The Disastrous Consequences of Partial Obedience

If you have your Bible with you, I hope you do, turn to the book of Judges, which is the seventh
book in the Bible in the Old Testament. So Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy,
Joshua, Judges. That's where we are this morning. We're beginning a 12-week series working our way
through this book of the Bible. And as you're turning there, let me just say something about the
graphic that we have up here for the book of Judges. This broken window that's here.
Back in 1982, there were two sociologists, James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, who proposed a
theory that became known as the broken window theory. And here was the idea that if in a community,
if in a neighborhood, there was a broken window in a local... and no one repaired it that would
send a signal to the community that no one's watching no one's in charge no one cares what happens
here and that perception would lead to increased lawlessness and neglect So we've got a broken
window here because the book of Judges gives us an overview of about 400 years of Jewish history
where God's people routinely drifted in long stretches of neglect and lawlessness.
where they weren't paying attention to God or his ways. And as a result, they experienced periods
of decline and danger. They had to be rescued over and over again by a variety of people who were
flawed people, but who were heroic people called by God to bring his people back to faithfulness to
him. And there's an ongoing cycle that we'll see in the book of Judges as the nation of Israel
moves from from the wilderness into the promised land to begin to occupy it.
And by the way, this cycle in the book of Judges that goes from complacency all the way around to
disobedience and repentance and back to faithfulness, that's been a cycle throughout the history of
the church. It's something we've seen over and over again. It's a pattern in human behavior.
The 400 years that are covered in this book, Well, let me show you where this fits on the Old
Testament timeline. So just to give you a perspective of where Judges fits in history,
I'm going to give you an overview of the 2,000 years from the calling of Abram into the land of
promise all the way up to the birth of Jesus. So 2,000 years. It's been 2,000 years since Jesus
was born, so that gives you some sense of the scope of time we're talking about here. It all begins
with Abram in Ur of the Chaldees being called out of Ur, being called into the promised land.
This happens, by the way, around 2,000 years before Jesus is born. And the book of Genesis covers
the patriarchs, Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons, covers a period of about 150 years of history.
And it covers the time from when Abraham comes into the promised land
famine goes to Egypt and then lives in Egypt. And then there's this 400-year period where you're
in Egypt and the Jewish people eventually become enslaved in Egypt. We don't have any biblical
account of the time in Egypt. That 400-year period when they're living among the Egyptians,
we just don't have any biblical record of what was going on there. But then around 1500 BC,
God raises up Moses. And Moses is the deliverer who is going to come and bring God's people out of
Egypt and bring them into the promised land, back to the promised land. They're going back to the
land that God had given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and his sons. And so this is the time of the
Exodus. And if you read in your Bible, starting with Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, you're really getting this period that's about a multi-year
period of the Exodus that then leads into 40 years in the wilderness,
followed by entrance into the promised land under Joshua. So that's the next thing that happens.
They enter the promised land, and that's where the book of Judges fits in. It's kind of the sequel
to what was going on in Joshua. In Joshua, they enter the promised land again,
and then Joshua dies. And the book of Judges gives us a 400-year overview of what happens from the
death of Joshua to God raising up the first king, actually the people demanding a king in Israel.
And that's when you have the period of the united... So you've got Saul and David and Solomon,
who are the three kings that rule over the United Kingdom. Solomon then builds the temple,
which is a significant event in that time period. And that's followed by another period of about
350 or 400 years where... kingdom divides. You have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom,
and it's ruled by a variety of different kings over that period of time. Most of them are not very
good. A few stand out, but most of them are just not effective,
not spiritually minded, godly men. Which leads us to the point where Israel is taken away into
captivity by the Babylonians. They come and destroy Jerusalem, take off God's people,
take them into captivity. God's people are in captivity in Babylon for about 60 years,
and then they are brought out of captivity and back to the land in 538 BC.
They're allowed to return to the land, rebuild Jerusalem. When we read Ezra and Nehemiah,
we're reading about the rebuilding of the city of Jerusalem. And then there's another 400-year
period where we have silence from the end of the book of Malachi to the birth of Jesus.
