Judges 2: What Happens When We Forget God?

Introduction

"When was the last time you asked yourself: how did I end up here?" With these words, Jack Driver-Székely opens a six-week series on the book of Judges at HTB Church, under the wider title "When Life Falls Apart."

The book of Judges gives a glimpse into the history of God's people. The preacher's hope is not that we stop at the question "why is this in the Bible?", but that we rediscover the covenant God made with his people, and find hope in it when life falls apart.

Today's text, Judges 2:10-19, sums up the whole book. In it, Jack Driver-Székely spots several stages of life worth meditating on, and one question that runs through the entire message: what happens when we forget God?

Message Outline

1. Read the label before you weed everything

While training at theological college for ordination, Jack lives with his wife in a house in Cambridge. During a visit, the landlord asks him to deal with a few weeds in the garden.
He finds a weedkiller in the shed and sprays it generously over the whole lawn, without even looking at where the weeds are. Then he turns the bottle over and reads, in very large letters: "Do not use on the whole lawn."
The garden soon looks like a heap of mud. Months later, he is still trying to replant grass, because he had not read the instructions.
His question: when life falls apart, how often do you go back to the story of God's people so you don't fall into the same mistakes?

2. When life goes on: a generation that does not know the Lord

God's people live in the promised land under the leadership of Joshua, Moses' close companion who succeeded him. In verse 8, Joshua dies. By verse 10, the whole generation around him has died too.
Joshua was not only a military leader. He embodied Exodus 6:7, the covenant God made with his people: "I will take you to me for a people, and I will be your God." Joshua knew it was true: he had literally walked through the parted Red Sea and come out of slavery.
Then another generation rises. Cultures change, stories shift, and the new generation wonders whether it will follow the path of its elders.
The preacher, who studies Generation Z, observes that it faces an epidemic of loneliness, often linked to smartphones. He recalls that six years ago, during the Covid pandemic, young people were handed iPads and iPhones with the words: "Here is your school, here is your social life." According to a recent study, 19% of five-year-olds in the United Kingdom have a mobile phone.
This generation did not ask to come after Joshua, and yet an entire book tells how it goes from bad to worse. Facing a rising generation, we can pray, draw on resources such as Alpha Youth, and begin to notice the signs of God's faithfulness in young people.

3. God also speaks through the smallest

Earlier in the year, Jack and his wife, parents of two young children, are looking for somewhere to live. Their landlord is selling. They find a place, lose it, and then the end of the lease approaches with no solution.
One Tuesday morning during a Tube strike in London, the tires on his bike are flat and the pump, broken by the children, no longer works. He has to take the car. With his hands on the wheel, he prays: "Lord, show me why I had to drive on the one day when nobody wants to drive in central London."
Stuck in traffic, he sees a van pull up beside him with these words on it: a promise fulfilled. He takes a photo and sends it to his wife.
Just as the notification sounds, at the other end of the room, their five-year-old spontaneously prays: "Lord, we ask you to show us your promises, and we know that you are real."
God can speak through the smallest, if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. A new generation can rise, and God can act.

4. From bad to worse: knowing the story is not enough

That is not what happens in Judges. Jack confesses his habit of turning a bad situation into a worse one: a bike needing repair that he decides to ride to the shop instead of pushing, only to fall outside the store and damage it further.
On his honeymoon, he did not want to leave a water slide: "One last time." He cut open his elbow. Ever since, at home, when Jack says "last time," everyone runs away.
In verse 11, the new generation immediately does what is evil in the Lord's eyes. It forgets God and adopts the practices the covenant forbade. The consequences are clear: the people no longer win victories in the promised land.
As a child, at a gas station, encouraged by his older brother, he opens the box of powdered-sugar sweets kept in his grandfather's immaculate car. The sugar explodes everywhere. Covered in powder, he answers "nothing" when his grandfather asks what happened. The consequence is simple: "Now you clean the car and put it back as it was."
You might think that knowing the story is enough to avoid mistakes. The book of Judges teaches something else: it is not only about theoretical knowledge, but about experiencing the covenant.
This new generation had not crossed the Red Sea, had not seen the promised land for the first time, had not lived in slavery. It knew these stories because they had been told to it. It had been told about God, but it had not experienced God.
When life falls apart, we can turn to the history books of the Bible, but we also need to long for an encounter with God, to experience the God who holds us when everything collapses.

