Living Set Apart in a World of Idolatry

I want to read it from chapter 3. This paragraph, the two paragraphs really in this version, 1-6, is really a summary of the entire book of Judges. It's sort of like telling you the main theme that's going to take place in the rest of the book. In verse 23 of chapter 2, sort of introduces chapter 3, the Lord has allowed these nations to remain. He did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua. And here the idea is because the people of Israel failed to do what God asked them to do, that is to destroy all the people in the land of Canaan, because they didn't do it, the Lord left them. He left them, let them to remain. He didn't drive them out as He had promised He would because they had broken their side of the contract that He gave. He said in verse 22, I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as His forefathers did. He did this as a test. Will, how will you react now that you have this land filled with people that you didn't kill or drive out? So then chapter 3, verse 1, these are the nations the Lord left to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan. He did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not previously battled, who had not previous battle experience. The five rulers of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonites, the Hivites, living in the Lebanon mountains from Mount Baal, Hermon, to Lebo, Hamath. The description here is that what was left of the tribes that were left in the land, these names that are given are all not Canaanites. It seems as if they had driven, the Canaanites had not driven them out, but had not cleaned the land out so that foreign tribes came in and began to possess the land while they were there. So that they were in the middle of a group of people who were foreign to God and not submitted or surrendered to the authority of God. So verse 3, then he says, the Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. The result was that they were living in a land surrounded by people who were not followers of Yahweh God. So what God intended to happen to them was they would be in a community where there would be no external influence of idol worship. That was the purpose of driving all the people out. So when they entered the land, there would only be people who were followers of Yahweh God. Their failure to do that allowed these people to remain in the land and they were surrounded by idolaters. Everywhere they looked, they were surrounded by them. The Bible describes the people of God as being holy. Holy simply means that they're separate or different, not like the rest of the world. What God was trying to do with the people of Israel was put them in a land where he could develop in them the nature and character that he had for himself, that he pass on to them so that they would be holy. If you look back in the Old Testament, you see that he had plans for how they were to live, the Ten Commandments. He had plans as to how they were to dress. He had plans as to how they were to eat. He had plans that were different than all the people around them. And the primary purpose of those rules was that they would realize we are different than all the other people in the world because our God controls every part of our life. He controls the way we dress. He controls the way we eat. He controls the way we live. He controls our day off. Everything about our lives, God is in control of us. He is our ruler. This separated life was to be distinct for them. Now they're settled in a land where they are surrounded by people who have a different God, who live in a different world. And because of that, the influence of these people are powerful on them. You know, it's true that if you're around people for a long time, you begin to pick up their language. You begin to pick up their slang. You begin to pick up their values. And the more you're around them, and the less you're around people who are like yourself, the more you begin to adapt to the culture that you're in. God's intention was, I'll drive all these people out, I want you to drive all these people out, and here you will only listen to me. But instead, they've made themselves submissive to the culture that was around them, a culture that was filled with pagans and pagans who worshiped pagan deities. In 2 Corinthians in the New Testament, Paul is describing for them, the Corinthian people, they were surrounded by very powerful forces of idolatry. He was describing in chapter 6 of 2 Corinthians, what was necessary for them to be able to focus on obedience to God. Chapter 6 verse 14, do not be yoked together with unbelievers, for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does the believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people. The intention that Paul is drawing to is, there's a necessity for believers and followers of Christ to be together, so that you're renewed constantly and reminded constantly of the principles by which you live. This is really the purpose of the church. The purpose of the church is to draw people together and celebrate the common commitment we have to God, so that we are renewing that in our worship. We're listening to it in the teaching in the church and the preaching in the church, so that the ideals or goals are held up before us so that we know how we're to live, what we're to do and what we're not supposed to do. And then we're surrounded