And we do have historical data about what happened during that time, but no biblical data. So
that's the overview. And again, the book of Judges fits in that period, that 400-year period from
the end of Joshua's life until the anointing of Saul as the first king of Israel.
That's where it fits. We don't know who wrote. The book of Judges, most scholars think Samuel was
involved in writing, maybe Samuel or a group of people under his supervision, and it was likely
written at the beginning of Saul's time when Samuel said, we need a catalog,
a history of what God has done over the last 400 years. There are three main sections in the book
of Judges. There's a prologue in chapters 1 and 2. And then that's followed by a period from
chapters 3 to 16, where we get the profiles of the different people who served as judges.
And then there's an epilogue in chapters 17 through 21 that looks back on that time.
And there's a key verse. If you want to know what the book of Judges is all about, there's a verse
that shows up twice in chapter 17, verse 6, and in chapter 21,
the last verse in the book. is a verse that tells you what the book of Judges is about.
It says, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
That's what was going on for 400 years during the time of Judges. There was no king,
and everyone was doing whatever they thought best. So that's the background. And here's what we're
going to see as we dive into chapter one this morning. As God's people came into the promised land,
God gave them a command to take possession of the land completely and to drive out or destroy the
inhabitants of the world. the land. And God's people disobeyed that command. They practiced partial
obedience instead of full obedience. They did some of what God asked them to do,
but not all of what God asked them to do. And partial obedience led to disastrous consequences that
lasted for generations, actually for centuries, in the history of Israel.
So that's what we're going to see as we get into Judges chapter 1 this morning. And it's a long
section we're going to read through. We're going to read all of chapter 1 and the first five verses
of chapter 2. Let me pray for our time in God's Word, and then we'll read the Scriptures together.
Lord, we need you now to come and instruct us, be our teacher.
Holy Spirit, would you soften our hearts, prepare us for the implanting of your Word,
Hear clearly what you would say to us, both as a congregation and individually.
Speak as we have just sung. Speak, O Lord,
and renew our minds. We ask all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Would you stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of God for the people of God.
Judges chapter 1, beginning at verse 1. After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of
the Lord. Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?
The Lord said, Judah shall go up. Behold, I have given the land into his hand. Let me just say
that's the tribe of Judah, not an individual. So the people of Judah shall go. And Judah said to
Simeon, another tribe, his brother, come up with me into the territory allotted to me that we may
fight against the Canaanites. And I likewise will go with you into the territory allotted to you.
So Simeon went with him. Then Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites
into their hand and they defeated 10,000 of them at Bezek. They found Adonai Bezek at Bezek and
fought against him and defeated the Canaanites and the Perizzites. Adonai Bezek fled and they
pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes. And Adonai Bezek said,
Seventy kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to pick up scraps under my table,
as I have done, so God has repaid me. And they brought him to Jerusalem and he died there. The men
of Judah fought against Jerusalem and captured it and struck it with the edge of a sword and set
the city on fire. And afterward, the men of Judah went down to fight against the Canaanites who
lived in the hill country, in the Negev, in the lowlands. And Judah went against the Canaanites who
lived in Hebron. Now the name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath Arba.
And they defeated Sheshiai and Ahimon and Talmei.
From there they went against the inhabitants of Deber. And the name of Deber was formerly Kiriath
Sefer. And Caleb said... who attacks Kiriath Sefer and captures it,
I will give him Aksa, my daughter, as his wife.
And Othniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, captured it,
and he gave him Aksa, his daughter, as wife. And she came to him and urged him to ask her father
for a field. And she dismounted from her donkey and Caleb said to her, what do you want? And she
said, give me a blessing since you've given me the land of the Negev. Give me also springs of
water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. And the descendants of the
Kenite, Moses' father-in-law, went up with the people of Judah from the city of Palms into the
wilderness of Judah, which lies in the Negev near Arad. And they went and settled with the people.
And Judah went with Simeon, his brother, and they defeated the Canaanites who inhabited Zephath,
and they devoted it to destruction. So the name of the place was called Hormah. Judah also captured
Gaza with its territory, and Ashkelon with its territory, and Ekron with its territory.
And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country. But he could not drive out
the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron. And Hebron was given to Caleb,
as Moses had said, and he drove out from there the three sons of Anak.
