then he asked the question what have you done and it was i i thought i found this fascinating i was looking back because that he that particularly hebrew phrase uh mazot asitim what is this you've done it sounded familiar to me and interestingly that occurs in two places in Genesis, and the two places are both connected with Abraham. The first time, and they're both connected with him lying. So the first time is when he lies about Sarah being his sister in Egypt, and Pharaoh says, what is this you've done? The Hebrew is almost identical. And then the second

time is when he lies, same lie, to a different king, to Abimelech. And when Abimelech finds out, he says to Abraham, what is this you've done? So now we have the messenger of God saying, what is this you've done? And I find it interesting because there's sort of a tie in there because you have lies and duplicity and this whole kind of marriage and fidelity and adultery context that is part of the connotation of this particular phrase. So there's an Abraham echo here and what the angel says to to the israelite so i guess they're they're they're kind of living up to their to their heritage in a bad in a bad sort of way okay so he says therefore i stay i'm not going to drive them out from before you instead they're going to become as

thorns in your sides and their gods shall be a snare to you and then when he speaks these words the people presumably i mean at least everything we can see it seems as if they're cut to the heart that they realize that they've done wrong and they are expressing their inward sorrow outwardly by weeping. So they lift up their voices, they weep, and they sacrifice to the Lord there. Now, if we stopped at this point, at the end of verse five, you would think, well, this is a pretty good sign, right? So they've gone astray and they haven't done what they're supposed to do now when they're when they're called on the carpet when they have a come to jesus meeting quite literally then they're they're sorry and they and they weep and they and they

sacrifice now if we get the impression that because of this everything's going to turn around we're going to be sorely disappointed because as we're going to see in just a few verses if this is if this is yeah if this is repentance which it yeah it certainly seems to be then it was short-lived because what's going to happen pretty soon is everything's going to go to hell in a handbasket But we sort of step back at this point. So we're going to hear about the death of Joshua and kind of what happens after his death and the death of those elders who were around him. Verse 6, Joshua had dismissed the people and the Israelites each go to their inheritance to possess the land. And for a while, everything's pretty good.

Verse 7 says they served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord, which he had done for Israel. And then Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. And after Joshua dies, they bury him in his territory in the hill country of Ephraim near Mount Gaash. And it says, all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. So we have Joshua's generation. We have the generation of the people that survived him, the elders. And they had seen, they had witnessed firsthand many of the things which the Lord had done.

but what happens next well the second half of verse 10 says another generation arose after them who did not know the lord nor yet the work which he had done for israel now here you have to put on your hebrew ears you have to understand this language from old testament perspective because when it says they didn't know the lord and they didn't know the work that he had done for israel it ignorance is not the problem here it's not as if in one generation everybody completely forgot a god named yahweh existed and that whole generation was totally unaware of what god had done for his this ignorance isn't the case here because to know as we've discussed before all the way back in genesis chapter 4 to know the lord is not to have some sort of head knowledge

of him. So this isn't an ignorance problem. To know is to have, yada in Hebrew is to have this kind of this intimate, very close, very deep understanding and connection to some things. So Abraham knows his wife and she conceives. He knows her in that intimate sort of way. So to know the Lord is not just to have head knowledge about him, but it's, we might even say a synonym of this, that they didn't know the Lord is that they didn't worship Him. They didn't believe in Him. They didn't love Him. They weren't in the kind of covenant connection with Him,

which was characteristic of their fathers, the generation of Joshua. Yeah, well, I mean, it kind of is as simple as knowledge does not equal faith, right? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Of course, this generation, they knew about Yahweh, and they knew what he had done in the same way that we can know facts. But that doesn't mean that those facts have any bearing upon our faith or our life, and that's certainly what it was with the Israelites. So instead of knowing Yahweh, they began to know the Canaanite gods,

