God Uses Unlikely Deliverers - Judges 3:1-31 - Session 4

Judges 3 introduces the first specific deliverers whom God raises up for Israel. The chapter begins by explaining that God left certain nations in the land to test Israel and to teach a new generation how to wage war. The test was not designed to give God information He lacked. It revealed Israel’s condition and exposed whether the people would obey His commandments.

Instead of remaining separate from Canaanite influence, the Israelites lived among the pagan nations, intermarried with them, and eventually served their gods. They became comfortable with the very practices God had warned would become a snare. This raises an important application for believers today: what we tolerate around us can eventually begin shaping what we accept and worship.

The chapter then repeats the familiar cycle of Judges. Israel forgets the Lord and does evil. God allows an enemy to oppress them. The people cry out, and God raises up a deliverer. After a period of peace, the people return to disobedience and the cycle begins again.

This session also explores the biblical themes of being sold under sin, redemption, and Christ paying the debt that sinners cannot pay for themselves. Israel’s bondage to foreign kings provides a picture of humanity’s deeper bondage to sin and the need for a Redeemer.

The study then turns to Ehud, the left-handed Benjaminite whom God uses to deliver Israel from King Eglon of Moab. The account is violent and graphic, reminding us that sin and judgment are not pleasant realities. Yet it also shows God’s faithfulness when His people cry out for help.

Finally, the chapter briefly introduces Shamgar, who defeats six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad. Shamgar receives only one verse, but his faithfulness was no less valuable than that of judges who receive several chapters. God does not require fame, recognition, or a large audience. He calls His people to faithfully accomplish the work He places before them.

Scripture: Judges 3:1–31
Series: The Book of Judges — An RTTB Study

 Questions discussed in this session:

• Were the Israelites supposed to marry outside Israel? 
• What happens when we worship what seems right to us? 
• Why would God want to teach people warfare? 
• Do people today forget the good things that God does for us? 

Transcript

Testing and Disobedience in Israel

Speaker 1 0:10

Music . Welcome to today's session of Reasoning through the Bible podcast . We're working our way through the Book of Judges and we've been following Israel , who has been disobeying God . They started out at the beginning of the Book of Judges inquiring of the Lord what they were supposed to do , and they very quickly it says in Judges followed after other gods . They very quickly forgot God . The word it uses is forsaken God . The Bible uses the term whoring after other gods . There were idols there that they went after and , as we learned last time , god removes his power from them and removes his blessing to the point where they are now turned over to these other idols .

Speaker 1 1:03

We're going to start in Judges , chapter 3 . I'm going to dive in here and read the first five verses of Judges , chapter 3 . Now , these are the nations which the Lord left to test Israel by them , that is all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan , only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war , those who had not experienced it formerly . These nations are the five Lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidoans and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon , from Mount Baal Harman as far as Lebo Hamath . They were for testing Israel to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord which he had commanded their fathers through Moses .

Speaker 1 1:45

The sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites , the Hittites , the Amorites , the Parasites , the Hivites and the Jebusites , and they took their daughters for themselves as wives and they gave their own daughters to their sons and served their God . The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord . It says here in these passages that God was testing the Israelites in verse 1 . Steve , why would God test us ? Why does it use that phrasing here ?

Speaker 2 2:15

What we've been talking about is that Israel had been told over and over again you need to obey God . Here's the commandments that you need to obey . Here's the things you need to do . And the reasons were because it was for their benefit . It was to keep them from falling into and having to be ensnared by these other false gods that did temple worship , prostitute worship , burning of babies and sacrificing babies . Those were all the evil things that they leaned to . It was for the purpose of staying true and not being caught up and ensnared in those things . They're there in order to see . Is Israel going to stay true to God , or are they going to end up going off again , worshiping these other gods that these other nations worship ?

Speaker 1 2:58

Now it says to test them to see whether does God know these things or does he have to figure them out .

Speaker 2 3:03

Well , yeah , no , he knows . He tells them back when with Moses , when it's mentioned here , as far as what Moses , he tells them this is what they need to do , but I can tell you right now they're not going to do it . So he knows .