But the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem, and the
Jebusites have lived with the people of Benjamin in Jerusalem to this day. The house of Joseph also
went up against Bethel, and the Lord was with them, and the house of Joseph scouted out Bethel.
Now the name of the city was formerly Luz. And the spies saw a man coming out of the city and they
said to him, please show us the way into the city and we will deal kindly with you. And he showed
them the way into the city and they struck the city with the edge of the sword and they let the man
and all his family go. And the man went to the land of the Hittites and they built a city and
called its name Luz. That is its name to this day.
Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shien and its villages.
and Tanakh and its villages, and the inhabitants of Dor and its villages, or the inhabitants of
Iblium and its villages, or the inhabitants of Megiddo and its villages, for the Canaanites
persisted in dwelling in that land. When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced
labor, but did not drive them out completely. And Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites who
lived in Gezur, and the Canaanites lived in Gezur among them. Zebulun did not drive out the
inhabitants of Kitron or the inhabitants of Nahalol or the Canaanites who lived among them but
became subject to forced labor. Asher did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko or the inhabitants
of Sidon or of Alab or of Akzib or of Helba or of Afik or of Rehab.
So the Asherites lived among the Canaanites and the inhabitants of the land, and they did not drive
them out. Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh or the inhabitants of Beth
Anath. And they lived among the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land. Nevertheless, the
inhabitants of Beth Shemesh and of Beth Anath became subject to forced labor for them.
The Amorites... press the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to
come down to the plain. The Amorites persisted in dwelling in Mount Haris, in Ajalon,
and in Sha'albim, and the hand of the house of Joseph rested heavily upon them,
and they became subject to forced labor, and the border of the Amorites ran from the ascent of
Akrabim to Selah and upward. Now, the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Baakum.
And he said, I brought you up from Egypt. I brought you into the land. I swore to your fathers.
I said, I will never break my covenant with you and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants
of this land. You shall break down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice.
What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you,
but they shall become thorns in your sides and their gods shall be a snare to you.
As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words all the people of Israel the people lifted up
their voices and wept. And they called the name of that place,
Bokim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. Amen. May God bless this reading of his word.
The grass withers, the flower fades. The word of our God will stand forever. You can be seated.
Now, obviously, a lot in those verses. Took us a while to read through them. more than we can cover
this morning. In fact, let me recommend to you as we go through the next 12 weeks and do this study
in the book of Judges, you may want to get a book to supplement the series so that you can get more
of your questions answered. And just follow along with us. And I'll give you a few recommendations.
There's a nice commentary in the series, The Bible Speaks Today. This is written by the British
Bible teacher, Michael Wilcock. And it's a helpful commentary. There's another commentary from the
Christ-Centered Exposition series. It's by Eric Redman, who teaches Bible and theology at the
Moody Bible Training Center, or Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. And there's this very helpful one
by Warren Wiersbe, who is a well-known. teacher from a generation ago. So you could grab any one
of these and have it as a supplement to our study. These are all helpful and accessible books that
will help you study on your own and know this book better, fill in some of the gaps from this
series. Instead of working our way through this passage,
through chapters 1 and beginning of chapter 2, and just going verse by verse through it, I'm going
to pull back and give you what I think are the big ideas that are found in this.
chapter, and I think there are four main things that you'll want to take away from what we've read
this morning. So here's what's first. I believe that this text illustrates for us what happens when
people listen to their fears instead of walking by faith. What happens to you when you listen to
your fears instead of walking by faith? So back in Deuteronomy chapter 7,
Moses talking to the people. On behalf of God, he tells them that God is going to give them the
land, and here's what he says. 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 you. And 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. But when we read in Judges chapter 1,
what do we see? Do we see God's people doing that? What they were told to do back in Deuteronomy 7?
No, in fact, look at verse 19. In Judges 1, the Lord was with Judah.
He took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain
because they had chariots of iron.
Now, what does that mean? Did they try and they failed? No, it means that they were intimidated and
they didn't try. They saw the chariots of iron. They got a group together. They said,
there's no way we can... take care of those chariots of iron. We can't do that. We're just going to
have to let them live there and just try to surround them and manage the situation. God had
promised he would be with them. He had promised he would give them into their hand.
