The Dangerous Cycle of Sin - Judges 2:11-23 (Session 3)

Judges 2:11–23 introduces the repeating cycle that will shape the rest of the Book of Judges. Israel forsakes the Lord, serves the Baals and Ashtoreth, provokes God to anger, suffers under enemy oppression, and then receives mercy when God raises up judges to deliver them.

In this session, Glenn and Steve examine the Canaanite worship of Baal and Ashtoreth and explain why this idolatry was so dangerous for Israel. Rather than completely rejecting Yahweh at first, Israel began adding Canaanite worship to the worship of the Lord. That kind of syncretism led them deeper into idolatry and away from the covenant commitment they had made in Joshua.

The study also addresses the relationship between God’s wrath and His lovingkindness. God’s anger is not arbitrary or uncontrolled. His anger burns against evil because He is holy and just. At the same time, this passage shows His mercy because He raises up deliverers for people who did not deserve His grace.

The discussion then turns to practical application. Israel repeatedly turned away from God, and believers today must recognize the same danger in their own lives. Staying close to the Lord requires daily prayer, time in Scripture, fellowship with other believers, and keeping short accounts with God when sin appears.

This session also explains the difference between feeling sorry and genuine repentance. Repentance is not merely regret over being caught or suffering consequences. It is a change of mind that results in turning back toward God.

Scripture: Judges 2:11–22
Series: The Book of Judges — An RTTB Study

Questions discussed in this session:

• Did Israel deserve God’s love and grace? 
• When we come in contact with unbiblical things, what usually happens?
• Is God wrathful? Should we concern ourselves with God’s wrath?
• Why would God describe idol worship as being like a prostitute?
• Is God loving or does He get angry? 

Transcript

Judges

Speaker 1 0:21

Welcome back to another session of Reasoning Through the Bible . This is Glenn and Steve and we're going through the book of Judges . We left off last time getting into chapter 2 of Judges and we've had the introduction in chapter 1 in our sessions before this . Now we're going to pick up in chapter 2 .

Speaker 2 0:39

So we're in Judges , chapter 2 . I'm going to read , starting in verse 11 . Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Ba'als . And they forsook the Lord , the God of their fathers , who had brought them out of the land of Egypt and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them , and they bowed themselves down to them and they provoked the Lord to anger . So they forsook the Lord and served Ba'al and the astroph . The anger of the Lord burned against Israel and he gave them into the hands of the plunderers who plundered them and he sold them into the hands of their enemies around them , so that they could no longer stand before their enemies . Wherever they went , the hand of the Lord was against them for evil , for the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them so that they were severely distressed , it says here in these passages that Israel was worshiping something . What does it say in verse 11 that they were serving ?

Speaker 1 1:39

It says they were serving the .

Speaker 2 1:41

Ba'als . So what are these Ba'als ? And it also mentions later astrophs . Tell us about those things , steve . What are these and what do we know about them ?

Speaker 1 1:50

Yeah , so Ba'al was a Canaanite God . He's used in chapter 2 , verse 11 that we just talked about , and it's a plural form of Ba'al to denote all the Canaanite deities . It's synonymous with the expression of other gods . In a secular sense , ba'al means Lord , master or Owner . It's a derived meaning of husband and when applied to a God , it functions as a title , meaning divine , lord or Master . A Ba'al appears as a divine title more than 70 times in the Old Testament and it refers to the Storm Weather God who , in the Canaanite mythology , goes by the different names and titles . It's also in other archaeological finds Haddad , the Victor , ba'al , the writer on the clouds , the son of Dagon , the prince , the Lord of the earth . He was one of the gods that the Canaanites worshiped there in the land and specifically , he's one of the 70 children of El and Asherah El , which means God in the Eugoratic text in Asherah . So he's a child of the offspring of these two gods . His Ba'al opposites include Mott , the God of Death in the netherworld , and Yom , the God of the sea . So Ba'al was the sun god and fertility god who wrote upon the clouds , who was responsible for the rains which brought life , and in Eugoratic mythology , ba'al was the son of Dagon . So when Ba'al is used , it does not refer to a multiplicity of gods , but sometimes to numerous manifestations of the one weather , god , upon whose blessings the fertility of the land depends . And then Ashtaroth , which we also see here in Judges . She goes by different names Ash-tarte of Eugoratic mythology .

