Judges 3:1-11

     The Central Idea of the Text is that God punished Israel for disobedience (Judg. 3:1-6), and when His people cried out to Him, He raised up a deliverer to rescue them and give them rest (Judg. 3:7-11).  

     God left the pagan nations in the land to punish Israel for their disobedience (Judg. 2:3), to teach them warfare (Judg. 3:2), and to test them (Judg. 3:4). The Lord’s tests were designed to expose the hearts of His people as to whether they would obey Him or not (see Ex. 16:4; 20:20). Israel failed God by:

1. Living among the Canaanites (Judg. 3:5).
2. Intermarrying with the Canaanites (Judg. 3:6).
3. Serving the gods of the Canaanites (Judg. 3:7).  

     In Judges, God is the primary cause of Israel’s blessing and cursing, victory or defeat.  God is always pictured as sovereign ruler, and the people were to submit their lives to Him if they were to know success. We observe that God allows His people (and fallen angels) to produce sin and evil, but never beyond or against His sovereign will (Job 1:1-21; Ps. 105:12-15; 1 Kings 22:19-23; 2 Cor. 12:7-10). “Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6). And, “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” (Dan 4:35).  Throughout Judges:

1. Israel repeatedly did evil in the sight of the Lord, each generation progressively getting worse (Judg. 2:19; 3:7, 12; 4:1; 6:1; 10:6; 13:1).
2. God repeatedly gave them into the hands of their enemies to punish them (Judg. 3:8, 12; 4:2; 6:1; 10:6-7; 13:1).
3. When His people cried out to the Lord, He repeatedly delivered them (Judg. 3:9, 15; 4:3; 6:6; 10:12; 18:23).

     Othniel was the first of Israel’s judges whom the Lord raised up as a deliverer to the give them rest from their enemies. Othniel would have been somewhere between 75 and 95 years of age. Othniel was obedient to the Lord. The obedience of this one man changed the course of history and proved a blessing to the nation of Israel. 

     Idolatry is the selfish sin of substitution in which we dedicate ourselves to something or someone lesser than God to meet our wants and needs.  Biblically, there is only one God, and He demands that His people worship Him.  God states, “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth” (Ex. 20:3-4). The exclusive worship of God is for His glory and our benefit. An idol can be either a physical object that symbolizes a deity, or it can be an abstract concept such as greed or justice.  A physical idol is merely the work of a craftsman (see Isa. 44:9-20). There is no life in it (Ps. 115:1-8; Jer. 51:17; Hab. 2:18-20), nor can it deliver in times of trouble (Isa. 46:5-7). A mental idol is created in one’s mind and becomes the object of one’s devotion. The record of Israel’s history—with the exception of a few generations that were faithful to God—is a record of their worship of pagan idols (Ex. 32:1-6), which at times included human sacrifice (Deut. 12:31; 18:10-11; 2 Ki. 21:6; Ezek. 16:20-21). The books of Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, 1 & 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all reveal Israel regularly committed idolatry, and this caused them to suffer greatly under God’s discipline as He faithfully executed the cursing aspects of the Mosaic Covenant (Deut. 28). Devotion to God guards our hearts from the sin of idolatry.