But this tribe of Judah was spooked by iron chariots.
How can you beat people who've got iron chariots?
Well, you remember Jericho? I mean, they have those walls.
How do you beat a city that's got the big walls? You do what God tells you to do, and he gives the
city into your hand. You remember when they needed to cross the Jordan River?
How are we going to get a nation across the Jordan River? Well, you step into the river, and God
will take care of it. He'll dry it up, and you'll be able to walk across as a nation. These people
are scared of the chariots of iron. because they're like their ancestors who saw the giants in the
land and said, oh, there's no way we'll be able to beat them. Now, let me just ask you,
are you ever guilty of disobedience or partial obedience because you just are scared or because you
don't believe that God's going to do what he promised to do? You've got fears or doubts and they
paralyze you.
Listen, there's another word. for partial obedience. You know what it is?
Disobedience.
Partial obedience is disobedience. If your car is almost out of gas and you say to your teenage
son, before you bring the car home tonight, stop and fill it up. And he says, okay. And he stops
and put $5 in the tank. Did he do? Can he say, well, I obeyed you? No, he didn't obey.
Did he do something? Yeah. Did he do what you ask him? No. If you ask him to mow the lawn,
And you come home and find half the lawn mowed. Did he do what you told him to do?
No. Partial obedience is disobedience. Did the Jews obey God when he said defeat the enemy,
devote them to complete destruction, make no covenant with them, show them no mercy? No.
They got scared, they got intimidated, and they responded not with faith but with fear.
You need to understand. Partial obedience or disobedience is ultimately rooted in pride and
unbelief.
When you choose to partially obey or to disobey God,
you do so because you either don't believe he's going to keep his promises to you, or you do it,
so that's disbelief, or you do it because you think, I know better than God in this situation. He
can't mean what he says there.
And the consequences of this kind of disobedience are, as we've said, disastrous. I'm just
wondering if you can think of a time in your life when you failed to step out in faith because you
were fearful, you had doubts, and you saw the consequences in your own life. Part of what we see
happening here in Judges chapter 1. Let me just stop and got to acknowledge here, there are a lot
of folks who struggle with what I read. to you from Deuteronomy chapter 7, God's command to the
people to go in and utterly wipe out these seven nations who were bigger than the nation of Israel.
And to read that should trouble us at some level.
When God says, show no mercy to the Canaanites, we ought to pause and go, wait, I thought this was
a God of love and mercy. And he's telling them to show no mercy? How do we understand that?
Well, actually, I think the book of Judges gives us a clue. on how we're to understand that.
We read this opening story back in verses three through five about this king, Adonai Bezek,
remember? And when he got captured, what did they do? They cut off his thumbs and they cut off his
toes. And what did he say? He said, I did this to 70 other people. I guess the Lord's paying me
back. And by the way, they cut off the thumbs and the toes because you can't operate a weapon and
you can't run away very fast if you don't have your toes and your thumbs. That's what they were
doing. So he says, you're repaying me for what I've done 70 times.
And here's what we need to understand. The wickedness, the evil of the Canaanites and all of the
tribes that were in the land goes well beyond whatever you can imagine.
You may have known some wicked people. You've never known people as barbaric and as wicked as the
Canaanites. I mean, we hear reports in our day about wickedness in our world.
When we hear reports of what happened on October 7th, what Hamas did to the people that they
captured. When you hear about what Boko Haram does against people in Nigeria.
When you hear about... guard has done to the people of their own country.
Some of it is horrible. It's terrific. It's inhumane. That's how the Canaanites were,
only worse. Their practices were an abomination to God.
They practiced child sacrifice. They would take their babies and throw them into the fire as an
offering to Molech. And it was normal for them to do that. And they didn't bat an eye.
or think twice. Their conscience did not bother them when they did that. How seared does your
conscience have to be to take a baby and put them in the fire?
These people practiced necromancy and bestiality, all kinds of deviant sin.
The Bible says their evil and rebellion against God was such that they had defiled the land.
