Sermon Prep Outline | Judges 1:1–20

A Strong Start Does Not Equal A Strong Finish

Introduction: As many of you know, I love to play Disc Golf. It is not Frisbee Golf, I could preach a whole message about it but I am working on it not bother me anymore… Okay never mind, short sermon… Frisbee is a brand. Just like Kleenex is a brand, it is not a thing. Kleenex is a brand of tissues. Frisbee is a brand, so if you play Frisbee Golf, you would only be playing golf with one Frisbee. It’s like calling basketball Wilson-Ball because you play basketball with a Wilson branded ball…

Anyways, I love the sport of disc golf and while we were in Stillwater, where I grew up, for Men’s Advance, I was talking to a buddy that I used to play with about the disc golf scene here in Sioux Falls and how I have played in several tournaments. He was asking about how I placed and I started to tell him about my tournament problem. You see, in almost every tournament, a two round tournament, I have finished the first round in first place. For some reason I start tournaments really strong, but by the end of the last round I have fallen to 3rd place or 5th place. It’s frustrating because though I started well, no one cares about who finished the first round in first, they only care about who wins in the end. It literally doesn’t matter how I finished the first round, it matters how I finished in the end.

A strong start is great and it is important, don’t get me wrong… But a strong finish is absolutely essential.

What I had to remember in my disc golf game, what the children of Israel are about to learn, and what we need to be mindful of is that a strong start does not guarantee a strong finish. Just because you started strong does not mean you will finish strong.

I think we really need this because…

We have started really strong as Eastside Baptist Church, we’ve had great leadership for a long time, but a strong start does not guarantee a strong finish.

We have a lot of families that have started strong, you are here tonight as a testament to that desire, but just because you start strong as a family doesn’t mean that you will end strong.

Your marriage can start strong , but it’s finish is not guaranteed to be strong.

Kids, teens, you can start strong and be raised in church but just because you were raised in church does not mean that you will finish in church.

A strong start is very important, but….

I am thankful that in God’s grace and His mercy that we don’t have to have a strong start to finish strong. I am thankful that He allows us to get right and to get on the right path.

I think of Bro. Jeremy Jacob sitting there. I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this, but Bro. Jeremy did not have a strong start, in fact he had a pretty rough start to his life. But by God’s grace and His mercy, Bro. Jeremy got right, he got saved, and I would say that he is on a path to finish strong. And you know what is even better, now he took his less than ideal start and is trying to raise his kids to have the kind of start that he didn’t have.

Teens, you may look at someone like Bro. Jeremy, or Bro. Michael at Men’s Advance and say, “I can start however I want, as long as I come back to the Lord at some point, it will end well.” Well let me tell you, for every one Bro. Jeremy or one Bro. Michael, there are thousands and thousands of teenagers who are ending in failure.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself here but teens, you know many of your parents did not have the start that you are getting right now, they weren’t raised in church like you, you are getting a much stronger start, you know what that means? That means that God is expecting more out of you. God says that to whom much is given, much shall be required.

So, Jacob kids, God has done and is doing some great things with your parents. I can’t wait to see what God does with the Jacob family in Luverne. But you know what? As much as God is doing with them, He wants even more from you. He desires and even expects to use you in an even greater way.

You have been given a strong start so don’t waste it…

A strong start is so important but what we will see from this text is that a strong start does not guarantee a strong finish

(1:1-2)- Israel has a strong start. What constitutes a strong start, what did they get right?

A strong start requires you to personally seek God’s will for your life.

Joshua has just died, the Israelites have has a strong spiritual leader for the last couple hundred years but now, their leader is dead. It is not exactly clear whether Joshua failed to appoint another leader for when he was gone or that God did not direct someone to lead after Joshua, whatever the case is, the Israelites now have to seek God’s will for themselves. They could not rely on the faith of Moses or Joshua, they now have to personally seek God. And that is exactly what they did.

As the Israelites are embarking on this journey to claim God’s promise, to move forward as we talked about last week, they desire to know what God will is for them.

Application- If you want a strong start, you need to make your faith personal. You need to seek God yourself. Your faith cannot be reliant on a person or even a group of people.

