I always try to pray before I read my Bible and ask God to reveal Himself to me in a new way so that I can gain some of His insight and understanding. This morning, when I saw that my daily Bible reading was Judges 1-6, I thought, "What could God show me in Judges?" I had obviously forgotten that the book of Judges is packed full of important lessons to be learned from God's people, the Israelites. God definitely had something in store for me this morning, even though I seemed to doubt His ability to come through in a book I barely remembered. So I will share with you what He taught me this morning through His word.
We have to backtrack a little to get some background, so let's go back to Deuteronomy. Here is Chapter 7. I know it's a lot to read, but it's very important because it contains God's specific instructions to the Israelites. I will highlight portions I want you to pay particular attention too.
1"When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, 2and when the LORD your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. 3You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, 4for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire.
6"For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 10and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
12"And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. 13He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you. 14You shall be blessed above all peoples. There shall not be male or female barren among you or among your livestock. 15And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. 16And you shall consume all the peoples that the LORD your God will give over to you.Your eye shall not pity them, neither shall you serve their gods, for that would be a snare to you.
17"If you say in your heart, 'These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?' 18 you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt, 19the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out. So will the LORD your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. 20Moreover, the LORD your God will send hornets among them, until those who are left and hide themselves from you are destroyed. 21You shall not be in dread of them, for the LORD your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God. 22 The LORD your God will clear away these nations before you little by little. You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you. 23But the LORD your God will give them over to you and throw them into great confusion, until they are destroyed. 24And he will give their kings into your hand, and you shall make their name perish from under heaven. No one shall be able to stand against you until you have destroyed them. 25The carved images of their gods you shall burn with fire. You shall not covet the silver or the gold that is on them or take it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared by it, for it is an abomination to the LORD your God. 26And you shall not bring an abominable thing into your house and become devoted to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest and abhor it, for it is devoted to destruction.
Okay, so here are direct instructions from God regarding the people that possess the land that God has chosen for Israel. God did not tell them to go into this land and just live there. He wanted them to utterly destroy the people that inhabited the land, burning their idols - in essence doing away with everything that had anything to do with these people. I believe God had a reason for this. I think He knew just how easy it would be for the Israelites to fall away from Him, if they allowed the people of the land to remain there. Let me use this illustration you might have heard before. You are standing in a chair. There is a person standing on the floor. Which is easier? You pulling the person up on the chair with you, or the person pulling you down to the floor with them? I think it would be much easier to pull someone down rather than lift them up. God knew this too. That is why he gave His people STRICT instructions about what they were to do upon entering the promised land. Let's see what the Israelites do with these instructions.
In Chapter 7 of Joshua, we see the disobedience of the Israelites regarding the Lord's specific instructions. In the very first verse of chapter 7, it says that the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. A man named Achan took some of the devoted things that belonged to the people of the land, thereby disobeying God's instructions. If you want to see how God dealt with him, you can finish reading Joshua 7 on your own. Then in Joshua 9, we see how the inhabitants of Gibeon deceived the Israelites by telling them that they were foreigners and wanted a covenant with Israel so that they wouldn't be destroyed. Joshua didn't seek the Lord's counsel on this before he made a decision regarding the Gibeonites and decided to go ahead and make a covenant with this people not to devote them to destruction. Later, Joshua finds out that these people of the land had deceived them, but he had to honor the covenant with them and not destroy them as the Lord had previously instructed. Now if you continue reading in the book of Joshua you will see that Israel did follow God's instructions regarding a lot of these people but they seemed to pick and choose when they would decide to follow them and when they wouldn't. Moving ahead to Joshua 13, we see that the half tribe of Manasseh did not drive out the Geshurites or the Maacathites but allowed them to dwell in the midst of Israel. Then in Joshua 15, we see that the tribe of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites from Jerusalem so they dwelled with them. In Joshua 16, the tribe of Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites and they lived in the midst of them. Then In Joshua 17, we see that the tribe of Manasseh could not take possession of certain cities, and the Canannites persisted in dwelling in that land. It's pretty obvious that allowing these people to dwell among them is NOT the same thing as destroying them. We keep seeing "they could not take possession" or "they could not drive out the people of the land". Well why not? Didn't they have God on their side? YES! God had already told them that He would fight for them if they obeyed Him. But I think the reason why they couldn't drive out these people from the land God had given them was because they lacked faith. Sure, these people might have had iron and strength as an advantage over the Israelites, but what is iron and man's strength compared to having God Almighty fighting for you! I truly believe if this chosen people had faith in God to conquer the people of the land, then by all means it would have happened!
