The Downward Spiral

I remember when I saw a 3D movie for the first time. I don’t remember what movie it was, but I do remember the moment when I almost ducked because it looked like something was about to fly off the screen and hit me in the face. That’s what my eyes told me, and the surround sound only added to the effect.

3D movies work by feeding slightly different information to each of your eyes. That’s why you have to wear those glasses. Your eyes see two slightly different images, which your brain combines to produce a 3-dimensional image. It’s the same with surround sound, or even stereo sound. Different sounds in different ears give the impression of space, of a 3-dimensional soundscape. And it’s something that’s a lot richer and fuller than you’d get if everything came out of one speaker.

We see a similar effect, believe it or not, in the Bible. The Hebrew authors would very often use a technique where they would say the same thing in two different ways in order to give a much richer and fuller picture than just a single report would provide.

We see this in the Psalms, where often line-by-line the same truth is repeated with different wording. But this also works on a bigger scale. Genesis tells the creation story twice, in chapters 1 and 2, from two different perspectives. God seals his covenant with Abraham twice in Genesis 15 and then 17. Large sections of Isaiah say essentially the same thing from different angles. This is all on purpose, as these parallel accounts work together, like the left and right speakers in a stereo, or the two lenses in 3D glasses, to give us a rich and detailed understanding.

And we find this here in the book of Judges, which has two introductions. The first introduction, which we looked at last week, took up all of chapter 1 and a bit of chapter 2, and told us the history of what happened after Joshua’s death. Today we look at the second introduction, which takes up most of chapter 2 and a bit of chapter 3. This passage considers the same events as last week, but from more of a theological perspective. In other words, God’s point of view instead of our point of view.

3:6 opens up this second introduction, and it takes us back, to an even earlier point than Judges 1, to that last time that Israel assembled to hear from Joshua. We remember that Joshua gathered Israel together, charged them to follow the Lord, sent them away to their inheritance, and then died (Joshua 24:28-31). That’s where verses 6-9 pick up, so we’re starting off this second introduction at an even earlier point in time than Judges 1.

1. Three eras (2:6-10)

And right away we want to notice that these verses are describing three key periods of time. The first era is described in verse 7—“all the days of Joshua.” This era is what the book of Joshua is about. Those were the years where the people witnessed and saw “the great work that the Lord had done for Israel,” as verse 7 goes on to say. And the people served and worshipped the Lord in those years.

The second era is the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, also in verse 7. They had seen the great work of the Lord, meaning that those days were days of memory, of remembering what what they had seen. And as a result, they served the Lord.

There’s a third era, in verse 10. A new generation arose after that generation of elders died. This generation, in verse 10, “did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” Miracles did not happen every day. Normal life in the Old Testament was fairly normal. But the people weren’t supposed to forget the great acts God had done. They were supposed to tell the next generation about the time that grandpa crossed the Jordan on dry ground, or saw Jericho’s walls fall, or saw the sun stop, or fought in battle after battle in which the powerful nations melted away before the God of Israel. They were supposed to explain what the piles of stones meant and make sure that nobody forgot what God had done. They were supposed to teach their children diligently about God’s word, like Deuteronomy 6:7 days. They were supposed to tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and His might, and the wonders that he had done, like Psalm 78:5 days.

But they didn’t. A whole generation served God and remembered what He did but apparently completely failed to pass it on to their children.

And remember this: what one generation assumes, the next generation abandons. It’s the same today. I grew up in churches that largely assumed the gospel. I was 17 when a visiting missionary pointed out to me how we almost never heard the gospel explained in church. We assumed it. But we almost never articulated it. And it’s not a surprise how many of the people I grew up going to church with have since abandoned Christianity completely.

What we assume we’re only one generation away from abandoning. And that’s what happened with Israel. They served God, but they didn’t pass it on with clarity and conviction. And as a result, a whole generation arose who didn’t know the Lord and didn’t know what He had done.

2. Sin (2:11-13)

And what was the result of this? That question brings us into verses 11-13 where we read about Israel’s sin. “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals.”

Two questions we want to ask right away: who were “the Baals,” and why would Israel worship them instead of the one true God? To answer the first question, the word “Baal” means lord. As a proper name, “Baal” was the weather or the storm god worshipped by the Canaanites. In a land that was often dry and depended on rain for survival, you can see how the god who supposedly controlled storms would be one of the most important gods to worship. “Baals,” plural, refers to the multiple ways that this weather god was portrayed and manifested throughout the land.

