THE UNLIKELY: THE CYCLE / JUDGES 1:1-3:6

After 430 years immersed in the paganism of Egypt, the people of God were finally delivered from their bondage. It was relatively easy getting the people out of Egypt; the hard work would be getting Egypt out of the people. For nearly four decades they wandered through the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula, circling, walking, waiting and learning the hard lessons of obedience. Day after painful day they learned to trust God. Then under the leadership of Joshua these freed slaves entered the Promised Land and were confronted by the fertility cults there. They fought to remove this influence from the land, but to no avail. As they fought, obedience became an afterthought, and they stumbled into their second failure: the breakdown of the family. Their disobedience and family breakdown triggered a cycle of chaos that repeats throughout the book of Judges. Tempted by disobedience and witnessing the unraveling of the family, we find tremendous similarities to our modern era. If we're not careful to learn the lessons from the past, we too are plunged into chaos.