Judges 1: The Pain of Partial Obedience Audio Transcript
Judges: Scandalous Saviors
01 – THE PAIN OF PARTIAL OBEDIENCE – Toby Beck
It’s great to great to hear that Rock of Ages. I was singing that and suddenly going what is that about Rock of Ages cleft for me, and I’m pretty confident it was referencing Moses when he wanted to see God and God said well, you can’t really handle all that.
So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll put a cleft in the rock and I’ll tuck you in there to protect you from the full dose of me. And then I’ll say my name as I go by and what’s beautiful about that is Moses was hungry. He was hungry for more of God. He was hungry to have all that that he could possibly handle and it’s a good thing to think about as we get ready to get into the scriptures.
Are you hungry for the Lord? Are you hungry to see as much of the Lord as you possibly can because I think God delights when we are eager to see him. God’s like okay, are you hungry because I’m more than you can handle but I would be happy to fill your plate and that’s what I’m looking forward to here this morning.
Judges: Who is Driving?
Judges, the book of Judges. We’re going to dive in. Here we go. The book of Judges is wild and wooly. I’ve never preached through it before. If you’ve read it recently you can maybe have a guess at why I have kind of avoided it. It starts out decent and gets really dark and we’ll talk about that.
Because of that I want to start with something light-hearted.
I want to share a story about two dear ladies named Esther and Hazel. In fact, I have a photo for you. Yeah, Esther and Hazel. In fact, Esther’s girls were here last night. They’re regular at Saturday night, Laura and Diane. Esther and Hazel were dear friends.
This picture was taken at the groundbreaking for this particular facility that was back in 2007 and this story is about when they were out on a drive. Hazel had a big car. So they’re out there on a drive in Hazel’s big car and neither of them are tall. So seeing over the dash is an issue. They’re cruising along and chatting away and they come to an intersection.
The light is red and they just sailed right through and Esther who had been talking was startled because while she wasn’t paying close attention, she thought that light looked red and yet they didn’t stop. So she just kind of was nervous a bit. And at the very next intersection, she was a little kind of amped and the light sure looked red again and no slowing right on through Hazel’s driving chatting away. Now she started questioning her own like, you know, they’re both old and like am I eyes not working? Am I starting to kind of lose my sensory perception? Clearly Hazel didn’t even let up. So now she’s really focused and at the third intersection the light is again red and again not a hint of Hazel going for the break right on through and she can’t handle it anymore.
Hazel! We just ran three red lights in a row. We could have been killed and Hazel looked at Esther and said, oh am I driving? So full disclosure that didn’t happen. But that joke is way better with Esther and Hazel in it than just two random elderly ladies that we’ve never met.
So I apologized to Laura and Diane last night. Sorry for it. They liked it. The reason I tell that story besides just that it’s fun is because the Book of Judges really highlights the need for a competent driver and this is especially telling based on where we have been.
Think about it. We went through the Torah, we called it a year in Torah. Then we had a few other topical series and then most recently we finished Joshua.
Think about that. Exodus through Deuteronomy. There’s one clear driver: Moses. Moses is humanly speaking the leader of God’s people. He’s an excellent driver, incredible character despite the passengers, right? They’re so fickle that people of Israel turn on them all the time and yet he did such a good job.
And then we just finished Joshua and Joshua obviously is the guy. He’s the leader. He’s the driver and he’s leading the people across the Jordan into the promised land into battles. And so we come to the Book of Judges and you look like, who’s driving?
Nobody. Nobody’s driving. There’s no one clear leader in the Book of Judges. Now there are leaders but they are more temporary leaders. None of them were like Moses and Joshua, the clearly established appointed leader by God.
Instead God would raise up temporary leaders called judges. More on that term, but it’s a misleading term. So if you’re new to the Bible and you hear the word judge immediately in our culture we think of, you know, somebody in a black robe in a courtroom sitting with a gavel making judicial judgments and that’s not really the right picture for what we have here in the Book of Judges.
These judges, and we’ll be more on that next week, but these judges are more like deliverers, saviors, heroes come to save the day when everything is going poorly and the Israelites need to be rescued. And that’s what these heroes, that’s what these judges are.
They’re heroes sent to save the day, but as we will see they are flawed heroes and increasingly so.
There’s 12 judges mentioned in the book. Some of them only get just a few verses so we don’t know much about them. Others get multiple chapters and what you find is every successive judge seems to be more flawed than the one before to the point where you’re like, man, what kind of Savior is this?
