Part 18 of the David Pawson 'Unlocking the Bible' Podcast series 

David Pawson makes history interesting.  Looking at the books of Judges and Ruth, he shows that there are 4 levels of studying history. 1) Important people; 2) Nations, political; 3) Patterns/cycles – rise and fall of civilisations; 4) Purpose/plot. While people often see no purpose in history, David shows that God is moving history to His planned ending. History is HIS-story and He’s writing it. In Judges, people had gone away from God and life became cyclical and things just happened again and again. In Ruth the line becomes the main thing and it ends with a royal line that is fulfilling God’s purpose. Redemption gets you off the roundabout and onto a line that’s going somewhere and you’re part of a purpose that’s being worked out in history. Originally Judges and Ruth were one book and still are in the Hebrew Bible. That’s important because they belong together. Many of the characters in Judges are weak but God uses them. Their weakness was matched by God’s strength. The people in this book weren’t actual Judges. They each saved the nation from a very bad situation. The Judge was God, operating through people. There was no King in Israel in those days. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. Because they didn’t clean wickedness from the land it was a constant problem to them.