I was in trouble for not doing my homework. I was sent to see Mrs. Harrington, my principal. My instructions from her were that I was to see her each morning to show her my homework. One day, I didn’t have all my homework done. My plan was to show her what all I got done, and just not mention what I did not do. She was pleased – I’d pulled the wool over her eyes! I went to class, didn’t turn in my homework – and Mrs. Pickle, my teacher, sent me back to Mrs. Harrington. On the way back to Mrs. Harrington, I concocted a daring plan to wow her with my intelligence and show her some of my better examples of homework and generally use some slight of hand to explain what was so excellent about my homework because there had to be a reason why I was sent back to her. I wowed her. She didn’t buy it at all, but walked back with me to class – got the truth from Mrs. Pickle – and then took me back to her office for a spanking. (Yes – I’m that old; principals were still giving spankings in Elementary School.)

The lesson I learned? Own up to what you’ve done or what you haven’t done! Don’t embellish the truth to take people’s eyes off of your mistakes or failures. Don’t manipulate information to hide your problems. Be honest – and take your licks. Own up to your mistakes. Because trying to sugar-coat something awful doesn’t make it less awful. If we’re not careful, what we end up learning is not how to avoid the mistake in the future, but how to do a better job of sugar-coating it.

Back in Kansas where I grew up, there were folks who would go into the pasture to collect cow pies, set them in sun to dry – then they’d varnish them and shine them up for display in their homes. Folks - a varnished, shiny cow pie is still a pile of manure. In this blog I hope we’ll discover the value of learning from our mistakes.

We’ve taken a high-altitude fly-by of the biblical narrative from creation to where the Chosen People of Israel are now a mighty nation living in the Promised Land of Canaan. Unfortunately, they’re holding onto their land with a faltering grip because they’re surrounded on all sides by enemies they failed to drive out before them.

When we read in Joshua chapter 11, the account says Joshua “left nothing undone of all that the Lord commanded Moses” and “the land had rest from war.” It was almost as if the account was saying “We did it! We succeeded!” As we found as we looked through the rest of Joshua, chapters 13 through 24, that victory cry was premature; they were far from victorious. Joshua may have accomplished what God told Moses – but he didn’t accomplish what God had told JOSHUA! Here they are – in the Land – but they don’t control it at all. This is where we find ourselves at the beginning of the book of Judges.

The land has been divvied up, each tribe has their own allotment – except Levi, the tribe of Priests – who live in and among the other tribes, being supported by them. And what we find throughout Judges is that the tribes undertook to capture and control their own allotted regions on their own – but still never did fully succeed in removing the Canaanites from the land.

In Joshua we had the entire nation fighting together. In Judges, we read about them fighting piecemeal, sort of taking parts of the land by infiltration and skirmishes. Doing it piecemeal – little by little – as individual tribes – using infiltration and insinuating themselves into the land like usurpers or aliens trying to sneak in was not how God intended or had commanded them. God told them to drive out the people before them – to rid the land of these godless people before they moved in to settle the land.

Think about just this one aspect: in this time period, the people of Israel are making the shift from being nomadic to being farmers and ranchers. For 40 years God had provided manna, quail, water sources, protection, and direction. God knew they would need to make the huge adjustment from wanderers to settlers – and it was why He told them to drive out the people from the land. If they moved in – and the Canaanites were gone, God would have showed them how to farm and harvest. If the Canaanites were still in the land, they would have inquired of the Canaanites about how to live in the land - farming techniques, fishing, how to find water and dig wells, etc.

They were now living side-by-side with people who knew how to live in the land, and as they settled among these people, they would have inquired about farming and fishing techniques, boat-building, and digging wells. That’s where the rub comes in. God knew this would be a problem because the Canaanites and all of the people of that region were well-versed in manipulating their gods and goddesses to ensure the fertility of their lands and livestock. Ritualistic fertility practices, child sacrifice, using astrology (not astronomy) to plan and plant and harvest and coerce the gods and goddesses into making the crops grow. Their new neighbors led them astray - introduced them to false gods and detestable religious practices – and the people forgot about God.

How the Israelites managed to survive those early years in Canaan is remarkable in view of the persistent hostility of their neighbors. When we read the beginning of Judges it reads like a moralizing story – sort of an excuse or criticism of everyone else’s conduct – it’s like the writer is trying to make excuses or tell the story in the best light or use some simple misdirection to explain something in terms of its moral significance, without actually telling the truth.

It would be better if the writer of Judges had said: “Well, God wanted us to do A – but we did B, C, and D and failed miserably.” Instead this is how it sounds:

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. . . (verse 8) The men of Judah attacked Jerusalem also and took it. (Judges 1:1-4, 8)

Umm - wait a minute. Jerusalem was a city allotted to the tribe of Benjamin, but the tribe of Judah with the help of Simeon were the ones who took the city. Sounds like someone from Judah might have written this account. In fact, we’re not sure who the writer is – it may be the prophet Samuel or the prophet Nathan who we know had a hand in writing much of the histories of the kings Saul, David, and Solomon. Judah took Jerusalem by force, but then in Judges 1:21 we read, “The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.”