That’s why we’re calling the Book of Judges, we’re giving it a title, Scandalous Saviors because they are heroes, they are saviors, they do save Israel, but boy, they have issues. And it’s not just the judges who have issues, the people as a whole also increasingly grow increasingly depraved.
The axiom of you get the leaders you deserve kind of comes to mind, the people of Israel increasingly depraved, the heroes that come to save them increasingly flawed.
So Judges starts out bright and promising. I’m glad to be in chapter one here. It’s still fairly sunny. But things start to just grow darker as the book unfolds. What goes wrong? And the reality is we’re going to see the root of what goes wrong right here in chapter one, but it does start out well.
In light of the darkness and the heaviness of judges, you know, some of it is so dark. We’re not going to read it out loud in church. It’s that awful. Honestly, it’s God’s word, but it’s dark. And the question is, at least my question was like, is there anything good in here?
Like, is there any hopefulness that I can come to this with? And the answer is absolutely yes.
All of God’s word is helpful. We’re promised that. And so when I was looking for, okay, what is the hope and the help that is to be found in the book of Judges? One of the things is just simply God loves his people enough to correct them. And that’s not just Israel.
That’s us as well as God’s people. God loves his people. And when we are astray, he loves us enough to correct us. And yes, correction is painful. We don’t enjoy it, but it’s for our good. See Hebrews 12. And so God’s correction is something that we see repeatedly in the book of Judges.
We also see grace and mercy. God continues to extend grace and mercy when you would think eventually God would say, I am done with you. I am so sick and tired of all of this and I’m just going to wash my hands of you.
And he doesn’t. He continues to extend grace and mercy, even when the troubles that they find themselves were brought on themselves. And lastly, and I think this is the most significant, when you see leaders who are so far from what you would hope for in a leader, it naturally should make you hungry for a leader that does better.
It should make you hungry for a leader who doesn’t have flaws. And you say, well, where are you going to find one of those? Only one place. Christ. All of these leaders leave you hungry for Jesus because Jesus leads perfectly. Jesus is the one leader who has never failed, who fully saves and fully honors the Lord.
And so this, my hope is that we see Jesus in the text.
He’s in the text. He’s in every part of the Bible. And so I’m going to get us started by reading a very short passage. But if you have strength to stand, one of the things we do to honor God’s word is we just stand, if we have the strength. And I’m going to read the first two verses of Judges and then we’ll work our way through the first chapter and a bit more from there.
Judges 1:1-2
So Judges begins this way. After the death of Joshua, the Israelites asked the Lord, who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites? And the Lord answered, Judah is to go. I have given the land into their hands. Let me stop and ask for help.
Oh Father God. We have all had a day and a week with the weather, kind of an unusual week, something to remember.
But far more than the weather, Lord, we’ve all had, I assume quite different experiences from one to another. Some people have had a pretty relatively easy week and things are going relatively well right now. Others, Lord, have had an extremely difficult week and they’re in a very difficult season of time.
I would assume, Father, there are people in the room this morning who feel especially close to you right now and others, Father, for whom you feel very distant. And there is the unspoken question of, are you even paying attention, Lord? Despite what I know theologically, it doesn’t feel like you are noticing anything that’s going on right now.
And so Father, we come together. One thing we all have in common is we need Jesus.
We need him when we’re doing well. We need him when we’re doing terribly. We need Christ this morning. And Lord, I know that you delight to give us your son. And so we want, the main question is, are we hungry? Are we eager? Are we seeking? Help us, Lord, to seek so that we may find, help us to knock so that you might open the door and that we might enjoy being with Jesus and find ourselves renewed.
And Lord, I’m asking a lot, but you are the God who delights to give far more than we even think to ask. So please give us Christ this morning. I pray this in Jesus’ good name. Amen. Amen. Go ahead and be seated.
The Pain of Partial Obedience
So very briefly, you got to understand context. If you were here through the book of Joshua, you already have it. If you weren’t here through the book of Joshua, here’s just the very, very quick scoop.
A good start
Joshua led the people of Israel across the Jordan River into the land of Canaan because God had promised to give them that land. And so Joshua, the book of Joshua, was all about fighting battles. They fought lots of battles, conquered lots of territory.