Baal had female partners, one of which was Ashtaroth or Astarte. The Canaanites believed that rain fell on the ground when Baal and Ashtaroth, or one of his other partners, were intimate with one another. And the way that you could get Baal and Ashtaroth to do this, so that it would rain, was to engage in those activities yourself. This is why prostitution was such an important part of Canaanite worship.

And this helps us explain why Canaanite religion was so attractive to the people of Israel. Worshipping Baal was way to take care of your basic needs. Sure, God had promised to bless them abundantly—but what if he didn’t? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to at least have a back-up god? And worshipping Baal sure would have been a lot of fun—like going to a college house party with lots of willing partners.

And remember that none of this seemed strange to them. It was embedded in the cultures around them, and it was as normal and common-sense to them as anything else they did.

That’s why these words “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” in verse 11 are so important. What the people did was not evil in their own sight. It made perfect sense to them.

But people don’t decide what is good or bad. God does. And God had given His people a written standard of what is right or wrong in His word. And He told His people to follow it, and promised that He would take care of them if they did. More than take care of them, He would bless them above all the other peoples of the earth. They didn’t need Baal to take care of them because they had the Lord.

But these people didn’t know the Lord or the great things He had done. And surrounded by sensual and seductive cultures, they jumped in to enjoy the local pleasures.

But here’s what they were actually doing, in the words of verse 12: “They abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.” Every phrase there matters in fixing the identity of the God they forsook. The God who brought them out of Egypt, the God who their fathers served, the God who gave them this land: they abandoned Him.

Verse 12 goes on: “They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them.” Verse 13 bookends this section, making it really clear in case we missed it: “They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.”

So this is what happens when you don’t finish the job God gave you. This is what happens when you don’t pass it on to the next generation. God is abandoned for the filthy idols of the pagans.

3. Judgement (2:14-15)

How did God respond to that? There’s a little phrase at the end of verse 12 that tips us off: “They provoked the Lord to anger.” And this theme of God’s anger is reinforced as we move into verse 14 and 15, where we find God’s judgement. Verse 14: “So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.” Literally, this is saying that God’s nostrils burned against Israel, which is a powerful word-picture of God getting really angry.

Do you believe that God gets angry? Does that fit with your idea of who God is? I hope so, because it’s right here in the Bible. And if you struggle with the idea of God’s anger, just think of how awful it would be if God didn’t care at all about his people’s sins. Imagine a husband coming home from work to find his wife  in the arms of another man, and all he does is shrug his shoulders and say, “I guess that didn’t work out well,” and then goes out to mow the grass. You would conclude that he did not love his wife very much, if at all.

But God’s anger is a reflection of His jealous love. He told the people back in the days of Moses, “You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you— for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the Lord your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 6:14–15).

But they didn’t listen. And so we now find out in Judges what this looks like when it happens. As verse 14 goes on, “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. 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.”

God warned them exactly what would happen. It’s all there in Deuteronomy 28. These were the curses for being unfaithful to the covenant that they willingly entered in to. The nations are against them, they are defeated before their enemies, and, worst of all, God himself is their chief enemy. Verse 15—whenever they march out, what is against them for harm? The hand of the Lord. Verse 15 ends with the result of all of this: “And they were in terrible distress.”

4. God’s Deliverance (2:16-19)

But God didn’t leave them there forever. Like we read up in verse 1, God said that he would never break His covenant with them. Though the people abandoned the Lord, the Lord would never abandon them. Verse 18, the second sentence there, tells us that “The Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them.” Just like when the people groaned in Egypt, God could not listen to their suffering and not move to save them.

And so he delivered them through judges, empowered leaders who saved His people. Verse 16: “Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.” But even these leaders were barely successful. Verse 17: “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them.” That word “whore” is offensive, and it’s supposed to be. They were unfaithful to the Lord like spiritual prostitutes, and sometimes literally as well. As verse 17 goes on, “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.”

So it sounds like these judges were only partially successful. They only sort of helped. And that’s exactly what’s described in verses 18-19, which basically give us a preview of the whole rest of the book of judges. What these two verses describe, we’ll see in detail several times over before we’re finished this series. Here’s the cycle:

“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. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways” (Judges 2:18–19).

