Word of Salvation – Vol.42 No.30 – August 1997
Though Distracted, We’re Retracted, for We are Contracted!
Sermon by Rev S Bajema on Judges 2:10-23
Scripture Readings: Judges 2:1 – 3:6
Suggested Hymns:
BoW 332:1-3; 436:1-4; 99; 332:4
Church of Jesus Christ.
Our text has often been used as a kind of introductory passage to the Book of Judges as a whole. It is generally seen as setting out the theme for the rest of what follows. But, we might well wonder – a theme for what? Isn’t Judges merely an interlude between the LORD’s great deliverance with the Exodus out of Egypt and the coming of the Kings of Israel? What’s these two hundred years in the whole Old Testament when so much is happening at other times?
Some have even entitled this period the proverbial ‘dark ages’ of the Old Testament; a kind of Middle Ages, that, like our Middle Ages a thousand years ago, doesn’t appear to count for much.
But what these time periods may seem to be is actually far from true. Just as we can trace back much of what burst out at the Renaissance and Reformation, to the Middle Ages in our western history, so what was to follow, when Israel became a nation under a king, developed from this.
Whether for positive or negative reasons, the fact is that these times were important. We consider a few of these factors now which come from our text.
One aspect which is quite obvious is their position in the Promised Land. The whole manner of living suddenly changes. From a life on the move, living in tents, to the life settled and based on farming, living in houses and towns. From finding the manna on the ground six days a week, to having to dig and plant in the ground.
Another factor which also affects this new agricultural living is that they had neighbours in the Promised Land.
It was not originally meant to have been that way, but that’s how it ended up. Through their own disobedience, as we read from the beginning of chapter 2, those pagan nations became thorns in their sides; their gods became a snare that would entrap them. They were going to be a real pain; and not just only through warfare and persecution, but more so by luring them away from what they know they ought to do as God’s covenant people.
This is what our first point is about: DISTRACTED BY THE DEVIL. From that first Point, DISTRACTED BY THE DEVIL, there then is, secondly, RETRACTED BY THE LORD. The Saviour God won’t leave them to rot. He’ll come back to help. They’re His covenant people, and He’ll do that repeatedly, through the Judges. And then there will be, thirdly, CONTRACTED BY THE FUTURE. At the end of this time of showing His love to them through the Judges, and their rejection of that love, He would leave those pagans there, to keep testing them, reminding them about what they were not. Then it wouldn’t be the kind of Promised Land it could have been.
So, firstly,
DISTRACTED BY THE DEVIL.
Please don’t think that this is excusing the Israelites, as though they could cop-out, saying, “The Devil made me do it!” It was they who allowed themselves to be led astray. From verse 18 we note that a “generation grew up who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.”
Well, we might think their parents must have done a poor job in raising them. It does seem that they just missed out on the message of the covenant altogether. Yet, congregation, a wider consideration would suggest otherwise. Just a generation, some 48 years, doesn’t delete every trace of the LORD God – YAHWEH – from among them. What we have, however, is the beginning of a cycle that keeps going around in this period of Israelite history, a cycle which consists of apostasy, judgment sent by the Lord, repentance, deliverance by a judge, and more apostasy.
That verse 18 says they knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel, isn’t because they didn’t know but because they didn’t share the same belief that these people around them were actually against them, and that those pagans would do whatever they possibly could to take them away from the LORD. All the evidence of their traditions should have kept then faithful, but those gods of convenience around them won their hearts.
And, in the new agricultural setting, it did appeal. The LORD had been a God of warfare; now they wanted the gods and goddesses for making the ground fruitful. The sexual union of the Baals and Ashtoreths would guarantee the fertility of the land. That’s how it worked for those other nations, and you wouldn’t want to be too different, would you?
Congregation, the process of accommodation with the world at that time is no different than what happens to the church today. And, soon enough, those sexual unions are copied in the worship services, within the sanctuaries, through ceremonies involving the sacred pillars and poles. Verse 11 is quite succinct, “Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals.”
That phrase, “did evil in the eyes of the LORD…” will re-occur tragically so often in Old Testament history. Not only will this disobedience become a vicious circle in these ‘Middle Ages’ but also right through the time of the kings, until they’re even kicked out of the Promised Land in the ultimate punishment!
Now, knowing what they did, especially with the great Exodus event still so recent in their memory, what made them do it?
