God’s Mission in Judges

Beloved People of God, 

In the New Testament, we find another letter to the church in Corinth. These people, filled with the Spirit and passionate about God’s call on their lives, were nevertheless struggling to live out their faith in ways pleasing to the Lord. They were rankled by Paul’s apostleship and his frequent sufferings. They had “a better way” in mind, one in which they could serve the Lord in ways that seemed right to them. Despite all their Spirit-empowerment and commission as a kingdom of priests, they failed to understand how the work of Christ’s kingdom comes through humility and weakness (2 Corinthians 1.9; 4.7; 11.30). While others around them boasted in their strength and lorded over people with violent power (2 Corinthians 1.24; Matthew 20.25-26), God’s kingdom of priests was to follow in the way of King Jesus, who, “though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8.9). These verses reveal how hard it was for the early Church to feel the solid ground of Christ the King’s foundation beneath them.

The Corinthians’ struggle helps us better identify with God’s kingdom of priests in the Old Testament, who repeatedly failed to fulfill their high calling to bear God’s blessing to all nations. Seven times—a meaningful number of times—the author of Judges repeats how the Israelites did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes (Judges 2.11; 3.7, 12; 4.1; 6.1; 10.6; 13.1). Why did they fail so consistently and so miserably? Because they forgot God was their true king (1 Samuel 8.7). Unlike the neighboring peoples with their Baal worship, viceroys, and minor monarchs, the people of Israel were a kingdom brought into the Promised Land by the Lord God, their eternal King (Numbers 23.21). But like the Corinthians after them, and—too often—like you and me, the people lived their lives as if “there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17.6; 21.25). Choosing to live this way, we not only affect the way we live under the Lord’s blessing for ourselves, but also the lives of those around us who have yet to know the name of King Jesus.

For Christ the King,

Brett