So just as a way of introducing the book, we're gonna start with chapter one, verse one, then we're gonna skip ahead for a moment. Judges chapter one, verse one says, now, after the death of Joshua, it came to pass that the children of Israel asked the Lord, saying, who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? Then look over at chapter 2, verse 7. You'll see it started saying this is after the death of Joshua. Chapter 2, verse 7 says, so the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua. And all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, which he had done for Israel. Now, Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was 110 years old. And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath-Horez, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gesh. When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them, who did not know the Lord, nor the work which he had done for Israel. I wanna begin a new series this morning. I want to Raise your spirits by regaling you with accounts of men who God raised up to lead His people in righteousness. I want to show you the history of blessings by God for those who live in obedience to Him. I want to encourage you with how good things can be if we put our minds to it. I want to present you with the inspiring stories of some genuine heroes of faith. It's what I want to do. What I'm going to do instead is preach through the book of Judges. All that to say, you might have some wrong ideas about this book. Out of curiosity, I'd like to see a show of hands. How many of y'all have heard messages or lessons about judges and been told that it contains things like a cycle of disobedience? Or sometimes it's called the cycle of sin and reconciliation. Have you heard those things? The idea is that Judges is telling this continually circular story where Israel falls into sin temporarily, they suffer the consequences of that sin, they repent, God raises up some Judge to deliver them, and then all is well until they fall into that cycle of sin again. Now there is an element of Judges where we can see that continual progression, but the reality is, that such a cycle would inevitably mean that there were days of righteousness and blessing, and there were days of sin and wrath, and there's sort of this constant turnover between the two, and the story becomes like a roller coaster with some highs and some lows. But the reality is, if you picture judges as being a cycle of sin and repentance, I want you to take in your mind that circular thinking and I want you to set it this way and realize that it's actually a downward spiral that is continually getting worse and worse. Judges presents this continually downward trajectory. Look at chapter two, verse 16. Chapter two, verse 16 through 19 says, nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them, yet they would not listen to their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord. They did not so. And when the Lord God raised up judges for them, the Lord was the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved with pity because of their groaning of those who oppressed them and harassed them. Now all that sounds like that cycle, but keep reading. Verse 19, it came to pass When the judge was dead, that they reverted and behaved more corruptly than their fathers by following other gods to serve them and bow down to them. They did not cease from their doings nor from their stubborn way. There's this cycle, but then after that cycle's done, it says, then they fell into sin and did more corruptly than their fathers. Every generation in Judges was doing progressively worse and worse. Now to be sure, there is more in Judges to disgust us than there is to delight us. The would-be heroes of the book of Judges include You know, those judges that we think of as being so heroic, they include assassins and murderers. One, Jephthah, is the equivalent of like a backwoods mob boss. Samson is so sex-crazed and unrighteous that he violates every religious oath that passed through his lips. Perhaps the best of the judges might be Gideon, and by the end of his life, he's collecting silver and gold from the people in order to melt it down and build it into an idol for the people to worship. Now stick with me, because I'm not trying to be Brother Bummer up here. I want us to have a realistic viewpoint of the ground that we're going to tread in this book. This is not going to be the judges of your childhood Sunday school class. This book is filled with sex and violence and rebellious immorality, and I am convinced the overall tenor of the story would show that the writer does not want us to see these judges as role models. The situation is that the nation, which we'll see at this point is really more of a loose confederation of tribes, the nation is a mess. The people surrounding them hate them. I mean, they hate them. And this makes sense in some ways. After all, they just waged war and caused refugees of Canaanites to go flooding into those countries. Israel's leaders are disappointing, and even when they experience God-given success, that's not necessarily an endorsement of their behavior. We have backwards thinking when sometimes we'll use prosperity to assume God's approval. When we say, you know, God is blessing us so he obviously approves of us and is rewarding our behavior, we'll actually miss the lesson of judges. Many times God blesses in spite of us, not because of us. God blesses for his own glory. So let's talk about some important background things. We need to understand some important background issues for the book of Judges. First, let's deal with this word judge for a second. When we use the word judge or judges, don't picture folks in black robes sitting behind a legal bench or a desk with a gavel. That's not what this is describing. The word used throughout the book of Judges is the Hebrew word Shophat, and the word designates a kind of leader, and that leader can be passing judgment the way we think of it, but most often it's used of a military leader. So for example, there is one judge, a woman named Deborah, who is described as leading in a common judicial sense. In chapter four, look over at chapter four. Judges chapter four, verses four and five says, now Deborah the prophetess, the wife of Lapidus, was judging Israel at that time, she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the