What Happens When we Abandon God

Well, if you have your Bible with you, I hope you do. Let's go to the seventh book in the Old
Testament. It's the book of Judges. So turn there, and this is where we're going to be over the
next couple of months as we explore the history of the people of Israel coming into the Promised
Land. This is a... 400-year period of history that's covered in this book from the time that Moses
led the people out of Egypt into the wilderness. Then Joshua brought them into the promised land.
And this is the story of what happened once they got into the promised land and what the next 400
years looked like. It's a period of time roughly from 1400 BC to 1000 BC.
And the 12 tribes of Israel are settling in different parts of the Holy Land.
is no king in Israel. And as we saw last week, what that means is that everyone is doing what is
right in their own eyes. And we also said last week that these first three chapters,
first two and a half chapters of this book are really a prologue. Before we get into the story of
the judges themselves, the writer is setting us up to let us know what went on.
And the dominant theme here is that as the people came into the land, they did not obey God and
remove, drive out the Canaanites or destroy the Canaanites completely.
They practiced partial obedience. And as we said last week, partial obedience is another word for
disobedience. So they did not obey the Lord. And this week we're going to see how their
disobedience turned out to be a big deal. We're going to see the consequences that they faced for
centuries because they did not do what God commanded them to do.
So there's a lot for us to cover. We're going to dive right in. But again, I want to pray for our
time in the word. Lord, we need your spirit now to come and speak to our hearts, soften our hearts,
open us. to receive from your word exactly what you would have us receive this morning.
And we pray that we would not just be hearers of your word, but doers of your word. We ask it in
your name. Amen. Would you stand with me for the reading of God's word?
This is the word of God for the people of God. Judges 2, beginning in verse 6 this morning.
And let me just say, this passage begins with a flashback to what happened in the...
days of Joshua and the concluding history. So we start with a flashback. Verse six begins,
when Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take
possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of
the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.
And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years.
And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath Haris,
in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountains of Gash. And all the generations were
gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord
or the work he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel,
did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord,
the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods
from among the gods of the peoples who were around them and bowed to them.
And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the
Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
And he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their
surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched
out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had
sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them
out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they
whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their
fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.
Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved 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 afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died,
they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods,
serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn
ways. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he said,
because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not
obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he
died in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as
their fathers did or not. So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly,
and he did not give them into the hand. of Joshua. Now these are the nations that the Lord left to
test Israel by them. That is, all in Israel who had not experienced the wars in Canaan.
It was only in order that the generation of the people of Israel might know war to teach war to
those who had not known it before. These are the nations, the five lords of the Philistines and all
the Canaanites and all the Sidians and all the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon.
And Mount Baal Hermon, as far as Lebo Hamath, they were for the testing of Israel to know whether
Israel would obey the command of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the
Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives,
and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served. their gods. Amen.
May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of our God
will last forever. You can be seated.
Okay, the key to this passage that we just read is back in verse 10 of chapter 2,
where it says, there arose another generation from Joshua's generation,
a generation who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And that's a
sobering verse. Somehow, The spiritual handoff that was supposed to have been made from Joshua's
generation to subsequent generations did not get made. The baton got dropped.
And it's the principal reason why all of the problems that we read about in this passage occurred.
And all of the problems we're going to see throughout the book of Judges, the reason why they
occurred is because there was not a spiritual handoff. Subsequent generations after Joshua's
generation either ignored or neglected or completely abandoned God.
And this chapter shows us just how vital it is for us to make a spiritual handoff.
to subsequent generations and to pass along a legacy of spiritual authenticity and spiritual
vitality to the next generation. Because we are always one generation away from losing,
from darkness, from provoking the righteous anger of God because we no longer follow him or turn to
him. And there are... Old Testament passages that always come to mind when I think about making a
spiritual handoff and our assignment to do that. The first is Psalm 78. I want you to turn in your
Bible to Psalm 78. Psalms is in the middle of your Bible. Turn there and find Psalm 78.
And this is actually a Psalm where the history of Israel is being recounted and where people are
being reminded of the foolishness of those who have gone before them. But it begins in verse 2 with
this. The psalmist says, I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old,
things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their
children, but tell them to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might and
the wonders that he has done. He established. a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel,
which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know him,
the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their
hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. We'll just stop right
there. The psalmist is saying, we have a pattern that has been given to us.
