Compromise & Consequence
Notes
Transcript
Intro: Theme/Topic (What’s the problem, the question, etc.)
Why Judges? If you’ve ever read Judges, you know why I’m asking that question! There are parts of the Bible that are difficult and even offend modern sensibilities. There are verses that frequently end up on t-shirts and coffee mugs and people declare them to be their life verses. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I’m pretty sure none of those verses are from the book of Judges.
This book is violent and unsettling at times (especially as we get to the later chapters). Many times the character of some of the “heroes” is at best questionable.
So back to my question. Why Judges?
First, as we draw nearer to Easter Sunday, the book of Judges will serve as a mirror for our hearts. As we encounter the brokenness of the people in Judges we will be knocked off our moral high-horses and confronted with brokenness in our own hearts. In short, the book of Judges will remind us how badly we need a savior that our celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus might be that much richer and sweeter!
Secondly, in an election year where we will be tempted to point our fingers outward at our ideological enemies, the book of Judges will remind us that one of the greatest enemies of the church is not “OUT THERE” but is “IN HERE!”
Thirdly, the book of Judges will act as a divine rumble strip. Ask my wife, she loves when I veer on to the rumble strip on the highway — she doesn’t. No one does. It’s jarring and unnerving! But it gets your attention doesn’t it! But it is so much better than the alternative if we were to veer too far off the road if there was no rumble strip. In this way the book of Judges serves as a warning to us of the spiritually lethal nature of sin.
Finally, the book of Judges will give us front row seats to a tension that this book by itself doesn’t resolve. We will see this in our text today. The tension between a God who has promised to be faithful to His people and a God who must punish evil — even when the evil is in His own people. Which aspect of God will win out at the end of the day? Will his faithfulness rule out over his demand for justice or will His demand for justice rule out over His faithfulness?
The book of Judges doesn’t often leave it’s treasures in plain sight for us to discover like our favorite life verses BUT like a coal mine, there are stunning diamonds here if we are willing to dig and get a little dirty. Let’s start digging!
Scripture
Grab your Bibles and please turn with me to Judges 1:1-2:5. If you need to use a pew Bible, you’ll find today’s text on page 236. I’m going to do things a bit differently today. I’m not going to ask you to stand while I read the entire passage — Your welcome :-) I’m actually not going to read the entire passage out loud because it’s 41 verses long. It would take up a third of my sermon time just to read it all.
But what I want to you to do is have your Bibles open and following along with me. I will read portions of this text and summarize others. But have it open on your laps so that you can follow along.
Prayer
Father we thank you and praise you this morning that ALL of your Word is God breathed and useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness — even the difficult parts and the scriptures that make us uncomfortable. May Your word to us this morning from the book of Judges challenge us this morning and mold us more into the character of your Son Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. We ask these things in Christ’s name — AMEN!
Intro: Formal (give context to passage, setting the scene, big idea)
Before we dive right in. It’s necessary to give you some historical background and to address a MAJOR elephant in the room. First let’s tackle the elephant. Then we’ll get to the background before working through the text together.
Remember when I said earlier that the book of Judges can offend many modern sensibilities. Well one of them is an accusation made by many — and some will tell you that this is THE reason that they cannot believe in the Christian God. And this is it — WHY would a loving God command the genocide of the people living in the land God told His people to go and possess?
I need to take a little time here before we really dig into chapter one, to clearly and carefully address this accusation.
First, God does command the Israelites to devote to destruction the people living in the land. But God also says in the 10 Commandments that it’s wrong to kill people and to steel from them. So, when we kill people who have not attacked us and steel their land that is theft and murder and it’s wrong. So, why this an exception? Let me be very clear —
THIS IS NOT GOD COMMANDING GENOCIDE — For one simple reason. God is not commanding the people of the land to be wiped out because of their ethnicity or nationality — He’s commanding their destruction because they are GUILTY.
What are they guilty of? I’ll spare you all the gory details because there are some young children in the room but you can read about it on your own in Leviticus 18:6-30 and Deuteronomy 18:9-14. When you read these passages you will learn that the people of the land were wicked, corrupt, oppressive, and perverted people!
