Judges 1

Chapter 1. The Cause of Spiritual FailureAnd they called that place Bokim. (Judges 2:5)The book of Judges has a very important place in the plan of divine revelation. It expresses a great truth and teaches a deep and solemn lesson: the danger of spiritual declension after great spiritual blessing. A Long Declension The book of Numbers is a sad book, because it tells of the wanderings of Israel in the wilderness for 40 years after God brought the people out of Egypt. But Judges is a sadder and more solemn book—it tells of the failure of Israel after they had entered the Land of Promise, a failure that lasted not 40 years but 400. It represents the danger of backsliding after a person has received the Holy Spirit and known Jesus in His fullness—a danger most real and alarming. The author of Hebrews warns against the same thing: “We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure” (Hebrews 6:11). There is a place in the discipline of the Christian life and in the wise and faithful dealing of God with His people for both warning and promise, for both hope and fear. No one is so unsafe as he who recklessly dreams of safety without vigilance and obedience. God has planted beacons all along the way, not to discourage us with needless fear, but to save us with wholesome caution and vigilant obedience. Judges stands in a larger sense for the declension of the Church of Christ after the apostolic age, and it represents the dark ages of Christian history. But in its personal application it may also represent the danger of retreating from the baptism of Pentecost and the deepest and highest experiences of the Holy Spirit. Began with Victory The book begins with a record of victory. After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, “Who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites?” The Lord answered, “Judah is to go; I have given the land into their hands.” Then the men of Judah said to the Simeonites their brothers, “Come up with us into the territory allotted to us, to fight against the Canaanites. We in turn will go with you into yours.” So the Simeonites went with them. When Judah attacked, the Lord gave the Canaanites and Perizzites into their hands and they struck down ten thousand men at Bezek. (Judges 1:1-4) This was all as it should be, and manifested the spirit of faith, obedience and humble dependence upon God. Further on we read that they even took Jerusalem and that they captured Hebron and other strongholds. They pressed down to the country of the Philistines, driving them from most of their strongholds. It seemed as if they still possessed the victorious faith of Joshua and had in their midst the same Almighty Presence of their divine Leader. Beginning of Failure But we soon begin to see the first indications of the coming failure. First, the men of Judah began to pause in their career of triumph. We see the first word of defeat and discouragement in Joshua 24:19 : “they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.” Soon after we read of the partial failure of the tribe of Benjamin: “The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites” (Judges 1:21). It was not that they “were unable,” but that they “failed to” dislodge them. Next we find Manasseh failing to drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shan and the neighboring towns: “for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land” (Judges 1:27). Next, Ephraim becomes discouraged and fails to drive the Canaanites from Gezer (Judges 1:29). Zebulun also allows the enemy to remain in his town (Judges 1:30). Asher yields to the inhabitants living in his region (Judges 1:31). Naphtali fails to drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh (Judges 1:33). And Dan flees before the Amorites of his mountain land (Judges 1:34). So there was scarcely a tribe of Israel that had not in some degree compromised with the enemy and given place to their foes, whom God had ordered to be completely extirpated from the land. The steps of their failure are very striking as we follow them in detail. Tolerating the Enemy First, the Israelites simply let the enemy remain. They seemed to have no fear of the Canaanites and just failed to exterminate them. Second, we find the Israelites deliberately putting the Canaanites under their control and keeping them there for the purpose of making a profit from them and getting something out of them. This is where the world gets into our Christian lives today. We compromise with evil; we not only allow it, but we use it for our own purposes. We think there is no harm in taking money from wicked men for religious purposes and meeting them halfway. We are willing to be agreeable to the world in order to have a good influence over it. But in the end we fall completely under its power. Third, we find the Canaanites living alongside the Israelites (Judges 1:27). Then, a little later, we find Israel living with the Canaanites (Judges 1:33). Israel began by treating the Canaanites as guests or slaves, but ended by finding that they had become their masters and conquerors. Conquered by the Enemy Next we see the Canaanites driving the children of Dan into the mountains. They now have grown strong enough to dictate and demand, as evil always does after we have given it standing room for a little while. Intermarriage Next comes the intermarriage of God’s people with the enemy. They meet in the social intimacies of life. They find the people of the world agreeable and profitable, and they consent to the forbidden fellowships and intermarriages of the godly and the ungodly, which in every age have preceded a time of corruption and great wickedness. No child of God has any right to intermarry with the ungodly, and a true parent dare not consent to such a union without involving the eternal well-being of the child. It is never safe to disobey God, and I have no hesitation in saying that I would not perform such a marriage ceremony. Idolatry The next step is partnership in idolatry and the forsaking of Jehovah’s worship for the shameful rites of heathenism. In chapter 3 we read: “They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs” (Judges 3:6-7). God’s Anger The culmination of all this soon came in the anger of Jehovah and His severe and righteous judgment upon His disobedient people: In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. (Judges 2:14-15) What a dreadful thing it is to have God against us and to know that He who controls the breath of our lives and all the elements of destruction around us is compelled by His nature to deal contrary to us and to consume us—even as fire consumes every combustible thing it touches! God is compelled to be against sin, and while He pities the sinner, He hates the sin. While we are against God, His presence must be to us a consuming fire. We would fly from the awful blaze of His holy glance as from a lightning flash and long to hide ourselves in hell. Given Up But there is something even sadder than this. We read that God gave them up to the power of their enemies and allowed the Canaanites, whom they themselves had trifled with and taken into covenant, to be the thorns and snares of judgment and temptation to them. There is nothing more terrible in all the judgments pronounced