The transcript of a sermon on Judges 1:1-15 has been edited for ease of reading.
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So if you have your Bibles, please turn with me to the book of Judges. Today we are going to be in Judges chapter 1. We’re going to look at the first 15 verses of the book of Judges and begin to unpack the glorious truths that God has for us in this book.
Not only are we beginning a new sermon series today, you may have noticed I’m reading out of a different translation than I typically do.
I’m going to begin preaching from the English Standard Version. Two main reasons. One is preference. I do most of my sermon study out of the ESV anyway, so there are times when I have to kind of shift up on the fly because I haven’t done my due diligence to read the NIV enough before I get here. And so preference-wise is just what I study in personally. It’s what I study in in my sermon prep, but also it’s a philosophical issue also.
What I mean by philosophical is the translation philosophy of the ESV from the NIV. The NIV’s translation philosophy is guided by the word readability. Ease of reading.
And so since 1984, in the couple of updates that have been made since the 1984 NIV, which is what is in the Pew Bibles there, it’s the 1984 translation, there have been some significant changes, to say the least, to the text. And the ESV, their philosophy is guided by accuracy to the original languages. So both the preference, but most importantly, the philosophy of translation is one of the reasons why I am changing.
Those are two of the reasons why I’m changing. I know I joked around and said you’re not allowed to ask questions on Sunday morning. I joked around about that earlier, but you are allowed to ask questions. I’m available anytime you have questions about why I might be changing translation or why I might say something in a sermon. Please feel free to ask those questions, especially if you have questions about this. We do have a few ESV study Bibles on hand downstairs.
If you would like an ESV study Bible, the church has purchased them, so feel free to grab one and I can direct you to that at a later time. But moving on out for a while, it took me 16 years to make this change. By the time the next 16 years comes around, I’ll probably be retired anyway, so we’re probably stuck with this.
But all that being said, let us turn our attention now to God’s word as we find it in Judges chapter 1 beginning in verse 1.
“After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them. The Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand. And Judah said to Simeon, his brother, come up with me into the territory allotted to me that we may fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you. So Simeon went with him.
Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hands, and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. They found Adonai-Bezek at Bezek and fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Adonai Bezek fled, but they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes.
And Adonai Bezek said, “70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so has God repaid me.” And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there.
And the men of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of the sword and set the city on fire. And afterward, the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who lived in the hill country, in the Negev, in the lowland. And Judah went against the Canaanites who lived in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath Arba. And they defeated Sheshai and Ahuman and Talmai.
From there, they went against the inhabitants of Debir. The name of Debir was formerly Kiriath Sepher. And Caleb said, “He who attacks Kiriath Sepher and captures it, I will give him Achsah, my daughter, for a wife. And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb’s younger brother, captured it. And he gave him Achsah, his daughter, for a wife.
When she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey. And Caleb said to her, what do you want? She said to him, give me a blessing. Since you have set me in the land of the Negev, give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs.”
Let’s pray. Father God, as we begin this series in the book of Judges, we ask that you would open our eyes, that you would help us to see your glory, and most importantly, that you would help us to see our need of a savior. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
INTRODUCTION
So as we begin this book of the study of the book of Judges, I just want us to take a few moments to catch up with where we are in the timeline of history. It’s always good to have the context of a book whenever you’re reading it or studying it.
Back in Genesis 12, we have the account of God calling Abram or Abraham out of the land of the Chaldeans and bringing him to the promised land. He gave him three promises in that. He said, I’ll give you a land to possess. I will give you descendants greater than the sands on the seashore or the stars in the sky. And I will make your people, your family, a blessing to all of the nations.
Abraham had a son, Isaac. Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob had 12 sons that became the 12 tribes of Israel. And at the end of the book of Genesis, Jacob and his family or his household of close to 70 people goes to Egypt with the blessing of God.
Fast forward from there 400 years and they are enslaved. They have grown to a very, very large nation, probably around a million people, maybe a little more than a million people. But they are slaves of the King of Pharaoh or King of Egypt, whose name is Pharaoh or whose title is Pharaoh.
And after a series of miracles led by Moses, whom God had called to secure the freedom for the Israelites, the Israelites are asked to leave Egypt. They are pursued. God miraculously saves them one more time.