mountains of Ephraim and the children of Israel came up to her for judgment. This seems like judging in the sense that we think of the word judge. But other judges, in fact all the other judges than Deborah, are primarily non-judicial leaders. They judge by leading in a military sense. For example, Samson in chapter 15 verse 20 is said to have judged Israel, but when you read all about Samson you don't find him doing anything other than fighting militarily for victory against the Philistines. The most common use of the word judge is to lead in combat, to go to war, to rule over the nation as they battle their oppressors. Now one thing we can say with certainty, and we'll see more about this later, is that nowhere in Judges Does one of these leaders assume the role of a king over the people who's setting laws and leading the nation in that sense? That's not what these judges are. I want you to think about the nation. One of the reasons why these judges aren't kings is partially because the nation in Judges is hardly a nation as we think about it. For some of y'all who are familiar with American history, you'll know that right after the Revolutionary War, the United States was actually a loose association of independent states without much in the way of a federal government over all of them. We operated for a time under what was called the Articles of Confederation. That is, New York did its own thing, and Massachusetts did its own thing, and neither one of them were doing the things that Georgia and South Carolina were doing. What the US found out pretty quickly, I think it was eight years, for sure it was less than 10 years, some kind of centralized government was reasonable if the nation was truly going to be the United States. Otherwise, states were actually competing against each other in, for example, the economic marketplace, they would compete against each other. And what happens, for example, if New Hampshire way up north gets invaded, you know, is South Carolina really going to send troops to help? The nation of Israel, at the time of Judges, was experiencing that same thing and learning that same lesson. On a timeline of the Old Testament, just like it's listed in your Bibles, Judges comes right after Joshua. So after the death of Moses and all the generation that died in the wilderness wanderings, Joshua led the people into the land of Canaan on a military campaign to conquer the promised land. Joshua led them and God gave them victory. Look back at Joshua, just before the book of Judges, Joshua chapter 21. Joshua chapter 21. Verse 44 and 45 says, the Lord gave them rest all around according to all he had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of all their enemies stood against them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hands. Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass. So the promise lands. By the end of Joshua's life, the promised land was theirs in the sense that they had conquered the territory. There were no major armies left within that area to defeat them. However, there did remain within the promised land pockets of Canaanites who still had to be removed from the promised land. So Joshua chapter 23, Verses four and five, Joshua, it says, see, I have divided to you by lot these nations that remain to be an inheritance for your tribes from the Jordan with all the nations I have cut off as far as the great sea westward, and the Lord your God will expel them from before you and drive them out of your sight, so you shall possess their land as the Lord your God promised you. So in other words, when you think about the work of Joshua, the heavy lifting had been done. The major armies of the land had been defeated. The rest of conquering the promised land was, militarily speaking, it was just mop-up work. God promised to bless that effort, but they were actually going to need to make the effort. Joshua was not going to be there in order to force them into the obedience of putting the Canaanites out of the land. And so Judges opens in Judges 1. Now after the death of Joshua, it came to pass the children of Israel asked the Lord saying, who shall be first to go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up. Indeed, I have delivered the land into his hand. So Judah said to Simeon his brother, "'Come up with me to my allotted territory, "'that we may fight against the Canaanites, "'and I will likewise go with you "'to your allotted territory.' "'And Simeon went with him.'" So in verse one, after Joshua died, there's still these pockets of Canaanites that are left to fight. And in verses two and three, it seems like Judah and Simeon are having a little chat. But you have to remember, Judah and Simeon, the men, are long dead at this point. This is describing the tribes of Judah and Simeon talking to one another. There's 12 tribes, but here two of them are working together in order to clear out this specific area to the southern end of the promised land. If we're gonna understand judges, then you need to know that. Even though the word Israel gets used, the nation of Israel is this loose confederation of tribes. And as a result, When the book describes at different times God's people being oppressed by outside nations, it is often an individual tribe or a couple of tribes that are experiencing that oppression. And when God raises up a judge to deliver the people, that judge isn't necessarily a judge over the entire nation. He is within that tribe or within that couple of tribes a regional military leader over a few tribes. Where Judges fits in the history of the Old Testament is it bridges a gap. Judges bridges the gap between Joshua's accounts of conquering the lands and then after Judges in 1 and 2 Samuel when the nation organizes under the kingship of Saul, and then later on David. Now that history spans about 350 years. It's sort of technical to start trying to figure out exact dates, and that is not something you want to do early on Sunday morning, I promise. So you're just going to have to take my word that it spans about 350 years from the time of Joshua's death to the time that Saul is anointed king over a unified Israel, this period of judges is about 350 years. So if you're picturing Old Testament history, Israel had this strong central leadership as it came out of Egypt, right? Moses was the leader. And then Joshua was the leader. And then for about 350 