by people who are living by those principles. That's why Baptists believe in a believer's church. Some denominations will accept anyone to be a member of their church as long as they want to. Their idea is, we get them here in the church, we preach to them, so they'll become converted. Baptist believer's church is the idea that the only people that are qualified to be members of a church are people who've accepted the lordship and authority of God over their lives. All of us, you only get in a Baptist church by standing publicly and openly and say, I've surrendered my life to Jesus Christ and he now is in charge of me. We know some people say those things and they really don't mean them and they don't live them. But the principle that we have before us is, God is our authority. So when you come together in a church, you should be surrounded by people who have a common surrender to the authority of God. That causes us to feel a part of one another's lives. We are responsible for correcting and encouraging each other. If you see a brother that's in a strain of way, it's our responsibility to stop and say, wait a minute, these things in your life need to be changed. All of this helps us to live in a world where God's authority and power is ignored by most of the people. The church is to be that place where we find the oneness that helps us to be able to resist all the culture around us that is separated from God's direction. The church is a critical ingredient. So whenever you hear people say sometimes, I can be a good Christian and not go to church, it's a little bit like saying, you know, I can work at this factory and never go there. Because there's a necessity for us to be a part of each other's lives and to help each other grow and find maturity. That's what it's about. The Old Testament, the idea was we want you to live in a place where no one, no evil or bad influence affects you. For us, it's not possible for us to do that. But what we do find is when we come back together and we hear the word of God proclaimed and taught and we share together the experiences we have, it helps us to keep on track as to what we're really supposed to be doing. If you drop away from that, it's easier and easier to not read your Bible, not pray, and to be influenced by people who are not surrendered to the authority of God. Now what God was doing with the people of Israel is unique, sort of like they were new believers. They had been in Egypt, they'd traveled through the wilderness, they'd had the Ten Commandments given to them, all the books and all the laws given to them, but they'd never lived anywhere to begin to practice those things. So he wanted them to come, find a place, and take their normal lifestyle as farmers and cattle raisers and learn to live by the principles that he gave them. Many of the laws he gave them as they traveled through the wilderness didn't apply because they didn't plant crops, they didn't do some of the things that were required in that. This principle helped them to be focused on what they were supposed to be doing. Paul's instructions are, don't be connected to someone in a very personal and powerful way who doesn't have the same values that you have. When I was growing up, this was a principle often taught to our young people about marrying someone who had the same commitment to Christ that you had. And boy, it is a very difficult thing for someone to be married to another person who doesn't accept the Lordship of Christ over their life, because they're doing the best they know how, but they don't take in consideration what God says is what they ought to do. So there's a constant tension between the two people. The passage in Corinthians, I think, probably relates more to the idea of being in business with someone. Don't go into a business to try to deal with a business if you have two different kinds of principles. You may have one person who's in business with you, and their idea is, let's make as much money as we can, no matter how many corners we need to cut. There you are in a business where you know your partner is not living by the principles of God. It reflects on you, and you find yourself in constant tension. How can I make the right decision when I have somebody here who's a half-owner in this business, and they make different decisions than I make? So you look at your life in circumstances, he says, and don't put yourself in a place where you can't exercise the complete and total authority of God over your life. For if you can't do that, then you find yourself constantly torn between the demand that God makes on your life and the demands of other people around you. And the mistake that the Israelites made by not driving out all the idolaters from the land was that the idolaters had a powerful influence on the people of Israel. They were around them. They saw them. Their influence was a powerful influence on them. The foreigners, they took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters and their sons to serve their gods. So they not only lived around them, but they allowed their children to marry into the families of the idolaters. So their children could no longer live, then, the life that their own parents lived, because they were in a position where they were married to someone who, in their worship, went to the idols and made worship of the idols. Now Satan is a very deceptive and powerful force in the world. Everybody who's tried to live for God knows this. Very powerful force. What Satan does is he deceives us in ways that make it hard for us to understand or see him. And when we read the stories in the scripture about idolatry, we don't often find this a powerful force for us, but it is very much so. The forces that are around us that rival God are not stones or wood or metal. They're really humans. We live around people in our world who do not take in consideration the instructions of God or the power of God or the presence of God. They live their life based on what they see and what they think is right. The Bible is going to describe at the end of the book of Judges that this was the whole secret to this story. