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Los Lunas Cornerstone

Church of the Nazarene

By Grace! (Judges 2)

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    Today we’ll start going deeper into the book of Judges to see what happens, what God does, when the Israelite people don’t do what He’s asked them to do. We saw last week through Judges 1 that God desires for His people to be obedient to Him, and He wants us to set an example, not only to other Christians, but to the world as well, and we can’t do that if we’re not obedient to Him.
    We’re going to dive into Judges 2, particularly the last half of the chapter. We’re going to look at the sin that the Israelites chose over and over again, and how God handled that, and also, what that means for us.
    Let’s look at Judges 2:10-13, “All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.”
    This was the consequence of the tribe of Judah, and many other tribes, not driving out the Canaanites from the land completely. The people mingled with the Canaanites, and married them, and started to learn about the Canaanite gods and serve their gods. Within just a few years, those who lived under Joshua’s leadership died, and a new generation rose up that didn’t know the Lord.
    Now, there was a lot involved in that process of forgetting God. Not driving out the people was part of that process. So was the peoples neglecting to teach their children about who the Lord was and what He had done for the people. Most people couldn’t read, most people couldn’t write, most people weren’t educated in any real sense of the word, so knowledge about the Lord, who He is, what He’s done, was passed primarily through parents to their children. If that wasn’t done, then it would be that much easier for there to be a generation that no longer knew the character of the God they were supposed to serve.
    The people instead started serving and worshiping Baal. Baal was the Canaanite god, sort of their chief god. Baal was thought to be the god of rain, the god of the land and its fertility, the god of the sun. So, what the Canaanites believed was that if they worshiped Baal, and his consort goddess, Ashtoreth, then the two of them together would send rain onto the land and the land would produce fruit and grains and the people would be provided for.
    Unfortunately, the worship of Baal and Ashtoreth required practices that the Lord had condemned: human sacrifice, child sacrifice, and temple prostitution. So, when God’s people forgot the Lord, and instead started worshiping Baal and Ashtoreth, we have to understand that they were involved in these practices that God had condemned. Obviously that’s a problem, but not just because of these practices.
    Remember Moses and the burning bush? Remember when Moses asked the Lord who He is, and God told Him, “I Am”. In Hebrew, the name that God gave to Moses was “Jehovah”, and when He gave Moses that name, He was reminding Moses of what He had promised to Abraham. It was a covenant to be His God, to be faithful to Abraham, to make Abraham into a great nation that would be a blessing to all. God, Jehovah, was reminding Moses that God is the God of the covenant. There is a covenant between the Lord and His people.
    This covenant relationship between God and His people is a bond like a marriage. That’s your first blank if you’re following along in your bulletin this morning. The covenant relationship between God and His people is a bond like a marriage. It is an agreement between two parties to love one another and care for one another, but most importantly to be faithful to one another.
    I want you to read a bit ahead and look at Judges 2:17, “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers.”
    The word choice here, that the people, the Israelites “played the harlot after other gods”, reflects what their choice to worship other gods did to their covenant relationship with the Lord. On the part of the people, they broke that covenant, they broke the covenant relationship. Now, God didn’t break His part of the covenant, the people did. But, when they did that, and here’s your next blanks, to break that bond is an act of spiritual infidelity. The people effectively cheated on the Lord.
    Now I want you to look at Numbers 25:3-5, “So Israel joined themselves to Baal of Peor, and the Lord was angry against Israel. The Lord said to Moses, “Take all the leaders of the people and execute them in broad daylight before the Lord, so that the fierce anger of the Lord may turn away from Israel.” So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Each of you slay his men who have joined themselves to Baal of Peor.”
    This was how Baal worship had been handled previously. The Lord took worship of other gods very seriously, to the point that when His people had previously worshiped Baal, the Lord ordered Moses to have them executed! Baal worship, and really any worship of any other god, false god, or idol, was severely condemned by God throughout the entire history of God’s people.
    His just nature demands that evil be dealt with harshly. His just nature demands that sin be dealt with by the death of the person who sinned. This is what we normally expect to see in the Old Testament, is God’s just nature.