But here we come into Judges. There’s still a lot left to do. In fact, we’ve got a map on the screen so that you can kind of see generally, roughly, the territory in green is what Israel had already largely conquered. And you can see it was a lot. There was a lot, but there was a period of peace following that where it doesn’t seem like there was any active battles going, but now it’s time to get going again because you can see that God had commanded them to conquer all of the territory and there was still a lot left that was still completely under Canaanite control along the Mediterranean coast and in the plains inland there.
And so they don’t have Joshua anymore to organize them. And so the Israelites asked God, I assume they went to the tabernacle and they prayed, God, who’s supposed to get us started again since Joshua’s gone? We don’t have a clear leader. And God responded, Judah.
Godly leadership
Judah is the one that is supposed to lead. And so they’re off and starting with Judah taking the lead. This thing, this whole chapter begins with godly leadership. Now it’s worth asking. Why did God choose Judah? There’s 12 tribes. Why Judah? Reuben was the oldest and typically the oldest would take the lead in these things, but God chose Judah.
God made a choice way back in Genesis 49 is where we hear it is where Joseph is blessing the tribes of Israel.
And here’s what he says about Judah. He said the scepter will not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from between his feet. Scepter is something that a king holds. Israel didn’t even have a king yet. They wouldn’t for a long, long time. And yet what God is saying here is that leadership for my people is going to come from the tribe of Judah.
He said it a long time ago. Well, we’re 500 years past that. And so it’s no surprise then in light of this that God’s going to say, yeah, Judah time for you to begin exercising a lead role amongst my people. I want you to get started in conquering the territory that remains.
And so it says in verse 4 that Judah got after it. Judah attacked. I circled that word as I was studying attacked because it comes up again in verse 8.
They are taking the initiative. They’re not waiting for God to do something. They are obeying God’s instructions. They attacked. Verse 10 says they advanced against the Canaanites. They advanced again. So what we see is Israel is now off to a good start.
Godly unity
Why? Because God appointed Judah to get started and they listened and got started. They took initiative to obey the commands of God. So off they go. The second thing that we see here is not only godly leadership, but godly unity. Look at verse 3. The men of Judah said to the Simeonites, their brothers, come up with us into the territory allotted to us to fight against the Canaanites, and then we in turn will go with you into yours.
Now, I don’t have a map to show this to you, but the tribe of Judah received a very large territory down in the Southern part of the land of Canaan near the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean.
So it’s a very large area. The tribe of Simeon, smaller, received a territory that was completely surrounded by Judah. So they are their neighbors. So it’s a very naturally, natural pairing. And Judah asked Simeon to help them with their battles and then promises to help them when Simeon is fighting their own battles.
The principle I wrote down here is that good leadership does not mean doing everything yourself. And then I wrote my own name next to that because I think that’s the thing I need to hear. One of the things I need to hear. Good leadership means helping all of God’s people find their place and fill their role and get involved.
And God loves it when his people are getting along together and working together and honoring him in the ways that God has called them to. There’s a Psalm that celebrates this, Psalm 133, how good and how pleasant it is when the brothers live together in unity.
How many of you have heard that scripture before? And then it goes on. Some of you maybe even know a song. It’s like oil dumped on your head. That doesn’t sound awesome. But in the Old Testament culture, in the Israelite culture, that was a, the parallel I think for us would be, it’d be like lotion on dry winter skin.
Like, ah, what a relief, right? It’s just such a soothing thing. It’s such a delightful thing. That’s what he’s trying to say there. And so God was so pleased, not only that Judah is taking the lead, but that there’s unity, there’s teamwork among God’s people as they seek to obey his commands.
And God blesses it when his people work together. The remainder of this section, verses one through 18, is all about things that are happening when obedience is happening and teamwork is happening, unity, God is blessing.
First, we see that God blessed them with victory. Look at verse four, warning, little grim. Okay, so that’s battle. Now it says, they went and fought, but why did they have victory? It says, the Lord gave the Canaanites into their hands. The Lord, so this is, this is a picture.
It was so much all the way through Joshua, right? So who is doing the work? Well, God, oh, God, ultimately, but it doesn’t mean that Judah and Simeon sit home and just watch it on TV. No, they go fight. They practice, they plan, they fight, they strive, all of the things.
But when it’s all said and done, God is the one that gives the victory.
God’s blessing
And so God blessed it because they were obeying him. They were working together and God blessed them with victory. He also blessed them with justice. Now, this is the thing I was thinking when I said, it gets a little grim. Verse seven, well, verse, no, we’ll go to, we’ll go to verse five.