Brother, sister, young person, what is it that makes you sin? With all that you have been brought up in, with the tremendous love of God that saved you from no less a fate than hell itself, how come you sin? And, further, how is it that you continue in that sin?
We don’t resist the devil, do we? The advice of James to flee from Satan we then don’t follow. We allow our focus to shift, however so subtly and slightly, onto someone or something apart from the LORD. The attraction for the Israelites appears to have been the health and wealth those pagans enjoyed. They were well off.
And those gods did fit in so well. Satan wouldn’t make it seem any other way, would he? Baal was the god of the storm and the rains, and so controlled the weather, which produced the vegetation. Ashtoreth was ‘Mother Earth’, the goddess of fertility and sex. In their combination – reflected in some of the most disgusting cultic behaviour, going from the public mass orgy of the people in the services of the temples, right through to child sacrifice itself – they felt these things appeased those seemingly powerful gods enough to bless them.
Now – and this is a most pertinent point – it didn’t do anything for the Israelites. Aside, that is, from the LORD punishing them severely. And they really suffered at the hands of their enemies; in fact, their energy is so sapped by this false worship they couldn’t fight back. If it doesn’t seem logical that they didn’t get the message, congregation, we have the addictiveness of sin illustrated clearly. For when you get caught up in sin which just won’t let you go, it is terribly draining and painful. The effects on you, your family, your friends, but especially your relationship with the Lord, is devastating. And yet, you just can’t seem to get out of it! The unbelievers don’t have this problem; but boy doesn’t it get to you!? Why?
One commentator, Arthur Cundall, says, “Since the bond which united the nation was primarily a religious one, centred in the covenant and expressed in worship at the communal shrine, the weakening of the bond led to a weakening of their unity and they became disorganised and divided.” A different loyalty has entered in. Within their covenantal situation it just tore them apart. With us personally today it tears us apart too. Apart from the Lord and His people, what are we?
We were made to live in communion with God. That’s the whole point of His covenant and of the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ which sealed the covenant. Grieving the work of the Holy Spirit in this way goes right against what our re-created souls are meant to be.
Friends, we must have this impressed in our hearts and minds! In the words of the apostle Paul in Ephesians 4:30, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.” It’s serious being a Christian; each tiny part of our lives must reflect that we are not our own but were bought with a price!
It’s no different for the church then, either. Having just experienced the Saviour God’s rescue from Egypt and His phenomenal care for them over forty years in the wilderness – and remember that’s a couple of million people on the move getting supplied all the time – what a smack in the face for the LORD?
But, they do repent. In verse 15 it says “…they were in great distress.” And from elsewhere in Judges we understand that this was a time of crying out to the LORD; then they remembered.
So, much as they had allowed themselves to be DISTRACTED BY THE DEVIL, they now were, secondly,
RETRACTED BY THE LORD.
Yes, the Saviour God saved them again. He drew them back to His rule of mercy by His own anointed leaders. “Then the LORD raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of the raiders” (vs 16).
Judges: a title which suggests someone sitting in a court room judging a crime. That’s a very particular position, presiding over a court. In this situation, though, its meaning is far broader. For judging means seeing to it that justice is done wherever it needs to be done, including the battlefield. Because then judgment is certainly executed on the enemy, and the Judge delivers his people.
The Judges, though themselves sometimes quite sinful men, yet received the anointing of the LORD for their task. And while they ruled, the people were blessed; the LORD showed His compassion.
As soon as the judge died, however, and they’re off again! Verse 19: “But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and worshipping them.”
Naturally we’re confronted by their evil desire. Yet also aren’t we pointed to the anointing that can save them, much as they themselves are unwilling? S G De Graaf has a point when he expresses the view that the LORD is maintaining His claim on the entire land of Canaan. By any measure of our patience and our rules of economic viability, the Israelites would have been foreclosed long ago.
But there’s something about the judges, something which shows that a king is needed; even, I add, that a king is coming. Indeed, a constant refrain towards the end of this book of Judges is: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”
Now, if that were to happen in our society today politically, we would have anarchy. The whole rule of law and order would fall to pieces, simply because no one would live by it. Imagine, then, the terrible tragedy when this happens spiritually. Because we’re talking about a government, a kingdom. A kingdom has a claim upon its citizens; a kingdom impacts on the lives of its citizens. So, to be RETRACTED BY THE LORD is to have at least glimpses of what things are really like anyway. Okay, so it might not appear that the LORD is really ruling in this time, but that’s only our perception by looking at it a certain way.
