God's Grace and Compassion in Judges

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges. The first thing, this passage that I want to read today is focused on sort of the appearing of the Judges in the story. I want to start with chapter 2, verse 16. The verse 16 sort of picks up, I mean it's built on of course the paragraphs before it. And the paragraphs before it describe what happened to the people of Israel. They came in the land of promise and they were caught up in the idea of the people around them living there. And they were heavily influenced by them, so they began to turn away from Yahweh God, the God of their fathers Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and began to embrace the Canaanite gods, the gods of Baal. And their life became more and more distressed. What happened whenever this took place, God began to withhold His guidance for them and His wisdom for them. He began to withhold His protection for them. He began to withhold His provision for them because they had violated the covenant. The promise in the covenant was, we will do everything you tell us to do. And God says, okay, if you do that, then I will be your God. And the role of a God was to give guidance to His people, to provide for them, protect them, and to make their nation great. That was God's promise to the people. So it ended up in the last of that paragraph, they were in great distress. They had enemies come into their land and plunder them. God had turned loose of them and sold them as if He was selling cattle to the enemy. And now they are in a situation of great distress. Now this is a summary of the whole book and it's going to talk about this over and over again in each of these stories that we read. And so in verse 16 it says, Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of their raiders. Before He talked about raiders who came in and plundered them. Raiders who came in and made them, like God, sold them as enemies. They were plundered and everything taken from them. The word judges here, all the way through the book, is not the word like we would use today. If you use the word judge, you think of someone that's in a court. He hears the cases on one side and another and dispenses justice. That's what we think of as a judge. In the Bible, the idea of the judge was quite different. You'll see that in the very phrasing of this verse. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hands of the raiders. No one takes your case to court here and a judge hears it and they go out and rescue you. They just tell you if you're right or if you're wrong. That's all they tell you. If you violated the law or you haven't violated the law. But here the role of the judge was more like what we would say as a deliverer or a savior. In fact, the very same word is used in the Bible to talk about this word, but it's translated not judges, but it's translated savior or deliverer. So when we use the word judges here, we're talking about someone more than a person who sits down and hears a legal case and administers a legal judgment. Here this person is responsible for rescuing the people of Israel from the enemies who have attacked them or have overcome them. So the Lord raised up judges. Now that's an important phrase for us because, I mean, before I started reading this book this time, I don't know how many times I've read it or preached from it, but most of the time in the Bible when people are in great distress, they plead with God, like the people who are in Egypt, God, we're having great trouble here, we're being oppressed, would you rescue us? Hear our voice. Come to save us. In the book of Judges, there is no appeal that people make for God to come and help them. It's not that they got in great distress and then said, God, we're in great distress, would you save us? They don't. That's an important ingredient because what it shows in this passage, the way it's done, it shows us that all of the book of Judges, all of God's saving and delivering power is done as the result of the nature of God. And we know in the Bible that when a person asks God for deliverance or salvation or to be rescued, that God answers the prayer of his people. But here he shows us that this relationship between God and his people all the way through the book of Judges is a result of God's compassion and is the result of his grace. Compassion means that he feels what the people of Israel were feeling. If you have had an accident and you see someone that has an accident, you begin to relive in your own mind what it was like for you to have that accident. So you feel the calm, the part that means together in passion, feelings. You feel their feelings together with them. So God never was in their circumstance, but he saw the distress that they were in. And when he saw them in distress, his heart went out to them. Now get this, he's doing this even though they have openly rebelled against his authority, refused to do what he wanted them to do, he still saw the result, the disaster that they have, and he felt overwhelmed with concern for them. Every parent knows this experience. You have your children and you tell them what they should do and the right things to do, and they ignore you. It could be in elementary school or high school or college or after they're already out and married or in a way, and you know they're making serious mistakes by the choices that they're making, but you can't stop it. They're making the choices. But it doesn't mean that when you see the pain that their choices bring you that your heart does not break for them. This is a powerful thing about God. Remember this when you get down on yourself. When you've done some things that you know God wants you to do or you know that he's not happy with you and you've made some choices that are disastrous for you and problems are all around you and you feel alone, God looks down on people and he feels the pain that they experience. He feels with them what they're going through. What helps us in those times whenever we're feeling like that, we oftentimes when that happens just feel very alone. Don't you feel that way whenever that happens to you? No one cares about me. Nobody's interested in me. I don't know what I'm going to do. If you stop to remember this passage, God looks down on people, not just the perfect people. These were people who were in rebellion against him and he sees the disaster they've gotten themselves into which was the result of failing to do