How soon do you suppose your next flight would be able to take off if, after accelerating for a few seconds, the pilot repeatedly had to slow down for something on the runway? How likely do you think an Olympic long-jumper is to take home a medal if keeps slowing down and speeding up as he approaches his jump? Neither the pilot nor the long-jumper are going to have much success, are they? There are just some things in life that simply require a measure of momentum in order to achieve success. Without that momentum, certain limitations can’t be broken; we get stuck.
Has your spiritual life ever felt like that? Or, maybe your spiritual life has only felt like that! We start, then slow down, then maybe stop, then start up again, but the only result we ever seem to achieve is that we end up getting stuck. Or backsliding. But any progress seems to be short-lived. Either we take our foot off the gas and slip into complacency, or sin abruptly steals our momentum. How do we break the cycle? How do we get unstuck? Enter the time of Judges.
You want to see what it looks like to get stuck, to get caught up in an unhealthy cycle that gets progressively worse, spiraling downward like dirty bathwater circling the drain? Look at the 300-350 year period after Moses and Joshua, before any kings were ever established in Israel, and you see the same pattern repeated: rebellion, regret, and rescue. The Israelites would turn away from God in favor of the surrounding pagan worship and customs. Oppression from those pagan nations would ensue, resulting in the Israelites calling out to the Lord in desperation for deliverance. God would raise up a judge and rescue, and the whole cycle would repeat itself again and again for over 300 years. As we study several key judges over the next several weeks in this series, we want to take note of key takeaways that each judge provides to help us get unstuck and break the cycle, so that we can finally make the progress we’ve wanted in our spiritual lives.
The book of Judges begins on a high note: “After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the LORD,…” (1:1). Joshua had led them well! When they needed direction, they knew to seek out the Lord, and so they asked him how to proceed in securing the land he had promised them. Unfortunately, they failed to act in the same confident faith that was a staple of Joshua’s leadership, and so the whole rest of the first chapter of Judges – and essentially the snare that would plague Israel throughout this period of history and up to and through the age of kings – was this: they failed to completely drive out the enemy. Again and again the refrain is the same: each tribe would advance, fight, get comfortable with their success, but then fail to completely drive out their enemies.
The Lord made clear to them the long-term damage that would result. “‘You shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive [your enemies] out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you” (2:2-3). So it comes as no surprise the tragedy that results shortly thereafter. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel” (2:10). Think it doesn’t matter when we treat our religion, our Christian faith, our relationship with God, like a spare tire? When we allow it to remain nothing more than something that is accessible to us only when absolutely needed in extreme situations, this is what happens. And let’s embrace the sad reality: this is what is currently happening right now in the church.
Notice I said “church.” It would have been an easier pill to swallow if I had said “in our country,” right? Because that doesn’t sting as much. It depresses us, sure. It frustrates us, definitely. But it also easily allows us to pass the buck and blame everyone else for the direction we’re going. But we’re the ones – you and me – who are guilty of repeating the same deadly cycle that is blatantly obvious throughout the time of Judges. We start out on the high note, seeking out the LORD, but then we either don’t bother to obey what he says, or only partially so, we get caught up in one sinful snare after another, and wonder how things got so bad and how the next generation seems so hopeless. It’s our fault! So do we want to keep repeating the cycle, or do we wish to actually do something about it and break the cycle? Then let’s commit not just to learning the lessons that the book of Judges teaches us, but actually living them, applying them, and putting them into action. Let’s lean on God’s power to equip us to break the cycle and not settle, but strengthen ourselves and the next generation of believers.
The first lesson God teaches us in our Judges series is that his promises don’t need any human help to bolster them up and make them more believable. God’s promises need no human intervention to validate them or make them more palatable. We take God at his word because it is God’s Word.
As we look at chapter four, already we see the cycle repeating. God had already delivered his people through the previous judge, Ehud. He provided them relief from oppression, but with that rest and relief they also became relaxed spiritually, and not in a good way. “Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, now that Ehud was dead. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin king of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor. Sisera, the commander of his army, was based in Harosheth Haggoyim. Because he had nine hundred chariots fitted with iron and had cruelly oppressed the Israelites for twenty years, they cried to the Lord for help” (Judges 4:1-3). Sisera and his iron-reinforced chariots were wreaking havoc on the Israelites. The advantage he had would be like an army of infantry today going up against a tank battalion – no contest. God, however, would turn the tables on Sisera and Israel’s enemies by showing that opposing him would yield the same result – no contest.