And they had lived like this for centuries with no sign of turning from evil. This was their way of
life. And so God calls his people to be his agents, his instruments of divine justice against the
evil people in the land. He could have sent a flood like he did when the whole world was
continuously evil, except he'd promised he wouldn't do that again. He could have caused an
earthquake. to come. He could have sent fire from heaven like he did with Sodom and Gomorrah. He
could have had the earth swallow him up like he did with Achan and his family. But his decision was
to use his people to be his instruments of justice and to wield the sword. Now listen,
God is a God of patience and mercy and love. He had been patient for centuries with the Canaanites.
He's also a God of righteousness and justice. He is a holy and just God. And there is a day that
will come when God's tolerance of evil and his patience towards sin runs out.
That day had come for the Canaanites and God sent his people in to execute justice on his behalf.
And that might not satisfy every qualm you have about what God commands here in Deuteronomy.
But when we read the testimony of Adonai Bezek and realize that what happened to him was one 70th
of what he had dished out, we can maybe get a glimpse into why it is right and just for God to say,
we must wipe these people off the face of the earth. And by the way, let me just add here,
God has not called the church in our day to do what he called the Jews to do in Deuteronomy.
It is not our assignment to go and be his agents of justice to wipe evildoers off the face of the
earth. The sword today has been given to the government, not to the church.
Jesus did not come to bring judgment on the earth. There's a day coming when he will do that.
But John 3, you know John 3, 16. Do you know John 3, 17? God did not send his son into the world to
condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. And that's the mission God has
called us to. He called his people in Deuteronomy, go wipe out the inhabitants of the land.
He calls us to go into every nation and take the gospel. That's our mission. That's our assignment.
We're not to bring judgment. We are to bring the good news of salvation to all people.
The day of judgment is not today. The day is coming, but today is the day of salvation. I hope that
helps you understand what was going on then and gives you a picture here. Okay,
so don't give in to your fears. Walk by faith. Here's the second thing I see in this passage.
Disaster will fall on you when you ignore God's command to mortify sin and try to manage it
instead.
You know what the word mortify means? When we say, I'm mortified, we think that means you're really
scared. Mortify means death, put to death.
And seven times in Judges chapter 1 from verses 19 to 35,
we read, they did not drive out. They did not drive out. Over and over again.
That's what they did not do, what God had called it. They did not mortify the sinfulness that was
in the land. In fact, the text tells us that they came up with what they thought was a better plan.
They decided rather than killing the Canaanites or driving them out,
we'll just put them to work. I mean, they'd just come out of Egypt. They'd been slaves in Egypt.
Turnabout's fair play. Let's turn the tables. Verse 27, Manasseh did not drive out the inheritance.
The Canaanites persisted in dwelling in the land. When Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites
to forced labor. They're looking, this is a win-win. They get to stay, we get free labor.
Except it wasn't a win-win. Because it wasn't just free labor that stayed,
it was the sinful practices of the Canaanites. Canaanite wickedness did not go away when the
Canaanites stayed. Their evil practices, their idolatry persisted, and instead of managing the
Canaanites and managing the sin out of them, what happened was the leaven of the Canaanites began
to affect The Jews, that's how it works.
You don't manage the sin out. Sin is the leaven that leavens the whole lump.
You've read that in the New Testament. It tells us that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.
When you mix yeast into the dough, the dough does not overcome the yeast. The yeast overcomes the
dough. When you allow sin to stay and you say, I'll just manage it,
it doesn't manage. It's like a tiger that you bring in as a cub. that grows into a ferocious
animal. Here's how one Bible commentator, Dale Ralph Davis, who was for years a pastor in
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, he wrote a commentary on the book of Judges, and he makes this
observation. He says, what began as toleration became apostasy.
What seemed so reasonable, we'll just have them be our slaves, proved lethal.
Living with Canaanites led to worshiping with Canaanites. Tolerate Baal's people and sooner or
later you will bow at Baal's altar. That's what the Bible is talking about when it says a little
leaven leavens the whole lump. That's what Jesus is talking about when he says if your right hand
offends you, cut it off. Don't say, well, I'll try to manage it. If your right eye offends you,
pluck it out. Now, he's not talking literally self-mutilation, but he is warning us to take
drastic steps to cut off sin. And our access to sin. Because here's what happens.
