The Bible Project helpfully summarizes and illustrates how Judges presents the story of Israel’s Total Failure. This was one of the darkest times in Israel’s history – a time of chaos, rebellion and judgment. But it was also a time of deliverance as God kept on raising up heroes to save His people from the consequences for their sins.
Though Open the Bible focuses on Judges this week, I have chosen to skip ahead to Ruth. The book of Ruth is set in the time of the Judges but has a much more hopeful and positive message. Where Judges is a downward spiral into increasing evil, culminating in a gruesome civil war, Ruth is a beautiful story of redemption.
This contrast invites us to consider which better describes each of us. We all have to face suffering – some as a consequence of our own sin and some a result of our fallen world. Do we respond like Israel in the days of the Judges by turning increasingly to our own desires and the world or do we, like Ruth, seek refuge in the God of Israel and specifically in our Kinsman-Redeemer, whose name is Jesus?