Learning the Hard Way

Prayer

Opening

Fun that we’re moving into another book as we continue our journey through the story of the Old Testament. We just finished the book of Joshua, where we found the Israelites finally occupying the land. After hundreds of years, God fulfilled his promise and the twelve tribes of Israel are now settled in the land that was formerly the Canaanites. We finished the book of Joshua looking at the covenant renewal at Shechem where Joshua challenged the people to be very clear and deliberate - to choose to serve the Lord their God, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

We learn in the first chapter of Judges the sad reality that though the Israelites now occupy the land, they were not in full control. They had failed to fulfill God’s command to drive out the nations entirely. This was true throughout the various tribes - Judah, Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali and the Danites.

And it’s at this point that God declares to the Israelites what he’s going to do. Judges 2:1-5 - The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2 and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? 3 And I have also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; they will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you.’” 4 When the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, 5 and they called that place Bokim. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord.

So God sends his messenger to the Israelites, reminding them of how he’s been faithful to the covenant. I told you, “I will never break my covenant with you.” I did it. I brought you up out of Egypt, I led you into this land, you now occupy it. Your part of the covenant was to be faithful to me, to drive these people out, to not being okay with being around them, or associating with them.

I told you this will happen and now it’s going to - I’m not going to drive out these nations. They will stay in place and be a constant stumbling block to you. You will become ensnared to their gods. The people respond in remorse, they know they’ve not done what they should have and weep in response.

It’s at this point that we get what will be the repetitive cycle laid out in the book of Judges, what the Israelites will do over and over again - rinse and repeat. Here it is, Judges 2:10-19 - 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. 11 Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. 12 They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger 13 because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. 14 In his anger against Israel the Lord gave them into the hands of raiders who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. 15 Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress. 16 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. 17 Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors, who had been obedient to the Lord’s commands. 18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, he was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who oppressed and afflicted them. 19 But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.

So this is the cycle that plays out over and over again in the book of Judges: It begins with sin, the Israelites turn away from God and begin to follow the idols of their neighbors. From sin it moves to oppression - God, in his anger, gives his people over to the neighboring nations, they are conquered and oppressed. Out of their suffering, they repent, they cry out to God for deliverance.

Cycle moves from sin to oppression to repentance and then to deliverance. God, in his never-ending mercy, raises up a judge - quick note here, a judge in this context is far more than a leader who handles disputes, they become the main leader of the Israelites, at least in some loose fashion as they are not truly a unified nation, they are a group of tribes. God raises up a judge who then conquers the oppressing nation and the Israelites are freed again. They live in peace, the last step in the cycle. They live in peace as they are faithful to God - that is, until the judge whom God raised up dies and they forget everything God did for them, and then start turning to the worship of false gods, to sin, and the whole cycle begins again. Rinse and repeat.

The only thing that changes is that as the years go on and we see repeat after repeat of this cycle, the overall behavior of the Israelites gets worse and worse. They never fully return to being as faithful and obedient as they were early on. By the end of the book of Judges we see some absolutely terrible, truly evil behavior that they engage in.

And what we’re going to see this morning is God, in response to this pattern of unfaithfulness, their rinse and repeat sin cycle, is going to change how God deals with his people. His goal, as always, as it is with us, is to spur us toward trusting him, loving him above everything else. Because this is life, it is the only way to life, to live in loving obedience to the Lord our God. Worship and serve him alone. And that’s what we want to look at, to see what God does and what it teaches us about the various ways he may work in us - to teach us, to build faith.

Change of Strategy

As I mentioned at the very beginning, God’s plan, what he set out for his people, was the covenant. It was quite simple - you obey me, my commands. You worship me and me alone. If you do this, I will bless you. I will give you this land. I will drive out the nations occupying it. I will bless you with their cities and home and vineyards and fields. All of that will prosper. You will have peace in the land. That was what God wanted to do, what he laid before the people. Now, to be clear, God knew they weren’t going to be faithful - God knows our hearts. He knows how fickle and rebellious and stiff-necked we can be. It was no surprise to him then and it’s no surprise to him now.

But here’s the thing - the Israelites don’t know that. They agreed to the covenant. They intended to be faithful and obey the Lord. At times, they were. But in large measure, what we’ll see over and over again in the book of Judges, is that they prove to be unfaithful.

Pay attention to what God says next, what God intends to do because they “refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.” Judges 2:20-22…Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, Because this nation has violated the covenant I ordained for their ancestors and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their ancestors did.”

And then again in Judges 3:1, These are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (goes on to list all of the nations). And one more time in verse 4, They (the nations) were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord’s commands, which he had given their ancestors through Moses.

Now, as it turns out, they failed the test, the passage ends on this ominous note, Judges 3:5-6, The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

God is making clear here, he’s changing strategy - he’s now going to deal differently with the Israelites now - instead of pouring out blessings, he’s going to test them. He’s going to use the nations that they did not drive out to test the Israelites on whether they will stay faithful to him in the midst of temptation. So, what does this mean? What’s going on here? Why would God test them in this way, especially knowing that they are going to fail repeatedly.