Teens, as you are embarking on this journey of becoming an adult, especially you graduates who are just a couple months away from moving out from under your parents authority… Just like the children of Israel, you need to seek God for your self. You need to know what God’s will is for you personally, you need to know what God expects of you not just your parents, you need to have a walk with God on your own, you need to know God personally, you need to know what His Word says, because Joshua, your spiritual leaders, your parents won’t always be there to help you.

As we saw last week and we will see later in Judges, if this is just your parents faith, if you only come to church because they come, you only read your Bible because they make you it is not enough, it won’t last, you will soon find yourself falling to the culture and suffering the consequences of the contamination of the culture and finishing in failure.

If you want to have a strong start teenager, you have to seek God on your own, have your own walk with God His will for YOUR life.

Parents, foster an environment in your house that points your children to seek God’s will for their life. When you are setting up standards and rules in your home, don’t set them just because you’re the parent and that’s what you say, show them from God’s Word or better yet give your kids some direction so they can see it in God’s Word for themselves why you do what you do.

Help them not to get so caught up in sports or other hobbies that they don’t have time for their church or for their Bible. Make sure that you are pushing them to be more involved in church and in their own walk with the Lord than you push them in their sports.

Help them do well in school and be excellent but help them to have a balance and prioritize a personal relationship with God above all else. Push for excellence in school but more than anything push for excellence in their faith.

Have boundaries for them so that they don’t spend so much time on their phone or on video games that they can’t concentrate enough to read the Bible or they stay up too late to get up in time to have their devotions.

Parents, if you want your kids to have a strong start, do everything in your power to help them have a personal relationship with the Lord outside of your own.

Adults, if we want to have a strong start and maintain through to the end of our life then we have to personally seek God’s will for our lives. We also have to have a personal walk with the Lord.

I am so thankful for a great church to come to every week. I am so thankful for a pastor that so passionately seeks God’s direction for our church, that so passionately and faithfully preaches God’s Word, but just coming and being around each other, or hearing God’s Word preached three times a week is not enough. We need to feed ourselves from God’s Word.

If you only ate or drank three times a week you would not be in good shape, in fact you may not survive at all! Before you think this does not apply to us as adults, how many times do we rely on our Pastor to feed us instead of getting what we need ourselves?

Many times when people leave a church, they say, I am not being fed, I wasn't getting the help I needed from Pastor, well, God never designed you to be spiritually sustained by your pastor. God didn't design a Pastor to be a personal chef and cook a relationship with God for you everyday. No, He designed us to seek Him on a personal level.

If you want to have a strong start you have to personally seek God’s will for your life. You have to personally have a relationship with God.

Transition- The Israelites started well, they sought the Lord’s leadership.

(1:2) Israel receives instructions that Judah is the one to go up and fight against the Canaanites first and that God will be with Judah and give him the victory.

(1:3) So, before Judah goes up to fight, he asks his brother tribe, Simeon to go with him into the land. While that kind of makes sense because Simeon’s inheritance, their land was in the midst of Judah’s land. But, we’ll see in a moment that that those were not God’s exact commands.

(1:4-7) Judah takes the land and God gives them the victory.

They destroyed the Canaanites and the Perizzites and they also destroyed Adonibezek in a rather unique way.

Adonibezek was a ruthless king who when he conquered another kingdom, he would cut off the thumbs and the big toes of their king and make that king serve him. Talk about humiliating!

But, God is just and will always make sure that sin will not go unpunished. Even a pagan king realized that God saw what he was doing and though it seemed like for years that he got away with it, it finally caught up to him. This could be viewed one of two ways…

One, this can be an encouragement to us that even though it seems like sin is prevailing in our culture, that nothing can be done about it, that everyone else around you is getting promoted even though they are not always ethical, that your lost neighbor or co-worker is further ahead in life than you, take hope that God sees it all, and in then end, sin and wickedness will be dealt with and righteousness will be rewarded.

Two, this could be viewed as convicting thing that God sees what you are doing and though it may take years, though it may seem like you are getting away with the sin that you are committing, God says be sure your sin will find you out. How about we just be humble, confess our sin to the Lord and get it right before He has to humble us in a shocking manor…

(1:8-10)- Then, Jerusalem, Hebron, Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai are all taken and the people are driven out.