And they find themselves at the foot of Mount Sinai, where God gives his covenant law to the people. A moral law to guide their holiness, a civil law to guide their government, and a ceremonial law to bridge the gap between their lack of holiness and God’s holiness.
How can God, how can a holy God dwell with an unholy people? That’s why we have the sacrificial system in the nation of Israel. Well, they leave Sinai, they make it to the border of the promised land that God has promised to give to them. It belongs to him. He is going to give it to them. Twelve spies go in.
Joshua and Caleb – they’re going to play in a little bit later here – Joshua and Caleb come back and say, “Hey, these are strong people. They have fortified cities. They have armies, but God has given them into our hands. Let’s start now.”
The other 10 spies come out and said, “Hey, these are a strong people. They have fortified cities. They have armies that will easily defeat us. So let’s turn back and go to Egypt.”
And the people followed the 10 spies and God judged them by having them wander in the wilderness for 40 years. And then Joshua brings them back. He takes leadership. Moses gives him leadership of the nation of Israel when Moses dies and Joshua brings them into the land. They conquer the land over a period of years. It’s divided up.
And then we come to that passage we read in Joshua 24 a little bit earlier, where Joshua has gathered the people of Israel after the conquering is taking place. The settling has not taken place. They still have to settle in the land. There’s still kingdoms they have to expel, but the land has been conquered.
And Joshua puts before them two choices. Will you continue to follow the Lord and rest in his power, rest in his might? He has promised to give you the land. He has promised to be with you. Will you continue to follow him and obey him and worship him?
Or will you turn to the gods of this world? Will you turn to the gods of the Canaanites turning your back upon the God who brought you here? And of course, the people all gather around and they say, “We will follow God. We will obey God. We will worship God and worship God alone.”
And in a way, Joshua says, “Well, I know better than that.” God promised in Deuteronomy, as Moses was giving the last words of Deuteronomy, God said you were going to disobey and ultimately lose the land.
But you are witnesses against yourselves that you have promised today to worship and to follow God. And if you don’t, you will bring upon yourselves the curses of the covenant.
The book of Judges is a book that explains how they started out following God. And then very quickly, before Caleb has a chance to die, before his son-in-law Othniel has a chance to die, they turn their back on God and follow the idols of this world.
And we’ll see this cycle repeat itself throughout the book of Judges. The Israelites worship idols. The Israelites are disciplined by being conquered and oppressed by other nations. They most of the time cry out to God. We’ll see in the account of Samson that they do not cry out to God in that account. He rescues them anyway. They cry out to God. He sends a rescuer and then they have a period of peace. They have a period of rest. And then after that period of rest, which lasts anywhere from 7 to 40 years, they go back to idolatry.
It’s important for us to know something as we go through the book of Judges. We are not going to tell each other that we need to be more like Othniel or more like Gideon or more like the Judges, because we are not the Judges. The Judges will ultimately point us to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
The point of this book is that since Jesus has done the work to reconcile us to God, we need to stop being like Israel. We need to stop following the idols of this world and coming under the discipline of God. We need to constantly go before God and cry out to him, seeking his face, seeking to confess, seeking repentance, seeking the power of the Holy Spirit to raise us up to holiness, that he is working within us.
That’s just a brief summary of where we have come from and where we are going.
Today we’re going to look at how the Israelites begin very well. But we’re also going to see some cracks in their success, cracks that will be exploited by the enemy as we move on through the book, cracks that will widen until we get to the end of the book and we have to sit back and say, “Well, Israel looks far more like Sodom and Gomorrah than they do the people of God.” So let’s begin looking at how they do well and where they begin to show some of their failures.
SEEKING GOD’S GUIDANCE
“After the death of Joshua” Joshua was a very strong leader. He was a godly leader. He had his faults.
There were a couple of times where he got in trouble, once with Ai, once with the nation of Gibeon, where he got in trouble for not seeking God’s help, for not seeking God’s face. But all in all, Joshua was a strong leader. He was a godly leader.
He had been put in place, ordained by God, trained by Moses. But when Joshua died, there was no leader to follow up. And so the Israelites are left with a question, what are we going to do? Who’s in charge now that Joshua is gone? And you know what? They do great in seeking to answer that question because they go to seek God’s face.
They go to seek God’s advice. They go to the Lord and they say, who shall go up for us first against the Canaanites to fight against them? And God answers them. We don’t know how this works, but we know that they receive this answer from the Lord.