We've been told we have a responsibility to pass along a legacy of spiritual vitality,
and we want to do that. That's what this psalm is all about. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how
Timothy in the New Testament, his mother and his grandmother had acquainted him with the Holy
Scriptures from the time he was young. They were doing what all parents and grandparents should be
doing with their kids.
But we shouldn't just be doing it with our own kids. We should be doing it with the kids around us,
the kids in our sphere of influence. It's why we, this week, went out and canvassed the
neighborhoods around here to share with them about the Backyard Bible Club that's coming up.
Because we have a responsibility to tell the kids about God, to tell them about Jesus.
We need to make it a priority in our own hearts and lives to pass on both the work of God and the
Word of God. to the next generation. And when I say both the work of God and the word of God, I
mean we pass on what the Bible teaches, but also tell kids you know about how God's been at work in
your own life. Do your kids or your grandkids know your testimony? Do they know about spiritual
markers or milestones in your life? Can they tell the stories of where God showed up,
God intervened, God directed, God led? Those are the things we pass along,
along with the word of God. And of course, all of this, when the psalmist says,
we've been instructed to pass these things along, as Moses told us, he's thinking about Deuteronomy
6, which is the other passage that comes to mind. So turn back to Deuteronomy chapter 6.
Deuteronomy is the fifth book in the Old Testament. Just flip over there. and look at chapter 6,
and here Moses is telling God's people to worship and serve Yahweh,
and he says in verse 6, these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit down in
your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as
a sign on your hand and they shall be frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates. And then in verse 10, there's a warning that he gives to
the people if they neglect or ignore this. He says, and when the Lord your God brings you into the
land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob to give you. with great and
good cities that you did not build and houses full of good things that you did not fill and
cisterns that you did not dig and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant. When you eat
and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt and
out of the house of slavery. It is the Lord your God you shall fear, him you shall serve.
and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are
around you. For the Lord your God is in your midst as a jealous God, lest the anger of the Lord
your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth. I went on and
read that because that's exactly what happened. He said, don't follow after other gods,
and the Jews didn't. Why? Because somewhere there was a breakdown in passing on the truth about
God. Somehow, The generation after Joshua neglected teaching diligently their children and the
children in the community. They weren't talking about God when they woke up and when they went to
bed and when they walked in the way. And when you don't do that, God says calamity is going to come
on you. The next generation will experience the result of that. They will go after other gods and
God's anger will be kindled against them. And that's what happens in Judges.
Those who were supposed to make the spiritual handoff didn't. And there was a generation who arose
that didn't know Joshua. They didn't know the works of God in Joshua's day. They hadn't heard the
stories. They hadn't heard about God's deliverance. They didn't have the confidence in God that
comes when you hear about how he has been active and present among his people. Let me just say,
if we're going to do... what God expects us to do and point our children and the next generation to
Jesus, here's what we're going to have to do. We're going to have to follow these Deuteronomy
mandates in our own homes. You're going to have to teach your children diligently the things of
God, His Word and His works. You can teach your kids how to read the Bible,
how to study the Bible for themselves, how to pray, how to walk by the Spirit,
how to worship God. We're also going to have to continue to be faithful as a church to support that
work. So whether it's Gospel Zone every other Sunday, whether it's Roots Youth Group getting
together, whether it's the Backyard Bible Clubs or the other events we do throughout the year,
whether it's Awana and how Awana works, all of these come together to try to support the work that
moms and dads are doing in the home so that we can do the best job we can to make this spiritual
handoff. And we need to be praying diligently. for the kids in our homes and in our churches.
In fact, it's been exciting for me over the last couple of years to see the number of young people
who have come forward and want to be baptized, to see the number of young people who are saying, I
want to go to Memphis and do the week-long street reach project like we're doing in June. And I
want to keep praying for the hearts of our kids that God would draw them to himself.
