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Dr. Manny Arango
Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey family. We used church candy for our new church plant the Garden, and the response blew me and my team away. At our new church Plant the Garden, we ran simple invite ads through none other than church candy, and hundreds of people responded. Seriously. People who had never even heard of us, who had never met me or heard me preach. They saw an ad on Facebook or Instagram. They showed up to a launch party or launch team training. Some of them have joined our team. Here's the best part. A good amount of them have started giving and tithing, which means the ads have paid for themselves. Our church plant is growing, and it's because we chose the right partner. We didn't have to figure out marketing strategies or spend hours tinkering with ad settings. Church candy handled it all, and it worked. You might not be planting a church, but if you're a pastor who wants to see more new faces on Sunday. And by the way, I've never met a pastor who doesn't want to see more new faces on Sunday. It's time to check them out. How about you go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a discovery call, Let their team show you what's possible when the right people hear about your church family. Welcome to the Book of Judges. Welcome to day 141. We're in a brand new book of the Bible. We are in the book of Judges. And Judges is one of my favorite books of the Bible. So I'm super, super excited that I get to teach this book. Sometimes, you know, I have to give a preface, like, man, the book of Exodus is awesome. But then you get all these instructions for the tabernacle, or, hey, the book of Joshua is amazing. But then you got all these chapters about land allotments, no preface. With the Book of Judges, it's all narrative the whole way. And so in terms of engaging our attention, I think the book of Judges is going to be a fairly easy read in terms of interpreting this stuff. Well, there's always gonna be difficulty, but that's why I got you covered. I'm gonna give you context clues, nerdy nuggets, always gonna give you a timeless truth. Hey, if you've done the reading for the day, I'M proud of you. Our reading for the day is judges chapter one and two. Just two chapters. If you haven't done the reading, go ahead and stop the audio, stop the video, go do the reading for today and then come on back. All right. A lot of context to go through because we're in a brand new book of the Bible. First piece of context. The book of Judges covers about 350 years of history. Now some of these judges are ruling successively. Like, hey, this judge is going to rule their, their judge, judge. Their appointment as judge stops. And then a lot of times the text is going to tell us the land has rest, where Israel has rest from her enemies. And then a new judge starts. So it's successive. Some of these judges are overlapping in terms of when they're ruling. Like they're ruling simultaneously and they are fighting or ruling in different parts of Israel. One of the big themes that we're gonna see through the book is unity versus disunity. Okay. Unfortunately, Joshua's generation is gonna be the last kind of glimpse of like unified, centralized leadership. We're not gonna get that again until we get to Saul. Okay, so the judges are like tribal leaders, okay? They are ruling. And this will be clear as we go through the book. Like Samson is a Danite. Tribal leadership is really gonna be a massive theme through the book. So to orient you, 350 years. Some of these judges are successive, some of them are simultaneous. We're gonna get 13 judges in 21 chapters. And I'll kind of break down a structure for you at the end of our context clues. But let me kind of give you a big, some big ideas to chew on. Okay? Couple of themes throughout the entire book. First theme is that God chooses the least likely candidate for leadership. Okay? So each of these judges are gonna have a thing that kind of makes them least likely. So you're gonna get Ehud, who's a left handed man, okay. That would have been seen as like a deformity, as kind of like a dysfunctional thing in the ancient world. You're gonna get people like Deborah, who's a woman. You're gonna get people like Gideon, who's from the smallest family of the smallest tribe. You're going to get people like Jephthah, whose mother is a prostitute. You're going to get all kinds of least likely characters. You're going to get a woman like Jael, who's not a judge, but she's just not the person that you would pick or choose or predict is going to be someone that God would raise up. Okay? This theme carries right on into the New Testament. And Paul is going to say, I picked the weak things that God chooses the weak things to shame the strong picks foolish things to shame, the wise to confound the wise, okay? That it is always least likely characters that the Lord actually chooses so that he could get ultimate glory. So that's a massive theme throughout the book. We'll keep our eyes out for it, and then I'll kind of bring that to your attention as the days go on. Number two, one of the big elements of the book that's hard to miss is what's called the cycle of the Book of Judges, okay? Now if you Google search, cycle of sin in the Book of Judges, you'll get a whole bunch of stuff. I don't like calling it the cycle of sin because there are four elements of this cycle. I'll actually give you what I would call these four things. Also. This cycle is summarized in today's reading. In Judges, chapter 2, verses 12 to 19, you get essentially a summary of the whole book. And we're going to see this entire cycle. The first, the cycle starts with rebellion, okay? The people of Israel rebel against Yahweh, and that rebellion is always in the form of idolatry. They go worship another God. And then rebellion is always going to be followed by retribution, okay? So God is going to punish them, since they worship idols, since they wanna be like pagan nations. God sends retributive justice, okay? He's gonna send retribution, he's gonna send punishment. So he's gonna rise up or raise up the Midianites or the Philistines or some group that is going to oppress the