Accommodation of sin leads to the normalization of sin. And the normalization of sin leads to men
calling evil good and good evil. That's the path you're on. You accommodate,
then you normalize, and pretty soon you call it good. And we can look at things in our culture
where we have...
generation ago we said that's wrong and then we normalized it and accommodate it and now we say oh
no that's a good thing how many people today are running around saying abortion is a good thing
friendship here's how it works friendship with the world leads to loving the world which leads to
being conformed to the world which leads to becoming of the world and not being of christ That's
the path. And Jesus calls his disciples to be in the world, but not of the world.
How much of the world is in you?
How influenced are you by what cultural voices are saying that are driving away what the Bible is
saying? Are you listening more to political commentators? Are you listening more to social media
experts than you are to God's word? Are you looking for wisdom in all the wrong places?
That's called digging empty cisterns, looking for water where water is not.
Now, listen, I'm not saying we all need to go live in a monastery and try to keep ourselves pure
because guess what happens when you go to a monastery? You take evil with you because you got it in
you.
You can't escape sin by trying to run away from it. It goes with you wherever you go. You can't try
to shut out the world and think, this is how I'll stay pure. Jesus, in fact, has called us not to
go isolate, but to go into all nations, to be ambassadors, to take the gospel with us,
to live in the world, but to guard our hearts as we do it, and not to be conformed by this world,
but be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind. So the Israelites come into the promised
land. They're relaxed. They find a way to accommodate the Canaanites.
They say, maybe this is to our benefit. And before too long, the salt starts to lose its savor.
Wasn't long before the same people who, or the generation that had stood before Joshua at the end
of Joshua, Joshua chapter 24, after Joshua says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.
And the people responded and said, far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord and serve
other gods. Well, a generation later, that's...
they're moving. They're hedging their bets a little bit. A little Baal worship, you know, that
might, I mean, we pray to God, yeah, but it wouldn't hurt to make a sacrifice to Baal too. I mean,
just in case, just a little. You know, we're on board with Yahweh, but we've got just a smidgen of
Baal.
There's a danger in that for all of us. We're all tempted to mix in a little idolatry with our
devotion. We have to be on guard against that. We have to know that's not going to lead us to
success.
We're not obeying God when we do that.
Here's a third lesson for us this morning. What we have been given by God, we still need to take
possession of. What God has given us, we still have a responsibility to possess.
The book of Judges is going to be a reminder for us that what God gives must still be received and
owned. He gave his people the promised land. He said, I will go with you and we will drive them
out. But after he gave it to them, he said, you've got to do the driving out.
He didn't clear it out before. He said, no, I'm going to give it to you, but we're going to go get
this together. He's given them a gift, but they still have work to do to own the gift that God has
given them. And the parallel here, of course, is that God has given each of us the gift of
salvation. If you are in Christ, if you have surrendered your life to him and are following him,
you have eternal life. No one can pluck you out of God's hand. No one can take God's gift away from
you. But our whole lives are spent driving out what needs to be driven out of our lives,
taking possession of what God has given us. There's a well-known illustration.
Some of you have heard this about a man 100 years ago. who desperately wanted to go from England to
the United States to cross the ocean on a cruise line, but he had no money. He could not afford to
buy passage. And someone came and gave him a ticket. Here's a ticket. You're going to be able to go
passing on there. You've got a stateroom. You can go. This was going to be a seven-day crossing,
and this man started to think, and he said, okay, I better pack some food with me to go for the
next seven days to get across the Atlantic because it's going to be a seven day trip.
So he was meager. All he had was crackers and sardines. He would put them in his suitcase, meager
rations. And he got on board the ship and he realized that most of the people on the ship were rich
and they were eating in the ship's dining room. Every meal they were going and he would walk by and
he would see these lavish meals being served in the dining room and he would go back to his cabin
and he would open a can of sardines and he would open crackers and he would eat his crackers and
sardines and try to stave off his hunger. And one day, about four days into the journey,
somebody said to him, they were talking and they said, I haven't seen you in the dining room. And
he said, first he was embarrassed. He didn't want to just say, well, I can't afford it. But finally
he just said, I'm poor. I just have passage on here. I can't afford to eat in the dining room.