It was there they found Adonai Bezek. That’s the king of Bezek, means Lord of Bezek. And they fought against him, putting to rout the Canaanites and Perizzites. Adonai Bezek fled, but they chased him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and big toes.
All right, we’re into judges, right? This is going to get more grim. What is up with cutting, cutting off the thumbs and big toes? It seems cruel and unusual punishment. Well, apparently this king, king of Bezek, that’s what he had done to everybody he conquered.
All of the leaders that he conquered, he cut off their thumbs and big toes to humiliate them and to render them completely dependent. And they all apparently crawled around on the floor in his palace, fighting for food scraps. It was a way for him to Lord it over them and to absolutely humiliate them for the rest of their lives.
And notice what happens when he is finally captured by the Israelites and it is done to him. Look at what he says. He says in verse seven, now God has paid me back for what I did. Notice he realizes where this is coming from. This is not just because, well, I finally met somebody more powerful than I.
No, he traces it. He says, this is God doing this to me. God is actually executing justice, judgment on him, using the Israelites as his tool of judgment.
So God is blessing them with victory. He’s blessing them with justice. I’m going to kind of fast forward and just point out. Next, we see that God is blessing them with marriage. There’s a guy named Othniel, who is actually going to be one of the judges that we’ll come to.
He wins a wife by winning a battle. That’s pretty cool. Maybe some of you did the same. And then he gets water. You can see in verse 15, he gets water for the land that he’s inherited. And you see, these are kind of some random, I was like, what is the unifying theme for all of these seemingly random moments of he gets a wife and then she asked her dad for some springs of water so they can…
And I believe it’s a picture of when God’s people are obeying and they’re working together in unity, God blesses. He blesses in a very wide spectrum of ways with victory and justice and marriage and water are just elements of this blessing because they are trying to obey God and they’re trying to obey him fully.
I want to draw your attention. One more verse here in this section. Verse 17. The men of Judah went with the Simeonites, their brothers, and they attacked the Canaanites living in Zepheth and they totally destroyed the city. Now again, got to say it again.
We’ve noted this multiple times through the book of Joshua, totally wiping out an entire city that does not seem very godly. And yet in this case, it is a unique case where God was executing judgment on these peoples who were absolutely depraved and God had commanded them, wipe them all out.
That is the command from God. This is not Israelite just being cruel. This is God executing judgment. You can see that the command came all the way back through Moses in Deuteronomy 20.
What did God say? When you get there, completely destroy them, these native peoples in the land. Their time is up as the Lord your God commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods and you will sin against the Lord your God.
So there’s both judgment going on as well as protection for the Israelites to say, if you do not drive them out, you’re going to end up just like them and the same judgment that they are receiving, you’re going to receive as well. So they were aiming and striving to fully obey the Lord.
So it’s a good start warning. This is about the best that it gets in judges. We’ve just crested. Joshua kind of goes up, right? They just keep winning battles and conquering more territory.
They’re obeying God. In judges, we just crested and it’s just going to go downhill, generally speaking. There’s a few little ups, but mostly down from here. Why? Well, because they started well, but they did not finish well. Look at verse 19. That sounds promising.
So you’ve got victory after victory after victory. They’re doing great. And then suddenly they run into an army that has chariots. Israel doesn’t have any and they cannot handle it. They cannot defeat chariots. And recognize if you’re a foot soldier going against the chariots like today, it’s like an infantry facing tanks.
It doesn’t go well for the people just on their feet.
And so it just says they quit. They stopped. It just says that they were unable. They had chariots and the story just moves in. They quit the battle. And I’m calling it quitting the battle against sin. Why? Because this was not just about getting land.
This was about living for the Lord. That’s what they were. That’s what God said. You’ve got to drive them out or else you’re going to behave like them. And so this was about fighting a battle against sin. And they found an enemy that they couldn’t defeat.
And they just quit. One of our guys in our Bible study, he was like, well, that just sounds weird. They face chariots. They couldn’t defeat them. And so they just stop. And on we go to the next part of the story. Like there was nothing about, okay, we’ll seek God.
Let’s ask, how are we going to defeat? We got problems here, Lord. So what do we do about this? No, nothing about that.
