The Unlikely: The Cycle / Judges 1:1-3:6
Introduction: Meeting the Unlikely
Welcome to week one of The Unlikely. As you can see, we have had a lot of fun in preparation for this series, and we are going to do some things that are a little unique and different for us. If The Well has been a place you have been around for any number of weeks, you know that typically we pick a book of the Bible and cruise our way straight through it. We drop in at verse one, and we just keep going until we run out of verses; then we pick another book.
What we are going to do in this summer teaching series is something a little different. Rather than teaching strictly expositionally—verse by verse—we are going to teach narratively. We are going to tell the story of the “unlikelies” we encounter in Scripture. We have come alongside the text with creative elements—our website, graphics, and videos—to introduce you to characters in the text who are indeed unlikely. These are people that you and I probably would have never picked. We would have looked at them and said, “There has got to be somebody better.” And yet, in the midst of chaos, God chose to use very unlikely people for His own glory.
We are looking at the book of Judges. It is tucked within the historical section of the Old Testament—twenty-one chapters covering about four hundred years of history. A judge was someone God would raise up in the midst of national chaos to deliver His people. Fifteen of them are named in your Bible, and in this series, we are going to cover six.
Historically, Judges takes place after the death of Joshua and before Saul is anointed king. As I was trying to explain that timeframe to someone recently, they gave me that look that said, Keep talking, because I have no idea what that means. I realized that if we are going to understand the context of Judges, we need to go back to the very beginning.
The Backstory: From Creation to the Promised Land
If you turn to Genesis chapter one, God speaks the world into existence and shapes mankind in His image.
Genesis 1:26-27 (NASB)
Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
God handcrafts mankind, male and female. For two chapters, they enjoy bliss. Then comes chapter three, and the wheels come completely off. Sin enters the world, and indwelling sin is passed down through generations. Sin is not just what we do; it is the nature we are born with. We are naturally good at being sinners.
By Genesis chapters six through nine, God brings a global flood, hitting the reset button. Noah and his family step off the ark, and instead of filling the earth as God commanded, humanity decides to build a tower reaching to the heavens—the Tower of Babel. God scatters them by confusing their language, and nations spread across the earth based on language affinities.
Out of that broken world, God calls a man named Abram, whose father was an idol worshiper. God promises to make a great nation from him. Abraham has Isaac; Isaac has Jacob, who is one of the shadiest characters in your Bible; and Jacob has Joseph. Joseph is the favorite son. Parents, take note: playing favorites never turns out well. Joseph is loved by his father and hated by his brothers, who eventually sell him into slavery.
Yet behind the scenes, God is working His plan. He raises Joseph to a position of authority in Egypt. When a famine strikes, Jacob sends his sons to Egypt for food, and Joseph reveals himself to them. Jacob’s entire family moves to Egypt as honored guests.
Over the next 430 years, everything changes. The Israelites transition from guests to slaves. Surrounded by Egyptian paganism, they live among people who worship the gods of the Nile, fertility, sky, and storms, as well as Pharaoh himself. When Pharaoh fears the growing Hebrew population, he orders the murder of all newborn Hebrew boys. But God preserves a baby who is drawn out of the water—Moses.
Moses grows up, flees Egypt after an act of violence, and spends forty years in the wilderness of Midian kicking up dirt, breathing sand, and shepherding sheep. That very desert is where he will later lead the nation of Israel. God appears to him in a burning bush and commands him to go redeem His people.
Moses returns to confront Pharaoh, the most powerful ruler in the known world. Plague after plague systematically dismantles the Egyptian pantheon, culminating in the death of the firstborn. Moses leads the people out, the Red Sea parts, and Israel is delivered.
Exodus 12:51 (NASB)
And on that same day the LORD brought the sons of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.
Suddenly, the people start asking fundamental questions: Who is our God? How do we worship Him? They had lived in Egypt for over four centuries. If we can barely remember our own national history from two hundred years ago, imagine four hundred and thirty years of disconnection. There was no written Bible yet. That is why God gives them the law and the sacrificial system in Leviticus, instructing them on how to relate to a holy God.
When Moses ascends Mount Sinai for forty days, the people panic. Without an intermediary, they default to what they knew in Egypt and build a golden calf. God stops them, reminding them that they are no longer slaves and must not make graven images.
Then Moses leads them through the wilderness. There is no shade, no vegetation, no natural water supply. God provides manna daily and brings water from a rock, teaching them that He alone is their provider.
God deliberately bypasses the direct, two-week coastal route into Canaan because the Philistines were there. He knew that facing immediate war might cause them to run back to Egypt. Instead, He leads them on a forty-year journey through the Sinai Peninsula. The book of Numbers records those forty years. Getting the people out of Egypt was easy—God handled the plagues, Pharaoh, and the Red Sea with ease. The heavy lifting was getting Egypt out of the people. God spent forty years discipling, reshaping, and educating them in the desert.
Why was that preparation so necessary? Because what awaited them in Canaan was spiritually toxic. The land was dominated by fertility cults centered around pagan deities like El, Baal, Asherah, Anath, and Ashtoreth. To secure rain for crops or fertility for families, worshippers engaged in ritualistic sexual acts to entice these deities. God spent forty years preparing Israel to resist that seductive worldview.