Speaker 1 3:44

Ash-tarte of Sedonia mythology . She was a female deity of Ba'al and the moon goddess . She's a Greek mythology , through Cyprus , of Ash-tarte , ishtar from Assyrian and Babylonian , and the Canaanite goddess of the generation , fertility and war . So Ba'al and Ashtaroth worship would have included temple prostitution , which you've mentioned before in some of our other sessions , glenn but they did not require rejection of Yahweh . Now we get into a thing called syncretism , where it was an addition of a Canaanite nature worship to worship Yahweh , which naturally led to idolatry . But the Canaanite fertility cults Ba'al was represented by an upright stone , ashtaroth was represented by a carved female figurines with exaggerated features , so large breasts , for instance , and large , exaggerated genitalia . And this worship of other gods was direct violation of the Israelite's commitment in Joshua 24 , 14 through 24 .

Speaker 2 4:47

So what does God usually think about when people try to worship Him and all these others at the same time .

Speaker 1 4:54

Well , he says he's a jealous God , that he should be the only one that would be worshiped .

Speaker 2 5:00

And I'm also reminded of the first chapter of the book of Romans , where Paul tells us that people started worshiping creation rather than the Creator . So people degenerate into these things . There's many of them , there's many of these idols that were in the land and God had said to get rid of all these things . But here , in Judges 2 , verse 12 , what does it say Israel did ? It uses a word there . It says they forsook the Lord . What does it mean to forsake the Lord ? What did they do ? They turned their back on God . They left the true God Yahweh and sought after these idols , these pagan deities . It says that in Judges 2 , 12 .

Speaker 1 5:40

Their term would be to abandon . They abandoned God .

Speaker 2 5:44

And it says that again in verse 13, . They forsook the Lord and serve all and the astral In verse 14, . How did God respond ?

Speaker 1 5:53

Well , he was angry . The anger of Yahweh burned against Israel and he gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them , and he sold them into the hands of their enemies and around them , so that they could no longer stand before their enemies .

Speaker 2 6:09

So it says here in these verses that God gets angry at this . So it brings up sort of a theological question about how God responds and how we respond to God and the nature of God . And there's been theologians over the centuries that have wrestled with this . So we're going to have a separate session where we kind of get into the specifics of the theology around . Does God change ? Can God get angrier at our actions or not , and how that works . But for now we'll simply hold here that God is angry at this and we'll get into the specifics of how for the theologians and the crowd in a separate session .

Speaker 1 6:52

His anger is born out of them abandoning him , so he's not abandoning them , they're abandoning him .

Speaker 2 6:59

Well , here we have in verse 12, . They began to follow other gods from the people who around them . What would happen here if Israel had suddenly gotten rid of the idols and fell down in their face before God and begged for mercy when they figured out he was ?

Speaker 1 7:18

angry . Well , other texts show us that he would have forgiven them and would have honored that repentance God always honors repentance .

Speaker 2 7:28

Here it also says remember the picture Israel has come into the land of Canaan and they've not driven out all these idol worshipers . They've come in contact with them . What usually happens when we come in contact with unbiblical things ? Do we end up influencing those things for good or do they influence us for bad ?

Speaker 1 7:53

It's usually them influencing us for bad .

Speaker 2 7:55

Can be the other way , but I found , more often than not , me as a Christian if I get into an environment where there's a lot of unbiblical things around , I end up getting influenced by it more often than me influencing it for good . Now it can be there's times where Christians are so strong in the Lord that you can go into a risky environment and influence it for good , but chances are most of the time , if the follower of God gets into an unbiblical environment , they're going to influence you towards their evil rather than the other way around .