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Now that doesn't seem like a very dangerous thing to do, but if you consider what it means, if you said, for example, someone was going to work on a car and they decided to do to that car whatever they thought was the right thing to do to fix it, but they had never taken a course in mechanics and never fixed a car before, you might end up with a very messed up car. The fact that they did what they thought they should do does not mean that it would be successful. For in their ignorance, they might do something that actually destroyed the vehicle instead of repairing it. And what happens whenever people in our country, and this is probably a pretty common thing for us, they find people who are willing to live, even in church, with some of the principles that God teaches, but there are certain things that they just refuse to accept. And they want to consider themselves followers of Christ, but they see that some of the things God says they should do don't make sense to them, they don't understand why, and because of that they say, I'm not going to do it. Now you see, idolatry is putting something in your life that is more controlling of your behavior than God. So when a person says that, what they're really saying is, like Adam and Eve in the garden, I refuse to accept the authority of God over me in this area of my life. And there are a lot of, even church people, pastors, preachers, who take some of the scripture and find it too difficult to accept. So they want to dismiss that and say it was something old and not modern enough. And I've found them in every denomination, certainly Baptists are the same way. They look at the Bible and they find some things that they don't want to do, and so they push it aside and say, I don't think this is necessary for me to do. Other people in our culture are trying to find in their own life contentment and satisfaction and make it a primary goal of their life. If I can just find myself, if I can just enjoy my life, and so enjoyment and pleasure are the key ingredient in their life. I remember talking to a lady who's very, very active in church, and she'd been a high school teacher and all kinds of different things, and she decided she was going to get a divorce and said, I'm not happy, and surely God wants me happy. So that happiness overrode the requirement not to be divorced. Now it's true that God wants us to be happy, but it doesn't override his desire to want us to be faithful. If you look at the cross, it wasn't Jesus' happiest day, and if the Father had been primarily concerned about his followers being happy, Jesus would never have walked that road to the cross, nor would he have been on the cross, because it was not a happy experience. What God wants from us is the willingness to be obedient to him regardless of the consequences, and when we put our own feelings and desires above obedience to God, we have an idol, self-fulfillment, finding my happiness, finding my joy in life. I've met people that say, I don't go to church very much. Actually, I find a lot more presence of God out in the wilderness at the lake. I get out there and I sit down and just feel the presence of God, and I know a lot of people feel really good when they go out in the wilderness at the lake, but you know what God asked of us when he had left this earth? He wanted all the world to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. I've never had anybody saying they went out to the lake and they were convicted they ought to go lead somebody to faith in Christ as a result of it. I've never had anybody sitting out there who said, boy, you know, I've got to start reading my Bible and going to church more. Most of them, when they're out there, they say, I've got to do this more and more. So you see, whether or not God is in control of your life determines the way you live, and we deceive ourselves sometimes in thinking that good experiences that we have are a substitute for God. They're not. If you look at the things Jesus told his disciples, you will find that when he became Lord of their life, he asked of them sacrifice, self-denial, and servanthood to him, and any kind of experience you have with God will lead to those things. Now, if you go out and sit on the side of the lake and God says, you know, you need to double what you're giving me for your offerings, then I'd say maybe you heard God. If he says, you know, you need to take a job in the church where they're trying to get people to work, I'd believe maybe you heard God. If you heard somebody, if you were out there at the lake and you came back and said, you know, God's convicted me, my prayer life is not what it needs to be and I'm going to