Though, look at this by faith and it’s a completely different colour! SG De Graaf is spot on when we’re wearing these spectacles. He says of the LORD, that, “He maintained His claim on the people and the land especially through the judges. The judges were only human beings, and the time of their judging didn’t last long. Therefore one judge followed upon another. But we have a Judge through whom the Lord never surrenders His claim on His people and the entire earth, namely, the Christ.”
The LORD wasn’t letting go, despite the vacillations of His people, He would be true to His covenant. Congregation, even by leaving those other nations in the land, He was accomplishing His divine purposes for His people. Verse 22 describes it, “I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the LORD and walk in it as their forefathers did.”
So, in the words of the third point. God’s people are…
CONTRACTED BY THE FUTURE.
Contracts are something we hear more of these days, with the so-called work-place agreements being contracts between individual employees and their employers.
Of course, the first contract man entered into, the one between God and Adam, didn’t become fulfilled. And, ever since then, any attempt at restoring things the way they ought to be with the LORD, only receives the same scathing attack. You see, there’s a vested interest at work; someone who will stop at nothing to break what we have in the LORD.
Mind you, Satan cannot do it apart from the parameters set him by the Lord in the first place. And that’s not condoning evil, as though it doesn’t matter anymore anyhow. But it does tell us that there’s a greater plan at work – there’s the big picture – which this is a part of; and there’ll come a judgment.
Congregation, if we were to take this test in verse 22, and compare it with whether Israel did keep to the way of the LORD and walk in it as their forefathers did, they failed, and they failed with the lowest marks possible! The history that follows until the coming of Christ is a depressing one; nothing but seemingly lost opportunities. And even when they had the blessed breaks from the LORD, when they were keeping to His way, the very godly leaders then blew it as well. David and Solomon and Josiah and Hezekiah to some degree or other failed to completely pass the test.
There was always this allowance of those other nations being there; the false worship was never totally wiped. It’s no coincidence that when our Lord Jesus Himself was being judged that His two Judges weren’t Jewish. Yes, it was the Jewish religious leaders that trumped up the false charges against Him. But it was Pontius Pilate and Herod who condemned Him to death.
Herod, who was directly related to those other nations, Luke records how it was that day of Jesus’ judgment that Pilate and Herod became friends. Before they had been enemies, but joined in this sin they found common ground; joined in this ultimate testing of the Israelite nation by the nations around, they were of one mind.
But here was one who would withstand the test. Now, after centuries of failure He would perfectly keep to the way of the LORD. Brothers and sisters, He is the LORD Himself! No one less than the Saviour God Himself, whose Spirit had sent and guided the people by the judges, was Himself among His people.
The period of the judges cried out for a king indeed, for the King, Jesus Christ, who brings complete justice for His people, defending them and keeping them safe from all their enemies. He’s the Judge who truly saves.
This is why we confess, in Answer 52 of the Heidelberg Catechism, that Christ’s return “to judge the living and the dead” – as we declare in the Apostles’ Creed – comforts us, because, “In all my distress and persecution I turn my eyes to the heavens and confidently await as judge the very One who has already stood trial in my place before God and so has removed the whole curse from me. All his enemies and mine he will condemn to everlasting punishment: but I and his chosen ones he will take along with him into the joy and glory of heaven.”
By this king, congregation, we have permanently in our hearts that which the Old Testament church could only have temporarily.
The test has been passed! Here we have the difference between leadership of the church then and now. For whatever temporary victories they could win then didn’t last. But, fellow believers, they were the foothold of God upon this earth; Israel was the way through which His great fulfilment in Christ would come.
Now in Christ the struggle has changed; the major battle was won; in Him the Church has all that she needs to fight towards the final V-Day. By Christ’s gifting we will tell and show whose we are; and how He is what we are, by His Spirit upon our hearts.
Congregation, we can all be judges, because of the anointing of Christ now upon all His Church. There is no more a physical nation where the church is; but Christ’s rule is spiritual, and that will mean physical consequences across the whole face of this earth.
We must pray that Christ’s rule will mean that the work of our hands is blessed in His service. That way the blessing which the judges gave of old will not fail upon their deaths, but will continue to bless, because it is in the name of the Great Judge, Jesus Christ.
Amen.