    But, I want you to look at what God’s actual response was. Judges 2:16-18, “Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them.”
    Because the Israelites didn’t drive out the Canaanites from the land, and because the people worshiped Baal and Ashtoreth, God let them be oppressed by the Canaanites. God didn’t cause the people to be oppressed, He just allowed for the natural consequences of their actions to happen. Then the people would cry out because of their oppression, and God’s response was to raise up judges, leaders, to deliver the people from their oppression.
    We’ll look at a few of these judges over the next few weeks, but there is a pattern with each of these judges. Every time God would raise up a judge to deliver the people, the people would follow the Lord during that time, but as soon as the judge would die, the people would go back to worshiping Baal and Ashtoreth, back to breaking the covenant relationship with the Lord.
    And still, God would raise up a judge to deliver them from the consequences of their choices. Why? They broke the covenant. They would continue to break the covenant over and over again. Why would God, a just God who demands justice and righteousness, provide deliverance for a people who break their covenant with Him again and again?
    Look closely at verse 18 again, “When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them.”
    Here’s your next blank, “the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning.” God demands justice and righteousness and payment for sins, yes, but more than anything, He loves His people. He loves them enough to let them experience the consequences of their sin, but He also loves them enough to deliver them when they don’t deserve to be delivered.
    This isn’t just a New Testament idea, that God loves His people. We certainly see it expressed very clearly in the New Testament, especially when we consider passages like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” Or Romans 8:38-39, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
    We see this concept displayed continuously in the Old Testament as well though, and this passage proves that. That word that we read in verse 18, “pity”, is translated elsewhere as compassion, or a desire to comfort. So, what is happening here, is the same thing that happened in Exodus when the people were oppressed and crying out to the Lord and God had compassion on them and a desire to comfort them and so He made a way for them to be delivered.
    The people got themselves into trouble, and when they were suffering under the weight of the consequences of their sins, they cried out to God, and because of His love for them, He took compassion toward them and desired to comfort them through the consequences of their own sin.
    Why did God do this? Not because He had to. Not because He was obligated to the people, because the people had already broken the covenant. He did this because He loves His people. He did this because regardless of how much His people disappointed Him, His love could not be separated from them. He did this because as much as He is a just God, He is also a loving God and a merciful God.
    The pattern that we see here, is that even in the midst of disobedience and sin, is that God provided a way for deliverance. This is something we see over and over again throughout the entire Bible, as God’s response to humanity’s sin.
    Continue this pattern on into the New Testament, and we see the greatest example of God providing a way for deliverance even, no, especially, when the people don’t deserve it. What we see in the story of the cross in the gospels is the same thing we see here in Judges 2, that even in the midst of disobedience and sin, God provides salvation by grace! That’s your last blank this morning. Grace is when God gives us what we don’t deserve. He showers us with blessings that we have no business having! The best being that He provided a sacrifice for our sins when we didn’t deserve it.
    All of this story in Judges highlights the sin of the people, yes, it highlights their disobedience, yes it highlights the consequences of sin, but most importantly it highlights the grace of God. It shows how amazing His grace is, that He would provide deliverance for His people, even when we don’t deserve it.
    We’ll close today’s message with a few questions to consider and answer this week:


1. Read Ephesians 2:1-10 this week. How does the pattern we see in Judges (sin, crying out to God, repentance, deliverance, peace) show the salvation by grace through faith that Paul talks about in Ephesians?

2. Many times, we look at the Old Testament and choose to only see a harsh God who inflicts judgment and punishment on His people when they stray even a little. How does this passage in Judges 2 prove that this is not the whole story?

3. Have you seen proof of God’s abundant grace in your life concerning past sins? How did that deepen your trust and faith in Him? If you’re currently struggling with disobedience or sin, how can you rely on His grace more to bring you back into a rightful relationship with Him?

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