I think it’s safe to say on one level, it’s simply the natural consequences of their actions. They had made a covenant with God, and they broke that covenant. God was clear what would happen if they did - and that’s exactly how it played out. By this, God is demonstrating that he will always be true to his word. You may not like the consequences, but you can trust that God is going to do exactly as he says. No idle threats from God.

But God is testing, he’s asking a bigger, more challenging question to the Israelites. Can you be faithful in the midst of all these temptations? Can you really? You think you can - you think you are capable of being good, being faithful. We will see. I will test you. Your heart will be revealed. You will (if you’re open to it) learn nature of your heart, how prone it is to sinfulness.

What I want to point us to this morning is God’s heart for his people in all this - that what God wants to see grow in his people in trusting in him, a willing obedience. And God knows us well enough (perfectly, in fact), that he will use different ways and methods at different times in our lives to grow faith in us - in might be in pouring out blessings, as God did originally with his people. It might be the working of miracles and signs - God did that repeatedly leading them out of the land of Egypt. It might be trials and testings - painful situations, as God is going to use here in the book of Judges. God may chose hiddenness, to hide his presence from us - that seemed to be the case when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years - we don’t see any word from God during that time.

But since the book of Judges is all about God’s testing of the Israelites because of their repeated disobedience, I want you to listen to C.S. Lewis’ description of what God is doing in bringing trials into our lives and see if it helps us see what God is doing with the Israelites: My own experience is something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity to-day, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threaten us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down. At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God’s grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing strength from the right sources. But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys: I am even anxious, God forgive me, to banish from my mind the only thing that supported me under the threat because it is now associated with the misery of those few days. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything else away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over - I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.

Lewis’ point is this - God’s trials and tribulations are a mercy to us. If pouring out blessings on us constantly would continue to draw us closer and into greater dependence, God would continue to do that. That is his heart - he wants to pour blessings and goodness and love. God is the beautiful giver, he wants the fullness of life for us (Jesus coming to us and dying for us is proof positive of that). And it is one of the ways he draws us to himself, when we experience his grace and love. But so often that isn’t enough.

We get self satisfied, a subtle sense of entitlement, I deserve what I want. We like our little toys. We get content with our little happinesses, with things we think will give us the love and significance and happiness we all want. The Israelites thought they could find it in the gods of the neighboring nations, lesser gods, and so pursued them. So God will test us. Bring tribulations into our lives - to shake us out of our “fallen and godless condition” as Lewis writes. God brings the trials in order to help us see the inadequacy of our little toys - in midst of pain and suffering and great difficult, they offer us so little.

It’s why God let the neighboring nations oppress his people, removing his hand of protection. You think you want these gods but you really don’t. They cannot give you what I can give you. And it’s only through the trials that they realize that and return to faithfulness to God - until that is, they begin to forget and like the puppy, shake themselves dry after the bathe and return to the dirt pile.

Main point is this - this is not about God wanting to punish us, to get back at us for being disobedient. God created us for himself, he knows that we can never experience the joy and goodness and peace of life without him, because there is no such thing. He is the source, the fount of it all. And if bringing tribulations into our lives, allowing those to happen, spur us out of life where we are more neglectful of God toward deeper dependence on him, treasuring him above all else, God loves us too much not to do it. It may be a bitter pill to swallow but the medicine is much needed.

And in our better moments, we should want God to do exactly that. To do what is helpful and necessary to draw us closer to him. If this suffering brings me into a deeper faith and trusting of Jesus, yes, please. I do not say that lightly. Because trials are hard. Who wants to experience pain? And we ought to make clear that God did not exempt himself - in Hebrews 5:8, we read, “Son though he was, he (Jesus) learned obedience through what he suffered.” Think about that for a moment - Jesus learned greater obedience through testing, through suffering.

So much of this comes down to trusting that God is always, always, working for our good. Whether it’s a season of blessings in our lives, or amazing miraculous things - or a time when God seems distant, hidden - or a time of great difficulty, struggle - can I trust that God is good? And that he can use whatever the circumstances are happening in my life for my good? To teach me, grow me to be more fully his? That trusting means I am open to whatever God may be using in this time in my life to grow and teach me - even if it’s learning the hard way.

Spiritual Disciplines - A few thoughts on putting into practice what God may be teaching you this morning

Trusting that’s true (that God is always, always working for our good - Romans 8:28, And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. If God is working for our good, we should be looking to see where God is working, in whatever is going on in our lives. God, how might you be using this to teach me, to build trust in me? (Or humility or strength of conviction or a deeper knowing of his love).

Then to join in with what God is doing in your life. Take an active role in partnering with God as he works in you - with a spirit of openness, surrender. Through a conversation recently I was thinking about the nature of freedom, what is freedom really about - realizing that freedom is rooted in obedience to God, being absolutely for God in everything. And so I’ve been praying that commitment daily, a desire to seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (talk more about that next week).

But all that to say - God works in our lives for our good. Sometimes, that’s through pouring out blessings. Sometimes he does amazing miraculous things. Sometime, through testing. Tribulations. Learning the hard way. Cultivate an openness to whatever God might use in you.