And they looked at him and said, don't you know? Passage includes the dining room.
If you've got a stateroom, you're welcome in the dining room. It's all there for you for free.
But you have to possess it. First of all, you have to know it's yours and then go possess it.
And I think... In our study of Ephesians, here's what we've seen. God has given us every spiritual
blessing in the heavenlies, but we have to possess it. We have to go get it. We have to take hold
of the blessings God has given us. We have to drive out the enemy. We have to tear down
strongholds. We have to fight the good fight of faith in order to take hold of what we've been
given. It's not sit back, let go, let God. No, we strive to possess the good things that God has
given. We see that with the nation of Israel. They failed to do it,
and we must do it in our lives spiritually. You will never enjoy that which you're not possessing.
We have to work to take hold of what God has given us in Christ and to find our joy there. Here's a
final thing I want us to see this morning. It's at the beginning of chapter two. It is this,
when partial obedience is exposed, When you see it for what it is, you need to do more than weep.
You need to repent. I wrote about this in the newsletter this week. There's a difference between
what the Bible calls worldly sorrow and godly sorrow. When we see that we have sinned,
it can be easy for us to be grieved and to weep. But that's not what God's looking for.
Look back at chapter 2 in Judges. Some interesting things. First of all, notice in verse 1, it's
the angel of the Lord who comes to speak to God's people here. When you see that phrase in the Old
Testament, the angel of the Lord, that is most often a theophany or a Christophany.
That means this is God himself or Christ before his incarnation. coming in human form as a
messenger. This is God showing up to talk to his people on his own.
We don't know exactly where this is or who he's speaking to, but the news of the angel of the Lord
speaking traveled throughout the land. And here's what's interesting. It says, when the angel of
the Lord came to speak, it says he came from Gilgal to Baquim.
Now, most of the time, when you hear about the angel of the Lord coming, you don't hear about his
journey. There's something, some rich symbolism that's here because the first place that the
Israelites set foot when they came into the promised land, after they crossed the Jordan River,
the first place they set foot was Gilgal. And the name Gilgal means circle of stones.
You remember what God told them to do after they crossed the Jordan River? Take... out of the
riverbed and build a monument, 12 stones. These are the stones of remembrance. So you will remember
all that I have commanded you. The angel of the Lord comes from that place,
the stones of remembrance, to this place, Bacchum. And Bacchum means weeping.
They've gone from the promise of God to the place of weeping. The angel of the Lord is following
them. And he says, look where you've come from, the place of blessing and promise to the place. of
weeping.
The journey the angel has been on is a journey from where God had promised triumph and celebration
to a place of weeping. And he reminds them that God had promised deliverance.
He had promised to give them the land. He reminded them he will never break his covenant. And they
are not to make a covenant with the people of the land, which is exactly what they've been doing.
Verse two, you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? And he says, now here's the
consequence for your partial obedience. I will not drive them out before you.
Now he had told them, when you go into the land, go up and fight them and I will drive them out.
But because they accommodated the Canaanites, God says that promise, you have forfeited that
covenant. That was a bilateral covenant. You forfeited that because of what you've done.
I will not drive them out. They shall become thorns in your side and their gods shall be a snare to
you. And how did the people respond to that announcement from God that they were going to reap the
consequences of their disobedience? They wept. As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words
to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. Weeping was so deep that
they named the place Weeping and they were deeply grieved and they responded by sacrificing to the
Lord. And the rest of this book will show you that what they didn't do was repent.
They wept, they sacrificed, but for the next 400 years, they mixed and mingled and continued to do
battle with or back off and accommodate the Canaanites who hated them and wanted to destroy them.
All because... of partial obedience instead of complete obedience. I mentioned the commentator
Michael Wilcock in his book. He says this, their tears showed their remorse, their sacrifices
showed how very devout they were, and their calling the place weepers showed how mindful of the
rebuke they meant to be in the future.
But what are we to make of this contrition? To judge by the evidence that backs up the charge,
not much.