The world is trying to take them in a different direction. And so we need to be praying for them
and we need to be instructing them and teaching them diligently. I just encourage you sometimes.
pull up the church directory on your device. And if you don't have the church directory on your
device, you can get that. You can talk to Matt or any of us, and we can let you know how you can
download the directory and get uploaded. But go through there and just look. It lists the parents,
but it also lists the kids. Just go through there and pray for the kids. It doesn't take long over
your lunch hour. Pull it up. Just go through. And the kids you know, the kids you don't know, just
pray for them that God would do a work. Because we don't want the next generation here to do what
the next generation did in the book of Judges. Because as we'll see going through this, it was
terrible. We're going to see how easily the people of Israel lost their grip on the gospel,
lost their grip on walking with the Lord. These are people, their grandfathers had been rescued
from Egypt. They'd been in the wilderness for 40 years. God had... for them throughout that time.
He had protected them. He had brought them into the promised land. They'd fought the battle of
Jericho. The walls came a-tumbling down. I mean, they'd been through all of this, this generation,
and they quickly forgot about God, neglected worshiping God,
and abandoned God to look around and say, what else do we have available? Oh,
what's Baal worship? Tell me more.
As a result, the people of God were now set up to experience defeat at the hands of their enemies
and to experience ongoing troubles and hardship. What I want us to look at as we go through this
passage this morning, I want us to see what happens whenever a people forget or neglect or abandon
God. There are seven things I think we'll see in this passage that show up.
What are the outcomes when we neglect or abandon God?
Here's the first outcome. When you neglect or abandon God, you don't stop worshiping.
You start worshiping something other than God.
The novelist David Foster Wallace, 20 years ago in 2005,
he gave the commencement address at Kenyon College. It's a well-known commencement address. It's
one of those that has lived on. And during that speech, he famously said this. He said, everybody
worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.
Your non-Christian friends, people who aren't in church this morning, it's not that they're not
worshiping, they're worshiping something other than the God who made the heavens and the earth. All
people are worshipers. We all worship someone or something. We are created to worship.
So it's not a question of whether you worship, it's a question of what or who you worship.
And in verse 12, In our passage, when the children of Israel came into the land occupied by the
Canaanites, they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land
of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them,
and they bowed to them. Now, that's a summary statement of what's coming in the book of Judges.
It happened over a period of several decades. This doesn't just happen.
You don't just wake up one morning and... you were worshiping Yahweh, and now this morning I think
I'll worship something else. It's a gradual departure. It's a gradual slide.
And it's a progression you can follow. These are people who went from, here's the progression,
you go from actively seeking and pursuing God, that's how you live every day, to occasionally
seeking and pursuing God, to beginning to prioritize other activities over seeking and pursuing
God. To looking around and looking at your pagan neighbors and seeing how they're enjoying life
without pursuing God and start to wonder if maybe all that you've been taught really matters. To
starting to want to fit in with your neighbors. Starting to be curious about your neighbor's gods.
And just think to yourself, oh, it can't hurt to go to the Temple of Baal once, you know. I mean,
come on, just once. To starting to follow and fit in with the neighbors and worshiping.
fail. That's the process. That's a gradual drift. But I want you to look at that path with me and
just ask yourself the question, where would you be on that path right now?
If you were taking an honest look at your life right now and saying, where am I? Are you actively,
daily pursuing and seeking God? Do you do that occasionally? Or have you started to prioritize
other activities around that? Are you starting to pay more attention to what the neighbors are
saying than what the Bible says? Where are you in that matrix?
When the Jews in Israel started to relax in their relationship with God, thinking, well,
we're here in the promised land. I guess we don't need God the way we did back in the wilderness or
back when we were fighting our battles when we were taking the land. They started to deprioritize
the worship of God. They just started looking around for other gods to worship because we're all
made to worship.
And when we put God on the back burner of our lives, we just come up with other things to worship.
Now, we're not worshiping the Baals and the Ashtoreth because they don't exist in our day. But we
find all kinds of things to worship, whether it's the satisfaction we get from our work. I mean,
you know the list of idols that exist in our world. You can make an idol out of money, make an idol
out of power. You can make an idol out of all kinds of things, pleasure, satisfaction.
And that leads us, when you start to deprioritize God, it leads to the second outcome.
When you abandon God, you start to take your cue from the culture you're living in.
put God on the back burner and you're not worshiping him and seeking him and in his word regularly,
you start to sit up and notice a little bit more what's going on in the world around me. What looks
attractive? What looks interesting? These Israelites didn't start worshiping Baal on their own.
They started noticing the Canaanites. They had conversations with the Canaanites.
