Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - A Man of Action | Historical Books | Judges 3:1-11

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

What did the judges do? What made Othniel's family stand out? What kind of man does God want? In today's episode, Patrick shares how Judges 3:1-11 encourages us to be men and women who seek and love the Lord. Read the Bible with us in 2025! This year, we’re exploring the Historical Books—Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 & 2 Kings. Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Judges 3:1-11

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. Yesterday, Jensen explored the cycle of idolatry and salvation that characterizes the entire book of judges. The pattern is a tragic descent into destruction. The people reject God, the people worship idols, and God allows foreign powers to subject them. Then the people cry out for salvation and God sends a judge to deliver them and bring them back to himself. Now, like Jensen pointed out, this is not merely a cycle. It's a downward spiral. Each generation seems worse than the last, and each judge seems more compromised than the last. But through the cycle,

God is training the people to see their need for him to be their king. And as the judges worsen, it only highlights how important it is for us to have a righteous king. Now, in Judges III, we start the beginning of a cycle with the very first judge in the book of judges. Today we meet Othneil, a judge from the tribe of Judah. It's worth pointing out that there's a judge from all 12 tribes in the book of judges. And it might be that the book of judges isn't entirely in chronological order because it's trying to highlight each tribe's descent into this cycle. But let's go back to Othneal. He really does seem to be the first judge chronologically. And we know this because the passage gives us his lineage. Let's pick up the cycle in chapter 3, verse 7. The Israelites did evil in the eyes

of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Bales and the Asheras. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cusham Rishathiam, King of Aram, Nahariam, to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years. But when they cried out to the Lord, he raised up for them a deliverer, Othniel, son of Canaz, Caleb's brother, who saved them. So did you see it? The pattern, the cycle? The Israelites forget God. They serve the idle Bail. and God gives them over to the king of Aram. Aram was a kingdom in the region of modern-day Syria to the north of Israel. But then you saw what happened, the people cry out for salvation and God sends them a judge,

Athneal. Now, Atheniel was the little brother of Caleb, and you might recognize Caleb's name from our series through the Torah a while back. If you're new or can't remember, don't worry, this isn't 10-minute Bible trivia. Caleb was a young man when God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. after God rescued them, Moses sent Caleb, Joshua, and ten other men into the land of Canaan to scout out the land as spies. Unfortunately, ten of the twelve spies came back and said God couldn't possibly give them the land of Canaan because it was full of fierce warriors and giants. But two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, they gave a better report.

They agreed that the land was full of warriors, but they said that they trusted God to be with them, so no one had anything to fear. Unfortunately, the people listened to the 10, not the two. And as a result, they didn't go into the promised land. They spent the next 40 years wandering in the wilderness until a new generation rose up. Only Caleb and Joshua were allowed to enter the land from the old generation, because they were the only ones who remained faithful. Now, we have no idea how old Othnia was during all of this. Was he alive during the Exodus?

Was he a boy when his older brother called the people to faithfulness? We don't know. What we do know is that once the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan, Othniel was the first person God used to rescue his people. He was the first judge. Now, I think it's worth saying that when modern people hear the word judge, we think of a governmental figure whose primary job is to decide the outcomes of legal cases. In our imaginations, judges have gavels.

They decide the law. But Othneil's story shows us something different. The judges in Israel weren't like our judges today. it would be better to imagine them not with gavels, but with swords in their hand instead. The judges were military leaders who fought Israel's oppressors. You'll see that in what happens next. The spirit of the Lord came on Athneal so that he became Israel's judge and went to war. The Lord gave Cushan, Rishathiam, king of Aram, into the hands of Athneal, who overpowered him.

So the land had peace for 40 years, until Athneal, the son of Canas, died. Some later judges did make decisions on legal cases, but you must remember that Israel's law was theocratic. It included laws not only about murder and theft and taxation, but also laws about worship and fidelity to God. And so we can assume that part of how the land remained peaceful was that Othniel was faithfully executing and practicing the law. But that's just an assumption. It's not in the text. The passage is clear. Othneil's main job was to go to war, specifically to go to war on God's behalf to rescue the Israelites from foreign subjugation. And when the judges did this, they became living enactments of God's justice, salvation, and protection. In other words,

the judges point us forward to Jesus, who went to war against sin, death, and the devil on our behalf and bore God's just punishment for our sin in order to give us salvation and eternal protection. But I want to focus on a different dimension, Athneal's life, his family. We don't know much other than that his older brother was faithful when many were not. His brother was courageous when many were afraid. Likewise, Othneill himself heeded the call of God. He showed courage in the face of oppression. And I think that pattern says something about Caleb and Othneill's family. You see, these were men trained not in blind courage, even though they were certainly courageous. They were trained in the courage of the Lord. Put differently, they were trained by their parents

to show courage not on the basis of their own strength and prowess, but on the basis of God's faithfulness and power. We're living in a time where we celebrate self-reliance, not God reliance. We're living in a time where men are encouraged to be quiet and passive, not courageous and brave. But this is not God's vision for our families, and certainly not for our men. He has no interest in brashness or machismo, but he does want families full of men and women who trust God to fulfill his promises and save them and protect them. People who resist the allure of idolatrice courageously, because they're drawn. to the great allure of God's glory.

What do you think Caleb and Othnale's parents were like? What do you think they encouraged in their sons? Again, I don't think we know for certain, but I suspect they trained their sons to love the Lord, to trust in him, to courageously stand against idolatry, to act with bravery when God called them to act. They weren't wallflowers. They were men of godly action. And I think that's precisely what God wants in our families and churches, men of godly

action, men who are humble because they trust not in their own strength, but in the mighty power of God, men who are active because they know that God intends to work through them. So seek to become such a man or such a woman, seek to parent such men or such a woman, seek to befriend and encourage them.