Speaker 1 8:31

And it comes down a lot of times to which side is the persistent side , and it's usually the non-God side . The evil side is usually more persistent than the godly side within humans .

Speaker 2 8:45

Verse 14 says that God got angry . Does God get angry ? I thought God was a loving God . How do we reconcile a God of love with this God of anger and jealousy ?

Speaker 1 8:56

This thing that you hear and where certain people will take certain things out of context . So you'll hear people that'll say , well , I don't want to love a God that's angry all the time . But then you also hear , well , god is a loving God , and that's all you hear . He's loving . It shows that he has characteristics that are both there are things which he gets angry about and there's things that he loves about .

Speaker 2 9:22

We did a separate session on God dealing with the people of Canaan , back with Joshua . But basically we have a situation here when God does deal with sin , then here we find people criticizing Him for dealing with evil . But when he doesn't , then people say how come God allows evil to hang around here ? You can't have it both ways . You can't criticize God for allowing evil and criticize Him for getting rid of evil . That's what he's doing here . His anger burns against evil .

Speaker 1 9:54

Let me pause here for just a second and mention On our website we have it broken down into three major areas . We have the expository , which is the verse by verse which we're doing here . We also have it broken down into topical and then also doctrinal things . We have that session that you just mentioned . It will be in line with our Joshua study , but we'll also have it broken out into that topical study . So , if you want to , you can go out to that topical study and look for that session on anger and how God deals with it . You can listen to it separately if you want to .

God's Wrath and His Loving Kindness

Speaker 2 10:27

My personal feeling is I think it's easy to talk about a God of love and I think it's harder to talk about a God of wrath . There may be people somewhere in the world that emphasize too much on God's wrath , but it's my experience that it's more often the other way around . We focus on God's love to an extent that we ignore His justice and His holiness , which is what drives His wrath . So most of the rest of the Old Testament is the cycle where Israel is disobeying , god , removes His blessing and allows the enemy to come in Israel , then repents because of the pain and appeals back to God , and God forgives and drives out the enemy , and then the cycle repeats . And this is what's happening here In verse 15, . It says here that wherever they went , the hand of the Lord was against them . Is that possible ? Does God ever go against His chosen people ? It says here he does and again , it's because of this . He's a holy God and they're allowing this gross evil .

Speaker 1 11:27

And the second part of that says it was as the Lord Yahweh had spoken and as Yahweh had sworn to them , so that they were distressed Back in Joshua . Whenever they went first into the land they were on one was on Mount Ebal , the other was on Mount Garazim , and in between it was the Tabernacle with the Levites down in the valley , and they called out the blessings and the cursing , and so that's what this is referring to . They were said blessed are those who worship the Lord Yahweh , for instance . Then they would say cursed are the people who don't worship the Lord Yahweh and the curse of that . So this is something and this is what this is referring to that God had told them and sworn to them If you don't worship me and if you don't obey me and you want to go after other gods and go worship and abandon me , then there's going to be consequences to it .

Speaker 2 12:20

So it says here that God gets angry and his hand was against them . Is that only happened way back a long time ago in the Old Testament , or does that happen today ?

Speaker 1 12:29

It happens today and we'll see that in the New Testament when we get into the New Testament . It talks about the wrath of God that are on those who don't believe in Jesus Christ and believe that he is God and deny him .

Speaker 2 12:41

The wrath of God is always on those that are evil and disobedient , and the love of God is always on those who fall before him and ask for forgiveness . It is possible for modern-day Christians to do this . So how can we make sure that the hand of the Lord is with us and not against us ? What practical things could we do ? The things I think of is just always remember the Lord . Remember that it's possible for me too to fall into these same traps , just like them . It's always possible . I could do this , always repent every time . I focus on the Lord and realize , hey , I've not been obeying . Repent and ask for forgiveness , ask his guidance and don't do what the last verse of this book says , which is , do what's right in my own eyes . If we just think more about God and learn more of his ways and immediately , whenever there's any shadow of sin in my life , ask for forgiveness .