years, it's this loose confederation of tribes that all wanted to do their own thing and tried to maintain their own tribal sovereignty. Until ultimately the nation gets really united under the kingship of Saul and then later David and then Solomon. This also means, by the way, that Judges provides the backdrop for another book of the Bible, Ruth. Ruth chapter one verse one says it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was famine in the land and a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. That man, Elimelech, is described as being from Judah because that's how they defined themselves is by their tribe. They are anticipating that day when kings would rule. The story of Ruth that happens during Judges sort of sets up the expectation of the future time of kings, especially King David. And incidentally, to continue with our theme of this is not a story of heroes, Think about what that darkness of judges tells us about a man like... Boaz in the book of Ruth. Even during that dark time, there were still some handfuls of men like Boaz who delighted in obedience to God's word and showed compassion to people, right? So it is not that every single individual had gone bad. We see good examples in Boaz, but there is this downward trajectory that's happening. The author of the book of Judges, We don't know. It's probably gonna be the last time I act like we don't know. We don't know technically, there is no internal claim to authorship of the book of Judges, but traditionally the prophet Samuel is given credit for writing Judges. And he seems like a really likely candidate as someone who would have interest in the time period and knowledge of its events. And Samuel also fits into the timeframe for authorship based on the internal evidence of the book. There are several times the book of Judges, the writer uses this reference of things that are happening, quote, to this day. So for example, look at chapter one, verse 21. Judges chapter one, verse 21 says, but the children of Benjamin, did not drive out the Jebusites who inhabited Jerusalem. So Jebusites dwell with the children of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. Now the Jebusites that lived in the city of Jerusalem, that's at the top of Mount Zion, weren't expelled like they should have been. It's not easy to throw people out of a city that's at the top of a mountain. And so the Jebusites remained during all the time of the judges. And so that tells us that when judges is written later on, We know that by 2 Samuel 5, King David does capture the city of Jerusalem and expel the Jebusites from the land and establishes Jerusalem as the capital city of Judah. So whoever's writing this has to be writing it before David's life, before that happens in 2 Samuel chapter five. And it also has to be written at a time when there were kings in Israel. Let's look over at Judges chapter 17 for a moment. Judges chapter 17 verse six. says in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So think about what this tells us about the author, the writer. Whoever is writing this is writing it at a time when there were kings in Israel because he's describing back when there were no kings in Israel. But like we said, this writer can't be writing any later than when David expelled the Jebusites out from the city of Jerusalem. And so the first king in Israel was Saul, and the second king in Israel is David. And so whoever's writing this has to be writing it right during that time. And the prophet Samuel seems like the most reasonable option. So the tradition that says Samuel wrote this really does fall with the internal evidence which is in the book. We can't say it's him for certain, but it's a really logical guess. And if it's not him, then we don't really have a clue who it would be. Okay, there's two repeated themes in Judges. Why would Samuel, if it was Samuel, and I'm gonna keep saying it is, why would Samuel write these stories? Why would he record this? Why would anyone want to look back on the history of these tribes during the time of the Judges and make sure that this stuff gets written down for posterity? Well, we could play the sovereignty of God trump card and say, well, the reason he did it is because the Holy Spirit told him to do it, and that's fair. But I think we can look at the book and easily identify two reasons, both of them found in the verse that we just read a moment ago. Judges 17 verse six says, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So, the second part of that verse, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That sounds like it should be an indictment of the pagan nations surrounding Israel. Hey, you go out there outside of God's people and all you find is folks who just do whatever's right in their own eyes. And yet, actually, it is an accusation against the people of God. We hear a statement like, everyone did what's right in their own eyes. And we say, well, yep, that's the world we live in. You know, there's selfishness and rebellion against God running rampant. There's wickedness abounds. The gospel of Jesus Christ falls on deaf ears. Everyone just believes whatever it is they want to believe and rejects anything that they don't want to hear. Right? We experience that both ends of the political spectrum decry anything contrary to their opinion as being fake news. There's no such thing as absolute truth. There is only whatever you feel is right is right. Let your heart be your guide. Everyone does what's right in their own eyes. But this indictment is written about the people of God. It is written about Israel. It is written about the ones who have been rescued from slavery, who have been placed in the promised land. They have been given the law of God as a strict code of what is right and wrong. They should know better. So just think, when you read the Old Testament law, especially the law of Moses, And you start getting these minute descriptions of here's how you spend your time and here's what you can eat and what you can't eat. Here's what you can touch and what you can't touch. Here's how you have to dress. Here's how you have to worship. Here's what and how you are absolutely not allowed to worship. And we think, why are there so many regulations about every detail? But the reality is, when we open judges, the very first generation that's actually tasked with living out that law in the land of promise, their