against Israel than this: “Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you” (Judges 2:3). And later we read: Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did.” (Judges 2:20-21) God allowed them to be filled with their own devices and tempted and tried by the results of their own disobedience. He even sold them into the hands of their enemies and gave their foes a power to subdue and enslave them (Judges 3:8), which they could have never claimed without divine permission. From that time forward, the Canaanites, Philistines, Syrians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Romans were but the executioners of divine judgment. They succeeded in their conquests and captivities by direct divine permission. All of this represents an awful truth which the New Testament undoubtedly confirms: God’s last and most terrible judgment is to allow the devil to have power over the disobedient soul and to permit temptation to overcome, torment and punish him because of his willful disobedience to the will of God and his rejection of the grace that would have saved him. The saddest thing about the condition of the sinner is that while he thinks he is free and has the power to reform and do as he pleases, he is the helpless slave of Satan, who has “taken them captive to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:26). He can never be free until he repents and renounces the dominion of God’s great enemy and appeals to the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to break the fetters of his captivity. The Hardened Heart There may come a time in the life of a wicked man when, through persistent rejection of light and right, he shall be given over, as we read in Romans, “to a depraved mind,” and “to shameful lusts” (Romans 1:28, Romans 1:26). He shall find within him a power compelling him to evil and possessing him with the devil just as one can be possessed and constrained by the Holy Spirit. This explains the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. This is the last stage of impenitence and despair, and it never comes to any person until he has rejected and refused the mercy of God and has deliberately chosen evil instead of good, Satan instead of God. God punishes him by letting him have Satan to the full, or as it is expressed so graphically in Proverbs: Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord, since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their own schemes. (Romans 1:29-31) It is possible even for the child of God to be delivered over to the power of temptation through a continuance in willful and persistent disobedience. The very things that we choose become our punishment, and through our own deliberate disobedience, we find ourselves under temptation that we cannot resist. The reason is that we are in a place where God never wanted us to be. We have brought upon ourselves our own torment. The grace of God is equal to all His will for us, and He knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation. But He has not promised His grace for self-imposed burdens, dangers or situations that are contrary to His divine purpose. There is nothing sweeter in life than to be conscious of being so encased in the armor of the Holy Spirit that Satan cannot touch us. Every fiery shot glances off, as the shot and shell are repelled by the armor plate on the battleship, and we walk through the hosts of hell as safe and unscathed as if we were treading the courts of heaven. But there is also an experience where we are conscious that Satan has a power over our hearts; that the fiery darts do penetrate and stain the sensitive soul; that the evil instigation does become a part of our thoughts and feelings; and that we are not in perfect victory over the power of evil. This is the meaning of the Master’s prayer: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). This is the meaning of hell, the beginning of torment, the retribution of sin. This is something even more bitter than the wrath of God. It is the culmination of the first step of unbelief, disobedience and spiritual declension. Let us guard against the first step, and let us ask Him to save us from the causes that led His people of old into these depths of wretchedness and sin. The Causes of Israel’s Failure The first cause was incomplete and unfinished work. The Israelites did not thoroughly finish the battle. They entered into compromises with evil. They failed to be thorough and wholehearted in their dealing with God. Let us make sure that we give no place to the devil and that we allow the world and the flesh no standing ground. All Satan asks is toleration of a single root of bitterness, unbelief or self-indulgence. As surely as God is true, however, that single sin will destroy us in the end. Second, the Israelites failed to recognize their temptations as God’s tests to see what they would do. He allowed the things to come so that He could test their obedience. Similarly, He lets temptations come to us, not so that they may overcome us, but so that they can establish us. If we would recognize them as God’s tests and rise above them to meet His higher will, they would become occasions for grander victories and higher advances. But third, the real secret of their failure was the lack of a true, personal and independent hold upon God as the Source of their strength. There is one passage in the opening verses of Judges that explains the situation: “The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel” (Judges 2:7). Here we see the cause of the whole trouble. The Israelites leaned upon Joshua and Joshua’s immediate successors more than they leaned upon God. They got their ideas and inspiration from human leaders, but they did not stand personally rooted and grounded in God. When the shock of conflict came, they failed. Indeed, their own language on a previous occasion shows that they did not really understand their own helplessness and their utter need of Jehovah. Self-Confidence In the closing chapter of Joshua we read that when that great leader had gathered the people together at Shechem and given them his parting charges, they answered with unreserved assurance, “‘We too will serve the Lord, because he is our God.’ Joshua said to the people, ‘You are not able to serve the Lord’” (Joshua 24:18-19). What Joshua meant was that they could not in their self-confident strength do anything but fail and sin. But they had not learned the lesson, and confident in their self-sufficiency, they did fail and sink into the depth of sin and misery. The triumphs of Jericho, Beth Horon, Hebron and Gibeon ended in the tears of Bokim and captivity by their foes. Thank God there is another side to Bokim, the place of which the inspired prophet said, “No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah” (Isaiah 62:4). Bokim is the place of weeping; Beulah is the place of love and joy. Bokim means failure of our strength; Beulah means married to Him and kept by His power from stumbling and from failure. Let us go to Bokim and learn our helplessness. And then let us go forth to Beulah and, leaning upon His love and strength, go forward singing: “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57). “I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).