5. The cycle that becomes a spiral

The people sin, that is, they break the covenant. They were forbidden to adopt the practices of the Canaanites, such as child sacrifice. Yet in the story of Jephthah, he expresses his gratitude to God by sacrificing his child.
The consequence is real: oppression. Then the people do what everyone does when their life falls apart: "Help us." They repent, and understand that if the covenant is true, God can still rescue them.
God then raises up "shofet," in Hebrew. These are not judges who decide between right and wrong, but influential leaders who deliver the people from captivity, discern when things go wrong, and whom the Lord and the Spirit empower to help the people. Curiously, according to the preacher, they are called judges only in this passage. The only one who bears that title in the book is God.
You could describe a tidy cycle that turns around and around. It is in fact a downward spiral. As you read chapters 18 to 21, you wonder: why do we need to preach this on a Sunday? Because the influence of these leaders ends up blurring the covenant and distorting God's promises.
Jack tells of a stew burned at the bottom of the pot, which he decided to serve anyway. At the table, nobody said "a bit salty": "It tastes burnt." He protested, but as he served it, everyone could see it was burnt. When those with influence distort God's will, things go from bad to worse.

6. A covenant that disappears, then is revived

The hope of this series is to awaken a collective memory, not of the history of God's people, but of the story of God and his faithfulness.
The covenant is recalled at the beginning of the book, then it disappears. It becomes present again in the next book, Ruth, when the foreigner who had no claim to the covenant says to Naomi: "Your people will be my people, and your God my God."
All have fallen short of the glory of God, as Paul says. We cannot look at this spiral and say "that's their problem": "I will never be that little boy with the box of powdered sugar, I will never serve a burnt dish." Life moves on, things fall apart, and the cycle starts to look like our own.

7. The one who breaks the circle

The Scottish theologian John Swinton, in a book on dementia, speaks of the fear of forgetting and the fear of being forgotten. Meditating on God's grace, mercy and love, he writes that this deep fear of being forgotten is replaced by a promise deeper still: we will not be forgotten, not by our loved ones, but by the Creator of heaven and earth.
God does not break this spiral through us. He moves from the covenant to the person of Jesus Christ, who took upon himself all our sins and all our spirals, so that they would not be our story. We know the ending: death will not have the last word.
There are two ways to live these six weeks: read Judges as a story, or meditate on "his story." If our life is a glass of water, meditating on who Jesus Christ is, and on God's love, mercy and faithfulness through Judges, saturates us with his grace. Life may fall apart, but we know that God is with us.
The other way is to rely on our spiritual practices: prayer, fasting, giving. "Done." Then summer comes, and focus slips away. Four days pass, and we have gone off the rails. A two-day leadership conference, and everything is lost again.
The command is simple: do not forget. Do not let your story be that of a generation that does not know the story of the one who came from heaven to die on the cross for you, so that you may have eternal life and life in abundance.
The book of Judges does not call for new strategies, but for letting ourselves be saturated with his presence. Hope is not a mere feeling: it is the presence of the one who is hope. "His name is Jesus Christ."

Key Takeaways

When a generation forgets God, it slides from bad to worse: the book of Judges is a warning for us too.
Knowing God's story is not enough: we need to experience the God who holds us when life falls apart.
Disobedience has real consequences, and influence that distorts the covenant makes the spiral worse.
God can speak through the smallest: a new generation can rise if we have eyes to see.
Jesus Christ breaks the circle by taking our sins upon himself: we are not forgotten, and death does not have the last word.

Personal Application

In what situation are you asking yourself right now: "How did I end up here?"
Do you know God mainly through what people have told you about him, or through what you have lived with him?
Do you also have a habit of turning a bad situation into a worse one? Which "one last time" do you need to give up?
What signs of God's faithfulness can you notice in the children and young people around you?
What does it mean for you this week not to forget the story of Jesus who died on the cross for you?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens when we forget God, according to Judges 2?

After Joshua's death, a generation rises that does not know the Lord or what he did for Israel. It does evil, serves other gods and suffers the consequences: oppression, defeat, distress. For Jack Driver-Székely, the book of Judges is a biblical warning about what happens when we forget God.

Who are the judges in the book of Judges?

The Hebrew word shofet does not refer here to judges who decide between right and wrong. They are influential leaders whom the Lord and the Spirit empower to deliver the people. The preacher points out that outside chapter 2, they are never called judges: the only one who bears that title in the book is God.

How do we escape the spiral described in the book of Judges?

Not by our own strength or by new strategies. God breaks the circle by moving from the covenant to the person of Jesus Christ, who took our sins and our spirals upon himself. The command is simple: do not forget, and let yourself be saturated with his presence and faithfulness.