start spending more time in prayer and reading the Bible, I'd say, well, you did hear God. But if you go out there and sit and just enjoy yourself and your life is the same, I'd say you just enjoyed yourself. It's not evil, it's not wicked, but there's a great difference between enjoying yourself and hearing God. And when we're around people who don't take seriously the authority of God, it causes us to make God like we want him to be instead of listening to who he is. The people that were in the Israel's life in this time in their lives had statues and idols everywhere. Satan is very up to the date. He knows that if he brought you and said, I want you to get on your knees in front of this piece of wood and pray to it, not a one of us would do it. We'd say, oh no, the Bible tells us not to do that. I'm not going to do that. But what he does instead of that is he comes to us and says, look at all the other people around you. They don't have to give their time to church like you do. They don't have to give their money away like you do. They don't have to work like you do. And they seem happy. Why do you have to do all that stuff? And so we say, OK, I can give God this much of my time, this much of my money, this much of my service, and then I can do all these other things under my control. At that moment, you have knelt down before a piece of flesh, your own. Idolatry is not finished in our culture. It's perhaps more powerful in our culture than it was in the days of these people. It's more powerful because you could not find anybody that you know who you saw was ignoring God and convinced them that they're an idolater. Satan is able to make us worship something other than God and then cause us not to even recognize it. It's like you were to get a dread disease that was going to kill you and there was no symptoms. That would be a terrible circumstance. You like to find the symptoms of your deadly disease and begin to attack it. But in our culture, worshiping something other than God, that means putting him in place of control of the way you think, the choices you make with your time, with your money, with your lifestyle. Those are the things that are equal to what the Bible is talking about. We live around people who are controlled not by God, but by their human nature, their passion for things. We've got to have more. We've got to have more. This is a nation that worships materialism. People will do anything they can. I read, I opened the internet up today, some guy builds a house and he's in trouble in the law about it. I can't remember how much it was, but it was something like 35 or 40 bedrooms, 35 or 40 toilets, you know, for like $200 million. Nobody has that many friends. And what is the purpose of this except to say, I have something bigger than anybody else in the world? It is idolatry. And you don't have to build that big a house, but you look at all the things we accumulate that we don't need and we want more and more and more and more. Greed is a powerful force of idolatry. It causes us never to be satisfied with one bedroom and one bathroom, but I need three or four or 50. The power of materialism is a very strong determining force in our lives. It causes us to have to work too much, causes us to have to spend our time with all the things that we're trying to accumulate and to never find satisfaction. It's hard for people who are caught in this to ever feel like, I have enough bedrooms and bathrooms, I need some more. Or it can be shoes, or it can be clothes, or it can be cars, or it can be anything. Contentment in Christ helps us to be caught in these idolatrous situations that surround the people who are here among us. And we can only do that if we keep in mind that all the decisions about our time, our money, and our lifestyle must be subject to God. We must ask Him how to act, how to think, and what we should do about every circumstance in our life. Jesus gave us the model as to how this is to work. He said, I don't ever say anything that the Father didn't tell me to say. I don't ever do anything that the Father doesn't tell me to do. He was under complete authority of God. That's what God's goal for us is. Everything else apart from that is idolatry. The Bible is powerful in telling us the dangers that this brings to our lives. We connect ourselves to those around them, and we begin to serve our gods. Now the people who were here in this story were not the original people who came into the land of promise. He said in the beginning of this section that the first generation that came there were faithful to God, but then their children turned away from God, and they were the ones that he's talking about here. It's not possible for us to pass on to our children the faith that we have and be guaranteed that they'll have it. That's not possible. Every person makes their own decision. It wasn't the fault of the parents that the next generation forgot the power of God. The nations the Lord left attest all the Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan. They hadn't been through fighting these wars. They didn't know what it was like. They never saw the power of God. We cannot make our children accept the authority of God over their life. Everyone makes that decision on their own. What we can do for ourselves is to make sure that we don't compromise ourselves and that we hold the principle of submission to God as a key ingredient in what we're trying