What were they waiting for? (Joshua, Judges)

As God's people left Egypt, they were given law and God himself dwelt near the people in the tent of meeting. They were bound for the promised land, yet because of their rebellion against God, they were disciplined with a 40 year period in the wilderness. The land that had been promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was finally to be taken as an inheritance, but the people desire something else other than what God has promised. Time and time again, rather than waiting for what God has promised, the ancient people of God coveted something else. 

The book of Joshua tells of the ancient Israelite entrance into the promised land. The entrance is met with opposition by the fortified city of Jericho. Spies are sent to scout out the land. The people cross the Jordan river which was a landmark boarder. The last time the ancient Israelite people had passed through water it was at the Red Sea as the Lord destroyed the pursuing army of Pharaoh (Exodus 14). Now as Israel crossed the Jordan (Joshua 3) into the promised land they were the conquering army. 

The promised land saw it's mighty fortress of Jericho fall before the people of God. This is where we might suppose the book of Joshua, and indeed the whole bible would end! The "happily ever after" page should come somewhere after Joshua chapter 8. Instead, we read of continued conquest, that this work of claiming the promised land was an ongoing effort that lasted a generation. The death of Joshua brings about a calamitous failure of the ancient Israelites. It sends the people of God into a spiral that only God himself can provide a way out. 

We're told in the beginning of Judges how Israel follows after their own desires. Trading what God had promised, for a life they saw fit to lead. Judges 1:27-36 lays out a systematic account of the failures of each individual tribe in relation to the command God had given them regarding conquest. This failure then leads to a desecration in worship. Judges 2:11-12 tells us:

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. 

In the midst of this heinous treachery against the Lord we might think the Lord would destroy ancient Israel. Instead, he continues to provide leader after leader and opportunity after opportunity for repentance. Othniel, Ehud, Deborah and Barak, Gideon, Tola and Jair, Jephthah and Samson, all used by God to lead God's people away from their wanting and waiting for their sinful hearts, towards wanting and waiting for the Lord. The nature of war in the promised land changes as Israel turns further and further away from the Lord. Rather than conquering the land from the Canaanites (and subsequent "ite" people) the people of God begin to make war against one another. 

There were land disputes and family disputes, boarder skirmishes and outright massacres committed within the people of God against one another. What were they waiting for? More land? They had been given the entirety of the promised land to inhabit! What were they waiting for? A leader from God? They had been given generation after generation, starting with Moses at the Exodus, Joshua into the promised land, and many more in the book of Judges. What were they waiting for? I fear the answer is all too similar to what many of us wait for. The desires of our hearts. The book of Judges ends with some of the most damning, tragic words words in the whole bible:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25)

A people who ought to have been waiting for the Lord, exchanged the promises of the creator, for the instant gratification of self deification. We are at our worst, in the same way the people of Joshua and Judges were at their worst. It's been true since Adam and Eve, and will remain true until the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds. Exchanging God's Word and rule for our own, always leads towards destruction. We, like them, have exchanged the rule of God through his Word and instruction, for the sake of our own wants and passions.