Speaker 1 3:16

Right . God had already said what's exactly going to happen . And God is infinite and he has knowledge , so he has infinite knowledge . He knows the things that we would do in different situations and what would happen if all of us made other choices . We'll deal with that in one of our sessions where we deal with the theology around this . But here , what he's actually doing , when it says here to test us , is he's teaching us . To test means to prove things , to prove whether they're strong or whether they're weak , and at what point the failure is . Oftentimes it's not God that's trying to figure things out . He doesn't have to get up in the morning and read the news to figure out what happened in the overnight markets . What he's doing is showing us our weaknesses . These are things the New Testament says . These things were written for our benefit .

Speaker 2 4:02

And when you take a test , the practical application is when you take a test in school , the test isn't for the teacher . The test is for yourself , to prove what knowledge you have on that particular subject . It's for yourself , it's not for the teacher .

Speaker 1 4:17

One of the reasons here it also says in verse two was to teach warfare to Israel . Now , war is an awful thing . War is an awful , awful thing , and it seems this generation here had not known war . It tells us that why would God want to teach these people war ? What would be the reason ? Well , first of all , what were they supposed to be doing ?

Speaker 2 4:40

They're supposed to be conquering the land . They were supposed to be driving out the inhabitants of the land and what did they actually do ? They ended up living amongst them , and that's kind of the picture that you get here is that they've gotten comfortable living amongst the pagans of the land and , just like in our previous session when it talks about the knowledge of Yahweh , it wasn't passed down to the next generation . We kind of get a sense here that warfare wasn't passed down in the next generation either , because they weren't at war , they weren't trying to conquer the land , they had gotten comfortable with the situation of being amongst all of the people that were there .

Speaker 1 5:20

So just like an earthly parent has to teach difficult things to their child , then our Heavenly Father has to teach difficult things to us . And it says in these verses , especially verse six they intermarried between these other people , which they weren't supposed to do .

Speaker 2 5:35

That was one of the specific things that they were told . You're not supposed to go in the land and intermarry with the inhabitants .

Speaker 1 5:41

What happens when you get comfortable with evil things , it absorbs into you . They had gotten comfortable with these idol worships , these horrible idols that had child sacrifice and temple prostitute all these things . So Israel got comfortable having these things around them , and now they end up marrying these other sons and daughters , and it violated what God had commanded them to do . They're very quickly just getting worse and worse with how they interact with these Canaanites . Would people in our day ever quickly forget the good things that God had done for ?

Speaker 2 6:18

us ? Yes , absolutely , I think we have today .

Speaker 1 6:23

Would this possible that the same things that happened to them might happen to us when we get comfortable with evil around us ?

Speaker 2 6:31

Yeah , and I think Paul has said that the illustrations of the history of Israel is there for our benefit , for us to learn from it . This is an application from that .

Speaker 1 6:43

And in verse seven it says the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord , forgot the Lord their God and served the Ba'als and the Astoroth . Those were idols that were in that we might not have a stone or wooden figure over in the corner of our home , maybe but do we ? Have idols that we ever fall after .

Speaker 2 7:01

Yeah , anything that really takes us away from God becomes an idol .

Speaker 1 7:06

Anything that draws us away from God . I've seen football stadiums that sure look a whole lot like idol worship to me Not all of them , but there are people that do that . I've seen people they even people that consider themselves not religious . There are some part of their lives that start using religious language .

Speaker 2 7:24

I want to point out too that , as in our previous session , we went through who these gods , ba'al and Astoroth , were , and they were nature gods . They were gods that were over weather . They were gods that were over the seas and the chaos , calming the chaos . They were fertility . So when you get here to them , they serve . The Ba'als and the Astoroth . It's not just idols , but it's what they represented and it's what the things they were taking God and that's what they kind of mean by abandoning God . They were attributing to these other gods the things of creations and things that were created , such as weather and fertility . They weren't praying to God for rain for their crops , they were praying to Ba'al .

