Judges 2: Every Generation needs a Deliverer

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What does the trend line of your life look like? Is it up and to the right consistently? I would like to meet the person who can describe their life that way. For most people, the graph-line of their life is up and down and sometimes it is hard to tell whether they are trending up or down. Judges gives us a view of God as the Lord of history. He tests Israel and he saves Israel. He finds Israel unfaithful, He allows them to feel the consequences of their unfaithfulness and then he saves them again. Seeing God in the book of Judges as the God of history will help us to know Him as the God of our history.

A key to understanding Judges is seeing that there are cycles that drive the book and the history of Israel at that time. When there was a leader who followed God, the people flourished, but after the leader died, the people would turn to foreign gods and drift away from faithfulness in their covenant to Yahweh (the Lord). This is because the experience of the Lord’s deliverance was experienced by the previous generation. Each generation would need to experience the deliverance that would come from the hand of a grass roots deliverer (or Judge). Judges were kind of like Jedi Knights. They weren’t formal rulers, but functioned with leadership within the nation and raised up to deliver the people when they were subjugated under foreign power.

Their deliverance wouldn’t last and after their death, the people would drift again, leading to the need for a greater deliverance. Judges would provide a compelling case for Israel to have a king. Better than that though, Judges points us forward to a deliverer who can deliver beyond his own generation. Israel needed a deliverer that wouldn’t be confined by death and could transcend death and bring deliverance in every generation. Jesus is our true Judge who delivers us from all of our enemies.

Though we have a deliverer that meets us in every generation, God still tests us to prove our faith. Just like every generation needs to experience Jesus and his deliverance for them and their world, so do all of the phases of our life. Is there a season in your past where God was quite real that has given way to a soft faith? As you go through Judges, see the God of history in the face of Jesus in order to experience his deliverance for you in every phase and season of life.

Posted by Marc