And God said, Judah shall go up. Judah had been singled out by Jacob in Genesis 49:8-10, that he was going to be the ruler, the king, in the family of Jacob in the nation of Israel. And so it’s natural that Judah should go up first.
And so they seek God’s face and God identifies Judah. And the first thing Judah does is he goes to Simeon. Simeon was a smaller tribe than Judah.
The tribe was actually landlocked inside the borders of Judah and being smaller, Judah knew that they would need help. And so Judah goes to them and says, look, “We’ll help you. If you’ll help us, we’ll help you settle your portion of the land. If you help us settle our portion of the land.”
This is, this is God’s people working together. How often brothers and sisters, do you and I try to go it alone in our Christian walk, but God has placed us into a family of brothers and sisters in Christ. And we should, we should use that family as, as, as helps for our holiness.
We should be willing to ask brothers and sisters for help. We should be willing to make those phone calls when we think we should make those phone calls, but we just don’t want to be a bother. God has put us in this family so that we can help each other.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE AT BEZEK
And so Judah and Simeon go and they fight against these two people groups, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, an army of 10,000 of these people, they, they defeat at the city of Bezek. And then they find the King or the Lord of Bezek. That’s what the name Adonai Bezek means is literally Lord of Bezek. It’s probably a title, not a name.
They capture him and they cut off his thumbs and his big toes. Now, why would you cut off somebody’s thumbs and big toes? Well, you can’t have, you can’t hold a sword if you don’t have thumbs and it’s hard to run on a battlefield if you don’t have toes.
But this, brothers and sisters, is where we begin to see a little bit of a crack in the success of Judah. Why is this a problem? Well, God had commanded them to expel or destroy all the residents of Canaan. Deuteronomy chapter 4, verses 9 and 10, God says that the sin of the Canaanites is complete.
Their idolatry is out of hand. Their idolatry has led them to rampant sexual sins. Their idolatry has led them to sacrificing children, babies, newborns upon a burning altar. And God says their sin is out of hand and I’m going to use you Israel to judge the nations of Canaan.
But also God warns them against taking on the sins of the Canaanites. No divination, no witchcraft, no adultery, no fornication, no child sacrifice. And so this double reason for eliminating the people of the Canaanites, one, God is judging them for their sins, and two, God is protecting the Israelites from falling into the sins of the Canaanites. That’s why God has them either expel or destroy the Canaanites.
They ignore that command by saving Adonai Bezek. Now we know he dies, it tells us here in the next couple verses. But after this judgment upon him of having his thumbs and his toes cut off, he says a very interesting thing. He says,
“70 kings with their thumbs and big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table. As I have done, so God has repaid me. And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there.”
“God has repaid me.”
That word repaid there is related to the Hebrew word shalom. Shalom is a fullness, a peace, a balancing of the scales, a reconciliation of relationship, sin being paid for. It’s all kind of wrapped up in that idea of shalom.
And so what he is saying here is, “I am so important that my thumbs and my toes are equal to the 70 thumbs and the 70 toes that I cut off of these other people.” It’s an arrogant statement to start with. But the other interesting thing about this is human blood, human righteousness cannot bring true shalom between humanity and God.
It’s the point of the sacrificial system. In the book of Numbers, they are dedicating the tabernacle of God. And there you can you can go through there and you can count.
There are thousands upon thousands of sheep and goats and bulls slaughtered to dedicate the tabernacle. It’s magnified in first Kings eight at the dedication of the temple. And oftentimes we ask the question, “Well, how did they feed the sheep? How did we do? How did they take care of them in the wilderness?” Great questions.
But the true question is when the author of Hebrews says the blood of bulls and goats is not enough to reconcile humanity with God is not enough to repay for the sins of men. You mean tens upon fifteens of thousands of sheep lost their blood in the temple courts? It flowed out the doors and that was not enough to pay for sin.
It took the blood of our savior. It took the perfect blood of a perfect sacrifice carried into the true holy of holies, God’s throne room to truly repay for our sins. And so Adonai Bezek gets it wrong. God has not done justice to him. He has disciplined him, but he deserves far more.
And for those who believe Jesus has taken that far more upon himself. So we see the men of Judah fighting some more, controlling some more ground, destroying some more cities.