Speaker 1 8:09

And in verse eight it says here the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Kushan Rishitham , king of Mesopotamia . A couple of things here . One is it uses the word sold , and I find this interesting because here we have a disobedient people that had turned their backs on God and were following after these other idols , and it says here he sold them . God sold , it uses the word it's the regular word in the original just like buying and selling something . This concept in Israel , or at least in the Bible , for our relationship with God , often involves a concept of buying and selling . Matter of fact , there's some very key doctrines . Specifically , there's a doctrine called the atonement , which just means that sins are paid for . We say Jesus paid for our sins . Well , how does that happen ? Well , there's many theologians that have an explanation . That involved buying and selling .

Speaker 1 9:12

And the passages in the New Testament that refer to this . Romans , chapter 7 , says we are carnal , sold under sin , and it says all people are that way Carnal sold under sin . First , corinthians , six you are not your own , for you were bought with a price . So a saved person is bought through the payment of Jesus' blood . Second Peter , chapter two false teachers deny the Lord who bought them . So Jesus paid for our sins , and there's a concept here that I'm not sure scripture flushes out entirely . But right here in Judges , chapter three , we have this where he sold sinful people to a king whose name means doubly wicked . We have here God selling his people . From a practical sense , they wanted to go slave after these other idols , so he lets them go .

Speaker 2 10:09

They had exchanged , as in Romans , it puts that the people had exchanged the truth for a lie . The same thing here that they had exchanged worshipping Yahweh and what things he had done for him for worshipping these other false gods and attributing to them . So that's the exchange .

Speaker 1 10:29

There's another theological word called redeem or redemption . One of the explanations for redemption and atonement is that there's the theme of Jesus paying for our sins , to buy us back and exchange . That happens . That's how we get the phrase Jesus paid for our sins is because we've been sold under sin .

Speaker 2 10:50

And when we get into the book of Ruth we get introduced to that concept of the kinsman redeemer . Yes , and we'll get really deep into that when we go through Ruth .

Speaker 1 11:00

So , steve , can you and I pay our own sin debt ? No , no , we can't . Jesus has to pay it . He has to pay our debt . We're so broke we can't even pay our own debt , let alone that of the whole world .

Speaker 2 11:13

In Romans it talks about where Jesus pays for that and where God had to be the perpetuation , when the perpetuation means the satisfactory sacrifice so that God could be just as we've talked about . He's a wrathful God . There has to be justice for the sin and the justifier . So that's the only way for the be the satisfactory sacrifices for him to come and be that sacrifice and pay that debt that we have .

Speaker 1 11:43

So here's a personal question , steve has Jesus paid for your sin ? Yes , he has . He's paid for mine , and all it takes is accepting that payment . People can reject it . You can say no , I don't want Jesus paid for my sins Right , a lot of people do that . But he's handing out a free gift to pay for our sins and all we have to do is accept that payment . It's a wonderful , wonderful thing .

Repeating Cycle of Sin and Deliverance

Speaker 1 12:07

Back in Judges , chapter three , from verses seven to 11 , this cycle that we've been talking about , that it even described back in the last chapter , the cycle of sin and God's deliverance , repeats itself . Israel forgets the Lord and does evil . Verse seven . The next verse God delivers them into the hand of an enemy . Verse nine Israel cries out to the Lord . God raises up a deliverer who defeats the enemy , and then the land has rest for a while in verse 11 . And this cycle repeats .

Speaker 2 12:38

And the amount of years in verse eight is that they were under oppression for 80 years . So this book of Judges transverses hundreds of years . Correct Close to 400 years is the time frame that we're going to be dealing with .

Speaker 1 12:52

Then , in verses 12 through 30 , the cycle repeats again . Israel does evil . God strengthens Moab , the Canaanite nation , against Israel . Israel serves the foreign nation for 18 years . They cry out to the Lord . He raises up a deliverer , ehud , and then , in verses 16 to 30 , israel defeats the enemy . That lasts for these 80 years . The cycle repeats itself at least six or seven times in the book of Judges .

