The cycles in Judges and so what?

 As Judges 2 lays out, there is a repeated cycle (or sometimes downward spiral) in book of Judges, thus:

Disobedience / Rebellion        (vv10-13, 17, v19)

 

Defeat               / Retribution   (vv14-15, v20-23)

 

Distress             / Repentance (v15b, v18b)

 

Deliverance     / Rescue           (v16, v18)

But so what?

The ultimate message of the book (see the last verse) is surely that we need King Jesus, the new and better judge, to save us. And to save us from this cycle. 

We need to put our trust in him definitively once and for all as we come to him in repentance and faith. 

As New Testament believers, with the outpouring of the Spirit and two thousand years of Christian heritage, the completed Scriptures and the church at a much greater level of maturity, I think we can hope for greater faithfulness than many of the believers in the time of the judges. But do we not also find ourselves in something of a similar cycle? In our own way, are we not still prone to wander? We also need to put our trust in Jesus daily, whenever we see hints of disobedience or rebellion in our own lives to bring our distress to Jesus in repentance and ask him to deliver and rescue us. Otherwise, we can expect defeat and the chastisement of our Father who loves us too much to leave us comfortable in compromise. 

As Judges also points out, we still live in the world (with the nations remaining in the land, if you like) that our loyalty to Yahweh might be tested and that we might be trained for the spiritual warfare of the Christian life.