CALEB CONQUERS AND BLESSES
And then we move to verses 11 through 15 and we see Caleb once again. Remember, Caleb was one of those spies who was faithful and he was promised that he would survive the wilderness wanderings, that he would receive a portion of the promised land. And we see here, Caleb probably in his eighties leading his family army to secure this area of Israel.
But not only does he conquer this area, he also gives blessing. After Othniel wins the hand of Caleb’s daughter, Caleb’s daughter goes to [Caleb] and she says in verse 15, “Give me a blessing since you have set me in the land of Negev. Give me also springs of water.”
Now, why would she need springs of water in the Negev? Well, because just like it is now, it was a desert back then. And if you’re going to set up a family in a desert, if you’re going to set up a household, if you’re going to have food in the desert, you need water. And so like the Proverbs 31 woman, she is going out to secure the well-being of her family.
And she goes to her dad and she asked, give me a spring of water, give me a well so I can take care of my family. And Caleb goes one step further. It says he gives her the upper springs and the lower springs, which is probably a literary, a poetic device to say that he gave her all the she needed.
All the water that she needed to, to set her family up well in the Negev. Caleb took care of that. Brothers and sisters, we talk about Jesus conquering sin and conquering death.
And he has, he has done that at the cross. He has done that in his resurrection, but he has done far more than conquer sin and death on our behalf. He has given us blessings beyond what we could ever think or imagine.
He has given us the blessings of creation. He has given us the blessings of our jobs. He has given us the blessings of our church family.
He has secured for us the blessings of prayer so that we can boldly approach the throne of God. But he has given us the blessing of the Holy Spirit. When we strive to be righteous in our own power, we deny the blessing of the Holy Spirit in our life.
But when we understand that the holiness that God calls us to work out, that he is already working in us by the blessing of the Holy Spirit, then we can set aside our legalism. We can set aside our ignorance of the law and truly pursue holiness, walking by the power of the Spirit, setting aside the acts of the flesh and putting on the fruit of the Spirit. And so not only has Jesus conquered, he has also given us blessing.
CONCLUSION
So just a couple of things to take from this sermon today. Number one, we are not given the power of the sword as the church. That power is given to the government.
But we are called to keep ourselves pure, to protect the purity of the church and to protect the purity of the Christian. This means when false teaching creeps into the church, we take a stand to keep it out because a mild false teaching today will become rank heresy and apostasy in 20 years. And so we keep false teaching out of the church.
That’s why the elders guard so strictly against false teaching within the church. But we also, in our own lives, make sure that we are not covered by the influence of sin in our own lives, in our own hearts.
The temptation in our life is to think, you know, the world does it this way. I know God says to do it this way, but the world’s moved on from God and does it this way. So I’m just going to do what I want in this area and I’ll kind of have my cake and eat it too. We must put those thoughts to death, brothers and sisters.
You don’t compromise with sin without incurring the discipline of God. If you’re his child, you do not feel the discipline you deserve. If you’re not his child, you will one day feel all of that discipline that you deserve.
Another thing is when we go to make decisions about our lives, do we pray and do we pray enough? The Israelites went to God and they said, who shall lead us? Do we go to God? Do we seek his will and his word and through prayer when we have decisions to make in our lives? Do we truly rest upon his wisdom as we seek new jobs, as we enter into relationships, as we buy homes, as we make moves? Do we seek God’s face? Do we seek God’s wisdom?
And lastly, are we willing to set aside our desire to look righteous or set aside our desire to set aside the law because Jesus has fulfilled the law and to walk in the power of the spirit toward the holiness to which God has called us? Looking to the cross the whole way because we can’t do it ourselves. We must have the power of the spirit working the power of the cross in our lives. And so are we willing to set aside our pride in legalism, our false freedom in no law and actually walk in the power of the Holy Spirit?
Let’s pray.
To the great God and father above. We do thank you for this book of judges. We thank you for the truths that it gives to us and we thank you that you give us blessings. You have conquered through your son, but you give us the blessing of the Holy Spirit. May we walk in the power of the spirit and find hope in you and in you alone. In Jesus name, amen.
We talked about God giving us blessings even as Jesus has conquered. He gives us blessings. So take this blessing upon you:
“To God’s chosen who have been elect according to the foreknowledge of God the father through the sanctifying work of the spirit to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood grace and peace be yours in abundance.”
He who testifies to these things says, yes, I am coming soon.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus.
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