Just end of the subject. And it kind of reminded me of that scene in Toy Story 2. I know you’re all big Pixar fans, but they’re going to go rescue Woody. And so the toys get together and they’re going to go rescue Woody. And they’re all feeling brave until they get to a busy street and realize they have to cross it.
A car whizzes by, runs over a tin can, which lands right in front of them. And Rex says, oh, well, we tried, right? And he’s ready to head home. Like no need dying in the process, right? And I feel like that’s what happened to Judah and Simeon. They get out there on the battlefield, goes to the chariots and like, oh, well, we tried.
Failure to finish
And they went home. That’s what happened. They just, they quit on that. I want to acknowledge, it is so easy for me in my comfortable, safe world where I am not facing a chariot.
I’ve never even been in a fight unless you count that thing in fourth grade that was, and I’m glad there’s no video. Because I lost badly. So I’m just saying it’s easy for me to criticize them for not facing chariots. But it’s not, it’s not about, well, how well would I have done against a chariot or how well would you do?
It is about, okay, who is it that they’re trying to obey? God. Does God have difficulty defeating chariots? No. Remember Egypt? They had chariots. Where are they? Bottom of the Red Sea. So it is about, they came to an enemy that they could not defeat.
And instead of seeking God and trusting Him for whatever God would do in order to enable them to win the victory, they just stopped. They just quit. If you look at verse 27, and it’s a different part of the story, but same theme.
Quitting the battle against sin
It says the Canaanites were determined to live there. Understandably, it’s where they live. So they don’t want to leave. They don’t want to lose. But the real issue then is that the Israelites’ primary problem was not lack of power. It was lack of determination.
They simply were not willing to pursue God enough to say, if you’ve called us to do this, it must be possible. How do we do this? They did not pursue that. And I think you’ve got to see the parallel here to the Christian life. If you’re a Christian, undoubtedly, you have followed the Lord and there have been victories that have been won in your life where God has changed things that needed to be changed.
Praise God for that. But inevitably, you will come to a point where suddenly you’re facing some sort of difficulty in your life, some sort of a part of your life that needs to be surrendered to God.
It’s not right. It needs to change. And you will find yourself failing to change. You, and you, and you may feel like, well, wait a second. I’m trying my hardest here to do differently than I’m doing. This is impossible. It could be because this is epidemic.
I’m going to mention it again. Porn. Porn is very powerful and very addictive. And once you’re stuck, it is very difficult to quit. And many, many people have found what I have found once in my life, that just deciding I’m not doing this anymore is not enough power.
And there you are right back again. And you can say, even after giving your best efforts, this is impossible. Or it might be controlling your anger to where you lose it against, usually those that you love most.
And you lose it and say, oh, I got to stop doing that. This is ridiculous. This is so harmful to the people I love and dishonoring to God. And yet you can find yourself even years later doing pretty much exactly the same thing. And you’re like, maybe this is just how I am.
Maybe I’m not able to do this. Or maybe it’s disciplining your eating, which is extremely difficult in this land where food is everywhere and so much of it not the healthiest. Or maybe it’s refraining from worry. Yeah, you know, Jesus teaches us that worry is not just unpleasant, it’s ungodly.
And I’m not trying to throw stones here. I’m just saying, Jesus says, no, this represents a lack of confidence in me. And yet worry for so many is just absolutely automatic.
Like to turn it off is like, seems impossible. Like how could a person possibly not worry? Or maybe it’s controlling your tongue. Gosh, I have such a quick tongue and a quick wit and also quick to wound and out it comes. And man, I’ve tried to get a handle on it and finding that what James says about the tongue is in chapter three of James is true.
It’s this forest fire and I keep lighting everything on fire. What’s wrong with me? I guess I can’t do this. I guess it’s impossible. And here’s what the scriptures teach us, both in Judges here, as well as in the New Testament. It is not impossible.
First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13. In fact, I want to invite you to read this with me off the screen. Many of you have this memorized. First Corinthians 10, 13. It’s not impossible.
Temptation can be extremely difficult. But what God says is, there is nothing that I have given you that you cannot succeed. I’m not giving you a test that you cannot pass. I have always provided a way out. And what we must not do is give up. That’s what, that’s what, that’s what the theme of this, of this, this point is.
Living in close proximity to sin
You, you, you fight. There’s lots to be said about, well, how do I find the way out? All of that? Yes. That’s, that’s going to have to be future messages. But ultimately what we have to recognize is if I find myself failing repeatedly, it is not because it’s impossible.