as we'll hear in the next section. Well, it's interesting that whenever you hear in the Old Testament, especially where Abraham knew his wife or whatever, there's a joining there, and sometimes it is accompanied with that, and the two became one flesh, this kind of thing, which is an identity-altering moment, because at this point you've taken on the identity of husband or the identity of wife, right? And so some of this knowing is that, sure, Israel might have—they knew about a god named Yahweh, and it's not as though, like, no one ever told them that they came from the land of Egypt or anything like this,

but this is not how they identified themselves as those who believed in Yahweh, those who were brought out of the land of egypt who were given all these things by god they didn't identify themselves with the promises of god this all becomes sort of just history and it's like yeah i know about that stuff but to know would be to say that that's that's who you are that's a good way to put it uh to talk about identity i think that's the that's probably the best way for us to kind of understand that because it changes yeah it changes your understanding of who you are right it's not just yeah i mean for me to know historical facts really isn't doesn't change who i am but when i marry when i become a husband or when i have children become a father

well yeah that that does change my identity so and that's of course a very a very uh intimate kind of kind of knowledge that affects uh affects my self-understanding so anyway and it's it's a good reminder too and we see this so many times in the old testament i mean this is this is a very practical thing for us you know it doesn't take long for things to completely fall apart we see this in the case of the king several of the kings you'll have like uh josiah for instance or hezekiah you'll have a great king one of the there weren't many great kings but you'll have on occasion a great king like hezekiah or josiah and their son the very next generation it's just like the worst of the worst so there's there's no guarantee in other words that from one generation

to another that there's going to be fidelity that there's going to be correct teaching that there's going to be uh the kind of worship that that god commands because all it takes it doesn't even take one generation uh but certainly that is very often what happens in the scriptures where you know we can and you see this just it's kind of practically speaking you see this in churches a lot you know where you'll have a church where uh you know it's it's it's a it's a good church uh they're they're really doing the work of the gospel and it's a you know relatively healthy church and and then you know in one generation they can close their doors yeah it doesn't it doesn't take a whole lot uh for a lot of good work to be undone or for just a lot of a lot of

really good teaching and the proclamation of the gospel to change and what looked like a very grace-centered scripture teaching good church the next generation can be something quite quite different. And it's the case in Israel, it's still the case today. Well, it seems that all it takes is the thing that God is ignoring the one thing that God has seemed to be after from the beginning, which is, listen to me, listen to me, listen to me. I mean, it's hear, O Israel, over and over and over again. It's as simple as not hearing anymore. This is how God chooses to reveal himself is through through your ears and at some point when you're not and you're no longer listening to him and in these in this case obviously not listening to the things that he

has said in the past to the uh your people it takes no time at all it's funny in the in in the old testament it almost seems like a good king ensures a bad king coming next yeah it does seem to be the case yeah it's like anytime there's a great king you're like oh man that next one's gonna be bad yeah yeah yeah i mean it really is like some of the worst kings were uh the sons of some of the best kings yeah so you have the sea still effect back back and forth one thing i thought of when you were talking about listing um you know one thing that doesn't change is so they're sometimes you listen to god and then sometimes they don't but one thing that doesn't change is there's always worshiping that goes on but the question is of course who are they

worshiping? Are they worshiping just Yahweh? Are they worshiping just Baal? Or are they trying to, as is most often the case, are they trying to bring these two together into some sort of a strange combination? And that's what we see in the verses that follow this. So what did this next generation do? Well, it said, verse 11 and the following, that they did evil in the sight of the Lord. Specifically, they served the Baals. We'll talk more about him in a minute, but I'll read a couple more verses. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them. They bowed down to them and they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and

served Baal and the Ashtaroth. So I want to take just a second because we're going to hear a lot about Baal and a lot about Asherah in the chapters that follow. In fact, really throughout the rest of the Old Testament. So just kind of a real quick survey of what we're dealing with here in this particular Canaanite pantheon. So of course, we're probably more familiar with kind of the Greek and the Roman, from Greek and Roman mythology, you know, we know the main names of those Greek and Roman gods whether it's Poseidon