So, God’s command to devote the people to destruction was an act of justice and Israel was the instrument God used to execute His justice.
We’ve seen in the Bible God using other instruments to carry out His justice on other large groups of people who were given over to horrendous evil. One of the most well known is the the flood in the days of Noah that wiped out the entire population of the earth except for 8 people!
Then there was the raining down of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorra.
So God devoting these people to destruction does not mean that God hates non-Israelites — It means that God hates wickedness, evil, perversion, and oppression.
In Book of Joshua we learn of one of the people of the land — Rahab, a prostitute, who helped the Israelites and made their God her God — a foreigner who became a member of God’s people and was even included in the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah! — This shows us clearly that this was not about ethnic cleansing!
One of the best ways to understand God’s judgement on these people is to consider that God knows the end from the beginning. And in His perfect foreknowledge, He alone knows who will be condemned on Judgement Day. And so, it is entirely within His prerogative as God of the universe to bring judgement down on certain people of His choosing “early.”
We’re almost done with this elephant. One question remains — “What’s to stop someone today from claiming that God told them to wipe out some group they deem to be evil?”
This question brings up a vital issue about the nature of the Christian view of God’s revelation. Historically, orthodox Christianity has agreed that Bible alone is the complete revelation of God’s special will.
There are some people today who claim to receive special “WORDS” from God as modern day prophets and apostles on an equal level to guys like Moses and Joshua! This extremely dangerous because there is no check against declaring some kind of new “holy war.” Because someone could just say, “God told them to do it.”
So, if you ever find yourself in a church where people are claiming some form of NEW special revelation from God — run! The Scriptures we have are sufficient for us to know God and follow Him faithfully.
Now there’s only one related and timely disclaimer that is needed before we dig in to the text. And it’s this — with everything going on right now in Israel and Gaza, we cannot use the book of Joshua or Judges to draw a straight line to today in order to declare what is happening now is the result of a Divine command from the Lord.
I’m not saying that Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself. I’m ONLY saying that their actions are not the result of some new DIVINE imperative from God today or an ancient one from here in the book of Judges. Is that clear?!
Now, let me lay down some historical context for our text today. Many of you are probably familiar the events of the book of Exodus. God raises up Moses to deliver God’s people from slavery and oppression from the Egyptians. There were 10 plagues and then God led His people out of Egypt in dramatic fashion when He parted the Red Sea and the people walked through on dry ground. And as Pharaoh and his army pursued them, the sea come crashing back down and consumed them!
God then gave His people the 10 Commandments through Moses on the top of Mount Sinai. And God led His people through the desert to the boarders of the promised land that He was giving His people to possess. But they chickened out because the people of the land were big and scary! So, God punished them by causing them to wander the desert for forty years until all that generation died out… all but Joshua and Caleb — the only two people who didn’t chicken out but were over ruled by the majority.
Now after Moses died, Joshua was His successor who finally led God’s people into the promised land. And one of the first cities they defeated was Jericho. You probably know that story about how they marched around the city for 7 days and God caused the walls of the city to miraculously fall to the ground!
So, under Joshua’s leadership God’s people take the land in a rather blitzkrieg fashion. And the book of Judges and our text today begins with the death of Joshua. The reality is that while the people did take the land under Joshua’s leadership, there still remained many pockets of resistance where the land was not fully in their control. So, now the Israelites need to finish the job, they need to fully drive the people out of the land. This is where the book of Judges begins.
Alright. As we work through this text we’re going to see how seriously God takes
even a little disobedience. I’ve God three points to guide us…
Compromise
Consequence
Christ
Compromise
Compromise
Look at the first two verses…
After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, “Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites, to fight against them?”
The Lord said, “Judah shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand.”
Chapter one follows 9 of the tribes of Israel and their efforts to fully drive out the people of the land. The narrative begins with the tribe of Judah who the Lord says should be the first to go up.
Much of this chapter focuses on Judah and for the most part you might say there were pretty successful but there were some compromises. Almost immediately they slip up by inviting the tribe of Simeon to help them. But remember, God did not say Judah and Simeon shall go up ONLY that Judah shall go up.