Now we arrive at the book of Judges. I had to read Joshua before I arrived at Judges and none of what I'm about to share with you really clicked for me, until I arrived at the first 6 chapters of Judges. In the first chapter of the book of Judges we see the continuing conquest of Canaan and the Israelites failure to complete it. In chapter 2, we see Israel's unfaithfulness, which is really not a new concept for them. It amazes me how God continues to hold them in his hand, protect them, and deliver them - despite their lack of faith. I say it amazes me, but it shouldn't surprise me, because this God of Israel does the same thing for me today. In verse 11, we see that the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they began to worship idols. They abandoned the one true God to worship man-made idols. A lot of you, including myself, think we are safe when it comes to idol worship, because none of us are bowing down to statues or Asherah poles. But we do have idols. We worship people, money, children, material things, etc. Idols are ANYTHING that take the place of God.
Because the people of Israel turned their backs on God, he allowed their enemies to rise up against them and cause them great distress. Only when they were in this terrible distress, did they cry out to the Lord to deliver them, which He did, time and time again. God gave Israel judges to help lead them. While the judge was alive, Israel was faithful to God. But when the judge died, they started worshiping idols again. I bet this pattern continues through the entire book of Judges, however; I can't say for sure since my daily Bible reading was only the first 6 chapters. But feel free to read the book of Judges for yourself and let me know if I'm wrong about this.
Now that you have this big hunk of background that spans all the way back to Deuteronomy, I want to point out a few things. Hopefully, by this point, you aren't sick of reading, because we are getting to the good stuff! As I was reading in Judges this morning, it was like a lightbulb went off in my head. God had a plan for the people of Israel and you can rest assure that God's plan is BEST. However, the Israelites did not follow God's plan, therefore, they didn't receive the very best that He had in store for them. Here is where I believe you can draw a parallel from Israel's sins to the Christian's sins today. God has a plan for us, a perfect plan for our lives, the BEST plan for our lives, layed out for us in His will.
When He saved us by His grace, He gave us a new nature. Ephesians 4: 22-24 says, "to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." Even though we have this new nature, we still have to deal with sin in our lives. In Romans 7, Paul points out that he does the very things he doesn't want to do because of indwelling sin. But here is the good news, God's grace is greater than ALL of our sins. After God gives us this new nature, we no longer have to let sin be the master of our lives. This new life now belongs to God, and He should be in control. When we are obedient to Him and living in His will for our life, we can KNOW that we are in God's best - the very best that He has for us.
So we are not much different from the Israelites. When we allow sin to continue to "dwell among us" instead of destroying the hold it has on our life, then we are saying to God that His best isn't good enough for us. Instead of letting God be our master, we are allowing sin to control us. You can look in the Old Testament, and see that when Israel was faithful and allowed God to be in control, they were successful in their endeavors. But when they turned from God, and turned to idol worship, God allowed them to be overtaken by their enemies. But EVERY SINGLE TIME that Israel confessed their sins and begged God to regain control of their lives, HE DID. To me, that is a great testament to how much our God loves us. No matter what we do, He still loves us and He forgives us. He still welcomes us back into His outstretched arms. That is very reassuring to me because I feel like every day I fall flat on my face in failure. I feel exactly the way Paul felt in Romans 7.
Just because we know that God is faithful, even when we aren't, does not give us the freedom to keep on living in sin. You can't continue to live in sin if you are a child of God. You might falter, you might fall away, but you can't continue that way. God will not allow it. You should not allow it. When God gives you a new nature, one created after His very likeness, we can't just let sin remain and "dwell among us". We have to destroy the hold it has on us, just like God wanted the Israelites to destroy the people that inhabited the promised land. He knows how easy it is for sin to take hold of us and drag us down from the chair to the floor. That is why He doesn't want us to remain in sin. Let us rely upon God's strength and endurance to cut loose any sin that is still remaining. You might not can get rid of it on your own, but with God fighting for you, who or what can stand against you! Let's learn a valuable lesson from Israel and be obedient to God so that He can deliver on His very best for our lives.
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