Speaker 2 13:25

And one thing too as we go through here , all these judges and all of these actions are taking place throughout the land . We see it taking place from the north to the south and the east to the west . In this particular case , moab was on the eastern side of the Jordan River , so it's over there , on the eastern side of where the Moabites are .

Speaker 1 13:47

So get the picture People had disobeyed . God allows the enemy to come in , even strengthens them to come in to teach Israel lesson . It says Israel had been in disobedience . Look at verse 15 . But when the sons of Israel cried to the Lord , the Lord raised up a deliverer for them , ahud , son of Gira , a Benjaminite , who raised them up . God did . God did . Did they do it on their own ?

Speaker 2 14:15

strength . They did not . We will see later on , though , that they go off and do that in a judge , but in this particular case , no God raises these judges , most of these judges , up for them .

Speaker 1 14:26

There's this awful story in the second half of Judges , chapter three , where Ahud is this left-handed man . In those days , of course , most people were right-handed and they had swords . That was the weapon of the day . Most people carried their sword on their left hip so they could pull it out with their right hand . But this guy who was the deliverer , he was left-handed , so he puts his sword on his right hip and covers it with a cloak , with his clothing . He then takes a tribute . What was a tribute ?

Speaker 2 15:02

A gift , something that was a token of acknowledgement to the other person . Right , they're the king or they're the Lord , correct ?

Speaker 1 15:11

And many times this tribute was couched in the language of a honorable thing I'm going to do for you , but really it was a tax they were exacting and you pay me a lot of money or I'll kill you . Oh , here you go , king , here's this gift that we have for you . So he's bringing this valuable gift , this either tax or tribute , or something he was giving to this king .

Speaker 2 15:34

And it says that this king Eglon , in verse 17 , was a very fat man , very large man .

Speaker 1 15:40

He was on his rooftop in his bathroom , is basically where he is . And Eglon comes up to him and says oh , I have a secret message for you from the Lord . And so King Eglon dismisses all the help . Ahud comes up to him , pulls the sword out and kills him , and it goes into graphic detail on how he kills him . He ends up dying in this upper chamber , this bathroom , Locks the door behind him and escapes . And while he's got the door locked , the helpers think , oh , he's in there using the restroom , Him being the king , Him being the king . Until they finally get worried about him and unlock the door and go in . They find he's dead .

Speaker 1 16:24

By then the judge , the deliverer , Ahud had escaped and gone back to his land , rallied the troops in verses 27 and 28 . Ahud gathers the men of Israel and they attack Moab during all the confusion around the death of the king . And it says in verse 29 , Israel kills about 10,000 of the Moabite soldiers . And in verse 30 , they have peace for 80 years . Ugly , ugly scene , and again it goes into graphic detail over these people , 10,000 people die . This one king is killed rather violently . Sin is ugly too . Sin is not pretty . And these stories again . They're a true history , but they're also an allegory . It tells us in the New Testament that these things were written for our benefit , in the sense that do we ever get away with sin ? No sin will find you out .

Speaker 1 17:20

This enemy , king Eglon , one minute , was in charge of a nation . He had Israel under his thumb . They were paying him tributes and he thought he was safe . He thought he was safe , but destruction came upon him suddenly . Suddenly he's dead . Suddenly there's the righteous hand of God coming against him . We should always be prepared in case sudden destruction comes upon us . None of us are beyond falling away from God . We can convince ourselves hey , my sin is hidden , everything's under control and I've got all these things under my thumb . But God never lets us get away with our sin and he'll get back at us kind of suddenly . The other side of this coin is God raises up a deliverer . What started this ? Back in some of the earlier verses , israel cried out to the Lord . So if we but cry out to the Lord , he'll deliver us against the pain of our enemies . He's a faithful and loving .

Speaker 2 18:23

God and it started out that the generation didn't know how to wage war . But we see there in 29 that through the deliverer that God raised up , yahweh raised up they struck down 10,000 Moabites , all robust and valiant men , and no one escaped . So in order to go through violent and robust and violent men , you need to know how to wage war . But of course God shows again that he was with them in this outcome .