what he told them to do. Now oftentimes whenever we have people around us who depend on us, our children or other people and we tell them all the right things to do and they go off and do the wrong things, one of the things that comes to us is, you didn't listen to me, you deserve this. And we get a little bit hard because our ego's involved, you didn't listen to me. God's not that way. He understands what happens to us. He doesn't break down and say, okay, I'm not going to demand this of you, but he feels the pain that we're going through. So he had compassion on the people who were there. And then the other word that's powerful here to help us see what God goes through is grace. Grace simply means doing for people what they have not earned and do not deserve. This is a key ingredient in the way God deals with us. So whenever you think that your obedience to God has earned you the right for his salvation or the right to be able, that you deserve his help, you need to stop and remember that's not the way God operates. If he operated based on our behavior, none of us could ever qualify. But God has enormous grace. That is, he's prepared to treat people better than they deserve to be treated because they need to be treated that way. Now this is so important for us to understand because if you don't get this, a lot of the things that God asks us to do sound foolish and stupid. In the New Testament, for example, Jesus was talking to people and he said, whenever one of the Roman soldiers comes by, and the law was when the Romans occupied the land, the natives of that land were required on demand to pick up the tools of the soldier and carry them a mile. That's the way they moved their soldiers through the land. The citizens of the land they conquered were to provide the transportation for the soldier's gear. I guess that's the best way I can think to say it. So whenever Jesus was talking to his disciples, he said, when someone asks you to pick up and carry their gear for a mile, you go ahead and carry it too. The first mile, you're obeying the law. The second mile is an extension and it's grace. You give the soldier more than he deserves. You'll remember Jesus talking about relationships too and he says, somebody slaps you on the face, and if they slap you and knock you this way, then they come back with their backhand, you just turn and let them hit you with the backhand. Somebody slaps you in the face, you just turn the other cheek. He's talking about doing for somebody something they do not deserve, that kind of submission. And this is a human being acting in grace, doing what is better for someone than they deserve to have happen to them. It is a characteristic of God. So what we're going to see throughout the book of Judges is the grace of God and his compassion. And we're going to see over and over how this happens. Most of us don't mind giving people a little grace once in a while, but what we really get offended by is when we give them grace and they respond by being nasty to us. Or if we turn the other cheek, they take advantage of us and steal our purse or something. What he's trying to help us understand is the nature and character of God in this story, of what he's like and how he responds to people. So in this story, the Lord raises up Judges and the Judges will save them out of the hands of the raiders. In his compassion, without them asking for it, he will bring someone up, empower that person with wisdom, empower them with the wisdom of God and the strength of God to be able to lead people to overthrow those people who have come and taken them over, have raided their land and stolen what they have. Verse 17, he says, now remember this is after God has had compassion for them, after he's extended his grace to them, even though they've rebelled against him, and even after they haven't asked for it. I hear people talk about this idea of forgiveness and they say, well, I'd forgive somebody, but they need to ask for it. If they ask for it, then I'm willing to forgive them, but I'm not if they don't ask for it. They didn't ask for it, but he was still extending his grace and compassion and mercy to them. Verse 17, in spite of that, yet they would not listen to their judges, but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshipped them. Two things. We see a definition of the term judge here that is changing what we would see normally. The judge, in our mind, just gives a verdict, guilty or not guilty. Here the judge in this role is not only someone who saves people from the enemy who's taken over their land, but he's someone who's instructing them about how to avoid the difficulty in the future. So the judges were people led by God who knew God's direction and his will for them, and he was telling that to them. Not only did God, without them asking, intervene in their circumstance, giving them grace and mercy and delivering them from the difficulty around them, but they wouldn't even listen to the instructions he wanted to give to them. We oftentimes, like Peter, when he was told to forgive, say, God, how many times do I have to forgive? We're willing to have grace and mercy and forgiveness, but we think that there is somehow or other a line out there in which we have satisfied God's responsibility and we no longer have to forgive or have to forget. In this story, he's talking about over and over again, the same thing happens. He rescues them without them asking. He has compassion on them. He delivers them and sends them someone to give them deliverance. Then he sends them that same person to turn around and say, now, here's why you got into this mess. Do not do this again. And the people, in spite of the fact that he rescued them, simply ignore God's instructions. We're going to see this over and over again in many different settings and circumstances in the book of Judges. If you've read through the Bible and you've read the book of Judges, almost everybody at some point in reading it stops and says, these are the stupidest people I've ever seen in my life. They do the same thing over and over again. It's like a guy trying to go out the door and he pushes the door open and it whacks him in the face. He pushes it open again and it comes back and whacks him in the face. And he stands there doing that over and over and over all day long. We look at that and we say, how stupid can they be? Well, he's simply painting a picture of the relationship that he has with us. His patience, his