Journey Through Judges and RuthSample

Judges Overview: In Front of the Text

In considering this lesson, you may want to journal on the following:

Identify one or more of the things you look to for relief or prosperity instead of waiting on God to provide. What are the “fertility gods” you look to—to stand in for the promises of God?

Protection & Prosperity

The disobedience and evil in a book like Judges might give us a false confidence in our own righteousness. This era in history was so bad that we can’t help but feel virtuous by comparison. The worship of fertility gods especially sounds like a sin we would never commit. But our situation is perhaps not so different.

We’re more like the judges than we may admit. They struggled with the tension of trusting God in a difficult geopolitical moment in history. They were surrounded by enemies and strapped by limited resources. Trusting YHWH was a matter of literally trusting him with their lives.

We fail to trust God in matters of much less gravity. It’s easy to become preoccupied with what God can do for us, rather than who he is. And when this happens we begin shopping around for better deals with other “gods.” We rely on money, jobs, status, insurance, and any number of other things to provide for us in ways that replace God’s role in our lives.

Wrap-up

Nicole wraps up this lesson on how God remains faithful throughout Judges, despite the discouraging and repetitive cycles of the leaders and the people.