Joshua 22-24 - Judges 1-2 Recap | OT Ep 29

In this episode, Austin and Ashley explore Israel's faithfulness and then apostasy in the context of the books of Joshua and Judges. They discuss the significance of the altar built by the Eastern tribes, Joshua's final charge to Israel, and the transition into the chaotic period of the Judges, highlighting Israel's failure to remain faithful to God and the resulting consequences.

Reading Plan - Old Testament in One Year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tSmSv3JOd-gCJS6VSFMtu-iv14NZ45_M/view?usp=sharing

Chapters

• 0:00 Eastern Tribes and the Altar (Ch 22)
• 3:46 Joshua's Final Charge to Israel (Ch 23)
• 4:48 Covenant Renewed (Ch 24)
• 7:45 Intro to Judges
• 9:36 Israel's Disobedience (Ch 1-2)

Transcript

Hey everyone,

My name is Austin. And my name is Ashley. Welcome to the Clean Slate Podcast. Where we're finding Jesus in the Old Testament.

Hey friends, welcome in to episode 29. Today we're gonna be recapping Joshua chapters 22 through 24, which I feel like we just started Joshua by the way. And we're gonna finish up starting Judges chapters one and two.

22 begins with Joshua telling the three tribes the east of the Jordan River that they are released from their oath and they may go back to their lands.

Joshua tells them that they have not forsaken their brothers, so like thank you, but they need to be careful now to keep the charge of the Lord their God. This may seem strange, but if you consider Israel's history, the reminder makes sense.

As the Eastern tribes are making their way back home and approach the Jordan, they stop to build an altar. But not just any altar, the Bible actually says it was an altar of imposing size.

This is a huge problem IF they mean to sacrifice on it.

Remember, we saw in the Torah that God means to be worshipped and sacrificed to at the tabernacle and nowhere else.

even if this altar was to the one true God, if they were going to worship by sacrificing there, would be worshiping him in a way that he forbade.

When the western tribes of Israel hear about this, they gather at Shiloh to make war on their brothers. Now this certainly seems weird to us, right? But we have to think back to Deuteronomy. In Deuteronomy 13, God instructed Israel to make war and destroy the inhabitants of a city,

worshipping another God and purged the evil from their midst. Also, recall Achan from earlier in this book. His sin not only cost him his life, but also the lives of his family. So with that framework in mind, the Western tribe sent a delegation to speak

to the Eastern tribes to try and grasp the meaning of this altar.

The delegation was led by Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the high priest. This is significant. You may remember in numbers, Phineas killed a man that had transgressed the Lord's commands and was worshipping other gods.

Phineas being the one to lead the delegation would signal to the people of the eastern tribes that this could end in bloodshed as Phineas, perhaps more than anyone in Israel, took seriously the worship of God. When the meeting begins, Phineas in verses 16 through 18 reminds them of the sin at Peor that caused the plague to come on the congregation and kill many of the people in Israel. The concerns of the western tribes now becomes clear.

If the Eastern tribes had fallen away from the worship of the Lord, the Lord will not only judge them, but all of Israel if the other tribes don't act. This potential war was about saving all of Israel, even if it meant death to their brothers.

the Eastern tribes responded by telling them that this altar was never meant for sacrifice or offering to actually take place upon it.

It was meant to serve as a reminder to the children of the Western tribes in generations to come that both Eastern and Western tribes still worshiped the one true God.

The people of the Eastern tribes, the people of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh, called this altar the altar of witness. And they said, for it is a witness between us that the Lord is God.

Phineas and the chiefs that went with him agreed that this was good and happily accepted their answer and there was no need for war.

Moving to chapter 23, Joshua is telling the leaders of Israel that he is old, and as verse 14 puts it, about to go the way of all the earth. Joshua is charging them to keep the commandments of the Lord after he passes on by reminding them of what God has done in and through them and

by reminding them of what the covenant they have made with God actually says. Remember in an earlier episode, we covered the covenant blessings and cursings from Deuteronomy 28.

That chapter shapes much of the Old Testament because it spells out in great detail the wrath that would fall upon Israel if they do not obey all the words of the covenant, which is what they agreed to. chapter here. You can see it clearly in verse 16 where Joshua says, if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded you,

and go to serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you and you shall perish quickly from off the good is given to you.

So in chapter 24, the covenant is renewed again at Shechem.

If you remember the name of that town, it's because it has been an inauspicious but important place in Israel's history.

Joshua begins this process by all the elders, heads, judges, and officers of Israel to Shechem.

Once there, he gives a really concise history of how their people came into this land, beginning with how Abraham came from beyond the Euphrates. That's important for here just a bit. And got to the land of Canaan.

Joshua then walks him through the Exodus, the battles they had in the wilderness, and how God brought them into the land to conquer it. And in verse 15, we get a, therefore. Remember, whenever we see a therefore, you got to stop and ask, what's the therefore, therefore? In this case, Joshua's saying, in light of everything I just reminded you of, being God's faithfulness to us, take what I'm about to say very seriously.