That’s the one answer that I cannot, I cannot embrace. And because Judah gave up the fight and said, well, I guess we’re not going to be able to drive them out.
Then they basically accepted the fact that we’re going to live in close, close proximity to sin. They’re going to live side by side with people who are worshiping idols in depraved ways. Now God promises a way out of sin, but to basically hang out around the door in to sin is stupid and sinful.
And that’s what they were doing. If you, if porn is your battle, buying a house next to an adult store is stupid. Right? Like I’m just, this is, this is the equivalent. And so that’s what Judah is essentially doing is saying, well, I guess we have to live this way.
And notice what happens right after Judah fails to drive out the people that they were supposed to drive out. Verse 21, the Benjamites, different tribe, failed to dislodge the Jebusites who were living in Jerusalem.
And to this day, the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites. Now, do you think there’s any relationship to Judah failing to drive out their people, drive out the enemies in their area and the Benjamites? Well, sure. Benjamites, Judah was a large tribe, very powerful army.
Benjamin, by contrast, very small, small territory, small army. And you can imagine Benjamin going, well, we’re not able to drive the Jebusites out of Jerusalem. And if Judah can’t defeat their enemies with their big old army, well then what hope do we have?
And so Judah’s failure is going to make it easier for Benjamin to not do what God called them to do. And on it goes through the rest of these verses, all the way down through verse 27 and following, you read about Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, even Dan, worst of all, like each one, it basically says they fought, but they couldn’t finish the job.
Establishing a relationship with sin
And so they end up living together. They end up living together with the idol worshipers, contrary to what God had commanded them. And when you live in close proximity to sin, eventually what you see here is they established a relationship with sin. Look at verse 28.
When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but they never drove them out completely. You see how this flows? So they were supposed to drive them completely out. They didn’t. Now they’re there. And eventually Israel got the strength, but instead of doing what God had commanded, they said, well, we’ll just make them do our chores.
We’ll make them haul our water and cut our wood for us. I call this sin with benefits because now they have decided to take something which is not right and get some economic value out of the arrangement.
And you could say, well, you know, they’re just making the Canaanites do their work. They’re not actually, you know, uh, worshiping their gods. No, not yet, but God knows. That’s why he told them you’ve got to drive them out completely because if, when you live side by side, then you’re going to form business partnerships with them and then your kids are going to grow up and fall in love.
And they’re going to marry each other and you’re going to intermarry with them. Before you know it, you’re going to be going to their temple and imitating their worship practices, which are all about getting drunk and having sex. That’s, that’s Canaanite religion summed up.
And so that’s, what’s going to happen. And God says, now you, now you’ve locked yourself into it. And it’s really important that you’ve got to see this is not a moment of failure for the Israelite people.
It is a lifestyle. It’s a whole system. It’s not like they one day didn’t obey and now everything bad is going to happen. No, it is a, they developed this over many, many months, probably even years to the point where, okay, now we live together, contrary to what God said, with the people who are worshiping idols, with the people who practice depravity as a lifestyle.
And it is a great temptation for us today as well. The context is different, but I kept looking at that term because it says it repeatedly. They pressed the Canaanites into forced labor. And to me, that is a picture in the Christian life of having sin in your life, but you try to manage it.
You try to keep it under control and, and, and, and keep it from ruining your life.
And there’s lots of ways that this happens. A person that finds that they cannot drink without getting drunk might have to acknowledge to themselves, well, yeah, I do drink too much sometimes, but I, I still do my job and, and, and I provide for my family.
So it’s, it’s really not a big problem. And that’s a way of protecting, protecting sin, basically. And then there’s a, or with anger. Yeah, I do lose it, you know, sometimes. Uh, but my family seems to be doing fine. So I don’t really think it’s a big problem.
Again, protecting it saying it doesn’t need to be dealt with because everything seems to be okay.
Or entertainment. Yeah, I do watch some shows that are not, you know, I probably wouldn’t tell other people about them, but you know, it’s not like I’m behaving like the people in those shows. It’s just, it’s just entertainment. It doesn’t really affect me.
Um, again, it’s protecting, it’s trying to control it. Uh, same thing with, with porn. I bring it up again because it is so endemic and it is so destructive. Yeah. Okay. I do look at porn sometimes, but it’s, you know, it’s not really the terrible stuff and it doesn’t really hurt anything.