Speaker 1 13:37

Don't lean on into your own understanding as it's put in other areas .

Speaker 2 13:41

Chapter 2 , verse 16 , says Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them . Yet they did not listen to their judges , for they played the harlot after the gods and bowed themselves down to them . They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord . They did not do as their fathers when the Lord raised up judges for them . The Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies . All the days of the judge for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them . But it came about when the judge died that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them , and they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways . God raised up judges to deliver them . That's what this book is about . Did the people deserve this kindness ?

Speaker 1 14:40

No , I mean , they deserve it , because they would abandon God and go off and do what they wanted to . And this also harkens back to what we read in our last session , when we finished it up , that the people were obeying God and adhering to God and worshiping God as long as Joshua was alive and the elders were alive , but then , once they died off , then they started worshiping the bowels .

Speaker 2 15:07

So the people didn't deserve God's kindness . But he , out of his good graces , raised up a deliverer . It says Judge here . It's really a deliverer , a leader .

Speaker 1 15:17

And we saw that it had a beneficial effect on them through him raising up these judges Do we ever deserve God's grace ?

Speaker 2 15:25

No .

Speaker 1 15:27

No , in fact , the word grace means getting something in return that you don't deserve . That's what grace actually means You're getting something , or being awarded something that you don't deserve .

Speaker 2 15:39

So what is it about our God that he does kind and loving things even though people don't deserve it ? It's because we have a loving , merciful God . At the same time he's a holy and just God , so he has to deal with the evil . So in the same passage here we have God dealing with the evil that a just judge must do , a holy judge must do . But he's also loving in that he raises up a deliverer . Who was the deliverer that we find out over in the New Testament Jesus . And he is our deliverer Right , and if we merely follow him , then we will be in God's grace . Note that the people rebelled and disobeyed God , but he lovingly reached out to them and kept reaching out , kept sending people to try to turn people's hard store . But God demonstrates his own love for us that while we were still sinners , christ died for us . It says in Romans 5 , verse 8 . So look down at verse 17 in Judges 2 . Did the people listen .

Speaker 1 16:41

No , they did not listen to their judges .

Speaker 2 16:43

What word does it use in there that says how fast they turned away . It says they quickly turned away . Have we ever found ourselves , you and me , disobeying the Lord quickly after we've promised to obey ? I know in my strength I've turned away rather quickly , sometimes surprisingly . So the law is weak through the flesh , because my flesh is weak .

Speaker 1 17:06

The other thing in 17 . Here it says and they bowed themselves down to them being the other gods that they went and worshiped . That's a active verb of not just going after or acknowledging . It's something of actual worship and serving the gods . That's what's denoted here by saying they bowed down to these other gods .

Speaker 2 17:29

So if I'm weak and I know that I am capable of quickly turning from the true way , just as these people did , I'm no better than them . What can I do in a practical sense to try to stay close to the Lord and not turn aside so quickly ? Keep your mind on him .

Speaker 1 17:48

Keep your mind on him and build a relationship with him daily , through prayer , through the study of his word , through interacting with other Christians . Through all of that you maintain that relationship and reminder of who God is . Keep your mind focused on him in your heart .

Speaker 2 18:05

Somebody said once keep short accounts with the Lord . Keep short accounts Whenever we have an issue , settle it quickly . Another practical thing we can do is just memorize the Bible , stay in it and read it a lot , listen to it a lot , because the words of the Lord will get into our mind and change our mind , renew our mind . It says over in the New Testament . So if we just stay in the Word , get God's words into our mind , learn more about God's teachings , we're a lot more likely to stay on the true path and not get off on the side paths of disobedience . It describes Israel's disobedience regarding idols . They played the harlot or some translations say , prostituted themselves . Or the old King James says horde after with the other gods . Why would he describe idol worship as being like a prostitute and you mentioned part of it while ago . But why would he describe it as being like a prostitute ?

