Week 11: Judges 1-21- Failed leadership pattern

God’s plan for his relationship with man is that they would be in intimate communication, He would walk among them and He would lead them. Instead mankind wanted to determine good and evil for themselves. Men would make their rules and enforce them there way. This lead to a world so evil that God judged it with the flood but man didn’t learn his lesson.

Throughout Exodus, Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy God lead the people through the physical presence of a pillar of cloud fire by day and a pillar of fire by night. He led them spiritually by giving them His instruction, His Law, through His servant Moses. After the death of Moses, Joshua took on the mantle of leadership. God used Joshua to dispossess the land of its sinful inhabitants – although not all of them. After Joshua’s death, no single leader is appointed by God.

We are told that after the generation that had been in the wilderness died off the next generation “did not know Yehovah, God nor the work which He had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). This is a stinging indictment of the people. In Deuteronomy 6:7 the importance of teaching children is expressed. We need to learn this lesson for we are never more than one generation away from a world that does not know the true God of the universe – Yehovah of the Bible.

There is a pattern of behavior that is repeated throughout the book of Judges. Israel begins in a state of the faithful worship of God. They then fall into sin and idolatry. God allows His people to experience the consequences of their sin by being enslaved by those that led them into sin and idolatry. The people at first blame God turning His back on them for their condition but later come to their senses and cry out to Him for deliverance. In response God raises up a leader — a Judge. The Judge delivers the people from their oppressors and brings them back to following God. The people return to serving God and observing His instruction.

The book shows not only the imperfections of the people, but the imperfections of the Judges. Gideon is full of doubts and God has to perform five miracles to encourage him. Jephthah makes a hasty vow that robs his daughter of the opportunity to be a wife and a mother. Samson is a slave to his appetites and passions. And while he is supposed to be involved in a life-long Nazarite vow of service to God, He marries a Philistine woman and is involved with other women inappropriately. Finally, Abimelech is murderous and a foreshadowing of the evil Kings to come.

God lets man feel the pain of doing “what was right in his own eyes” so that we will come to our senses, abandon our pride and allow Him to lead us every day. Unfortunately, the people will instead ask a king as the solution to their leadership problem.