So what’s happening here is Judah is doubting that the Lord who said, “I have given this land into your hand!” They looked at the task the Lord assigned them and didn’t think they could do it without another tribe’s help. This may seam minor or nit picky but notice that has this chapter unfolds that what seems like a minor crack now will get worse and worse. And this is the pattern that the book of Judges will take…it starts small but progressively get’s worse.
The narrative continues detailing much of Judah’s successes. And for a moment the spotlight shines on Caleb in vv. 11-15, who rewards the faithfulness of Othniel by giving his daughter Achsah in marriage to him. This is probably the lone bright spot here in this text. We get a picture of Caleb as a father rewarding faithfulness to God’s commands. And parents shouldn’t we want that our children marry spouses who are faithful to the Lord’s commands. This is what we see in 11-15.
Now look with me at v. 19…
And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.
This is stunning! The Lord was with Judah BUT he could not drive out the people in the plain because they had chariots of iron. Understand that what’s happening here is the same thing that happened in v. 3…
As Judah assessed the situation in v. 3 they didn’t think they could be successful by themselves so they invited Simeon to join them.
Here they assess the situation and determine that chariots of iron were too much for them to handle — This might seem like common sense in the eyes of the world but it results in faithlessness because they didn’t trust God, who the first part of v. 19 says was with them!
Tim Keller here has a way with words that helps us unpack and apply this principle for us today…
It is not our lack of strength that prevents us from enjoying God’s blessings…It’s our lack of faith in His strength!
Whenever we rely on ourselves and the seeming common sense of our world instead of simply obeying God we will give up just like Judah did.
And if you skip down briefly to chapter 2:2 we see how God assesses these events. Judah said, “we could not drive them out” but God says, “No, you would not drive them out.”
What Judah saw as good reasons for failure God sees as excuses! God will never ask you to do something that is impossible for you to do in His strength. There is never an “I CAN’T” with God only an “I WON’T” when we rely on our own strength and fail to trust God’s strength.
What are some hard things that God commands us to do that we often make excuses for not doing? Here’s just a few that I can think of…
Colossians 3:13 says we are to forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Common sense that looks only at your own resources says, “I can’t forgive that person.” — But God sees this as an I WON’T that shows a lack of faith in His strength!
Here’s another hard one — Ephesians 4:25 “Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”
Common sense says I CAN’T because If I tell the truth that person may not like me anymore! OR it would hurt them too badly. But God sees that is an I WON’T that shows a lack of faith in His strength.
Now moving on in our text, Judah’s I CAN’T attitude spreads like a virus to the other tribes.
In v. 21 the tribe of Benjamin fails to drive out the Jebusites from Jerusalem and so the lived side by side with the people they were supposed to drive out.
In vv. 22-26, the house of Joseph makes a covenant with some of the people of the land — this something they were strictly forbidden from doing!
In vv. 27 to the end of the chapter things really start unraveling as tribe after tribe like a broken record — does not drive out the people they were supposed to.
Some of them, like the tribe of Zebulun in v. 30 figured — “If we can’t drive them out and they we may was well gain some economic advantage from the situation and made them their slaves!”
Things got so bad that by the time you get the tribe of Asher in v. 32 that it wasn’t that the Canaanites lived among them — NO! It says they lived among the Canaanites!
In v. 34 we see that the tribe of Dan wasn’t driving out the Amorites but it was the Amorites who were driving them out!
And the chapter ends in v. 36 with the headline not being about Israel’s boarders but about the Amorite’s boarders
And as we turn to chapter two the Lords’ verdict is that Israel has disobeyed in two ways: Look at v. 2…
and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done?
Israel disobeyed coming and going — they DID what they were not supposed to DO and the failed to DO what they were supposed to!
But consider the situation Israel now finds themselves in…they obeyed to a point. They even saw some successes and victories but they were interwoven with serious compromises as they failed to do all that the Lord commanded mostly because in their assessment it was too hard.