When they enslaved them, the Canaanites who were enslaved would say, well, we have to have our day
when we go up to our Canaanite temple and worship Baal. And the Jews said,
what day is that? Well, tell us more. Let me explain a little bit about Baal worship among the
Canaanites. So they believed that Baal was the God of fertility, that he brought crops to the land
and he brought babies to your house. And they thought that he was married to Asheroth and that it
was in their copulation that fertility happened. So they wanted Baal and Asheroth to be together
regularly. And so they would practice temple prostitution and all kinds of sexual immorality as a
way to try to prompt. Their thinking was maybe if Baal sees us. he'll get busy too,
and then the land will be blessed.
So they would often take drink offerings. They would go to the temple and they would have drink
offerings, and then they would practice temple prostitution. Basically, bale worship was a lot like
going down to the bar and looking for a good time. And over time, the Jews started to go,
so what do you guys do up there? Tell me more. They say, you ought to come along. It's fun.
And that's how it begins. You may have heard of the...
author and motivational speaker Jim Rohn, one of the things he said that was a famous saying of his
is, you are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with.
That's an interesting thought, isn't it? The five people you spend most of your time with,
you rub off on one another. It's basically what the Bible says when it says, he who walks with the
wise will grow wise, but the companion of fools suffers harm.
You hang out with wise people, you walk with wise people, you're going to grow in wisdom. You hang
out with fools, guess what happens to you? Pretty simple. And if you're hanging out with wise
people, then the Bible says iron sharpens iron.
So one man sharpens another. That's the good side. Positive peer pressure.
Find the right people to be hanging out with. But if you're hanging out with the wrong people, in 1
Corinthians it says, do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals.
Pretty simple. Who you hang around with rubs off on you. We talk to young people a lot about peer
pressure. Grownups, we got peer pressure issues too. Who you're hanging around with is going to
determine who you become.
Now, whenever we read those verses or think about that, you wonder, how do we reconcile that with
what Jesus did? He was called a friend of sinners and tax collectors. He hung around with sinners.
I mean, I remember my teenagers telling me that, right? When I would say, you know, who you hang
around with matters. What about Jesus? Well, Jesus hung around with sinners for one reason,
to call them to repentance.
Most of the time, my teenagers were not trying to hang around with sinners to call them to
repentance.
I mean, look carefully at what Jesus wasn't doing when he was hanging around with the tax gatherers
and the wine bippers in the New Testament. John Piper says he wasn't. hanging around with him just
to go with the flow. He wasn't trying to get in with the hip crowd. He wasn't looking for a good
time, wasn't there to drown his sorrows or tag along with the social scene or grow his reputation
or hang out because he had nothing better to do. No, he was on a mission. He was actively seeking
the salvation of sinners. So yes, we should be involved with our non-Christian friends and
neighbors intentionally, purposefully, on a mission.
But at the same time, we've got to be careful. recognizing that we're all prone to have Canaanite
ways rub off on us. In Judges, the people of God were clearly being influenced by the Canaanites.
And Romans 12 tells us you're not to be conformed to this world,
you're to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I like the way Eugene Peterson says it in
the message. He says, don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without
even thinking.
Let me say that again. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without
even thinking. That's exactly what was happening to God's people in the book of Judges.
They were fitting into the Canaanite culture without even thinking, which leads to the third
outcome that results when you ignore or abandon God. He lets us experience the consequences that
come from our rejection of him.
God, it tells us verse 14, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. He gave them over to
plunderers who plundered them. He sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they
could no longer withstand their enemies. When they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against
them for harm. As the Lord had warned, And as the Lord had sworn to them,
and they were in terrible distress. That phrase, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm.
That's another sobering phrase.
I don't think anybody woke up this morning and said, Lord, would your hand be against me for harm
today? We don't pray that. But when we ignore God, when we turn from him,
God's hand can turn against us for harm. Now, let me be careful here.
Does God's hand actually bring harm for his children? Yes, if you understand that correctly. It
doesn't mean destruction, but it does mean he disciplines those he loves. He harms us in that
sense. He lets us experience the consequences and lets us go far enough that we feel the pain of
the consequences because it's an act of grace and mercy on his part, an act of love on his part to
bring us back. When God allows you to experience the consequences of your sin, it's for the purpose
of drawing you back to him.