Speaker 1 18:55

So God raises up this deliverer , this judge , ehud . What do you think of this guy ? Did he do right by sneaking in and kind of deceptively hiding the sword and saying I got a message for you which is basically a deception . So did he do correctly by doing that , or was it incorrect ? I mean , he was supposed to , according to this , was following God's plan and God raised him up . Was that a good thing to do ? Are there ?

Speaker 2 19:22

ethics in war . Are there ethical things ? Very good question .

Speaker 1 19:26

Very good question . I think here that he was doing what God had him . Did God raise this man up because this was an evil king ? He was doing what God had commanded him to do . Now the next deliverer is only mentioned very briefly Judges . Chapter 3 , verse 31 , says after him came Shamgar , the son of Ainath , who struck down 600 Philistines with an ox-goad , and he also saved Israel , and that's all that's mentioned of them there . Now an ox-goad is basically a pointed stick that they would use to poke the oxen , the work animals .

Speaker 1 20:02

Get them to go , get them to move , he ends up killing 600 Philistines with a sharp stick .

Speaker 2 20:08

It was a biblical version of a hotshot . What we call a hotshot , Call a hotshot .

Speaker 1 20:13

Everybody works in cattle . Now there's irony here . Oxen are dumb and stubborn . They have to be poked with a stick to get them to move . Israel used the same stick to do what Israel should have been doing , which was to drive out the wicked enemy . So that's one lesson out of this . The other one is we're going to get to people like Deborah that has a long section about what she did . Samson has I think it's three chapters . You know he had a lot about him . Gideon , gideon Shamgar gets one verse . Okay , was Shamgar's actions any less valuable than those people that had two or three chapters ?

Speaker 2 20:57

It says he also saved Israel , which is the point .

Speaker 1 21:02

Samson we're going to get to him in the future . He had three chapters , but almost all of that was Samson's failures . Most all of it was Samson doing silly things that he shouldn't have been doing . What he's supposed to be doing was faithfully following God and delivering him . What gets recorded about Samson was one failure after another and one disobedience after another . And he gets this long section . Shamgar gets one verse . So my question is in our day , what's better ? Should I get a lot of fame and recognition or should I get just one little thing mentioned about me ? I would rather have one little thing done for God and have it be a recording of . I was faithful in this one thing that God gave me to do , rather than try to be a famous person and end up with a whole lot written about me , about my failures .

Speaker 2 22:02

And right before Ehood and had talked about , had struck down 10,000 of the Moabites . Here , Shamgar is 600 of the Philistines . Okay , so another lesson would be does it have to be a great victory , or can it be a small victory as well ? If the Lord is behind you , and God is behind it , doesn't always necessarily need to be some big production .

Speaker 1 22:29

There was a true story . A friend of mine was teaching a Sunday morning Bible class in his church and they announced the class and on the morning of the first day of the class , one lady showed up . One person showed up . Well , you might be disappointed that they only had one , but as they got to talking , this lady that showed up was in a very dark spot in her life and my friend who was teaching the class just so happened to have been through that same experience and they spent three , four , five months of Sunday mornings with just my friend and his wife and this one other lady on Sunday mornings having a class that had one person in it . But it helped that one person If we'll just follow God

Reaching People's Hearts Through Faithfulness

Speaker 1 23:11

.

Speaker 1 23:11

Sometimes we only have one person that God wants us to reach . Sometimes it's 600 , sometimes it's 10,000 , but we shouldn't always seek after what I would call upfrontedness , which is to be up in front of a crowd with my name known everywhere . Sometimes God just wants us to do one thing and do it well and do it faithfully . And we're going to wrap up here , but a couple of things to mention before we go . Be sure and look at our website , reasoningthroughthebiblecom . We have there how to find us and how to get messages to us If you have any questions or things you'd like to get to us . Sometimes we'll be answering some of your questions , and there's also a resources page there where we'll have lesson plans that can be downloaded for free and used in your Bible teaching they follow along is what we're doing here , so look at our website , reasoningthroughthebiblecom , and we'll see you next time when we get to Judges , chapter 4 .

Speaker 2 24:06

Thank you very much for joining us on reasoning through the Bible .