Now let’s look at the disastrous consequences in my second point…
Consequence
Consequence
Look at v. 3 with me…
So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”
Now that Israel wouldn’t drive out the people of the land as God commanded them they will be thorns in their sides.
They are now living among the idol-worshipping Canaanites and God is going to give them what they wanted. He is going to allow them to sleep in the bed they have made! And like buried landmines, the evil ways of the Canaanites lie dormant ready to explode the spiritual lives of God’s people.
This is what happens when sin is allowed to rent space in your life it becomes a thorn in your side. It will not lead to joy but will rob your joy from you!
God wants obedience in every area of your life not just some. The problem is that for many of you your sin seems too difficult to drive out so you rent it a room in your life. You get comfortable with it. But it will ultimately be a thorn that robs you of true joy!
Verse 3 also says their gods or idols will be a snare. Now we don’t worship idols like the Canaanites did — little wooden or stone statues but we do just in different ways. This is because idolatry is ultimately about our hearts.
Idolatry is when we take some good gift in the world God has created and we make it the ultimate source of our security, identity, or value — it could be your job, your grades, your sport, your comfort, your health, your friends, your boyfriend or girlfriend, even your marriage! All of these things are good things God has given for us to enjoy but as soon as they become our source of ultimate value and identity they’ve crossed a line from being a gift to be enjoyed to being a god that we worship with our time, our money, and our thoughts.
Verse 3 says these idols trap us. It’s because there is such an addictive nature to them. When something becomes an idol it ensnares us — we have to have it — we can’t say no to it — we are addicted to it.
And when we fail to perform and live up to it’s demands it’s a merciless master — a snare and a thorn.
These consequences lead God’s people to weeping in vv. 4-5 and perhaps some form of repentance. But as you’ll see in the book of Judges there is a repeating cycle that plays out. And as it goes on and on the repentance grows weaker and so does the deliverance.
And now that you’re all good and depressed, beaten down, and discouraged, let’s discover good news of Christ here in our text in my final point.
Christ
Christ
Look at 2:1 with me…
Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you,
Remember that tension I spoke about earlier? — The tension between God’s judgement and His faithfulness. Well, here it is — God says, “I will NEVER break my covenant with you. But then in v. 3 God’s judgement is that He will NOT drive the people out from among them — they will be thorns and snares that lead to death.
How is it that these two things can be reconciled? God’s faithfulness and His judgement?
Look at 2:1 more closely with me. It’s no coincidence that the angel of the Lord goes up from Gilgal to Bochim? Joshua 5:9 tells us what happened at Gilgal.
And the Lord said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” And so the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.
This is a reminder of God’s grace — He is the one who rolls away your reproach and shame — the name Gilgal literally sounds like the Hebrew word for ROLL. And notice that the angel goes from Gilgal to Bochim a word that means WEEPING. Have you connected the dots yet? The grace of God that rolls away your shame comes to you in your place of weeping!
This can only be foreshadowing the beyond the book of Judges to the New Testament — the only place where the tension between God’s faithfulness and justice is satisfied. God’s perfect justice was satisfied when Jesus died on the cross as the full payment for our all our failures to obey!
AND the cross is at the same time where God shows Himself to be faithful to all His promises to bless us!
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
If you’re here today and you are feeling the weight of your failure to obey God KNOW that Jesus is the only one who can roll that shame away BECAUSE He’s the only one who took it upon Himself and paid for it on the cross and rose again so that you can be set free from the snare of sin and welcomed and accepted by God!
Trust Jesus to be your savior today!
And if you’re here and your struggling to find joy in your Christian life because of the burden of your failures then look to the cross and remember that Christ was rejected that you would be accepted.
And finally if you’re here today and you are renting space to sin in your life and you’re filled with a lot of “I Cant’s” that are really “I WON’Ts” and you’ve become comfortable and complacent with it. Look to the cross and remember the high cost Jesus paid for your sins to be forgiven — and be challenged but not crushed to live better!
Prayer
Closing Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness
Benediction
Church there’s a world of people who are caught in the snares of many false gods and their sins are perpetual thorns in their sides robing them of true joy. Will you tell them how Christ died and rose again to set them free!?
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Romans 15:13