Judges 2:1-19

Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? 3 So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” 4 As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. 5 And they called the name of that place Bochim. And they sacrificed there to the Lord.

6 When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. 7 And 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 work that the Lord had done for Israel. 8 And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. 9 And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. 10 And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

11 And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. 13 They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.14 So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. 15 Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

16 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. 17 Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. 18 Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. 19 But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.

Judges 21:25

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Sermon Recap

Have you ever felt stuck in a cycle of sin? The people of God have. For this week of our Year of the Bible series, we’re in The Book of Judges. Judges is a wild book. And there are highlights. But much of it is a sad, gory, violent, downward spiral away from God and toward sin and selfishness. By the end of the book, you’ll be depressed. And that’s the point. We humans are really, really broken.

There’s a repeated cycle that scholars point out in Judges. It goes like this…

Rebellion: The people of Israel forget God and fall into temptation to disobey God’s Law and even worship the God’s of the Canaanites.

Restitution: The people experience the consequences for their sin. God allows a people that live in the Land to oppress them and enslave them.

Repentance: The people realize their sin and cry out to God to rescue them.

Rescuer: God raises up a “Judge” (tribal military leader) to rescue the people, defeat the oppressors, and (hopefully) lead them back to God.

The problem is they keep going back to their sin and when they do, it’s worse than before. So what do you do when you're stuck in the sin cycle?

One: Clear The Land

All of the Israelites problems stem from their failure to drive out the Canaanite people in the first place. It’s not that things would be perfect or that they would be perfect if they had cleared the Land, but they certainly wouldn't have experienced the same temptations. There are plenty of way we fall to sin that could be avoided simply by cutting things that tempt us out of our lives.

Two: Cry Out to the King

There’s a repeated refrain at the end and it’s actually the last verse of Judges. “There was no king in Israel…” The author of Judges seems to think that a king would be the solution to their problems. The reality is we can’t pull ourselves out of the sin cycle. We need a perfect King to come and pull us out.

That King has come in Jesus. Cry out to him, ask him to pull you out of the cycle of sin. That’s what he came to do.

Application Questions