The God Who Remembers
For Meditation (Corey Widmer)
This Sunday we begin a new sermon series through one of the strangest and most challenging books in the Bible: the book of Judges. Filled with violence, moral confusion, and deeply flawed leaders, Judges tells the story of what happens when God's people gradually forget who they are and absorb the values and practices of the world around them. Far from being a collection of heroic stories, Judges is a cautionary tale about the slow erosion of a people's identity. It asks a question that feels remarkably relevant for our own unsettled time: Who are we becoming?
Judges 2:6–23 gives us a kind of preview of the entire book. Again and again, Israel forgets the Lord, turns toward other gods, suffers the consequences, cries out, and experiences God's deliverance— only to begin the cycle again. Yet beneath this painful pattern is an extraordinary testimony to grace: though God's people repeatedly forget him, God does not forget his people. Judges is both warning and hope, judgment and grace— a call to renewed covenant faithfulness grounded in the steadfast love of God.
As we gather at the Lord's Table this Sunday, we will hear Jesus' invitation anew: “Do this in remembrance of me.” We come as forgetful people to remember the God who has remembered us.
Questions for reflection and discussion
Judges 2:10 says that a generation arose who “knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.” What do you think it means to “forget” God? How is that different from simply forgetting information about God?
What are some of the forces in our culture that are forming us right now? What are they teaching us to love, fear, desire, or hope for?
Spiritual drift is usually gradual rather than dramatic. Where do you notice that kind of slow drift in your own life?
Judges repeatedly raises the question, “Who are God's people becoming?” What qualities would you hope increasingly characterize us as a church in the midst of a fragmented and anxious culture?
What helps you remember God's faithfulness? Are there practices, people, stories, prayers, or habits that regularly bring you back to who God is and who you are in Christ?
Judges 2:6-23
After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the land, each to their own inheritance. The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.
Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of a hundred and ten. And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.
After that whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another generation grew up who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress.
Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, “Because this nation has violated the covenant I ordained for their ancestors and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their ancestors did.” The Lord had allowed those nations to remain; he did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua.