THE TRAGEDY OF AUTONOMY: The Book of Judges

May 28, 2023

In this message, David goes over the book of Judges and what we’ll be focusing on in this sermon series. Drawing a connection to our own lives, we see that the period of the Judges in which ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ is being lived out today. Join us over the next 10 weeks as we dive deeper and explore what comes with the desire for autonomy.

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Series Synopsis:

Our moments of victory afford us our greatest temptations to fall. Israel entered the promised land and experienced the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise. It should have been the best of times but spiraled into the worst.

Judges is a tragedy. The downward spiral of the nation of Israel assimilating the prevailing culture into moral, spiritual and national demise. The book begins with Israel disobeying God in the wake of the victory He provided in bringing them into the promised land and ends in civil unrest. Throughout the many sub-tragedies of the account, the reader is reminded of Israel’s autonomy “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. The book offers the accounts of various “Judges” or leaders who ruled over Israel between Joshua’s death and Samuel. Judges leaves the reader with the question- who can lead Israel out of its depravity and back into being the people of promise God called them to be?

This book has a powerful message because the period of the judges in which ‘everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ is being lived out today. Judges makes the case that living in this way is tragic. God doesn’t allow the people then, or us today to continue on this self-destructive path. He is always at work redeeming. This book constantly reminds its readers that there was no king in those days, revealing our innate desire to be led. Where Israel’s leaders fail, Jesus succeeds. He is the King we all need.

We desire that over the next few months, as we study verse by verse through The Daily, discuss together in our Communities, and are taught at our Gatherings, we will take heed the message of Judges- that fueled by the grace of the gospel we would live obediently to Jesus Christ and resist adopting the idols of our prevailing culture that we might be a people who act upon what is righteous in the Lord’s eyes.