(1:11-13) Caleb gives his daughter to Othniel.

This part is recounting what happened in Joshua 15 where Caleb promises that whoever would take and destroy Kirjathsepher would be able to take his daughters hand in marriage.

You may look at this as a little radical but this was Joshua’s way of securing a husband that would be good for his daughter.

There are several things we could focus on here but I believe God gave us this account just to see the stark contrast of how Israel started verses how they finished in the book of Judges.

Caleb desires to give his daughter a man that is proven and that he knows will serve the Lord. This is in contrast to the next generation that gives their daughters to the sons of the land who corrupt their family.

(1:14-15)- Achsah in her desire to acquire the springs of water, to acquire this vital source for their survival, was using her initiative and influence to provide for her family, to support and help her husband. In an even bigger way she was trying to help provide for her family for future generations that would need a sustainable source of life.

She is a great example of a good mother and a good wife of a future judge of Israel. We can look at her in contrast to another wife of a judge, Delilah who later in the book, uses her initiative and influence to tear her husband down and bring failure and death to the house of Samson.

There are many things we could take away from this especially with Mother’s Day coming up next Sunday, (your reminder dads and kids…), but Mom’s and wives, don’t underestimate the impact you have on your husband and on your kids. Don’t let anyone tell you that your role as a wife or mother is lesser than or insignificant because it’s different than a man. In many ways because of your role, you have the greatest influence and impact on your husband and on your kids and even the future generation than anyone else.

Achsah is a great example of how Israel had started strong.

(1:16) The Kenites are spared and given a dwelling place in the land due to a promise, a request that Moses had made back in Numbers 10 to Hobab, his brother-in-law.

This is just another example that the Children of Israel have really started strong, they are seeking the Lord, they are doing right by their children, they are keeping promises made by their ancestors. It’s a strong start…

(1:17) This is something I missed the first few times going through this text…The tribe of Simeon is numerically insignificant, they are a small tribe that you wouldn’t think much of, but I believe it is important to note that as we get through the book of Judges, the tribe of Simeon are the only ones to wholly and completely follow God’s command to destroy and drive out the inhabitants of their land. Because of this, they dwell there in Hormah and are never mentioned again. It seems that they don’t get punished and judged like the rest of the tribes. You know why? Because God kept His Word. He promised that it would be well with those that obeyed Him. They followed God’s commands and He allowed them to have peace.

Transition- Again, a good start at least for the tribe of Simeon. But, here is where we start to derail… Here is where the strong start, starts to fall apart…

(1:18-19)- The tribe of Judah fails to drive out the inhabitants of the land.

Judah drives out Gaza, Askelon, and Ekron and it even says that the Lord was with Judah. Just like God had promised, He was with Judah as they were going to defeat and drive out all of these people out of the Land that God has promised them. But something changed when they got to the people that dwelled in the valley…

Judah failed to drive out the people in the valley because they had chariots of iron. They feared that they could not stand before these strong weapons of war, they feared that they would be destroyed, and thus left the valley to be occupied by the very people God told them to destroy. It is sad to say but this started a downward trend, a downward spiral, a cycle that the children of Israel could not break for 410 years…

They had such a strong start, what stopped them, what happened?

The Children of Israel failed because they allowed their feelings to overcome their faith.

This trend started long before they saw the iron chariots…

This goes all the way back to their parents in Numbers 13 when Moses sent 12 men to spy out the very land that they are trying to conquer. Joshua and Caleb came back with a good report that even though there were giants and strong enemies that God would give them the victory so they should go conquer. But, ten of them came back with a report of fear and instead of claiming the promised land like God had promised, they allowed their feelings of fear to overcome their faith in God and they lost the opportunity to go into the Promised Land.

Now, years down the road, another generation is receiving their inheritance and they are faced with the decision to choose faith over their feelings of fear. There was a small hint of it when God said that He wanted the tribe of Judah to go up and fight first, but even though God said He wold be with Judah, Judah still wanted to take Simeon with them. I can’t help but think that they were a little fearful to go up by themselves and so they ignored God’s promise of His presence and took Simeon as well, only obeying God’s command halfway.