So I'm going to read verse 14 and 15 for us. says, now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your father served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. and if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the river,

or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

beyond the river has to do with the gods that Abraham and his people would have worshipped in Mesopotamia where he was from. The gods of the Amorites are clearly wicked as we have discussed. So Joshua is saying, pick today who you will serve. He's telling them, don't, as the prophet Elijah will later say, limp back and forth between two opinions.

The opinions here would be God or anything else. God doesn't want to compete for our affections. God will be Lord of all or not at all.

This is clearly seen in multiple moments leading up to this point, but friend listen, there is a line in the sand for us as well. Remember a theme through these first few books that we have done together has been it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of living God, as the author of Hebrews says. God bids us all to come to Him. And again, like the author of Hebrews says, it is called today.

If you are under the sound of my voice, please turn to Jesus.

wants you enough that he chose to die for anyone who would believe on him and turn from their sins.

Let it be said of you that you made a choice that this day I decided that me and my house will serve the Lord.

The chapter and thus the book closes with the people saying that they will serve God and would not turn away from Him.

once. Then Joshua son of Nun leader of the people went the way of all the earth and passed on into his eternal inheritance.

We also see the fulfillment of a long-held promise by the people of Israel.

They buried the bones of Joseph in the same piece of land Jacob had bought centuries before from Hamor. At the end of the chapter, Eliezer, Aaron's son, and the high priest also passed away and was buried.

So in what seems like a really short amount of time, as far as our study together, we've already passed through all of the book of Joshua, but so much has happened. Now we're going to enter into the period of the judges.

As we enter into the book of Judges, we will unfortunately see the downward spiral of Israel's national and spiritual life into chaos and apostasy, showing the need for a godly king to lead it.

The events we will see recorded in Judges will take place from Joshua's death about 1400 years before Christ all the way to the rise of Samuel and Saul which will be about 1150 years before Christ. So this book covers hundreds of years in Israel's history.

If you had to pick one phrase to sum up all of Judges, it would be, In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. The major problem for Israel during this time was that pattern Austin talked about last episode. They failed to drive out the inhabitants of the land, which driving out all of the inhabitants is exactly what God commanded them to do. Why?

because they would risk whoring after their pagan Canaanite gods. And that is exactly what we'll see from here. So, spoiler alert, this book gets real and it gets ugly.

So, Judges chapter one, verse one. After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, who shall go up for us against the Canaanites to fight against them? The Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand. Now, remember that Judah was a tribe, not one man any longer. The tribe's namesake has been long gone. So, God is saying the tribe of Judah will lead you into battle.

And while their success in battle was God-given, again, they failed to do what God commanded. And we see almost verbatim from the other tribes.

Verse 19, he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain. Verse 21, Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites. Verse 27, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of multiple villages. Verse 29, Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites.

Then Zebulon, then Asher, then Naphtali. Unfortunately, we see all similar stories.

So continuing this right into chapter two, we see this angel of the Lord who speaks as God himself. He says, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land. You shall break down their altars. But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you.

but they shall become thorns in your sides and their gods shall be a snare to you.

The Israelites respond with weeping and sacrificing to the Lord. And we will continue reading to see if this is a genuine repentance or just a, I'm sorry we got caught and called out type of sorrow.

Verse six is a flashback to Joshua's death in Joshua 24 that Austin talked about. So if you haven't noticed yet, ancient Near Eastern cultures, when retelling a story or making a point, they talk circularly around a point. So things might not be laid out in chronological order, like one, two, three. It might be three, one, two, four, to make sure the reader understands that all of what they are saying is relevant. But to us in the West, this makes no logical sense.

But in this instance, it is to call attention to Israel's apostasy. The Webster definition of apostasy is to abandon a once held religious belief. The Ashley definition of apostasy

is to say you serve the Lord with your mouth, but not believe in your heart. So this passage, starting in verse six, tells us, when Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each into his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. But Joshua dies.

And in verse 10, and all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

So this is evidence that not only did they fail to drive out the inhabitants of the land, but they also failed to teach the next generation of all the Lord did through Moses and Joshua, bringing their people out of Egypt, parting the Red Sea, giving the law and their time in the wilderness and the water and the manna and the splitting of the Jordan and how they conquered the land that they are living in now.

Verse 11 gives us the first of many accounts of an unfaithful Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. Verse 13 adds, and the Ashtoreth. All of those are pagan deities that were worshiped in the land.

And while the Lord's righteous anger was kindled against them, we see starting in verse 16, God's desire to draw his people back to him. Then the Lord raised up judges hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they hoard 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. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them.

they did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.

So because of this, the Lord said, I will no longer drive out the nations before them. And even in this, we see simultaneously the discipline of the Lord on his people for their unfaithfulness, but also so that this generation might come to know him in their sufferings, knowing life without the favor of the Lord so that they ultimately turn back to him.

That's going do it for today's recap. May His grace abound to you and to me as we study to find Jesus in the Old Testament.