By Mark Grace, CCCNZ Ambassador
Na ka kohia ano hoki taua whakatupuranga katoa ki o ratou matua: a ka ara ake tetahi whakatupuranga ke i muri i a ratou, kihai nei i mohio ki a Ihowa, ki nga mahi ano hoki i mahia e ia mo Iharaira.
Ona maliliu lea o lenā tupulaga uma* ae tulaʻi mai le isi tupulaga ina ua mavae atu i latou, o ē e latou te leʻi iloa Ieova po o galuega na ia faia mo Isaraelu.
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.
Judges 2:10
Judges 2:6–15 describes a cycle of faithfulness to failure. Over two to three generations, the people of Israel move through moments of faithfulness, forgetting, forsaking, following and fusing; and as a result, they face God’s anger.
Faithfulness
In verses 6–9, under the spiritual and military leadership of Joshua, the people are faithful to God. They serve the Lord. They remember all the great things the Lord has done for Israel. They keep the covenant.
Forgetting
In verse 10, they forget. The generation that had experienced so much of God’s grace, God’s goodness, God's leading, and God's promises does not pass that knowledge on to the next generation.
Forsaking
It gets worse: in verse 12, their forgetfulness leads them to forsake the Lord. It is wilful forgetfulness—silence at best and suppression at worst.
Following and fusing
Verse 13. They don’t reject the God of the Bible outright. They just relegate him to third or fourth place and recruit other gods, the Baals and the Ashtoreths. They are idolatrous and disobedient.
Facing his anger
Verses 14–15. In his anger, God gives them over to the people they had already given themselves over to. In his anger he gives them over to the consequences of their choices.
We see this pattern in New Zealand over the last century. From 1925 to 2025, the people of New Zealand have forgotten God.
We can easily see this pattern in others. The Kiss Cam images of the cuddling couple—Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot at the Coldplay concert. Both were once faithfully married. At some point, they had a change of heart. They broke their marriage vows. They now face the professional and personal consequences.
It's harder to see the pattern in ourselves.
John Calvin famously noted that our hearts are perpetual idol factories. We don’t naturally drift towards covenant keeping; our hearts naturally drift towards idolatry. We don’t naturally drift to faithfulness; we drift towards forgetfulness.
This cycle in Judges reveals my own heart and points me to my need for Jesus Christ. In him, God didn’t send another flawed saviour. He sent me—and us—the true saviour.
On the cross, Jesus stood where we should have stood.
Jesus broke the cycle unfaithfulness and drifting by being broken for us. He was given over to death, not because of his idolatry but because of ours.
He faced the full force of God’s covenant curses, so we can receive the blessings of his covenant faithfulness.
