One of the great gifts of studying the narratives of redemptive history is that these ancient tales of crisis, faith, and courage offer us, the contemporary people of God, a moment when “the very real past meets the very needy present.”

This week’s study is all about cycles: cycles that need to be celebrated—birth, growth, and maturity; cycles that need to be broken—stagnation, deterioration, and death. Our focus will be on the twelve cycles of the book of Judges, each of which revolves around one of the twelve heroes celebrated...

How could the successors of Joshua, the heirs of the divine promise, lose their grip on that gift that stood as a goal and apex of the entire work of God narrated from the Creation through the Exodus to the conquest? The answer is chilling: Israel frittered away its inheritance a little bit at a ...

We meet Deborah, an unlikely leader, a woman in a patriarchal culture who captured the respect of her people, executing judgment from the public meeting place under a tree, a woman of courage, integrity, gravitas, worthy of admiration.

For twenty years Israel had been afraid to fight against Sisera and his chariot forces. But under the courageous leadership of Deborah and Barak, the men of Naphtali, Zebulun, Issachar, and Ephraim stepped forward to claim their inheritance. Something had shifted, and Israel was ready to break th...

Yahweh has spoken. The courageous have come. The militia have taken up arms and joined their captain Barak. The prophet Deborah is with them. The battle is necessary. But the odds are impossibly stacked against them, and these men expect to die. What territory can you see that is worth fighting f...

The strategy of victory for the kingdom of God in both covenants is that God delights in choosing “the weak things of the world to shame the strong” (1 Cor 1:27). Feeling a little outgunned today? You might be exactly where God wants you.