love, his kindness toward us. But at the same time, he lets us make the same mistakes over and over again until we're finally ready to say, okay, God, I will give myself to you. I pledge myself to live a different kind of life. Yet they would not listen to their judges and listen to this word, but they prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. He uses strong language here, prostitution. Not the way we'd normally think of religious ceremony or religious community. So what he was talking about was the power of these gods of the Canaanites and how strong that they were. Their emphasis was on fertility of the crops and of the animals. The gods, if you worship the God of Baal, he guarantees you that he will send you rain and he will make your cattle productive. Here was the promise of prosperity. It's a very important allure to people, the promise of prosperity. You can turn on the television set and if you'll find preachers on the television, some of the most popular and successful preachers promise you prosperity and success. It's a very powerful enticement to us. God does not promise that. He promises he will provide our needs. It's different than prosperity. He promises he will protect us, which is different than a life of fun. And here, what the Canaanites were doing, they were attracted by the promise of prosperity and fun. The pagan idol, the pagan gods of the Canaanites was not only the promise of prosperity, but also the allure of sexual enticement, sexuality. So that the worship in the temples of Baal involved sexual behavior. So here you have a young, attractive God who offers sex to you and then promises to make you rich. Now if you could have a church service where you promised all the guys that they'd have a beautiful wife and get rich at the same time, that they could have sex with this person, and promised that to the ladies too, you would have a big congregation. In fact, that is what the appeal to many people are. The whole sexual issues in our country are people who feel like having sex and lots of sex with lots of different people is the ideal life to live. And it entices many people. The pornography industry makes a fortune off of this, promising vicariously sexual satisfaction to those that watch. And people get snared in that in such a powerful way that they cannot resist or control themselves. This was the promise of the Canaanite gods in a little different kind of setting and a little different kind of culture. I'll give you all the money you want and all the sex you'd like to have with whomever you'd like to have it. Now, I'm going to contrast that with Yahweh God, who says, let me tell you the Ten Commandments. There's hardly any kind of powerful appeal in that. Let me tell you the kind of clothes you must wear. Let me tell you the kind of food you must eat. Let me tell you how you must farm your crops. God came across the God Yahweh as a God of rules and regulations as opposed to this exciting sexual prosperity that he was faced with in that same country. And it's like the difference between people who get attracted and addicted to porn. Have you ever heard anybody addicted to worship services? You've heard of those, haven't you? She didn't ask about the porn, did she? She knew what that was right off. But you can see the difficulty that the people of Israel were faced with. The appeal to their physical pleasures were so far from the demands of righteous living that God was giving them. So over and over again, and this is every generation, it's not talking about the same generations. What happens is a generation goes by and another generation is snared into the same set of problems all the way through this book. Now this is what God is saying is going to happen to them. Yet they would not listen to their judges, but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them. Now what he means by this and the way he uses it is quite different than what it might appear you would want to talk about. You'd talk about the Baal religion being the prostitute and the Israelites being the customer. But he turns this all around. You people, my people, have become the prostitutes. You have been willing to take on all the lovers that are interested in you. You see, the Baal worship was not simply one god, but there were many different Baal gods of different locations, different communities. In fact, if you look, when you read the Bible, you may see the Baal Peor. That means it's the Baal of the city of Peor. So every city had their Baal, their god of worship there. And so he addresses the people of Israel, not that they have themselves become customers of the religious prostitutes, but he's saying to them that you have become the prostitutes. You have sold yourself to the Baals. You have allowed them to take over your life and control you only with the promise of money and excitement. You see, they were attracted to the Baal worship because of the promise of prosperity. So he's saying to them, you have been willing to sell yourself for some money. Now we would think we'd be far, far away from that. I see some people once in a while who say to me, you know, on weekends it's just hard for me to make it to church because, you know, I have to work all week and so I have to rest up on that day. And what they're saying is, I'm not going to do the things God tells me I should do on Sunday, forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, because I have to save myself to work hard. You see that saying, I'm selling myself for money. I'm selling myself for whatever kind of cause keeps you from being submissive and obedient to God. To give your life to something that takes you away from God and your service and obedience to Him and everybody who does something contrary to what God wants is hoping for a payoff. Why does a person on the weekends do other things that would keep them from being able to be of service to God? Because they think what they're doing on the weekends or on Sunday is going to be more beneficial to them than doing what God says they should do. There is a payoff, you see. If I do this instead of what God tells me, I'm going to have a better life. My family is going to be better. My circumstances are going to be better. So you see, the violation of God's instructions is saying to God, I'm not going to do what you tell me, but if I do what I think is best, I will receive a greater benefit from it. What the Bible calls that is prostituting yourself, saying whatever Satan tells me I should do in place of what you tell me I should do, I think his payoff for me will be better That's what prostitution is, giving yourself to someone for pay. What God is concerned about is the contest between himself and the offers of Satan are addressed to our personal satisfaction and contentment, physical and material, not on the spiritual dimension that he places himself on. So he says, Yet they would not listen to their judges, but prostituted themselves to the other gods and worshiped them. Unlike their fathers, they quickly turned from the way in which their fathers had walked, the way of obedience to the Lord's commands. He's talking about the Israelites who came out of Egypt. He's talking about those who were faithful to what God asked them to do. The example of their fathers did not stick with them. There is a comfort in this in some way, really. A lot of times parents get distressed because they raise their children and their children don't necessarily turn out the way they wanted them to turn out. The Bible never says if you raise your children and teach them the right things, they will always do the right things. The Bible does tell us that if we teach them the right things, they will always know the right things and always remember the right things. But doing them is another story altogether. You cannot guarantee that every generation is going to follow the instructions of the parents. And that's what he's saying to them. Their parents lived a life that would reflect obedience to God. They came into the land of promise and fought for it. They obeyed God in all the ways that he asked them to do until the land was given to them. But now the next generation forgot about God and began to do what they wanted to do that would be, in their minds, more advantageous to them than obedience to God. The parents had done the things that were right, but their children took the wrong turn. And whenever you raise your children and you've tried to do the best that you know how, sometimes we take on ourselves the responsibility of making sure their lives are correct. But you can't do that. I point parents who get in that struggle to the Garden of Eden. God had two children. They were the only ones in the world, no negative influence whatsoever on television or radio or from the neighbors. He was a perfect father to them. He walked with them every day in the garden, talked to them, was nice to them. But they still turned their backs on him and did exactly what they wanted. If God can't raise perfect children with no outside influence, no one else in the universe can either. God doesn't like it, but it's a part of the reality of what happens. He gave them parents, their fathers. They quickly turned away from the way in which their fathers had walked and the way of obedience to the Lord's commands. The description of failure. The failure to accept the authority that God gives us and the instruction God gives us and then choosing to do exactly what we want. Whenever we come to know Christ and we surrender our lives to him, those early days are terribly exciting for us. But the reality is that all of us, as we begin to live our lives with God, find that at different times we begin to forget what life was like before we met him. We begin to get a little tired of reading the Bible and praying and trying to live this correct life. And our enthusiasm for obedience and submission begins to wane. That's true for all of us. There have to be times in which we have to stop and say, I think my life has drifted away from what it was at one time. I have to renew this promise that I've made to God. Becoming a follower of Christ is a lot like being married in the sense that in the beginning there's a lot of excitement and thrill. It's all new to us. But when you've been married 40, 50 years, you know, you begin to take each other for granted a little bit. You begin to not think as much about the other person as you did before. The relationship sometimes needs rejuvenating, and it's also true with that of God. Now here's the clue. Whenever you have in your own marriage a situation in which there's conflict and you feel uncomfortable and you know something's wrong, it's time to sit down and say, what's happening here? In the Bible, the relationship between the people and God, it talks about they were in great distress. If you find your spiritual life in great distress, it's a sign that you've drifted away from what God really wants for you. Now when you're in great distress, don't give up, for God is compassionate for you and concerned about your distress. He wants to be able to deliver you from that distress. The distress that comes to you is designed in God's part for you to stop and say, God, where did I go wrong? And in His kindness, He will say, I've been waiting for that question. I'd like to tell you the answer. And you listen. Read the Bible, pray, and you listen. And God will show you the things in your life that have gone out of line. What happened to these people in the Old Testament is a common problem for all followers of God. The times of distress should not be discouraging or disappointing to us. They are like a warning signal. Be careful, you're in dangerous ground. Stop, look, listen before you go any further. And God, in His compassion for you, will tell you what you need to do. And in His grace, He will give you what you need. Because He wants to have you, the people of His, living in a relationship that's close and powerful. So you know He is your very best friend. He is the rule of your life. And He loves you and cares for you. Let's pray. Father, I ask as we try to live out our lives under Your authority that You would remind us when things get bad, if they're in distress, and we've caused it by the choices we've made, that You'd help us to see what we did wrong. Help us not to be depressed or overwhelmed, but to be really encouraged because now we know that there is an answer, and that You're nearby, and that You feel for us, and that You care about us, and You want to restore the relationship that has gone sour. Remind us constantly not to be attracted by the things of this world that promise far more exciting things than You do, but help us to have the values to hold on to life, life that is full and rich and complete. Help us not to be attracted by what the world sees as life, fun, games, excitement and thrill. Help us to remember You are the Lord, and we are Your servants. Amen.