Living Among the Hittites and Jebusites
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 19 viewsIn the United States today, we are like the Israelites of old, living among pagans and as foreigners. However, have we reached the point though, where the world cannot tell us apart from those who do not belong to Christ?
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good evening and welcome back!
Tonight we are going to be looking back in the time of the Judges, and looking at the 2nd and 3rd chapter of the Book of Judges if you would like to start turning there.
Now the time of the judges was a time after Joshua had died and Israel was desperately trying to take possession of the land of Canaan.
Israel no longer had this strong leader as they did with Moses, Aaron, and Joshua.
They had fallen into this pattern of behavior that is pretty common among professing Christians today.
We start out strong for the Lord and then after a while, we begin to slack off and back away from God.
We begin to go our own way and serve "other gods," rather than The God.
Then something will happen to remind us who God is and we come back to God and serve Him for a while.
But then we slip right back into that same pattern and it goes on and on and on.
The same holds true for the Israelites here.
Like I said, Joshua is dead and gone and they serve God for a while, but after Joshua . . .
After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.
We are living in a generation just like that now.
A generation that "knows not God."
A generation that "does evil in the sight of the Lord," and "serves Baalim."
Just like the Israelites we have "forsook the Lord God . . . and followed other gods . . .and provoked the Lord to anger."
However, they didn't just get away with it.
The Bible goes on to state that . . . .
In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. 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.
God allowed them to wallow in their sins and allowed them to co-mingle with these people and they were eventually overrun by their enemies and defeated by their enemies.
And when it became so much the people could no longer bear it, God would raise up a judge to deliver the people.
And as long as that judge was around, the people would do well and serve the Lord, but as soon as that judge would die...
But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.
They would return right back to the same old, fleshly, worldly, carnal way of doing things and the whole pattern would repeat itself.
Any of this sound familiar?
I think it sounds a whole lot like our modern day "Christians."
When things are going real good and we feel the presence of the Lord with us the strongest, we do real well and serve God faithfully.
However, when the Lord pulls back just a little, we slip right back into those patterns.
See, with Israel, God left those other nations there for a reason...
Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.”
And . . .
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 forefathers did.”
God wanted to "prove" Israel, or "test" them.
It is the same thing for us . . .Those things that are a "thorn in the flesh" to us, are left there to "prove" us, or test the level of our Spiritual maturity.
They are meant to teach us and mature us.
The problem is, we are living among the Hittites and Jebusites and we are disobeying the commands of God.
Look again at Judges 2:2, this time . . .
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?
He plainly tells them (and us) to not get too friendly with the world . . .
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.
But we have disobeyed God and we have entered into a league with the world. We've gotten to buddy- buddy with the Hittites and the Jebusites.
Which is where our focal passage for tonight comes from.
Judges 3, starting in verse 5, the Bible says . . .
Scripture Focus
Scripture Focus
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. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.
Can You Tell the Israelites from the Jebusite?
Can You Tell the Israelites from the Jebusite?
Now the problems didn’t start just because the Israelites lived among these people as verse five points out.
They really couldn’t control who did and did not live in their area.
The problem started in verse six that tells us . . .
They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
What this is referring to is their becoming completely intermingled with the Jebusites and the Hittites.
So much so that they began to inter-marry between the two peoples.
Not only this, but instead of serving God, they began to serve the gods of the Hittites and Jesubites of their day.
And verse seven informs us that . . .
The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs.
They forgot all about God.
It got so bad that you couldn't even tell who was an Israelite and who was a Jebusite.
They were that inter-connected with these people.
If you go back to chapter two, verse 17 we learn that . . .
Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the Lord’s commands.
Listen to what it is saying here.
They quickly turned away from God and prostituted themselves to these other gods and they worshipped them.
They were so ready just to “fit in” with everybody else that they abandoned all they held to be true.
Can You Tell the Christian from the World?
Can You Tell the Christian from the World?
And I wonder if any of this sounds familiar?
Because I think we know where we are going with this.
You couldn't tell the difference between the children of God and the pagan heathens of the day.
But what about us today?
Is it any different?
Can you tell the difference between the Christian and the rest of the world?
Do we look different?
Do we act any different?
People will say, "we do this so we can fit in," or "we don't want to alienate anybody," or "we don't want to stand out."
Is it really so bad to stand out?
James accuses us of this . . .
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
However, are we not supposed to be a “peculiar people”?
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
And . . .
while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
By the way, what the NIV translates as “his very own” in Titus and “a people belonging to God” is translated in the KJV as “peculiar.”
And the meaning is really—special to God.
We are special to God but may be seen as strange by the rest of the world.
We are not supposed to fit in.
We are not supposed to be like the world or the things of the world.
This world is not our home . . . .It is not normal for us to "fit in."
Going back to the Old Testament for a moment we are also reminded that . . .
Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”
And Deuteronomy . . .
You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.
We belong to God and we are special to God and we should not soil ourselves by taking on the sinful nature of the rest of the world.
John goes on to tell us that . . .
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
When we begin to try to "fit in" to the world's model and the world's way of doing things, we become as James puts it "double-minded".
We try to ride that fence and have one foot in heaven and one foot on earth.
he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.
When we ride that fence we are going to fall off and when we fall off we will fall right into Hell!
I want to share something that A.W. Tozer wrote about this subject:
Tozer: "The danger is that we allow ourselves to be too much affected by the degenerate tastes and low views of the Hittites and Jebusites among whom we dwell and so learn the ways of the nations, to our own undoing, as Israel did before us. When the whole moral and psychological atmosphere is secular and common how can we escape its deadly effects? How can we sanctify the ordinary and find true spiritual meaning in the common things of life? The answer is plainly apparent but to some of us it will seem too tame and ordinary. It is to consecrate the whole of life to Christ and begin to do everything in His name and for His sake. That just means that we begin to do for Christ's sake what we had formerly been doing for our own!"
Altar/Challenge (A Choice to Make)
Altar/Challenge (A Choice to Make)
It all boils down to each one of us having a choice that we have to make.
This is the same choice that Joshua asked the children of Israel . . .
But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
We have to make a choice each day when we get out of bed, who we are going to serve.
Are we going to serve God, or are we going to serve the gods of the Hittites and Jebusites?
The children of Israel initially made the right choice . . . .
Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled.
The problem was that the people didn't follow through with their promise, with their profession of faith.
Joshua even warned them . . .
Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you.”
However, the people were convinced otherwise . . .
But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.” Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.” “Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied. “Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.” And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”
What about us?
Have we also made this promise to God?
Have we made a commitment to serve Him, to live in the world but not be "of the world?"
How is that commitment going now?
Are we serving Him?
Can you tell a difference in your life than the life of the rest of the world?
In the words of Joshua . . .
“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”
Have we thrown away our foreign gods?
Have we yielded our hearts to God?
Face it, we have to live among the Hittites and Jebusites, but that doesn't mean we have to live like them.
The choice is yours to make.
What will that choice be?
Let’s pray . . .