So it’s not a problem. Again, sin gets protected. Uh, the tongue. Yeah. My tongue gets away from me sometimes, but there’s no real harm in it. Everybody laughs and I like to make people laugh. I just, I guess I was just, you know, it’s good to make people laugh, isn’t it?
Um, or yes, I do spend a lot of time on my hobby. Uh, but you know, it seems like my family is still doing well and you know, I get to church pretty often on and on.
And I’m just giving examples of ways that we can have sin that’s in our life and try to protect it rather than get rid of it. Why don’t we just say, why not just get rid of it at all? Instead of trying to keep it from ruining your life. And one reason, if we’re totally honest is because we like it.
If I get rid of it completely, then I don’t have that thing that gives me a benefit that I like. So to kick it out completely, ah, and secondly, to kill sin completely, because that’s the way the Bible talks about it, to get rid of sin completely would just be flat out so hard and maybe even tried real hard and you remember it being so difficult and defeating and discouraging.
And so now you don’t even try anymore, which is exactly what Israel did.
And what the Bible says is the one thing you cannot do is give up. If you give up and then you have basically made sin a lifestyle and what God says so many places, I’ll mention one in the new Testament, Romans 13 verse 14, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.
Meaning don’t give it a little bit of territory, get it all gone. How many of you have ever heard of a little pamphlet, just a short little pamphlet called My Heart, Christ’s Home? Yeah. So it’s a brilliant, it’s a really good picture of basically your life represented by a house.
And when you become a Christian, Jesus comes into the living room and, and you realize, okay, there’s a bunch of garbage in here and it’s got to go and so you chuck it all out. And then Jesus says, uh, could we go in the kitchen?
Oh, wait, wait, no, not, not in there. I’m not quite ready for that. Could I go into the bedroom? Oh, not in there. And you shut that door. And Jesus said, no, the whole house, the whole house. I’ve rescued all of you. So we got to clean out all the rooms.
That’s the idea here. And what the Israelites were doing is they were cleaning out part of the house and the rest of it, they were protecting sin because it was too hard. And because honestly, they kind of liked it. And one of the reasons that we’ve got to clean out the house and not protect sin and to say, Jesus, you’re invited.
And actually I want you in every room is because we’re going to see him. We’re going to see him soon, he says. And they see him here.
Facing the Lord
We’re going to close with just the first few verses of chapter two. It says that the angel of the Lord showed up and appeared to Israel.
The angel of the Lord. Now, if you read from the beginning of the Bible up to this point, you would read about this angel of the Lord multiple times. I think you’d first encounter the angel of the Lord. And I think in Genesis 16, when he appears to Hagar and in her distress and helps her out, you see the angel of the Lord appear to Abraham on Mount Moriah as he’s preparing to sacrifice Isaac.
And the angel of the Lord said, stop, do not sacrifice your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. The angel of the Lord is the very same one who appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him to take off his sandals because he’s on holy ground.
The angel of the Lord is also, I believe, the same one who appeared to Joshua before the battle at Jericho, where he introduced himself not as the angel of the Lord, but the commander of the army of the Lord.
But he said the same thing that he said to Moses, which is take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground. So I take it to be the same person. And I believe that person that appeared in all those occasions is actually Jesus. Now, there is debate on this. If you disagree, I’m fine.
We all love God and we love him. But I believe this is Jesus before, call it pre-incarnate, meaning before he was born as a baby in Bethlehem, about 1300 years earlier here, he shows up and appears to Israel. And speaks to them, what does he say? And look what he says to them as verse one continues.
I brought you up out of Egypt and I led you into the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you should break down their altars.
Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this now? Therefore, I tell you that I will not drive them out before you and they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you. It’s like God, if I can paraphrase, is saying, you were stuck in human trafficking, you were being trafficked.
And I saved you out of that. And not only did I save you out of that, but I married you and I set you up in this amazing place to live. And now you are ignoring me and not only ignoring me, you’re flirting with your old pimps, the ones who abused you and you’re flirting with them.
And so I’m telling you right now, I am going to be distant from you. We will not have the closeness we had. And your old lovers will abuse you.
That’s what God is telling them. And it says in verse four and five that they wept when they heard this. They wept. They offered sacrifices. And it would seem like they are repentant, but they’re not. They don’t change anything. They keep right on going in the same way.
