They Were In Terrible Distress
These are the concluding words to a section in Judges 2 that deals with Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. Verse 16 says that “the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.” Israel’s unfaithfulness is the expression of the sin of unbelief. They did not believe God or his Word. They did not believe in the signs and wonders that God had performed (Josh. 24:17; Judg. 2:7). The generation after Joshua forgot God (Judg. 2:10; cf. 6:13).
At the heart of all sin and sinfulness is unbelief. Israel had a powerful hankering to be like the nations (Josh. 24:20). This was what God had specifically warned them against (Ex. 34:10-16; Deut. 31:16-18). Judges 2:11 puts it plainly: “And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals” (see Judg. 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1).
The familiar refrain of Judges was that “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 17:6; 21:25). This is the incredible deceptive power of sin. It makes us blind to God. We do what we please and what we consider right. Sin does not make us fear God, but seeks to counterfeit God by making him appear less than he is. That’s what the serpent told Eve in the garden—“did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?’” (Gen. 3:1).
Notice that word “actually.” It implies “did God really say that…” Satan paints God in a different light. He throws doubt into the mind of Eve. He reduces God to something less than He had revealed himself to be. Sin makes God less than he is. It is remarkable that when we are faced with sin, we are taken in by its deception. God is portrayed as tolerant of sin.
The reduction of God which began in the garden continues today. When we reduce God, we also reduce his standards. Thus, if we portray homosexuality as a genetic disposition, meaning that it cannot be helped since it is natural to such people, then we seek to obscure the very obvious fact that God simply says it is sin. This reduces all Scripture to mean something other than they plainly teach. And ultimately, this means God has been reduced. All sin does this. Adam and Eve blamed others for their sin. In essence, when we transfer blame, we accuse God of being responsible. We reason along these lines: “You made me like this,” or “I could not help it because this is who I am!” So sin wreaks havoc with how thinking and feeling, and because sin is so powerful it sucks us into more sin.
This is what happened to Israel. Their entire history in the Old Testament is one of decline. It is true that here and there God intervenes and the light shines brightly once again. But it is short-lived. When you read Judges, it is one cycle of sin after another. Israel sins against God and God brings judgment upon them in the form of oppression. They are then in great distress and cry out to God. God then raises a judge to deliver them, and once they are delivered, they revert back to doing as they please. The cycle then begins all over again.
This is the nature of sin in reverting back to old habits and practices. It is deceitful. It was John Owen who said, that “unless we are killing sin, sin will kill us.” Judges 2:15 stresses that God’s hand was against Israel for harm as he had warned and sworn to them it would be. The result of God’s hand upon them was great distress. The word for “distress” means to be in a narrow place, to be constrained. In other words, it is like being squeezed in a vise. They were being cramped by God.
The results of sin always affect circumstances and conscience. Sometimes we feel the heat of God outwardly in circumstance, and sometimes inwardly in conscience. Neither is pleasant. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can manipulate circumstances. That’s what David tried to do in 2 Samuel 12 with Uriah the Hittite. Manipulating circumstances is called covering up sin. We do it all the time. Conscience is another matter. It is brutal. It assaults us with guilt and it is relentless. It is so relentless that we feel as if we are on a knife edge. If God sets his face against the nation, the nation will feel the heat. They were thus “greatly distressed.” God’s distressing us is designed by God to bring us up short. To stop us in our tracks! To prevent us from committing more sin!
God always responds to the cry of distress. Distress should drive us to confession and repentance. We should not forget the distress of sin. But Israel forgot. Verse 17 says, “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the LORD, and they did not do so.” They walked for a while in the good way, and then reverted to their own ways.
Verse 18 says that the Lord raised up a judge to deliver them and the Lord was with the judge who then saved them from their distress. The Lord was moved to pity by their groaning (vs. 18). It is sad that when that judge died, they turned back and were “more corrupt” than before. Judges 2:19 says “they did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.”
The word for “corrupt” means to go to ruin. The word for “turn back” is the twelfth most frequently used verb in the Old Testament, appearing over a thousand times. It has connection to both repentance and backsliding. Repentance is turning away from sin. Backsliding is turning back to sin. In the context of Judges, Israel did not give up its sinful ways. They stubbornly persisted in evil before the Lord. God expressed his anger toward Israel by saying they had violated his covenant with them through their disobedience (vs. 20). The consequence of this was to leave them to their own devices.
The book of Judges is about people with feet of clay and hearts of iron. Wayward and stubborn! This is what sin makes of us. We need to understand this in order to truly see grace and mercy for what it is. Grace and mercy imply total helplessness by the one to whom it is extended. We have utterly bereft ourselves of spiritual power when it comes to dealing with sin. Grace and mercy supply us with what we need. Grace and mercy soften hard unrepentant hearts. Grace and mercy show us the good way to walk in. As Christians today, we face many onslaughts and assaults from the world and the flesh, let alone Satan. Satan makes great use of both the world and flesh. The flesh always parades itself seductively before our eyes, and then through our eyes it reaches into our minds and hearts. The world holds itself out alluringly as something good and beneficial—you need a little entertainment now and then! The world always offers us its goods in disguise. It squeezes and squeezes like a python. Just a little squeeze here and there, but it gets stronger all the time. The end is death. We must never be deceived by sin’s painted colors. We must guard our minds and hearts. We must renew our minds. Memorizing Scripture goes a long way to fighting sin.
Are you in terrible distress because of sin? Are your circumstances and your conscience in dire need of change because you have tampered with sin and its false delights? The Lord Jesus provides us with constant grace and mercy, providing restoration. Don’t refuse such mercy and grace. Fly to the Cross and you will once again delight yourself in the Lord.