The King we need

Israel needed a king. But not just any king would do. Israel got one. A Benjamite king. Saul. But not a man after God’s heart. He could do nothing about the root of Israel’s problem. God would eventually establish his ideal king, one after his own heart, David. In the history of Israel, he was the best of the kings. But he too took on Canaanite culture in big ways. Solomon—king of peace. Yet a man who worshipped at the altar of pleasure with foreign women. God’s people need a supremely righteous, covenantally pure king. That’s the king that Judges argues for. And Israel had that king, in the Lord, though they refused to acknowledge him. But this is what makes those final words of the book so important. Prophetic, even. In those days there was no king in Israel. But there is hope for one day, where God’s people will have a king, the one they truly need. For that king, the book of Judges cries out. It yearns for the day that brings the ultimate king, who will deal with his people’s sin, uproot his people’s real problem from their hearts, and rescue, shepherd, carry, and transform his people, according to his righteousness. His morality. His code of ethics. God in his marvellous grace, despite his people’s persistent expressions of Canaanite behaviour, despite the awful atrocities recorded here, does not destroy them. They are not completely consumed. Because of his grace in the coming Saviour and King, the nation of Israel does indeed come out of the dark and horrific days of the judges more or less intact. Because he was looking to the future.

Judges shows us all the King we so desperately need to rescue us from doing what’s right in our own eyes. The one who would rule by serving, loving, redeem by giving up his own life, and separate us from the Canaan of this depraved world by living a life according to God’s morality, God’s Word. Jesus Christ is that King, who then offered up his own life to destroy our sin, destroy the Canaan within, so that we can be really forgiven. He is the only source of hope—for Benjamin, for Israel, for us. And because he then arose from the dead, the words of the apostle Paul, a Benjamite himself, ring true: there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is instead righteousness and holiness, in Christ.