Speaker 1 19:03

Prostitution means that you're abandoning , especially if someone is married . They're abandoning their spouse to go after something else that they deem desirable , so it's a very good word picture in regards to what's taking place in their heart .

Speaker 2 19:23

Part of it is because the church is called the Bride of Christ . So that's an illustration , a model , if you will , of purity . The bride is supposed to be pure . The bride is not supposed to be defiled . We have here an image that the followers of Christ are the bride of Christ and we are not to be out running around with others . So that's one . Another one is that these idols were , some of them were literal prostitution . They had sex worship at some of these . So it was an apt description to say horde after . But God wants a love relationship with us . It's not a list of rules , it's a love relationship , just like a husband and wife that are dedicated to each other . That's the way it's supposed to be with God and we're not supposed to be breaking that love relationship . It's built around love , which is the highest ethic . We're following other gods and following idols are compared to prostitution in the Bible .

Speaker 1 20:27

Another area that we'll have a separate session on as far as the topic is covenant . We've seen covenant several times mentioned here and we'll have a separate session on it , but that covenant is something that was very , very serious between God and His people and between God and us . We'll delve into that in a later session .

Speaker 2 20:47

What was the ? First commandment I shall not have any other gods before me , israel didn't even get past the first one , but let along the other nine or the other 600 that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai . So they violated the very first one in the cycle in verses 18 and 19 . Once we had talked about that a few times , before , the judge dies and people go right back to where they were , they weren't learning and they were on a downward cycle . Does God still raise up leaders and deliverers for us today ?

Speaker 2 21:22

I think so I think he raises up wise people . Some of them are not famous , people that are maybe public none but in a local church He'll raise up people that can teach people and be a pure leader . I've met several over my lifetime that were just doing what the Lord said , and in a local setting there's also been large national ones or ones that are famous . John Wesley came at a time in the history of England where a lot of historians say it would have fallen apart if John Wesley , just through hard work , hadn't caused a revival . There's times like that where God does raise up people . We just need to be aware and be . Possibly one of those deliverers could be us . Does God teach us discipline today , the way he did back then ? Because that's basically what he's doing . He's teaching them discipline . There's a punishment factor here to try to get them to obey . Does God do that today ? Does he allow painful things into our life so that we can ?

Speaker 1 22:21

bear more fruit ? He does . A key question also , though is it recognized as God disciplining us ? People might not recognize it as being a discipline from God , but that's a key thing To recognize it as a discipline from God . That's what leads to the repentance of you repenting and turning away from that ticker item .

Speaker 2 22:42

Over in the New Testament , in the book of John , it says that every branch that bears fruit , god prunes it that it might bear more fruit . It says that in John 15 . We have here a illustration of what God can and does do to us today In this passage , here in Judges 2 , verses 11 through 19, . Has this long list of disobedience that proves that the weeping back in verse 4 , we talked about that earlier God had confronted them with their sin and they cried about it , but they never really repented . All that disobedience proves that that weeping was not genuine repentance , it was just they're sorry .

Speaker 2 23:24

They got caught and I'm reminded of you know , sometimes people ask whether pets can get into heaven . My answer is I had an old Labrador that will not be in heaven , and the reason why he will not be in heaven is that he was an unrepentant murderer . He knowingly , willingly , jumped a fence and murdered the neighbor's rabbit in cold blood , and he knew the rules . He knew he wasn't supposed to jump the fence . Now he was sorry , he's sorry . I caught him , but he wasn't sorry at the rabbit , in fact left himself . He would have done the same thing over again because it was the nature of that Labrador dog to chase rabbits , and it's the nature of a child of God to repent and follow back to the father again . The question we have is what is our nature ? Do we have the nature of those that follow God , or do we have a nature of disobedience ? And we need to be on the path towards love and following God .