So that's the third outcome. Here's the fourth outcome of neglecting or rejecting God.
Your heart becomes hardened to God's grace. The more you ignore,
reject, or neglect God, the harder your heart becomes to His grace. And when His grace is
manifested, your heart hardens toward it. In verse 16, of Judges 2,
it foreshadows what we're going to see. The Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of
those who plundered them. Thank you, Lord. That's an act of pure grace. These people are ignoring
God, disregarding God, worshiping the Baals. God raises up a judge to bring deliverance.
In fact, the word judge here is the same word for Savior in the Old Testament.
He raises up a Savior to save them while they're off doing their Baal worship.
And what he does for them here is the same thing that God has done for us, raising up a savior to
rescue us. When we were still dead in our trespasses and sins,
when we were still his enemies, he sent not just a savior,
but his own son to be our savior. He sent him to live the perfect life of obedience that we should
have lived and then to die the death that we deserved in our place. so that we can be rescued from
sin. And again, it was while we were still in rebellion. Well, when God sent saviors in the Old
Testament, what did God's people do? Verse 17 says, they did not listen to their judges.
They whored after other gods. They bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which
their fathers had walked. The tragic response of God's people in the Old Testament was when God
sent a savior as an act of grace, they hardened their heart against that savior. And the tragic
response of people in our day to the amazing grace of God in sending his son to die for us is that
people in our day reject him or abandon him or neglect him. They ignore him.
They harden their heart toward his grace, which is why the writer of Hebrews warns,
if you hear his voice, Do not harden your heart.
Soften your heart. Turn to him. Turn from sin and self. Turn and follow and obey.
Listen, if you're here this morning and the Lord is speaking to you, is he calling you? Is he
drawing you? He's here to rescue you from self and sin,
both in this life and... the consequences in the life to come.
So just take a minute, look at your life. Do you have a joy in you that transcends your
circumstances?
Do you have a peace that passes understanding? Do you have a love for others that is the overflow
of the love you experience from God? Have you learned how to be content in whatever circumstance
you find yourself in? Jesus is here today in our midst saying, I can give you that,
that joy. that peace, that love, that contentment. If you will turn to me,
I'll give you rest. Do not harden your heart.
Because if you harden your heart, that leads to the fifth outcome that we see in this book.
You will begin a downward spiral in your sin.
Again, verse 19 foreshadows what's ahead in this book. Whenever the judge died,
God's people turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers. going after other gods,
serving them, bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.
Whenever you read Romans 1, Romans 1 talks about people on a downward spiral of sin.
When you turn from God and follow after idols, you find yourself slipping down the path.
And the point for all of us is if you find yourself thinking, well, I'll just do this one little
thing. It's not that big a deal. That's not how sin works in our hearts. It's the reason I often
quote the Puritan John Owen, who said, be killing sin or it will be killing you.
Bible teacher Ralph, Dale Ralph Davis says this. He says, sin is not simply an action you do or
fail to do that you can choose to do or not do. Sin is a power that holds you in its grip.
Johnny Cash knew that. He said, he fell into a burning ring of fire and went down,
down, down, and the flames went higher. And it burned, burned, burned.
I don't know if that's actually what he was talking about here, but it came to mind while I was
preparing. Again, John Owen's quote is a powerful one. Be killing sin or it will be killing you.
And if you don't turn from sin, then there's the sixth outcome. You forfeit God's protection and
you experience his discipline. Verse 21 says, because the people rejected God,
he rejected them. I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when
he died. And we'll see in the book of Judges this pattern. I called it last week, the cycle of
misery, where over and over again, God's people forget God. They go after idols.
God sends a judge. He rescues them. He brings deliverance. The people say,
thank you, God. Then they become complacent. Then they reject God. It's just this ongoing cycle of
misery.
And it's important for us to recognize that when God lets us experience the consequences of our sin
until we cry out to him, when you harden your heart against God, he will harden his hand against
you. Not his heart, but his hand.
If you are his child, that hardening of his hand is a temporary thing. It's not a permanent thing.
God is always ready to extend grace and mercy and forgiveness to anyone who sincerely turns to him.
I mean, not someone who turns to him manipulatively and just says, help me out of a jam in a moment
of distress, but somebody who turns to him and says, I know I was wrong. I'm going to follow you.