Now, what started in their parents generation, what started as a small compromise, has turned into complete failure. They had started so strong but they ultimately failed because they allowed their feelings to overcome their faith in God, what they knew about God.

You see they had been given the promise of God in verse after verse in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua that God would be with them as they go to drive out the inhabitants of their land. They had been promised at the beginning of their conquest that God would be with them but they ignored what they knew God had said and chose their feelings of fear.

They also had seen God work in incredible ways in the past. These chariots were not the first chariots that God has had to deal with. They had seen the Egyptians try to conquer them and use their chariots to chase after them but God took care of those chariots and wiped them out and left them at the bottom of the Red Sea. If He could do it back then, He could do it now.

But, instead of putting their faith in God and letting Him work, they sacrificed their strong start and allowed their feelings of fear to overcome their faith and thus they finished with failure.

If we are not careful, we too as the people of God will take the strong start that we have had and finish with failure because we have chosen our feelings over our faith in God.

Application- How does this show up in our life?

Church- As Eastside Baptist, we have had a strong start. But, we can start to let our feelings, let our emotions, the emotions of a culture drive our church. We feel like we need to change our music and our worship so that we can draw a bigger crowd. Because we become a sensitive congregation, we refuse to let our pastor confront us about the issues that we have, we don’t let him preach on things that are hard for us to hear, so all we get is watered down preaching. If we are not careful, we will let our feelings overcome what we know God wants for us. He wants us to be a light in Sioux Falls, to have music and worship that is distinct and set apart to God, to have preaching that confronts our sin and encourages us to get right. Let’s not take this strong start and finish in failure because we let our feelings overcome our faith.

Men’s Advance- Men, we just got back from Men’s Advance and I would say at that meeting we got a strong start. Maybe even this week you’ve started strong but let me tell you, you’ve probably already faced it, you will not always feel like you did at Men’s Advance. We get back and we start to feel the chaos coming back into our lives, mayhem is back. And you will be tempted to not deal with the things you need to change, that God spoke to you about last week because your feelings are starting to disagree with your faith, what you know you should do. Let me encourage you, even though your feelings say to give up, to put off dealing with that temptation, that financial issue, that marriage struggle, that family struggle, don’t give in to your feelings, trust God that He knows what He is doing. If you will choose faith then you don’t have to finish in failure.

Christians- It is really hard to choose faith in the morning when we know we need to spend time with God but are feelings say that we are too tired, it’s hard to choose faith when your feelings are telling you to stay up late and watch that last show or finish that movie instead of going to bed so that you can get up early to spend time with God.

Husbands and Wives- Your feelings will tell you in the moment that you need to be right, that you need to have the last word, or that you need to be justified, maybe even that a different spouse would be better than what you have. Faith says that husbands, you love your wife as Christ loved the church and wives that you submit to your husbands, that you both submit to each other and to the Lord. If you’re not careful, you will choose your feelings instead of faith in a moment of weakness, and finish your marriage in failure.

Parents- It is really easy in the moment to choose your feelings and just get frustrated with your kids because they are not responding right and instead of training them to behave, you punish them in the moment and never train them up in the right way.

You can let your feelings in the moments when your teen is driving you crazy asking for more freedom on their phones or with their friends and just give in so you can be their friend or you can get them to stop nagging you. Faith says to protect their future, to protect their purity, help them grow to put the Lord first in their lives.

Teens-You will be tempted to choose your feelings in…

Friends- In a moment with your friends to give in to something that you know is not right.

Parents- Think that you know better…

Church- Leave because you were offended…

There are so many applications that we could make even to the temptations in purity that we face, the struggles with finances, our service at church and to the Lord. In every area of your life, you will be faced with the decision to either choose how you feel in the moment or choose what you know about God. That decision will determine whether or not you finish strong or you finish with failure.

Conclusion- We have had a strong start as a church, as families, as Christians, and you may be doing good right now but if you allow your feelings to overcome your faith, what you know about God, it will end in failure every time. A strong start does not guarantee a strong finish if you want to finish strong, choose faith over your feelings.

Let’s learn from the children of Israel and remember that failure is inevitable when you allow your feelings to overcome your faith.

ALT CIT: You will finish with failure if you allow your feelings to overcome your faith.