On the one hand, this looks like a repeating cycle. They sin, they suffer, they cry out for help, they are saved, they experience a few years of peace, and then the cycle repeats. But notice that little phrase in verse 19: “they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers.” This is not just a repeating cycle. This is a downward spiral. It keeps getting worse.

5. Reasons for the remaining nations (2:20-3:6)

And so, verse 20 brings us full-circle by telling us, like we read in verse 14, that “The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.” And while God would deliver His people, there are some things He will not do as long as this downward spiral keeps unravelling. Look at verses 20-21, which sound very much like the angel’s message from last week: “Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died” (Judges 2:20–21).

The nations would remain. For this whole period of Israel’s history, Israel didn’t take any new land from their enemies. Instead, their enemies were constantly conquering and taking from them. And when God raised up a judge to save them, all that judge did was get the enemy off their back for a time. But they basically only ever got back to where Joshua had left them.

And this section here tells us the reasons for this situation. The reasons for the remaining nations. And there’s actually three reasons. The first reason, as we’ve seen, is Israel’s sin. Verse 20: “Because this people have transgressed my covenant.” God warned them they would only have his help against those nations if they kept His covenant, and because they didn’t, those nations remain. That’s the first reason.

But that’s not the only reason. In verse 22, we read about a second reason for why God left the nations in place around Israel. He did this, verse 22, “in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did, or not.”

God leaves the nations because He wants to test Israel to see if they will follow Him or not. This word “test” is the same word that’s used in Genesis 22, when God “tested” Abraham by asking him to offer up Isaac. Six more times throughout Exodus and Deuteronomy we see God “testing” Israel by various means to see and prove what is in their heart and whether or not they will really follow Him with all of their heart.

And that’s what’s happening here. The surrounding nations are a test for Israel. Will they follow the Lord or will they give in to the pleasures of Baal?

Now I’ll be honest: I really struggled with this point this week. It didn’t make sense to me, because didn’t Israel already fail the test? They already broke their covenant with God and already served Baal. That’s why the nations were still there. So how can God now say that He left them there in order to test Israel to see if they would be faithful to him or not?

And the answer, which seems so obvious once you see it, is that God is constantly giving His people another chance. It’s not one-and-done. Yes, they failed the first test, but what about the next test? Because even their punishment for failing the test is itself another test giving them another chance to respond well and be faithful to the Lord. He keeps bringing them back to the place of their failure, giving them yet another opportunity to succeed.

It was the same thing with Israel in the wilderness. Why did Israel wander in the desert for 40 years? The answer is that it was a judgment for their sin. They refused to go in to the land when God told them to, and so wandering in the desert was judgement. But it wasn’t just judgement. It was also a test. Deuteronomy 8:2: “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” God was giving them another chance to prove their faithfulness.

We can think of it like a teacher saying to a student, “you haven’t done any of your homework this year, you’ve goofed off in class, you’ve been lazy and irresponsible, and so I’ve given you an F on this class, and you’re going to have to take this class again over the summer. And I’ve done this to test you to see if you will do your homework and learn some diligence and responsibility.”

The punishment is another test, another chance to be faithful, because God is constantly giving His people another and another and another opportunity to turn and repent and follow Him. He keeps giving the Israelites a fresh chance to be like the Joshua generation, to believe God’s promises, and to act on their faith.

Some of you have failed tests in your life and you might think you’re washed up and hopeless. And I pray that the book of Judges is a profound encouragement to you, as you encounter a God who refuses to give up on His people. A God who is faithful when we are faithless. A God who turns judgements into further tests, giving His people yet another chance, yet another chance, yet another chance.

“Then Peter came up and said to him, ‘Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times’” (Matthew 18:21–22).

You could almost argue that the book of Judges is one big illustration of that truth.

And that’s only the first two reasons for the remaining nations. There’s a third, which we find in chapter 3. “Now these are the nations that the Lord left, to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known it before” (Judges 3:1–2).

Israel was going to need to learn how to fight. They were going to face some very significant enemies in the future, and so God uses the remaining nations—which are mainly there because of their own unfaithfulness—to teach the generations war. Once again, we see that God is always doing more than one thing at any time, using even the fruit of our failure to prepare us for something He has planned in the future.

Verses 3 gives us a list of these remaining nations, which is basically the same as the list of remaining nations from Joshua 13. Not much has changed since his day. And verse 4 repeats the way in which these nations will test Israel to see whether they’ll obey him or not.

So, speaking of that test, how did Israel do with it? Verses 5 and 6 tell us. “So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods” (Judges 3:5–6).

