Sermon Resources
Introduction to Ruth
The book of Ruth is primarily concerned with two things: land and lineage.[1] It begins with the story of a famine and a man, Elimelech, who took his wife and sons (lineage) from the Promised Land into a foreign land in which he and his sons died, leaving Naomi without a lineage. The book of Ruth is about how Yahweh brought Naomi back to the land and provided her with a lineage through Ruth and Boaz. In chapter 1, Yahweh…
Izban, Elon, & Abdon
Once again, and for the last time, we encounter more minor judges as we walk through this book: Izban, Elon, & Abdon. Together with the previous judges, they bring the total number of minor judges to 6, equaling that of the major judges. These three serve as a bridge between the Jephthah cycle (chapters 10-12) and the Samson cycle (chapters 13-16). The account is so short we can quote it in full: After him Ibzan of Bethlehem judged Israel. 9…
Tola and Jair
As we continue our walk through the book of Judges, we come to two more “minor” judges: Tola and Jair (Judges 10:1-5). We should note that we call them “minor” judges only because they occupy such a small space in the book, not because they were insignificant in their time, similarly to how we call the books of Hosea-Malachi “minor” prophets because their books are shorter than the “major” prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, & Ezekiel), but their ministry was no less…
Shamgar
After him was Shamgar the son of Anath, who killed 600 of the Philistines with an oxgoad, and he also saved Israel. Judges 3:31 As we’ve seen in the past few weeks, the book of Judges recounts a cycle of sin, judgment, and deliverance in Israel, and each time God works deliverance by the hand of a judge. The major judges are Othniel, Ehud, Deborah/Barak, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. They each receive a full cycle and, in some cases, multiple…