#12 Heroes Who Died – OT Survey

The Book of Judges is a book about the increasing misery and disaster that overcomes God’s people when they refuse to worship Him faithfully in the promised land. It’s also about heroes. Heroes who died.

Judges is an adventure story. It has plot, drama, betrayal, violence, love, and war. The book has humour, irony and biting sarcasm – all of which are legitimate forms of warfare that God employs against those who practise idolatry.

It’s a book about tribes who fight the nations, judges who fight kings and tribes who fight with each other.

Throughout the book, God disciplines Israel when she goes into idolatry and then raises up a saviour when she cries out.

What happens in Judges is not always pretty. In fact, it is often plain ugly. And the reason that it’s ugly is that when God’s people do not walk in the ways of the Lord, the sinfulness of man is cut loose and that sinfulness is horrific.

If Israel worships God faithfully, they will win the battle before them. If they do not worship faithfully, all of the disasters that were to fall on the Canaanites will fall on them.

If they want to worship like Canaanites, God will give them a taste of what it’s like to be one. If Israel refuses to drive out the inhabitants, God will move the inhabitants to drive out Israel.

On the other hand, if they cry out to God, He will raise up a saviour to save them. And this is where we meet our heroes.

These characters are not actually judges. They are deliverers, saviours. And as we meet them we need to keep a couple of things in mind regarding their actions.

First, it was God who raised them up to save Israel. Second, the context is warfare, and the rules of warfare are not the same as the rules that apply in times of peace.

Thirdly, the focus of the book is not on the morality of the heroes. The point of the book is not the moral dilemma nor to have us stand over Israel’s saviours in judgement on their behaviour. Gideon is not a lesson on pride. Japheth is not a lesson on rash vows and Samson is not a lesson on gullible men. To do this is to place man and his works at the centre of the story. No, the point of the book is to show the salvation of God.

Judges is also a book of violence. It is violent because that is what idolatry produces. Those who live like Canaanites die like Canaanites (Judges 5:31).

Toward the end of the book, the events move from the heroes who fought God’s enemies to Israel who now turn on themselves and begins fighting, brother against brother. Neighbour against neighbour.

Samson, Deborah, Ehud, Gideon, Barak, Japheth and others. Memorable stories of heroes. But more importantly, memorable stories of a God who saves a sinful people. A people who are all committed to doing what is right in their own eyes.

The trap for us is to commit the same folly by judging their actions according to what is right in our eyes.

Where God is silent, we do well to be silent also.

If you want a moral takeaway, it’s that idolatry is ugly. It produces the kind of society you read about in Judges.

This is important. If you walk away and say,  I don’t want this God to be my God then you are choosing barbarism. You’re choosing a dog-eat-dog world where there is no mercy, no salvation, no forgiveness. You are choosing a world where there is only the black hole of your own self-destructive and idolatrous heart.

In other words, idolatry is you opting for violence.

Solomon helps us understand this in Proverbs when he says,

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. (Proverbs 14:12)

Finally, the writer of Judges tells us from the beginning and repeatedly throughout,

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. 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. (Judges 2:18-19)

Do you see the problem? These saviours keep dying.

Israel only stands on its feet so long as the judge or saviour lives. When He dies, Israel descends back into idolatry.

And so, in Hebrews, having told us all about these wonderful and heroic saviours the author states,

…and these all died. (Hebrews 11:13)

God was a Saviour to Israel but those he sent to save them all died.

And so, Israel is left longing for a Saviour who will endure. A Saviour who, though He dies, lives.

This is the glory of the Gospel that we celebrate today.

In Judges, we learn that our rejoicing is never to be that we did what was right, but that God is gracious when we did wrong.

In Judges, we are left longing for a solution to the destructive consequences of our own idolatry as well as the growing pile of dead heroes.

Jesus is God’s gracious answer. Jesus was raised from the dead. And that is the salvation that the book of Judges points to. It points to a Saviour who will not only vanquish God’s enemies but live to take the throne ever after.