And they mean it. with a sincere heart. That's what's called repentance. And when you repent with a
sincere heart, God gives grace. I loved a few weeks ago when we were dedicating babies on Mother's
Day, and Reed Riggin shared the verse that... and Kelly had selected for their daughter,
Rosalia, as her dedication verse. And it's from Joel chapter 2. And in the context of Joel 2,
God's people are crying out in anguish. The earth is quaking. The heavens are trembling. And God
says this to his people. He says, yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your
heart, with fasting and weeping and with mourning, and rend your hearts and not your garments.
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast
love, and he relents over disaster.
We read through Judges and see God's people again and again abandoning God and think,
how could they do this? Let's not lose sight of the fact that we do it regularly.
We abandon him every time we give into our flesh. We abandon him when we follow our pride.
I think I know better when we have our own agenda, when we forsake him in the process.
But even then, God says to his children, return to me and I'll relent.
Here's the final outcome when you abandon God and you become one with the world.
It's the last verse we read this morning in chapter 3, verse 6. Their daughters, that is the
daughters of the Canaanites, they, the Jews, took... themselves for wives and their own daughters,
the daughter of the Jews, they gave to their sons, the Canaanite sons.
This final step marks a turning from God that's a settled turning.
In the marriage union, the Bible says God takes two and makes them one flesh.
God joins together and fuses together a husband and a wife to be one.
And this final step of turning away from God here represents more than just social or cultural
accommodation. It's a spiritual betrayal. And the reason we know that is because in Deuteronomy 7,
God had specifically said to the nation, when I give you the land, don't marry the pagan.
people. When the Lord your God, this is Deuteronomy 7 verse 2, when the Lord your God gives them
over to you and you defeat them, you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no
covenant with them, show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your
daughters to their sons, taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn your sons from
following me to serve other gods. That's what he said in Deuteronomy 7. You get to Judges 2 and
they're going, That doesn't make any sense. These are nice Canaanite girls. She's sweet.
And the intermarriage of God's people is saying this, we care more about satisfying our own
passions and desires than we do about following what you say in your word. In fact,
we're going to see when we get to the story of Samson in the book of Judges. One of my favorite
verses in the whole book of Judges, Samson must have been a teenager at this time. He says to his
parents, go get that Philistine woman. because she looks good to me. It's just right there.
She looks good to me, go get her.
And that's just saying, I'm going to be ruled by my passions, by my desires, not by what God says.
This trajectory, all of these outcomes, this is the outcome when you ignore or abandon God.
It's the trajectory your own life can be on when you do it. If a church starts to do it,
It's the same trajectory for that church. I'm going to close this morning with one more sobering
verse. This is from the New Testament book of James. James shows us that the issue we've been
looking at this morning from the book of Judges is not unique to the ancient world. It doesn't go
away. The more we allow ourselves to be comfortable with the ways of the culture around us,
especially when the culture is in conflict with God and his word, the more we will drift away and
ultimately abandon God. And James calls it spiritual adultery.
Here's what he says in James 4.4. He says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship
with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God. So let me just ask you, to what extent have you allowed the world and its
values and its beliefs, the beliefs of the culture, to pull you away from what God says in his
word? How might you be flirting with the world today?
Which of the idols of our culture are you most susceptible to?
Can we this morning recommit ourselves to the one whose history we can look at in our own lives and
in his word and say he alone is worthy of our devotion and our praise and we will follow him and we
will not be pulled to the right or to the left by the culture. We will plug our ears to the siren
song of the culture so that we can follow the Lord. even as we reach out to our friends and
neighbors to call them to come with us pray with me will you lord i pray that our hearts would be
appropriately sobered here by what we have read and heard from you this morning i pray that you
would continue to press on our hearts how we need to apply these truths in our own lives lord i
pray that we would not be prone to the worship of idols,
the distraction of idols, but that as we follow hard after you, our hearts would be strengthened
against the temptation. And I pray this morning for those who have not surrendered their lives to
you. Lord, I thank you that in your kindness, you have sent a savior and that you stand this
morning ready to offer to all who will follow you the blessings of eternal life.
And I pray that we would not harden our hearts, that any here who need to know you as Lord and
Savior would not harden their heart to what you are doing in their lives right now. We ask these
things in Jesus' name. Amen.