The men of Judah took Jerusalem, but the men of Benjamin couldn’t hold it – so the Jebusites shared the city with the Benjamite tribe. Not exactly what God had envisioned.

Hmmm. . .
Option A: Drive them out like God commanded. . .
Option B: Let them stay and we’ll live side by side with them. . .

The wars they fought were Holy Wars – wars sanctioned by God for His Chosen People to take possession of the land. Ultimately, the biggest Holy Wars ended up not being against Canaanites, Ammonites, Moabites, Midianites, and Philistines, but against the gods and goddesses of these peoples – against the Baals and Ashtarts, against Dagon, Kemosh, Molech, Asherahs and the other gods and goddesses of the region. These were fierce battles against a fierce, evil, pervasive enemy – and the people of Israel quite nearly did not make it.

Read Judges 2:1-15. It sounds like an historical account – but it is in reality a bunch of excuses with God being the bad guy. It might as well have said: “We grew up and forgot about God – that’s why we started worshipping other gods! And – God got mad at us and handed us over to the bad guys – that’s why everything is so bad. . . God did it to us!” God warned them! They just didn’t listen.

The excuses and “slight of hand” or “constructive story-telling” that also served as a reasonable and accurate historical account continues. Read Judges 3:1-5.

These are the nations the Lord left to test them. Come on – God didn’t leave them, the Israelites failed to drive them out! That’s where we really pick up the thrust of the entire account of Judges. Judges is about apostasy and appeals. “Apostasy” means renunciation of faith – which Israel did over and over again. Then – at the height of their apostasy – they’d appeal to God for rescue – over and over again.

The book of Judges is about Israel rejecting God – followed by requests for His help; it’s about sinfulness followed by soliciting that God would save them; it’s about inconsistency of faith followed by consistent pleas for mercy.

We could break down most of the narrative in Judges in this way:
• Israel sins and is punished by oppressors
• Israel cries out to the Lord for help
• God raises up a deliverer – a judge – to save the people
• The people get rescued – but then fall back into sin again. . . and the whole process be repeated.

A “judge” was a national hero. Judges 2:16 says that “the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders.” A judge was a warrior, diplomat, and deliverer. God would appoint them as the need arose – and because God appointed them and raised them up, God is actually the ultimate Judge and ultimate Deliverer of the people, working through these human leaders.

There were six major judges: Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah and Samson. There were also six minor judges: Shamgar, Toloa, Jair, Ibzan, Elon, and Abdon.

It could also be argued that Joshua was the first judge – a national hero, rescuer, and leader, and that the prophet Samuel and his two sons were the last of the judges. It’s just that Joshua’s story is told in Joshua, and Samuel’s story is told in 1 and 2 Samuel; while in the book of Judges, we read about only 12 judges.

I want to make this comment, too: Deborah was a prophet and a judge. And – she was a woman. If someone ever wants to argue with you about the role of women in God’s design for humanity – Deborah is an important point to make. Miriam – Moses’ sister – was also a prophet, but Deborah is a prophet and a Judge – and helped save the people. This is early in the biblical narrative – yet so many people want to suggest that women are supposed to be subservient to men, although the New Testament teaches that we’re to “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” (Ephesians 5:21) Deborah is a woman and a judge and God used her to lead His people. Argument over!

These judges are raised up by God because we see that sin cycle repeated over and over:
• they sin and face oppression,
• they beg for help,
• God sends a Judge,
• they are rescued. . .

In fact, the narrative throughout the entire account of Judges reads pretty much the same for all of the Judges:

“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord by __________. The Lord gave them over to ___________ who oppressed them for __________ years. When the Israelites cried to the Lord for help, the Lord raised up ______________ to deliver them” Then the story of the judge is told – with the section closing with: “The land enjoyed peace for _________ years.”

Then – the cycle repeated. Sin leads to punishment – they beg for help – God sends a Judge – Israel is rescued.

This has parallel in our lives today. We forget that the Lord is our master – we go our own way – God lets us face troubles – then we go back and say “oops, sorry – I need your help.” No matter how many times we ask – He helps us – and no matter how many times as ask and get His help, we have the tendency to go back into sinful patterns or forget about His Lordship – and we get upside down and turned around without Him.

We also have the tendency to make it sound like it’s someone else’s fault – OR we try to downplay our own shortcomings – OR we try a little slight of hand and idealize what we’re going through and make it sound ultra-spiritual or less wrong – and try to distance ourselves from our behavior.

