S5: Day 71: Judges 4–6

0:00Hey, thanks for joining us again on a year in the Bible with daily grace. We love that we could just spend every day a few minutes with you. It's Shelby and CJ. We're walking through judges today, we're in chapters four through six. Before we jump into these chapters, CJ, just give us a quick recap of where we're at. And yesterday we talked about four S's and I maybe want to recap those again in case we don't remember them going into today. Yeah, so again, judges comes right after Joshua. If Joshua depicted the conquest of Canaan as a success, judges shows the darker side, shows maybe how Israel failed in the conquest or continues to fail in the conquest. And yeah, we talked about the four S's and we see this pattern all throughout the book of judges. Israel is going to sin by committing idolatry or rebelling against God. They're going to suffer at the hands of the Canaanites who are still in the land and they haven't yet driven out. They're then going to supplicate God, which again is just a fancy way to say they're going to cry out to God for help. And then they're going to experience God's salvation through an unlikely hero that God

1:01raises up to save Israel. Super helpful recap. Let's get into chapters four through six. What's going on in these chapters? Yeah. So again, we're going to see the same four S pattern. We're going to see Israel sin, meaning they did, again, what was evil in the side of the Lord, the text says. So then a Canaanite king named Jaban, he comes and he oppresses the Israelites, which means the Israelites are now suffering. And we don't explicitly see them supplicate the Lord or pray to God or ask God for help, but I think it's implied that when they're suffering, that's what they're doing. And then we hear the story of salvation through sort of an unlikely group, Deborah, Barack and Jio. And Deborah is a woman. So I think in the context of the book of judges, she's sort of an unlikely hero in that way. And then we have Barack, who's supposed to be the fierce military commander, but he seems sort of cowardly throughout the story. And then we're going to see Jail, who I'll hold off for a second to say more about her, because she's just so great. There's a whole story there, exactly.

2:04And then through Barack's cowardice, God says, I'm going to hand over the Canaanites to a woman. And we've already been introduced to Deborah, so we think, oh, okay, God's going to hand over the army into the hands of Deborah, because she seems to be the courageous one. But as the story goes along, Cicera, who's a commander of the Canaanite army, flees away from the Israelite army and he ends up in the tent of this woman named Jail. And Jail is very kind and hospitable, but she knows who this guy is. And she ends up comforting him, putting him down for a nap, and then she drives a tent peg through his head, believe it or not, and secures victory for Israel, which is actually a pretty, pretty cool story. Yeah, it is absolutely. Okay, so that brings us to Judges 6. What's happening in this chapter? Well, we're going to see the same cycle. The 4S is again, but this time we have new characters. So in Judges 6, we see Israel sin because they, again, are idolatrous and then the Midian

3:08ites and the Amalakites attack Israel and oppress them. So now they're suffering. And then the angel of the Lord appears to a man named Gideon and he says, Gideon, you're going to be my guy and you're going to save everyone. But Gideon, probably like Barack, is kind of cowardly. Again, he's an unlikely hero. But regardless, Gideon says, okay, I guess this is what I'm going to do. So he builds an altar to the Lord and God also instructs Gideon to tear down an altar to a false god ball, which is in the region of Gideon. But Gideon, being sort of a coward, does it at night because he doesn't want to face backlash from the people that are in his village or in his town. Let them in of the city find out that it's him and they're mad. But Gideon's father sticks up for him, so he'll go dad on that part. And then at this moment, Gideon is enveloped, it says, by the Holy Spirit, and he's sort of commissioned at this point to go and secure salvation for the people of Israel. But even after all this and even after Gideon has recognized how faithful God is, he still

4:10doesn't really trust God all the way, so he asks God for this test. And the test is well known, it's Gideon's fleece. So one night he asked that the fleece that he sets out would be wet, but the ground would be dry, and the other night he asked the opposite, which kind of shows again that he doesn't really trust God. He's still a little cowardly. So that's where we're at with Gideon. Yeah, and we'll pick up more of Gideon's story tomorrow, it's going to continue tomorrow. I know one thing we said throughout Judges is that we're looking for Christ in the midst of this. Do we see Jesus in these few chapters? Yeah, I think we do, again, Judges is a book of gross, gross sin and unlikely heroes. And I think with Jail and Debra, and maybe even Gideon, these people are unlikely. They're either cowards or maybe they're women, so they're not viewed as being as strong, maybe as a tough military commander like Barack, or Jail, who's just this kind, sweet woman mind-of-grown business, but then ends up securing victory for the whole nation of Israel.

5:12And I think we see that same sort of meekness in the person of Christ. He's not exactly what you would expect of a king when he came in the first century. I think people were expecting military victory in this big show of strength, but he came humble mounted on a donkey. He's this meek man who saved the world through that humility. Yeah, what a great connection there. Thanks for drawing that out, ZJ. I think my takeaway in these chapters is just God working to save his people despite his people's struggle to obey, or in their weakness, we see God's strength. And I think we're going to see that highlighted all throughout this book, but I see it particularly in these chapters. Thank you for walking us through Judges 4-6. We're going to pick up Gideon's story tomorrow because we're not done with him, so we'll talk more about him when we come back tomorrow. Thank you.