or Zeus or Aphrodite or whoever it might be well the Canaanites had their own pantheon they were polytheistic of course so you have a multiplicity of gods and that was pretty much the way it was I think we talked about that last episode almost

every other nation believed in multiple gods, Israel was unique in being monotheistic Each had their own kind of hierarchy of the deities. And among the Canaanites, the chief god, kind of their equivalent of Zeus, would have been El. And as was pretty characteristic of the heads of the pantheons, they had a lot of kids. So El has about 70 offspring. Now, there's a couple that are important for us to note.

one of these is bale who's known by very many very many names sometimes he's called victor bale he's uh he's referred to as the rider of the clouds because he's the storm god and uh kind of the god of the weather and he's also he he is identified he has let me put it this way there are various local manifestations of bale and that's why you'll you'll see language like they serve the bales in a plural that doesn't mean that there were a lot of gods named bale that means that Baal would manifest himself in various ways, in various places. So he had these local manifestations, like he's called Baal of Zaphon, which is a mountain, kind of like Mount Olympus for the Canaanites. Mot is another one of these. He's the god of the underworld, kind of the

Canaanite equivalent of Hades, I guess you could say, the god of death, the god of the underworld. And there's another offspring of El, who is connected with the sea. So he's kind of the of Poseidon and the one we hear most about is Baal he's the most popular he was like a younger god El is often described as sort of a he's like kind of old and out of energy uh and Baal is the the vigorous the uh the storm god so he's very popular among the Canaanites and then his his lover his his girlfriend was Asherah and Ashtarot is just the Hebrew for plural so just like he had multiple local manifestations of Baal so you had multiple local manifestations of Asherah so just like you know the Greek and Roman gods they were always getting in bed with with one goddess or

another or sometimes even with with with women so Baal he had his he had his lover he had his consort and her name was Asherah so these were often worshipped together Baal because he was the storm god and you you know you're a farmer pretty much everybody's life is based upon agriculture. Whether you were growing crops, you were raising animals, and so you wanted good weather, of course. And so you'd pray to Baal. You'd pray for him to bring rain so your crops would be fertile. And very often you had these kind of fertility rites that were connected with Baal that were sexual in nature. That's why you had cult prostitutes in the Old Testament, thinking that by this kind of liturgical action, by this worship that centered around

sex or some kind of sexual activity that would imitate Baal and please him so that he would send rain to fertilize the earth, quite literally. But you also wanted good weather, but you also wanted offspring. So you turn to these fertility goddesses like Asherah. And Asherah, it was depicted iconically like a lot of these fertility goddesses were. You had these little figurines where there'd be these exaggerated breasts and prominent genitals and just kind of a things that we look at and we're like wow that's kind of freaky looking but that was that was their way of exaggerating her fertility by having these enormous breasts and prominent prominent genitals that's the way they were the icons of the car figures were were depicted so anyway people would

pray to them asherah or they pray to baal and uh they would hope to receive from them by pleasing them they would hope to receive from them offspring or good rain or whatever it might have been okay all that is kind of a survey of where where they were the kind of place that they were in the canaanite religion now put yourself there you're you're an israelite well you want good weather too and you want kids think about it so maybe well you're having trouble with your crops or you're having trouble with your flocks or you your wife isn't conceiving but you look around oh well a lot of Canaanite children running around, or the Canaanites' flocks and crops seem to be doing pretty well. So maybe instead of just praying to God, to Yahweh, maybe I should also pray to Baal,

or maybe I should also pray to Asherah. And so for very practical reasons, this was a temptation for the Israelites to turn to that God, because it seems as if they weren't getting what they wanted from Yahweh. Well, you can't help but notice, I mean, I guess you could help it, but if you're really paying attention, how different the God of Israel is than everything else. I mean, besides the fact of being one God, which is weird to everyone around them, I mean, this God is, like, far less sexy. I mean, like, every other pantheon of gods, they all have, like, this sexual component to them going on, right? Like, Israel's God could not be more different.