Under Joshua’s leadership, Israel finally crosses into the Promised Land. Canaan was not a single unified nation, but a collection of tribal city-states strategically located on the land bridge connecting Africa, Europe, and Asia. Joshua leads the conquest, but as the book of Judges opens, two major failures emerge.
The First Problem: Partial Obedience
The first failure is disobedience. In Judges chapter one, Israel complains that they cannot drive out the Canaanites because the inhabitants have iron chariots. Consider the absurdity of that complaint: the God who devastated Egypt, parted the Red Sea, and fed them miraculously in the desert is somehow powerless against iron chariots?
Their issue was never military; it was spiritual. Throughout Judges chapter one, we read a tragic refrain: Benjamin did not drive out the inhabitants; Manasseh did not drive them out; Ephraim, Zebulun, and Naphtali failed to drive them out. They obeyed partially, which means they did not truly obey at all.
Judges 1:28 (NASB)
It came about when Israel became strong, that they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely.
Because they compromised, chapter two records that they began worshiping the Canaanite gods and engaging in their pagan practices.
Judges 2:1-3 (NASB)
Now the angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, ’I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? ’Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become [as thorns] in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’’
God warned them that because of their disobedience, He would not drive those nations out; instead, they would become thorns in their sides and snares to their souls. The tragic result is captured in Psalm 106.
Psalms 106:34-37 (NASB)
They did not destroy the peoples, As the LORD commanded them, But they mingled with the nations And learned their practices, And served their idols, Which became a snare to them. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,
They mingled with the culture, adopted their idols, and eventually sacrificed their own children. Disobedience was their first major problem.
The Second Problem: The Breakdown of the Family
The second problem was a catastrophic breakdown in spiritual leadership within the home.
Judges 2:7 (NASB)
The people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the LORD which He had done for Israel.
As long as Joshua and his contemporaries were alive, the people remained faithful. But when that generation died, the spiritual baton was dropped.
Judges 2:10 (NASB)
All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.
An entire generation arose that did not know the Lord or what He had done. How does that happen? It happens when the home fails to fulfill its primary calling.
In the Old Testament, the primary center for spiritual formation was always the family. In Deuteronomy chapter six, God instructed fathers to teach His commands diligently to their children—talking about them when sitting at home, walking down the road, lying down, and getting up.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NASB)
’These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. ’You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. ’You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
God warned them that when they entered a land filled with cities they did not build, cisterns they did not dig, and vineyards they did not plant, they must be careful not to forget the Lord. Yet that is precisely what happened. They enjoyed the blessings, forgot the Blesser, and stopped discipling their children.
The Repeated Cycle
These two failures—disobedience and the breakdown of the family—sparked a recurring cycle throughout the book of Judges:
- Prosperity and Peace: The nation enjoys God’s blessing.
- Complacency and Disobedience: Israel forgets God and falls into sin.
- Oppression: God allows enemies to conquer and oppress them.
- Crying Out: In their misery, Israel repents and cries out for help.
- Deliverance: God raises up an unlikely judge to deliver them.
Once the judge died, the cycle repeated itself, spiraling downward over four centuries.
Walking It Out Today
As we begin this series, let us look at the practical implications of these two ancient failures in our lives today.
First, consider disobedience. Like ancient Canaan, our culture is intensely physical, self-indulgent, and sexually charged. The Israelites did not immediately shake their fists at God; they simply practiced partial obedience. They removed most idols but kept a few that seemed harmless.
Partial obedience is disobedience. We do the same thing when we negotiate with God, saying, I will follow You here, but I am keeping this one indulgence to myself. It might be what you look at on your phone late at night, an inappropriate emotional connection, or a small compromise at work. A tolerated sin is like a pet lion cub—you think you have it under control, but eventually, it will grow up and consume you. If God is convicting you of a compromise, deal with it completely.
Second, consider the family. Parents, we carry the primary responsibility for the spiritual formation of our children. When a father tells his son to be a man of integrity, fidelity, and faith, but then abandons his commitments, it shatters the child’s framework of spiritual truth. When a mother teaches godliness but fails to model it, the impact is devastating.
The family is where children should see patience, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation in real time. No marriage is perfect, but grass is green where you water it. If you want a healthy marriage and home, invest in it.
Regardless of your past, you can choose today to establish a godly legacy. Open the Word of God in your home. Talk about Jesus around the dinner table. Let your children see you reading Scripture, praying, and living out your faith. Take hold of the spiritual baton, run alongside your children, teach them to carry it, and pass it on with confidence.
Israel’s backstory was marked by compromise and spiritual neglect, yet God’s grace remained relentless. As we explore the stories of these unlikely judges, we will see that no matter how deep the chaos, God is always able to redeem and use ordinary, unlikely people for His glory.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for Your Word. As we journey through this series, help us examine our own hearts. Guard us against the trap of partial obedience. Give us the courage to confront the compromises we have made. Strengthen our homes and our marriages. Help us to faithfully disciple the next generation so they know who You are and what You have done. We ask that You work through our weaknesses and use our lives for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.