Judges 2
Leaders Prep Section
Watch this video, read these notes, and send the pre-written email (below) to your group 2-3 days before you meet.
Notes
We’ve seen God be powerful – hurling hail and crushing armies. And we’ve seen him be open; taking someone like Rahab into his family when she recognized him as God. But now we’re about to see another part of God’s character. We’re about to see his jealous side. It makes you wonder; what happens when a God this powerful gets jealous?
Group Guide Starts Here
Context of scripture
Ch 2 is a summary of what we’re going to see play out in the rest of Judges. God’s followers start in a good place. Then, they start focusing on other gods and God lets the Canaanites terrorize them. When the people start asking for help, God saves them by raising a warrior from among them. And the people start return to God, until it all happens again. It’s one big cycle.
Read Judges 2: 1-5
Notice that God says he will never break his relationship with his followers but, will let them feel their bad decisions.
Have you ever said the same thing to one of your kids? Is this good parenting?
The name they gave the place they were in, “Bochim,” means “weepers.”1
Why do you think they wept; because they were sorry or because they would feel the consequences?
Read Judges 2: 6-10
The previous generation experienced so much with God and yet still couldn’t get their children to truly understand what God had done for them.
Why is it so difficult to pass hard-earned knowledge to the next generation, especially when it’s about God?
Read Judges 2: 11-15
Baal is a general term for several gods believed responsible for elements such as the sun and rain, obviously crucial in agricultural societies. Worship practices were drenched in sexual overtones. For example, male and female temple prostitutes preformed sexual acts to arouse Baal to send rain to make the earth fertile. These sexual overtones are probably why God uses the metaphors of adultery and prostitution to describe Israel’s decision to follow these gods.
Contrary to popular teaching, the Israelites never totally abandoned God; they simply added the worship of Baal. They had one God (a God of Power) to part rivers, fight enemies, and topple the walls of Jericho, and other gods (the Baals) for everyday life to make their crops grow, rivers flow, and economies prosper.2
Are we so different? In other words, do we think of God when there’s a crisis but tie our everyday life to the rise and fall of the stock market, who gets elected president, or how our business performs?
Read Judges 2: 16-18
Judges are not like a courtroom judge in western society. They’re more like revolutionaries or warlords fighting for God’s people. They are flawed, temporarily in power, and used only to fight back against the people Israel was supposed to drive out in the first place. They don’t make laws, govern, or teach. They’re God’s sledgehammer, used whenever they’re needed.
Why wouldn’t God have just raised a strong leader like Joshua? What’s the harm in that?
Read Judges 2: 19-23
Notice in v.22, God says he’s not driving out the Canaanites in order to use them to test Israel.
Does any part of you think God is a manipulator? If you lived here during this time, would you wish God would just leave you alone or would you rather he make you go through this in an attempt to bring you back to him?