Can We Find the Gospel, Even in the Darkness of Judges?

Charles Spurgeon, known as the Prince of Preachers, once said that with every sermon he tries to take his text on “a bee-line to the Cross.” There are certainly some passages of Scripture where such a task would be simple. Certainly, it is easier to do in the New Testament. And there are some places in the Old Testament (like Job crying out for a mediator) which are obvious connections to a gospel message. But there are some places that prove incredibly difficult, like the book of Judges. 

The book of Judges is an incredibly dark book. It is a downward spiral from beginning to end. It is filled with horrific stories. Perhaps the most horrific is in Judges 19 when a concubine is found dead at the threshold of her master’s door. The story continues with a Levite taking her body, cutting it up in twelve pieces, one for each of the tribes of Israel. And this act ends up provoking a civil war against the tribe of Benjamin. It’s brutal. 

So how do we see the gospel in the book of Judges? 

How Do You Find the Gospel in the Old Testament? 

I suppose before understanding how to find the gospel in the OT, it’d be helpful for us to define the gospel. The simplest definition is one given by JI Packer: God saves sinners. If you’d like to put a bit more meat on your gospel presentation, I use two different frameworks with four points each. The first is God—Man—Christ—Response. The second is more of a story: Creation—Fall—Redemption—Glory. 

The first presentation centers upon God’s character and how humanity fails to meet God’s holy standard, as such the judgment of God is upon us. But the good news is that Jesus Christ fixes this by fulfilling what is required through his life, death, and resurrection. Our only fitting response, then, is to respond to Him in repentance and faith. When this happens, we are united to Christ and his record becomes our record. 

The second presentation centers upon the overarching story of the Bible. God lovingly created us to love Him and enjoy Him forever. We were made for rest, rule, and relationship. But we made shipwreck of this, and so rather than having the blessings of obedience, we are under the curse of disobedience. Rather than having peace (rest), purpose (ruling), and healthy relationship, we often experience the opposite. Ultimately, we are alienated from God. But thankfully God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our curse and to fulfill what God intended for humanity. As such we now experience the blessings of Jesus’ obedience in our place. He restores the rest, rule, and relationship we were created to enjoy. Someday everything will be ultimately restored and we will live in a new heaven and a new earth. 

We could write entire books focusing on these various themes of the gospel. But every gospel story follows this basic skeleton. No matter where you find yourself in the Old Testament (or the New Testament) you can find one of these various threads. Every place in Scripture is either telling you something about God, something about our rebellion, something about His rescue, or something about our future restoration. If you can spot this, then you can fill out the rest of the story. 

How Do You Find the Gospel in Judges? 

If you have any familiarity with the Bible, there are probably a few characters that you might place in the book of Judges. Even if you don’t know exactly where the stories come from, you’ve probably heard of Gideon (that’s the guy who put a fleece out) and the story of Samson (that’s the guy who got his hair cut and really bad stuff happened as a result). And if you’re like me, you’ll also remember that story about a morbidly obese guy who gets a dagger buried in his stomach. The book of Judges would make a Netflix series, but it’d probably be rated TV-MA. The content is horrific. 

However, there is a pattern found in the book of Judges that parallels the gospel story. God has set them in the land — and charged them with the creation mandate. They are to rest in God, rule their sphere for the glory of God, and live in a loving relationship with God and others. Yet, in Judges we see a pattern typical of humanity throughout the rest of the Bible (and even in our own day). The people did evil in the sight of God. Sin always carries with it consequence. When the people did what was “right in their own eyes” God would allow the people to be conquered by another nation. When the people suffered this hardship, they would inevitably cry out to God and he would then graciously send a deliverer. 

This cycle repeats after each judge. As the story progresses though, it looks as if this story is a downward spiral. Even the “heroes” become less heroic as the story progresses. A good descriptor of the entire book is found in Judges 21:25. “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” 

Yet, there is another thread which runs throughout the book of Judges. God continues to be faithful to His people. He responds with mercy and grace when they cry out to Him. The people continually get themselves in hopeless situations and God comes through in rescue. He uses surprising methods — like depleting Gideon’s army. And he uses surprising people — like Samson, Ehud, or Deborah. 

If we are thinking about the creation-fall-redemption-glory aspect of the gospel, it is clear that in Judges most of the attention is paid on the impact of the fall. It is a story of what happens whenever humanity follows our own heart. Judges leaves us with a longing for a king. That king, that ruler, should be the God of the Universe. But as the story of the Bible picks up from Judges, we see that the people do see this need for a king, but they desire a king like that of the nations. This project will also fail. 

Throughout the narrative of the Old Testament there is always a longing for a leader to bring the people back to the glory of the Garden. They are always looking for one to bring them the rest, rule, and relationship that they were created for. But every judge fails. Every king fails. Every prophet fails. Every priest fails. Until Jesus comes. He is the prophet, priest, king (or judge) that does not fail. He does not follow the same wicked trajectory, but He always does what the Father wants. He alone is fit to bring humanity back into the rest, rule, and relationship which we were created for. There is a day coming where he will bring us into this eternal joy as he eradicates all sin and unbelief from His kingdom. He is the one that each spiral in the story of Judges was ultimately longing for, but could not accomplish by our own effort. 

But what do we do with that story about the concubine? How would we connect this to the gospel of Jesus? 

Where Is Jesus in the Levite and the Concubine? 

Earlier I shared the outline of this horrendous story. A woman is the victim of “everyone did what is right in his own eyes.” She is tortured, victimized, and ultimately left for dead. Even though her body has breathed its last — it is her body that will continue throughout the close of the book of Judges as she is cut into pieces and mailed throughout the twelve-tribes of Israel. 

How would you preach Jesus from a text like this? Where is Jesus found in this story? 

In one sense, I think you’d say that the point of the text is that Jesus isn’t in the story. A man who should have been providing for this vulnerable woman instead said to a group of wicked men, “do with [my virgin daughter and this concubine] what seems good to you.” And apparently rape and abuse is what their wicked hearts believed was the right thing to do. What do you say of a society when this is what seems “right”? This is a Christ-less society. 

If you want to follow your own heart, the book of Judges is a picture of what happens if you, and everyone around you, decides to do just this. Left to our own sinful impulse humanity will always victimize others. (That’s not to say that every person is as wicked as they could be, but that we will always spiral further into rebellion apart from God’s grace). We have a propensity to use the vulnerable instead of rescuing them. Judges teaches us that even our heroes are tainted. 

But when we juxtapose this story with the work of Jesus Christ, we see that he protects the vulnerable. In a world where Jesus is ruling, there are no victimized women. There are no dead bodies. There is no civil war. In a world where Jesus is ruling, we have vulnerable people protected and secure. We have those who were once victimized to be restored into a place of rest. We have humanity with changed hearts rightly ruling over creation and enjoying God’s goodness as we were meant to. And we have humanity in a loving relationship with God and other humans. This is where Jesus is taking us.

We preach the horror of Judges by owning up to the reality that this is our world apart from Christ. And then we proclaim the world that Jesus is creating. He is overturning all sin and unbelief and replacing it with passionate worship. He is rescuing. Which side of this rescue will we be on? And as we look at Judges and see some level of similarity to our own world, we are left saying what they should have been saying, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

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