One of my great fears, one of the great problems that we can encounter is when you come to church and God’s word is preached and it’s not hard if you’re letting the Lord speak to you to feel convicted about whatever is not right in your life and you can feel appropriately sad about that.
But if nothing changes, if there is no action, initiative to actually change anything, it’s not repentance. It’s like what they’re Israel.
They felt sad, but no change. And they kept right on the downward path that they were walking. Here’s the beautiful thing. It doesn’t have to be that. We could actually listen. Imagine, I tried to imagine, what if Jesus showed up to you, you could see him, you could touch him and hear him and he just talked to you about your life.
What would he say? It’s worth pondering or what if Jesus showed up in front of us and said, Toby, why don’t you sit down? I have something to say. What would he say to our church as a whole? And I can’t help but think about there are seven different churches that had that happen in the book of Revelation.
They’re all in the same region. And Jesus spoke through the Apostle John and basically just assessed each church.
And I was looking at that this week. Two of the churches were doing well and all Jesus really said was, you’re doing great. Keep it up. Hang in there because it’s tough. I know it. I see it. I’m proud of you. So two were commended. Two others had the opposite.
Jesus didn’t have anything good to say about their church and he basically warned them severely. You better repent like for real, not just be sad or you won’t be a church. You might still gather, but you won’t be actually a church. But what about the other three?
The other three, it was a mix. There were things they were doing well and things that they were really failing in. And it really is what you would call partial obedience. And it was serious.
It wasn’t like, well, okay, I’m grading on a curve here. No, he is. Jesus is speaking, saying these things that are not right. You need to deal with this. You need to get serious about this. And so, you know, I’m not going to go into the details of this.
And so here’s what we’re going to do. I want to invite the worship team to come up and they’re going to get ready to lead us in worship. But we’re going to take a few minutes because we have a few minutes. Revelation 2. This is the first church I believe that Jesus spoke to.
And here’s what he said by way of rebuke. Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
This is a church that had some things that were good. The things that you read in that section, as Jesus evaluates that church in Ephesus, they were doing some good things. And yet there were things that were really critical. And he basically says, you kind of forgot what it was like to be saved.
And your love has gone cold. And we have many in our church have been Christians for a long time. And so I want to give you a few minutes to just say, all right, Jesus, what? What do you want to tell me? What needs to be changed? Last night I sat down at this point and then we were singing our songs and he was bugging me.
Well, why don’t you tell them what he’s working on in your life? And I said, wow, but I already sat down, you know, and we’re singing and I don’t want to.
So I will share at this moment, rather than coming up after our songs are done, that there are two things. So I’ll say, no, three. One, the issue of porn. I want to say that in the past, that is an area that has been conquered. And I share it, and it’s honestly shameful to say it, but I share it, one, to be transparent.
Two, because I know by reading the stats that there are many that are in the slavery of porn is doing terrible damage, whether you know it or not. And I’m saying that because I know some of you have tried to deal with it and you’re still failing. And I want to give you hope.
It is not impossible. It is not. Much more could be said.
But I just want to say, don’t just accept. I guess this is it. And if you’re needing help, I am one person who would be happy to talk to you. In the present, however, that doesn’t mean I’m done. In fact, I think I had, oh, good. The really big damaging sin has been conquered.
Oh, good. I’m done. No, I have been learning in the present two things. One, talking consistently with gentleness to my wife. And again, I’m not proud that I have needed to repent about that many times throughout 35 years of marriage. But now it is more important than ever.
And God has recently said it is time to win victory over this and to consistently talk in a helpful way.
And I’m encouraged right now, but it’s still early. And so I’m saying this both by way of example and by way of accountability, because you all have freedom to ask me, how’s that going? Secondly, and this is a little bit embarrassing as well, but not wasting time on YouTube.
YouTube is a wonderful and terrible time sink because there’s so many interesting things I can watch. And I realize I’ve been staying up too late at times going, good grief, it’s 11:30. I should have been in bed an hour ago. Why? Well, because I’m watching interesting things.
YouTube is not a sin, I don’t think. But when it’s taking more time than I’m supposed to give it, then it becomes that. And so I have made some plans about how it doesn’t take more than it should. And I’ve talked about that with Kristin. Those are examples, tangible examples of what it’s looking like at present for me.
What I’m encouraging you to do is ask Jesus, all right, Lord, what do you want to work on with me? What needs to change? And just take some time with him and then we’ll sing to the Lord.