to do in the church. In the article I wrote in the newsletter this month, I was trying to emphasize this. One of the difficulties we've had in Baptist life is saying to people, will you accept Jesus as your Savior? I don't think you'll ever find anybody who doesn't want to be saved from hell. If you find anybody and say, would you like to go to hell? I've never had anybody that I've ever talked to who said, I'm looking forward to that. Everybody wants to escape hell. But that's not the key ingredient to salvation. The key ingredient to salvation is the surrender of your life to the authority of God. Being saved is the result of accepting the Lordship of Christ over your life. When we miss that ingredient and go straight to salvation and say, okay, if you will say this prayer, you will be saved, we confuse people. We don't give them the real truth. Jesus always asked people who wanted to follow him something that required them to submit themselves to his authority at cost to themselves. Would you guys like to follow me and become fisher's men? Okay, leave your job, your family, and come and follow me. I would follow you, Lord, but I've got my father who's home and he's near death. He said, let the dead bury the dead. I've asked you to come and follow me and I expect you to leave your family behind and do what I've told you to do. What a hard thing that is to ask. Never in the Bible is salvation offered apart from sacrifice and self-denial. So we have to be careful when we say to people how they can become a follower of Christ and make sure that they understand that it means putting God in the position of supreme authority over everything in their life. It means their choices, their lifestyle, and their nature. I will let God shape who I am. I will let him direct my lifestyle. I will act in ways that are difficult for me and sacrificial for me because God asks it of me. There is no salvation apart from the Lordship of Christ, none. I meet a lot of people whose lives do not describe or do not show any serious concern about God's control of their lives, but they think that they're going to go to heaven. I was talking to a pastor one time and he said, he had a big church, and he said, you know, I really don't think that half of the people in my church are saved. I said, well, you know, they only got in your church if they stood in front of the congregation and professed their trust in Christ and you told them that they were saved because they'd done that. If they're in your church because, and you still don't think that they're followers of Christ, it's because we lead them there without making it clear exactly what salvation is. And Jesus made it clear that it was a matter of submission of yourself. If you live your Christian life and you're not doing something for God that you don't really feel comfortable doing, you're not going to grow in your faith. You may have reached the level where you're comfortable where you are and stopped, but you're not going to really become everything God wants you to be until you start saying to God, okay, what's the next step I need to take? Because his intention is that we become exactly like him and it means changing a lot of stuff in our lives, the way we think, the values that we hold, and the lifestyle that we live. What happened to the people of Israel was they did not do what God wanted. They moved into the land of promise and instead of keeping themselves separate by strict obedience to what God asked, their daughters and sons married into the families of idolaters and soon all of their children were half followers of God and half followers of idols. And now what we're going to see in this whole book is the absolute devastating result that this brought. This book is the most depressing book in all the Bible because it shows what happens when people compromise their surrender to the authority of God and do not allow themselves to focus entirely on submission to him and obedience to what he asks. The circumstances of this book are lived out in every generation because we live in a world where it's impossible for us to isolate ourselves only with other believers. Pastor one time told me, he said, I just wish I could get everybody in my church building and I could keep them there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Then maybe I could get them to be righteous and holy. Well that's a noble idea, but what happened if you did that was they'd be cemented each other after the first two weeks, they couldn't even get along, unless something dramatically changed and they became more like God. And we can only do that when we live under his authority in whatever place we're at. That's the key. The story of the scriptures is the first commandment, you're to have nothing in this world that controls your mind, your will, your finances, or your lifestyle, but me, almighty God. Anything other than that is disaster for you. Let's pray. So Father we live in a world where we all sign to competing voices around us. We know you can't stop those voices, you've placed us here in this world. Let us have the ear to hear your voice above all the others, but more than that, help us when we hear your voice to be passionately excited to do whatever you tell us. That the world might know what it's like for someone to live as you direct them, and that they might know what you are like by the way we live. In the name of Christ we ask this, amen.