Sermon Tone Analysis
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WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
It is striking that this happens within a generation.
Their parents, though flawed and sometimes half-hearted, had faith—they “served the LORD.”
The children “served the mini-lords.”
Who is responsible?
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
It is always impossible to lay blame neatly when one generation fails to pass its faith on to the next one.
Did the first generation fail to reach out, or did the second generation just harden their hearts?
The answer is usually both.
Mistakes made by a Christian generation are often magnified in the next, NOMINAL, one.
Commitment is replaced by complacency and then by compromise.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
Judges 2 is by no means the last or only time this has happened.
Another interesting example is early New England.
Nearly all the first settlers in 1620–1640 were vital, biblical Christians.
But by 1662, the first generation realized that many of their children and grand-children were only nominal believers.
They had to institute the “halfway Covenant,” allowing people to vote who were only baptized as infants, but who as adults were not church members.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
Deuteronomy 6:4–9 and 20–25 are instructive here.
They tell us what needs to be done to pass our faith on:
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
We ourselves must love God whole-heartedly.
We are to have these commandments on our hearts (v 6).
That means that we are not hypocritical or inconsistent in our behavior.
The commandments are not only kept mechanically or partially.
Rather, God has an effect on all of us, through and through.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
We are to apply and reflect on the gospel practically, not only academically or abstractly.
Deuteronomy 6:7 is not promoting regular family lectures!
The references to “sit … walk along … lie down and … get up” refer to routine, concrete daily life.
Instruction in God’s truth then is not to be so much a series of lectures and classes.
Rather, we are to “impress” truths about God by showing how God relates to daily, concrete living.
This is a call to be wise and thoughtful about how the values and virtues of the gospel distinctively influence our decisions and priorities.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
Third, verses 20–25 tell us that we are to link the DOCTRINES of the faith to God’s saving actions in our lives.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
We are to give personal testimony to the difference God made to us, how he brought us from bondage into freedom: “We were slaves … but the LORD brought us out.”
We are not only to speak of beliefs and behavior but of our personal experience of God.
We are to be open about our own struggles to grow.
We are to be transparent about how REPENTANCE works in our lives.
We are not to be formal and impersonal in the expressions of our faith.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
In summary, we must be consistent in behavior, wise about reality, and warmly personal in our faith.
History and personal experience both show us that these three things are very hard to carry out on a broad scale.
Most Christians rely on institutions and formal instruction to “pass on the faith.”
We think that if we instruct our children in true doctrine, shelter them from immoral behavior and involve them in church and religious organizations, then we have done all we can.
But youth are turned off not only by bad examples, but also by parents who are not savvy about the lives and world their children are living in, or who cannot be open about their own interior spiritual lives.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SMALL DID NOT’S TURN INTO SIGNIFICANT DID NOT’S.
In Judges 2, we are not told exactly what the first generation of believers did with their children.
2:10 is key, however.
The next generation did not know the LORD, relationally and personally.
This is the very outcome that Deuteronomy 6 was written to avoid.
Deuteronomy 6 is not a “technique” that guarantees that someone’s children will be believers, because their own wills and choices play a large role.
However, when a whole generation turns away, we have to expect that the parents have failed to model real faith and disciple their children.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SOMETHING WILL BE KING.
What are God’s people doing when they do not listen to their God-given leader (for them then, the judges; for us today, the ultimate leader, Jesus Christ)?
What are we doing when we worship other gods instead of the true God?
We have “prostituted” ourselves (v 17).
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SOMETHING WILL BE KING.
This is a striking, provocative image.
Prostitutes then (and often now, too) are people whose lives are out of control, who are desperate, and who are giving themselves without getting any real pleasure or love in return.
The use of the word “prostituted” here tells us that when we serve an idol, we come into an intense relationship with it, within which it uses us, but does not truly care for us.
We become completely vulnerable to it, little more than a slave to it.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SOMETHING WILL BE KING.
This image also tells us that God sees all sin—all idolatry—as “adultery.”
He does not merely want us to know and obey him as a citizen obeys a king, or merely to follow him as a sheep follows a shepherd.
He wants us to know him and love him as a wife loves a husband.
In both the Old and New Testaments, God calls himself our Bridegroom (Ezekiel 16; Ephesians 5; Revelation 19).
A marriage is an exclusive, legal commitment, but it is not only that; real marriage involves deep, intimate, selfless love.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SOMETHING WILL BE KING.
This shows us why God responds to his people “following other gods and serving and worshiping them” (Judges 2:19) by becoming “very angry with Israel” (2:20).
His anger is not opposed to his love; it is the expression of it.
It is because he loves his people, and cares about his relationship with them, that he responds with right anger when they turn from him and prostitute themselves.
His anger is that of the innocent, jilted lover; his love is that of the wonderfully forgiving husband.
The relationship God wants us to enjoy with him—and the only relationship which will avoid idolatry—is a passionate, personal relationship of love.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING SOMETHING WILL BE KING.
The people’s failure to take all of Canaan both resulted from and represented their failure to give God exclusive lordship over their whole lives.
How can we know if Christ is Lord of every area of our lives?
Am I willing to do whatever God says about this area?
Am I willing to accept whatever God sends in this area?
Where either answer is “no,” there is the area of our lives and hearts which we have opened up, or already given over, to an alternative god.
WHEN GOD IS NOT KING DISCIPLINE IS THE DISPLAY OF LOVE.
God’s discipline on his people’s half-heartedness, and idol-heartedness, is that:
THE CURSE IS THE CURE.
THE CURSE IS THE CURE.
Israel’s sin resulted in God’s discipline: leaving the Canaanites in the land.
But this discipline is also a manifestation of God’s grace.
It provides these Israelites with an opportunity to turn to God in faith and to walk according to God’s Word as their fathers, the “Joshua generation,” had done.
THE CURSE IS THE CURE.
Leaving the Canaanites in the land, along with the Israelites, was something God had purposed long ago.
His gracious purpose of teaching this generation warfare was the reason why He prevented Joshua and his generation from totally wiping out the Canaanites.
While the continued presence of the Canaanites was an unpleasant manifestation of divine judgment, it was also a gracious gift from God.
We need to understand the last verses of our passage in the light of verse 10.
There we were told:
THE CURSE IS THE CURE.
Now we are told that God left the Canaanite nations in the land so that all those who had not “experienced” [literally, known] war could “experience” [know] it.
If not “knowing” God or the outworking of His presence and power was the problem (as our text tells us), then leaving the Canaanites in the land was a part of the solution.
The oppression of the Israelites by these nations presented the occasion for God’s people to learn war, and in waging war, to experience His power.
Here was a way to truly “know” God.
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