Yeah, there's not even any image of him, right? right yeah yeah i mean there's no like big muscular a statue of yahweh that you can look at and say oh my god you know our god is super super strong just just look at them god says nope no images of me either so yeah he just it's hard to imagine just how different he was from all of the various peoples that were around them and their and their gods i mean yeah the closest thing you've got is like you know you got the ark right um where you know god god's dwelling and then so people were like well you know where's your god oh he's you know he's in there in the tabernacle and like well can i go can i go and see what he looks like oh no no no

like you can't even you can't even see that unless they bring the thing out like you know there's no there's no images you can't see where he hangs out like none of that yeah yeah because of all that i mean you can at least from a totally human perspective you can understand why the israelites gravitated toward uh this this kind of worship and especially if they were you know use the old the old language fleshly minded yeah yeah look what look at what their worship looks like you know you can see a bunch of young guys be like hey you know let's let's go to the canaanite church on sunday yeah because of what what's that what's happening there they have prostitutes there yeah yeah exactly anyway what happens well uh they uh they began to serve

bale and uh in asherah and naturally the anger of the lord burned against israel i love this hebrew expression anytime you see the anger the lord burned uh know that behind that the literal hebrew is that god's nose became hot so that's the that's the that's the hebrew idiom for god god's anger burning he was very earthy uh very very visual and so when they depict like god being patient means he's long of nose him being angry means he's hot of nose so his anger burned against them and he turned around and he he gave them into the hands of people who plundered them he sold them into the hands of their enemies and they can no longer stand against their enemies it says in verse 14 so he's he's doing what he threatened to do he's he's more or less saying oh

oh so you you want to be like the canaanites well okay i'll just give you to the canaanites so i'll my my discipline of you is going to take the form of basically handing you over to that sin in which you have now become involved and god does that all the time of course well this is why chad they don't have me doing hebrew translation because if i was if i was doing you know if i was translating the hebrew bible you know it would read something like and then god smelled what the israelites were stepping in and things got spicy we need to come up with a with a daniel lemery price translation yeah i kind of like that yeah that's that's how i would i'd be like let's see hot nose how can we put this in in ordinary

ordinary language all of us can understand yeah yep i smell i smell that and things are about to get hot yeah i sometimes wish they'd have they'd have left some of these idioms in there because it's just it's more it's more entertaining it's more visual well so what would god do well he you know he did what i just described and this is wherever they went god's hand was against them for evil just like he told them that was going to happen but now here we have the surprising part verse 16 despite all this it says god would raise up these shofatim which we translated as judges who saved them or delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them now what's amazing about this is it you know it doesn't say that uh this was because you know it god is sort of

working with a quid pro quo to use the phrase that we hear thrown about a lot these days in america anyway there's no quid pro quo here it's not like the people said gave god their their sorrow and their repentance and so god would give them a deliverer he just would do it because that's that's the kind of covenant god he is he told them that he would not break his covenant with them he told them he would be faithful to them and so he raises up these deliverers judges who would save them from the hand of those who plundered them but verse 70 goes on and they did not listen to their judges so they would be delivered but they wouldn't turn around and listen to the judge instead it says they would uh they would prostitute themselves they played

the harlot after other gods and and bow down to them and they turn aside quickly from the way in which the fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the lord so we this is this generational shift that we were we were talking about earlier so here's what would happen well verse 18 says god raised up these uh shofateen these judges and god was with the judge he delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge for the lord was well my translation has, he was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. Now, that can be translated that way, that the Lord was moved to pity. It's actually a word that occurs in some pretty significant stories that you're probably