Speaker 1 24:24

Would you say that , juxtaposed to that is the nature of people that are not a child of God to not repent . I mean , in that what they're saying here is that they did what was right in their own eyes . Oh yeah , that's not repenting , that's continuing to do what you think .

Speaker 2 24:39

I'm reminded of I think it was J Vernon McGee that taught the parable of the prodigal pig .

Speaker 1 24:45

Not sure you ever heard that .

Speaker 2 24:46

That's why I'm chuckling Parable of the prodigal pig and it seems there was a son that left the father and he goes down and ends up in the pigsty . At one point he says I think I'm going to go back to the father . As the story goes , the son and the pig go back to the father and they both get a bath and they both get a robe and they both sit at the table to eat roast beef . So what's the difference in the son and the pig ? When they were both in the pigsty they both acted like a pig and smell like a pig , and when they were both back at the father's house they were both looked like a son . So what's the difference in the son and the pig ?

Speaker 2 25:26

The difference is , as soon as the father opens the door , the pig's going to run back down the pigsty again because he likes it down in the mud , because it's the nature of a pig to wallow in the mud . That's what pigs do . Now there may be a son or daughter that gets down in the pigsty , but they hate it down in the pigsty . They hate it . It's not their nature . It's not their nature . And the son or the daughter might find themselves in a pigsty wallowing around in the mud , in the manure , but they're going to hate it there and they're going to want to go back to the father . So what we can't do is believe the lie of the devil that says , just because we sin , that God's never going to take us back again If we just merely repent and go back to the father . That's the story of the parable of prodigal son is that it's a loving father that's just waiting for us to go back , even though we smell like a pig .

Understanding Repentance and Testing in Judges

Speaker 1 26:22

Can we just talk briefly about that word repent . I mentioned it a little bit a while ago . We kind of brushed through it . But just to pause a little bit , the word repent doesn't mean feeling sorry for something you did . That's what the nation of Israel , that's what they did by weeping . They were feeling sorry . But repentance is that changing of the mind . Again , it's that word picture of doing an about face , like in the military . They're marching in one direction and they do a 180 degree about face and go the opposite way towards God . They're going away from God . They repent , change the way that they're thinking , change their mind back towards God and make that 180 degree turn back to God . So repentance , sometimes I think people think repentance is feeling sorry . Repentance is actually turning back to God .

Speaker 2 27:18

My old Labrador dog . He was sorry that I caught him , but he wasn't sorry that he didn't repent .

Speaker 1 27:24

He didn't , he didn't repent .

Speaker 2 27:25

Next time he saw a rabbit , he was a premeditated unrepentant murderer and next time he saw a rabbit he was going to go after it again . You're absolutely correct . Repentance means change your mind . That results in a change of action . So last thing , in Judges chapter two , verse 22 says he leaves the other nations in the land to test whether Israel will keep God's commandments .

Speaker 2 27:48

Does God ever put people in trying circumstances to test them ? And the testing sometimes is just approved to us . I mean , god knows , god knows what's going to happen Again , we'll deal with this in a separate issue about what God knows . And does he have to figure things out ? We would conclude no , god already knew how Israel was going to respond in every circumstance . But here we have him proving to Israel whether or not they're going to repent or not . He puts us in circumstances to help us grow . It puts us in trying circumstances to test us so that we know that he is faithful . So that's all of Judges chapter two . Probably a good place to wrap up right here . Next time we'll get into Judges chapter three , which it gets into the children of Israel again doing evil in the sight of the Lord . God talks about testing the Israelites again and giving reasons why he wants to take them into warfare .

Speaker 1 28:48

And we start talking about specific judges .

Speaker 2 28:51

So we'll talk about that next time . On Reasoning Through the Bible