reaction to it is, eh, we'll just do whatever we want. And for all the regulations in the law of Moses, there was even the anticipation that that is exactly what the people would end up doing. Moses actually told them in Deuteronomy chapter 12 verse eight, listen to this, Moses told them, you shall not at all do as we are doing here today, every man doing what is right in his own eyes. So Moses told them, look, when you get to the land, do what God says. Do not just do whatever it is you think is right. And these so-called heroes of judges, they did whatever it is they wanted to do. Samson, for example, because you know the story of Samson pretty well. Samson, well, I know God's law says not to marry those pagan outsiders, but have you seen Delilah? She is quite literally right in my own eyes. And we do that same thing. It's not just the society around us, it can be us. We read the word of God and we say it is our source of authority for all things. We say the Bible is our standard of faith and practice. And then when it's time to put it into practice, what do we say? Well, we don't respond in our lives with, well, the word of God says. We respond with, well, I think, You know, we don't respond to the world around us with, thus saith the Lord. We react with, well, but I feel like I wanna do this instead, and it just makes more sense to me. Is the word of God our rule of faith and practice or not? Like, is it really our rule of faith and practice, or are we doing what's right in our own eyes? Samuel, if this was written by Samuel, has woven these stories together and reaffirmed this truth all along the way so that the very last word of the book of Judges, Judges chapter 21, verse 25, says, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That's the last word of Judges. Judges serves as a warning of this ever-worsening downward spiral of disobedience that is a testimony to what happens when everyone does what's right in their own eyes. That's where this gets us. The second theme of the book gets sort of tightly packed into these same verses. In those days, there was no king in Israel. This theme requires a little bit of thoughtful unpacking. Let me ask you a question. Would the nation of Israel have been okay without a king? Yes, for a time at least, yes. a theocracy. A theocracy is a nation that is ruled directly by God. That is the ideal standard for humanity. This is God's design for His creation. He made Adam and Eve. He told Adam, you're going to have dominion over the earth. You're going to rule over the earth under the rule of God. In other words, Absent a king, without a king, if everyone did what was right according to God's word, that would have been ideal. That would have been being ruled directly by God's commands. And yet human disobedience, our sinful nature, ruins any hope for that ideal. We refuse to obey God. We do what we want to do. And so God had made promises as far back as Abraham. In Genesis chapter 17, verse six, he told Abraham that he would be a father of kings. Abraham's grandson Jacob was told in Genesis 35 verse 11, kings will descend from you. Jacob's son Judah in Genesis 49 verse 10, paraphrasing that, says you will get the king's ruling scepter until the one to whom it truly belongs comes. The law of Moses describes in Deuteronomy 17, when you come into the land, you're gonna want a king, and here are the rules for choosing one. So if Samuel wrote these stories of the judges, he is, Samuel is the very prophet of whom the people insisted We want a king. We want a king just like all the other nations around us. And God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint Saul. Not because Saul would be a godly king, but because God told Samuel, Samuel look, go anoint Saul, he's the kind of king they want. They have not rejected you, they've rejected me. So give them what they want. Give them a Saul. And King Saul was a national leader. The tribes get unified, and they're unified under a man who did not lead them in righteousness. To have a king is no better than doing whatever's right in your own eyes, unless that king is going to lead the people in righteousness. But, Assuming Samuel wrote this for a second, what does Samuel know? As he sees, and he knows the history of what Israel looked like without a king, and he sees, well, here's this King Saul who's not leading the people in righteousness. What else does he know? Well, I'm content to think Samuel is writing this book of Judges saying, look how badly we did without a king. Look how badly we did when everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And now look how badly we do when we have a king that does not lead in righteousness. but there is this little shepherd boy named David, and God sent me to pour oil on his head, and he is going to be King David, he is gonna be a man after God's own heart, and he is gonna pull us out of this downward spiral. Samuel, I think, writes Judges in anticipation of David. But, We're granted hindsight. When David comes, he is heroic. He defeats the giant Goliath. He can lead the people in military victory against the Philistines. They're actually singing, David's killed tens of thousands. And he gets arbitrarily angry with messengers hacking them to death when they give him news that he doesn't like. He can fall into lustful temptations with Bathsheba because she satisfies his own eyes. He can watch his family fall apart and the nation go into civil war. In short, David's life would not be out of place in the book of Judges. If you can track the theme of the writer of Judges, the solution to this, Catastrophic downward spiral is a righteous king. I think he hopes that's going to be David, but we know it's going to be Jesus Christ, the son of David. There was no king. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, is a foreshadowing of King Jesus. He saves us from our sin. He makes us the righteousness of God in him. He rules as Lord and master over his people, his word abiding in us. He is this perfect judge leading us to victory. He is the perfect king leading us in righteousness. And better yet, he is God in the flesh. So when he rules as king, he does rule over a theocracy. He rules directly as God ruling over a kingdom. All of the shortcomings of these would-be heroes and judges should point us to the perfection of the true judge, the true king, the true hero, who is Jesus.