people of God. And then you're going to get repentance. And that repentance is going to spur Yahweh to raise up a judge, okay? You're going to get the raising up of a judge. And then fifth, you're going to get restoration and rest, okay? Restoration and rest. So the first part of that cycle is rebellion and then retribution and then repentance and then the raising up of a judge and then restoration and rest, okay? God is going to use that judge to then fight off the oppression and restore order to Israel and then bring rest. Now what you're going to realize is that this cycle is a downward spiral because each judge is worse than the last, okay? So by the time you get to the very last judge, which is Samson, you realize this is a. This. I don't think this man's godly at all. Okay? He's a very, very ungodly character. So we're gonna get. It's not just a cycle that's repeating itself. It's a. It's a cycle that's getting worse and worse and worse at each successive ring of the cycle. Okay? One of the final themes we're gonna really see towards the end of the book, there's gonna be a repeated phrase, and it's gonna say, in those days, Israel had no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. This is gonna be a repeated phrase that we're gonna get all throughout the book of Judges. And we'll really deal with that as we get towards the close of the book, towards the last five chapters of the book and then last kind of big idea is that this book goes from conquest to compromise to chaos. If you're thinking about, like, a mind map for this book, I want you to think conquest, which. The first two chapters are gonna recap Joshua's conquest of the land. And then from chapter three to chapter 16, you're gonna get the compromise of Israel. Okay? They are going to rebel against Yahweh. They're gonna then have to get punished by Yahweh. They're gonna repent. God's gonna raise up a judge, and then you're gonna get restoration arrest that. Those successive cycles are all happening between the chapters of 3 and 16. And I would characterize that as the cycles of compromise, okay? And then last, you're going to get absolute and utter chaos from chapter 17 to chapter 21. So 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21. The last five chapters of this book are actually the most depressing, sad, heartbreaking chapters of the entire Hebrew Bible, of the entire Bible period, Old and New Testament. So if you're looking for, like, a mind map of the book, this book is broken up into three sections. I would call Judges, chapter one and two, Conquest, a recap of the conquest. Kind of bridging the gap between Joshua and Judges, kind of getting everybody caught up to speed on what has actually happened in the Book of Judges. Joshua's gonna die again, okay, Here in the beginning of the Book of Judges. So there's a lot of overlap between the beginning of Judges and the end of Joshua. And then from chapters three to 16, we're gonna get 13 judges. And then from chapter 17 or 21, we're gonna get all out chaos. Okay? That's kind of like a big mind map, the book. All right, let's move into our nerdy nuggets, okay? Cause we got A lot of them. Judges, chapter 2, verse 8 and 11, it says this. Joshua, son of nun. It's not nun, it's nun. Joshua, son of nun, the servant of the Lord died at the age of 110. A man lived pretty, pretty long. You see, we're getting the death of Joshua again. Recap for us. Even though we just got that at the end of the book of Joshua. And they buried him in the land of his inheritance at Timneth Aries, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash, or Gaash. After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor, nor what he had done for Israel. What do you mean? Another generation grows up that does not know the Lord nor what the Lord had done for Israel. That is a wild statement that an entire generation comes up immediately after Joshua's generation and they don't know God, which is an indictment on their parents. What happened that an entire generation doesn't receive the baton of faith? Now, I could understand if it's a couple of kids here, there, whatever, that are just kind of like, you know, not strong believers, but when you've got an entire. It says a whole generation. I think this is now at the point of widespread something. Someone's got to get fired. Okay. Someone's got to get fired. What? What's going on? I always love to remind people, you know, we are one generation away from, not from there, not being Christians in, in the United States of America. Like, we're one generation away. So this is a heartbreaking verse. This verse also sounds a lot like the beginning of Exodus where it says, there arose a pharaoh who knew not Joseph. It's like man time has a way of whittling away at our conscience, at our identity. So a generation grows up, okay, and immediately what happens then? The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the baal. So I need you to see the contrast between the eyes of the Lord and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. That the eyes of the Lord is objective, your eyes are subjective. Whether or not something is right in my own eyes is irrelevant. Whether or not it's evil in the eyes of God is actually what is relevant. So when people want to operate in sin, we're basing what we believe, what we think, based on our own opinions, based on our own viewpoints, based on. Based on how we see things. And surrender and obedience is always going, I want God's perspective on that. I want God's Mindset on that. I want to know what the scriptures say about that. I don't trust the way that I'm looking at things. I want God's vantage point on things. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of Scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. And who do they worship? They worship. Now we're going to get this massive. Essentially we're going to get the whole book kind of summarized for us from Judges, chapter 2, verse 12 to 19. I want to draw your attention to the very first in. In that verse, verse. In that, verse 11, then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the baals. Okay? And then it's going to actually say Baal and Asheriths in verse 13. So let's kind of break down Baal and Asher. Baal is actually your fertility God. It's a God of abundance. It's also. BAAL is a God of rain. It is rain that causes crops to be fertile. And BAAL is depicted as a storm God. So they believed that the fertility of the land was actually the product of BAAL and Asherah's sexual union in the heavens. So because BAAL and Asherah had a sexual relationship that happened in the heavens, there's abundance and there's rain. And they believed that Baal's power was at its peak power when the sun was highest in the sky, so 12 noon. So the way that you would worship Baal and worship ashereth was to mimic their sexual performance in the heavens. And so you worshiped BAAL and Asherth here on earth by engaging with temple prostitutes and a highly ritualized procedure of having sex while incantations were being read over you. So very, very, very, very pagan in terms of sexual expression. And Ashrath was also the goddess of Fertility and war. When the Bible says that they forsook Yahweh and worshiped and served BAAL and Asherah, it is also saying, yeah, there's also illicit sexual activity. That is that everyone in this culture knows that that means that we probably don't know that. That this verse is implying. All right, we get a character known as Adonai Bennek. Also chapter one, you're going to get all kinds of. It's kind of sad, you know, people who just don't drive out people in the land. So verse seven, you get verse seven of chapter one, you get a character called Adonai Bezek. And what the people end up doing is cutting off his thumbs, cutting off his big toes. First of all, God said, hey, when you find kings or when you find leaders, you kill them instead of killing them. What the Canaanites would do or what pagans would do is they would take their fingers, mutilate them, carry their mutilated fingers as bracelets or as necklaces, and essentially, you know, or take a king, gouge his eyes out, and make him be your court jester. And Yahweh says, even when I've called someone to be judged and they're gonna die, they still deserve dignity and respect as an image bearer. And so we do not mutilate. We don't mutilate people made in the image of God. Like, that is an absolute. That's a no, no for God. And we can already see in chapter one that there's compromise that the people of Israel are compromising in stuff that doesn't seem like it's a big deal. But by the end of the book, you're going to see that small compromise ends in huge compromises. There we go. Verse 6. Adonai Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. So, yeah, this is. This is terrible. It's actually more loving and just more obedient to kill this king than to mutilate him in this way. All right, the last thing I wanna say is that the book starts. Chapter one, verse 12 to 15 is gonna be a recap of Othniel's daughter. Now, this will lead us directly into our timeless truth of the day. The book is going to start with a dad. That first judge is going to be named Othniel. We'll talk about him tomorrow. And if you remember back in Joshua, it's going to get recapped here in chapter one of Judges that Othniel cares, that he finds a man of Valor, a man of character, to marry his daughter. And so he does that. And so Judges is going to start in a scenario where a godly father finds a godly man to be a godly husband for his daughter. Because the proof of biblical masculinity is your ability to protect, defend and sacrifice your life for women. How women get treated in a society is the proof or the litmus test of how healthy that society is. By the time we get to the end of this book, women are going to be in a place of being abused and sexually taken advantage of and raped. And I mean, it just gets terrible. Which leads us into our timeless truth, because that is true today. The quality of a society is based on the quality of how women are treated. And so when women are treated like they are valuable, then you know that there are godly fathers and godly husbands and godly brothers. In a society, when women are raped and molested and neglected and abused and not cared for, you know that there are men who have dropped the ball somewhere. So that is a timeless truth. If you want to know the health of a society, look at the women. Because in any society where there are healthy, thriving, flourishing women, then that means there are secure, confident, hardworking men who are full of godly character. Men like that create healthy societies, create societies that flourish. And so we're going to see that in the book of Judges, and we can see that in our world today that fatherlessness has actually become the root issue in a lot of societal issues. And whenever biblical masculinity begins to falter and fail, it has a ripple effect in all these other areas. So if you are a man and you are watching this content, I want to challenge you to be a godly man. Because your character in your life is going to have a massive ripple effect in the women that actually come into contact with you. And if you're a woman, then you should be very, very hyper vigilant and aware of the men that you entrust yourself to, because not all men can be trusted. I wish that we lived in a society where all men were full of character and were godly. Even if you meet them in church, that doesn't mean you can trust them. That just means they're a churchgoer. That doesn't mean they're a godly man. Okay, so that's our Thomas truth. I'll see you tomorrow as we dig into judges chapter three to five for day 142. If you're on a streak, don't break it. If you're not on a streak. Hey, we're in a brand new book of the Bible. Just add tomorrow to today, you'll be on a two day streak. And how about you get on a streak as we go through judges? How about that? Just I think we got six or seven days of judges content, so don't skip a day and you'll be on a streak. I love you guys. I'm so proud of you. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 142 as we continue our trek through the Book of Judges. Love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram at thebibledepartment. If you enjoyed this episode and wanna dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses at thebibledepartment. Com. We'll see you back here tomorrow.