When we’re acting this way in our lives, we have the tendency to keep things under wraps and hide our true selves from one another. In Christ’s Church today, there are many people with secrets. We are angry, disappointed, frustrated, depressed – and we do everything we can to hide that from one another. The people we need around the most we hold at arm’s length because of embarrassment or irritation or fear of losing face. We fight battles with sin without the benefit of one another to help with prayer and accountability. Being alone as we sort out our faith issues brings us to ruin, if we’re not careful.

That was also happening with the people of Israel during this time. One tribe would get sideways with God because of something horrible – some sin they were committing or some god or goddess they were embracing. It would be hard to face your neighbors in the next tribe. You didn’t want them asking questions about your weird religious practices. So there was a real lack of cohesion between the tribes at this point in Israel’s history; no political or cultural unity. Not all the tribes answered the summons to fight. They didn’t all defend one another.

You remember the trans-Jordan tribes – Reuben and Gad who settled on the east side of the Jordan River in the plains of Moab? For 18 years the Moabites would raid the tribe of Benjamin on the west side of the Jordan, and the trans-Jordan tribes did nothing to stop them. The tribe of Ephraim acted out with some violence from time to time – one of their tribal leaders by the name of Abimelech actually set himself up to be king at one point which ended up fizzling and he ended up dead.

So those were their two major issues:

Lack of spiritual purity. They worshipped other gods and forgot about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Lack of political unity. They were separate tribes with no real cohesion, no real leadership.

The Tabernacle – the actual moveable tent sanctuary where the people were to meet with God and inquire of Him - was set up at a place called Shiloh. But the tribes took turns taking care of it and apparently spent very little time there. The Law – given by God to help the people live properly before the Lord – was not being taught or disseminated. The tabernacle meant to make the people feel close to God and the Law mean to constrain the people in their behavior were far from their minds. And the Israelites got into all kinds of messes because they worshipped horrendously evil gods and goddesses.

God would send them rescuers as they were needed, but the people were all supposed to be looking to God for their spiritual, political, military, and providential leadership. They simply could not get their act together. Some judges only served in one area of the land; some judges served at the same time in different areas. There were many years when there were no judges in the land.

The heroes – or judges that God sent were not kings. Their authority was neither absolute nor permanent. They established no personal dynasty or system of administration. They had no court and had no standing in any of the armies of the people. For a matter of fact, the narrative shifts from saying “the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” to now saying – as you can see at the first line of chapters 18 and 19 and the last line of chapter 21 are: “In those days Israel had no king. . .” These words speak volumes about how the people felt at the time – and how the whole concept of kings came about.

In reality, this comment on not having a king was just another smokescreen attempt on the part of the people: “we keep getting in trouble and we keep having to ask God for a rescuer. . . we wouldn’t need to keep doing that if we just had a king!”

Blame your troubles on someone else! “I’d be good if I had someone telling me all the time to be good!” Ever feel that way? “If God would just be better at being God then I wouldn’t be so bad.” Ever get to the point in your thinking that you could be ultra spiritual if you just had someone tell me all the time to be ultra spiritual? Since you don’t have that constant reminder or a master telling you daily how to live – then you can’t really be to blame for your troubles, can you? Right. . . You’d be good if you had someone telling you to be good each and every day, right? Sure. . .

The Israelites should have been learning by experience that a single leader could not rescue them from all the messes they got themselves into. They should have been learning that GOD and God alone was their leader and king. . . but what they were soon going to be demanding was an end to Judges and for God to send a dynasty of kings to rule over them.

The book of Joshua – which we touched on last week – gave the impression the people of Israel had conquered the land. Reading the details of Joshua – and now, the book of Judges – we find that Israel did not drive out the enemies of God from the land, and now those enemies are giving the nation of Israel some serious fits. The biggest problem was that Israel would forget about God and start worshipping any god or goddess that came along. They’d get in trouble – God would punish them by sending an enemy to bother them. The people would call out to God for help. He’d send a Judge to rescue them and help them cope with their problems; a charismatic figure who would deal with the threat of the moment.

The people got to a place where even having God as King and Deliverer was not enough. They wanted more – but it was all just a smokescreen to hide the depth of their failures and faithlessness.

The troubles they were facing were not a matter of chance. They were reaping the fruits of disobedience – because they had not done what God asked them to do – and they had done what God asked them NOT to do.

The challenge was put before them many years ago by Joshua. It’s our challenge still today.

“Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. . . But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. . . But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15)

How often will we keep going back into our old sinful patterns? How often will we forget about His Lordship – and get upside down and turned around without Him? How often will we try to scapegoat our problems and try to blame others – or possibly even try to blame God for our own messes? Or will we choose this day who we will serve – and choose to serve and obey and follow Jesus Christ?

The good news of our relationship with Jesus Christ teaches us this in 1 John 1:8-9: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”