He spoke through his representative, Deborah, to reveal how he would bring about deliverance and rescue his people. Who was Deborah? We’re told she was leading Israel at the time. She was a prophet recognized by Israel as being gifted with discernment to provide counsel and direction and settle disputes as they arose. Remember this was the time before the monarchy had been established, before Israel had begged to be like other nations and have its own kings. And it was after God had appointed a permanent leaders like Moses and Joshua to lead his people with the specific purpose of guiding them out of Egypt into the promised land. For this time, God saw fit to lead his people through these individual judges, and Deborah was one of them.
She showed herself to be an exceptional leader, even more so because of the obvious contrast from Barak, the man called to lead the Israelites into battle. If we wonder why, in a primarily patriarchal culture and Bible history in general, a woman (Deborah) was leading, perhaps Barak’s hesitancy to follow God’s direction demonstrates the answer for us. When the Lord had revealed through Deborah that he planned to give Sisera and his army into Barak’s hands, hear again how Barak responded: “Barak said to her, ‘If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go’” (v.8). Deborah rightly pointed out that her command had come right from the top, right from the Lord himself, who had promised victory! But God’s direct promise alone wasn’t enough for Barak; he required human intervention. He needed the assurance that Deborah would accompany him.
Think of how backwards that is! How often don’t we find ourselves in a situation that leads us to the conclusion, “Only a miracle will save us now,” or “only divine intervention will change this outcome”? Yet divine intervention is exactly what the Lord promised to Barak, and it wasn’t enough. He thought that he needed an additional confidence booster from a human being. It should have been the other way around! Barak should have told Deborah to sit tight and that he’d be right back, because the Lord had already guaranteed that victory was a done deal!
Wouldn’t we all like to have a little more Deborah and a little less Barak in each of us? We have a Bible stacked with God’s promises of intervention on behalf of his people, yet we insist on worldly confidence boosters before acting on those promises by faith. The Lord promises to watch over our coming and going, but it takes the confidence booster of a clean bill of health from the doctor for me to believe it. Jesus reminds us that since he dresses the flowers and feeds the birds, we don’t need to lose any sleep over his ability to provide for our needs. But it takes the confidence booster of a steady job and income and to put my mind at ease. God promises that forgiveness and heaven are his free gifts only by grace, only through faith, but I am easily deceived by the false confidence booster that I’ve been a pretty good person to really reassure me.
We have it backwards! God’s Word is enough. God’s promises are enough. How can some earthly factor or some worldly circumstance add any value whatsoever to what God himself has declared? It can’t. Nothing can. Barak needed Deborah’s assurance for God’s promise of deliverance to be more believable. God forgive us for every time we need some added assurance for God’s promise of deliverance to be more believable!
But God delivers anyway, despite our doubt, just as he did for Barak and the Israelites. “At Barak’s advance, the Lord routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera got down from his chariot and fled on foot. Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim, and all Sisera’s troops fell by the sword; not a man was left” (v.15-16). Not a man was left! How does an army of foot soldiers not just scrape by, but completely wipe out a superior fighting force of state-of-the-art chariots? God intervenes, and emphatically at that! Read the praise song of victory in the next chapter and discover that divine intervention definitely played a role! The very plain in the valley that Sisera thought would give his chariots an advantage became his undoing when roaring waters rendered them useless (cf. 5:21)! And though Sisera was able to escape Barak’s sword, he could not escape the Lord, who humbled Barak by allowing a woman, Jael, to fearlessly finish him off.
As he did Barak, God may choose to humble us for requiring additional confidence boosters to trust in his promises. But here’s what will not change: God will always keep his promises. Now if God waited on us until he had 100% perfect and complete trust from us, well, he’d hardly be able to keep a single promise! He doesn’t operate that way, though, as you know. He doesn’t withhold from us what he has a right to. He doesn’t treat us as he has a right to. He doesn’t give us what we really deserve. Instead, he delivers. Just as we’ll see over the course of the next several weeks in Judges, God delivers.
In baptism, he delivers. In his Supper, he delivers. Through his Word, he delivers. He always delivers! He delivered his Son into this world so that he could deliver his Son for this world. He has done this great thing – the greatest thing – for you. His forgiveness flows freely to you in an abundant stream that will never slow to a trickle, but will always overflow. You are his and he will deliver you always. Let’s stop the cycle and start taking his promises at face value, not requiring any earthly circumstance at all to make his promises more palatable.