These words are heartbreaking. Instead of driving out these nations, they are intermarrying with them. Remember Romeo and Juliet? When nations are at war, they don’t let their kids marry. When you let your kids marry, and you start sharing grandchildren with these other nations, you haven’t just made peace with them—you’ve started to become them. Intermarriage with these other nations was like a paint mixer at a hardware store—blending everything together until you can’t tell the difference between the individual parts any more.

God wanted His people to be distinct. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). That was the plan. But here is Israel, living like they’re one big happy family with all of these idol-worshipping, Baal-worshipping, child-sacrificing, prostitution-practicing pagans. “And they served their gods.”

Let’s step back at this point and just imagine something. Imagine you were a traveller to the land of Canaan at this time in history, and you came from some other place in the world, and you had no idea about the exodus or Moses or Joshua or any of the history of the people of Israel, and you just made notes on the different peoples that you saw in the land, what would you see? You’d see a group of tribes: Canaanites, Hitties, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, and Israelites. All of them exchanging children in marriage with each other. All of them worshipping the same gods. What would tell you, just with what you could see with your eyes, that being an Israelite was any different from being a Perizzite?

The answer is nothing. Or at least precious little. Verses 5 and 6 tell us that Israel had basically become just another Canaanite people group. There was nothing distinct or different about them.

Except for one thing: they had a God who would be faithful to the covenant He made with their fathers. That’s the only difference. That’s it.

And that’s why God is the main character of the book of Judges. Not Gideon or Samson or Deborah or any of the other characters we’ll meet in these pages. God is the hero of the story because, without God and His faithfulness to His covenant, Israel would surely have ceased to exist as a distinct nation.

Have any of you ever met a Hittite? Do you know any Jebusites? There’s no question Israel would have faded into the pages of history just like these other peoples, were it not for Israel’s faithful God who keeps His covenant promises.

Conclusion

And why? Why did God make and keep a covenant with this people whom He knew would be so unfaithful and who would turn their back on Him again and again and who would need to be rescued out of the fire over and over again?

The ultimate reason? “I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 26:4). He promised to send an offspring who would bless the nations. A Messiah who would bring the blessing of forgiveness to those who had only known the curse of their own failure (Galatians 3:8, 14).

God rescued Israel so that Jesus could rescue you.

That’s what we want to see here. We don’t want to miss the big picture. God who saved Israel over and over again so that He could do what? Send the real saviour who would break this downward spiral once and for all.

But even as we rejoice in knowing our Messiah has come, suffering in our place to redeem us from our sins, risen from the dead to give us His empowering Spirit, we can’t ignore the warning found for us here in these pages. 1 Corinthians 10:6, speaking about the wilderness generation, says “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.” And no doubt the same applies to the Judges generations.

Like Israel in the time of the judges, we’re surrounded by people who worship other gods. Instead of Baal, we have mammon—wealth and money. Do we know how tempting it is to serve money instead of God, to give in to greed and hoarding up treasures for ourselves, because we “need to take care of our families”? When your employer asks you to do disobey Jesus as a part of your job, do you think “well, I need to be responsible, don’t I?” That’s the exact same reasoning that led Israelite dads to march off to the shrines of Baal. Where else were they going to get rain for their crops from?

And instead of Ashtaroth, we have Taylor Swift. If what happens at a Taylor Swift concert isn’t worship, I don’t know what is. But in truth she’s just one example of the way in which our culture worships at the altar of lust. She’s just one of the many songwriters and singers and movie-makers who have worked so hard to make immature, hormonal, lust-driven stupidity seem like it’s actually beautiful and even noble.

Do not envy their success, because Jesus said it would be better for them to have a millstone hung around their neck and be thrown into the sea than continue to cause temptation to these little ones. And do not buy their seductive ideas. Do not believe the lie that you should follow your hormones instead of the king of heaven. Baal and Ashtaroth always leave you high and dry. Yahweh wins. And Yahweh is the only one who really loves you. Who comes to rescue you, even after you’ve walked away from Him. He’s the only God who saves.

So, is there anything you need to repent of? Is there anywhere you need to double-down to be watchful? Is there any place where you’ve let the seductive lies of our idolatrous culture seep in your ears?

How we need the Lord to keep us faithful. How we need His help against the world, the flesh, and the devil. Would you pray here as we end that God would protect and keep us?