Here's the point for all of us here. When you're confronted with the reality of sin and the fact
that you have disobeyed, you've been only partially obedient to the Lord, sorrow and grieving
should lead to the right response.
Sorrow and grieving on their own are not the right response. They should lead to the right
response, which is a change of direction in our lives.
When you are confronted with your sin, God is not impressed by your tears or your anguish.
In fact, given the option between repentance without tears or tears without repentance,
which one does God want? He wants repentance. Now, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be broken
or grieved or that it's wrong to grieve. In fact, it's right to have sorrow for your sin.
We see how David grieved over his sin in Psalm 51. He was in anguish.
Our soul should be stirred and troubled. We should not be cold and calculated and go, oh,
well, I guess I messed up. I'll do better next time. No, there should be some sorrow.
But if all there is is sorrow and there's no turning, that's a problem.
In many ways, the book of Judges is a sequel. It's the anti-Joshua.
Joshua shows the triumphant people of God. coming into the land, taking the land, following God,
obeying God, getting victory after victory as they possess the land. Judges takes us and shows us
how that got completely undone over the next 400 years. In fact, there's what's called a cycle of
misery that's at work here. And we're going to see this more next week. But let me just show you
what this cycle of misery looks like. The cycle of misery is when God's people start with
compromise and that compromise then leads them. to a place of spiritual bondage or physical bondage
when their compromise leads to them being enslaved. When we get to the story of Samson,
we'll see that the Philistines took the Jews captive in their own land.
Then you go from bondage to a period of misery where you're in misery because you're enslaved
again. And that misery leads to crying out to God. And it leads then to a gracious deliverance.
When we cry out to God, He comes along and raises up judges who graciously deliver His people.
And then from deliverance, they go to a time of rest. Oh, isn't it good? Look what God has done.
He has blessed us. And then that time of rest leads to a time of spiritual complacency. They start
to become spiritually complacent, which leads to compromise, which leads to...
You see how it works? It's just a perpetual cycle that you're on.
And we'll hear more about that next week. But it's not just nations that can fall into this cycle.
You can fall into this cycle. We fall into this as individuals. When you become spiritually
complacent, it leads to compromise. When you compromise, it leads... to bondage.
When you are in bondage, it leads to misery. When you're in misery, you cry out to the Lord. He
delivers you and you rejoice and you find rest in that. And then when you rest, you start to become
complacent again.
Can anybody relate? Anybody got an amen on this? I hope you do. Let me wrap this up this morning
just by pointing out that this pattern points to the need for a greater deliverer than the ones we
see in the book of Judges. All of the judges that we'll see, the people we'll meet,
like Gideon, like Samson, like Othniel, all of these people we will meet are heroic people who
bring deliverance for a time, but they're also flawed people who can't complete the work.
Who can take us into the promised land and have us dwell with him where evil and darkness is gone
forever? There's only one judge who can do that.
But these all point us to the greater judge who is to come. The Lord Jesus,
the one who can bring an end to the cycle of misery in our lives. So the question is,
and Mike asked it earlier, do you know him? Do you know the one who is that greater judge?
And better than that, do you belong to him? Have you pledged your allegiance to him?
Have you pledged your full obedience to him? Now listen, all of us pledge our full obedience and
then stumble.
That's the truth for every person in this room. But that doesn't mean we then settle for partial
obedience because we know we're going to stumble. It means we continue to strive to be people who
are fully obedient to the Lord. And if you don't know Him, you can know Him today.
You can cry out to Him and He will come and rescue you from wherever you are and start you on a new
path. Join me. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word and for what it points us to.
We thank you for these examples from history and what we can learn from them. We thank you that in
our need for deliverance, you meet us and you rescue us.
Lord, we confess, as we've already confessed this morning, that we are a people prone to partial
obedience, but we want our lives to be wholly devoted to you. And so we come again this morning to
renew that pledge.
to re-believe your promises and to act in accordance with them.
Lord, I pray for anyone here this morning who doesn't know you, who doesn't have a saving
relationship with you. Lord, would you awaken them from their spiritual slumber and help them to
see their need and help them to see your beauty and your glory. May they cry out to you and find
peace and rest and salvation in you today. We ask it in your name.
Amen.