familiar with. So, one of these is right after the gold calf incident, God prayed that, I mean, Moses prayed that God would change his mind and not destroy Israel, and then another occurrence is in Jonah chapter 3, after the Ninevites have put on sackcloth and ashes after they heard the preaching of Jonah, it says the Lord changed his mind. He sometimes translated he relented concerning the disaster that he had threatened them with, so this could be because the Lord was moved to pity but i think there's another connotation to it because he wasn't just moved to pity but also he altered the course of what he had threatened he relented from the disaster that he had threatened against them and he didn't do it now how would the people respond to all this

well it says that verse 19 says that they after the judge died well they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers and serve the other gods and bow down to them and you really have if you look throughout the book of judges you you sort of have this this downward spiraling effect where we'll have the first judge in the next episode Othniel we've already met him he's the nephew of Caleb but when you go from from Othniel to Ehud and you finally get to Samson you can kind of picture this this downward shift because every time it gets worse and then it gets worse and it gets worse so the judge will deliver them there'll be a period of rest but by the time the next judge comes around things have just gotten gotten even more disastrous for israel

so that's that's the flow of the book so i just just warn you as we go through the book of judges things if things look bad now oh well you just wait it's gonna be it's gonna be more entertaining as we uh as we get to the closing chapters yeah you know one of the things that's interesting about this is that the bible is so odd and how it describes things that i mean god is always the the one in control i mean in verse in verse 14 you have all this stuff happening and it says that he being god sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies and then in verse 16 and the lord raised up judges who would save them out of the hand of those who plundered them and so so you end up with this thing where it lets you know first of all that this is god's possession

all right that the people that god looks at as at israel as his people and his possession and And he sold them. This is the language it used. So, I mean, he sold them to their enemies. And then it's like, yeah, I'm going to raise up some guys to go and, like, thump on these guys and take them back. I'm going to take them back. Right. Yeah.

I hadn't thought about that. That's a great image. I'm going to sell you and then I'm going to steal you back. Because I'm God. You're my property. You're my people. Yeah. And so what you end up realizing is that God is responsible for all the things that happen.

Because some people will say—we'll talk about this sort of thing in a way that, well, then God takes his hand off you, and then, you know, whatever happens, happens. This is not the way the Bible talks about stuff. I mean, that God is, like, active in this. Yeah. In fact, it uses that language, literally, of, like, his hand was against them for evil. Yeah. Yeah, so there's not a hands-off approach. He remains active throughout this.

Yeah, he's either shoving you into slavery or he's yanking you out of slavery. Right, yeah. It kind of sets the pattern that we've seen already and we'll see many more times. All of these are like miniature exiles. It's like, you know, they were under Egypt for a while and they're going to be under the Mesopotamians for a while and the Philistines and eventually the Babylonians. So God is constantly kind of putting his people under the dominion of others,

but then he'll bring them out because ultimately he's the God who is moved to pity and he relents concerning this disaster. And he's the mainlet. He's the God who always provides a savior, which is what I love about the book of Judges. No matter how bad things become, he always raises up a deliverer. He always raises up a savior because ultimately that is his defining characteristic. He won't let his people remain in captivity because he's the kind of god who liberates us from that and brings us back to himself yeah one thing uh that you won't hear anywhere but here is that uh in judges you first of all see a reenactment of the exodus over and over and over again but the good news in in judges is that god is constantly repenting

this is true this is true and you cannot like it but that's the word that's the word when he changes his mind when he relents and you'll see this in some translations God repented and that is good news

and that's good news for us it's good news for the Ninevites in 40 days you're going to be destroyed but God doesn't, he has mercy he threatens us with the law and yet he has mercy and he saves us

So it's good news that God changes His mind to go down the path of mercy and grace. Amen. All right, man, that is it. That is 40 minutes, guys. If you would like to support the podcast, you can do so by going over to 1517.org, clicking on the Donate link, and you can become a contributor. Thank you so much to those of you who do that. It really does make everything possible. Chad, I will see you next week when we get into our first judge. All right. See you then.

We'll see you next time.