Living Within God's Provision

Chapter 2, if you'd like to find that. Joshua Judges. The first two chapters of the book of Judges is an introduction to the book. He's sort of telling us a connection between Joshua, the book of Joshua that ends the story of their getting ready to possess the land. They've already gone and broken the back of the people who are living in this land that God was giving to them. And now Joshua dies and he's saying to, God is saying to the people, now this is your opportunity to go to the places I've assigned to you. Each tribe was given a piece of ground. And they were then to go and drive all the enemy out so that there would be no influence, of anybody who was negative to God. And they were to be isolated in one place without the temptation of following idolatry. When they started in this first introduction, he tells them how they started the right way. He said, ask me for directions and instructions and I'll give them to you. So they start off saying, OK, tell us who should go first. They did that, but immediately began to compromise what God asked them to do. In this introduction, he's talking about how their military conquest started out successfully, but little by little began to lose its emphasis until finally they were not able to drive out the enemy because of their violation of the instructions of God. And then the second part of this introduction talks about how God sees this, what happened to them. And this is the second part of that of the last part of that introduction in verse in chapter two. He's talking about what took place in verse 13, because they forsook him and served Baal and the Asteros in his anger against Israel. The Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as he'd sworn to them. And they were in great distress. He's now summarizing what takes place in the book of Judges all the way through. This is a summary of what's taking place in this paragraph. He's covered the whole book of Judges really in a summary way. So the people turned against God. They began to do the things that their neighbors were doing. I think we take for granted the idea that we're through with idolatry because nobody has a statue in their house that they kneel down to. But becoming a Christian or follower of Christ means a surrender to the authority and will of God and to the authority and will of Christ. That's how you enter the kingdom of heaven. It's not a matter of joining a church or being baptized or taking the Eucharist. It's a matter of saying to God, I give you my life and I will live my life in submission to your authority. I will allow you to guide my life in all areas. I'll allow you to guide my life in my home, in my finances, in my relationships with people, in all the areas of my life I'm willing to follow the instructions you give me. Now idolatry for the people of Israel was not an abandonment of God, the God of the Old Testament. They never did abandon him completely. What they did was they maintained their commitment to do the things that they were supposed to do in the temple, make the sacrifices, but at the same time they added to their group sacrifices to the bales in the community so that they were doing two things. They were submitting to God in part of their life and submitting to the bales for another part of their life. I think that what's happened to many people in our country is they haven't given up on Christianity or God. They believe in God and they believe he exists and they believe he's a good person and most people are not antagonistic toward God. But when it comes to the day-to-day operations of their life, they do not surrender to the authority of Christ. If you look at their lives, you'll see that many of them are controlled by the very forces that control the people around them who don't go to church at all. Many people in our culture are saturated with greed. When we think of greed, we think of the Christmas story where the old guy is mean to his employees and doesn't want to celebrate Christmas, but that's not really what it is. Greed is a person who feels a need to find value in life by having more and more things. You don't have to be rich to have that. You could be a person with almost nothing, but still feel that you need one more dog or one more cow or one more sheep or one more pig before you could really, and then when you get that, you need one more, and then when you get that, you need one more. It's the feeling that my life will find fulfillment if I have more material things. That's a powerful passion in our world, and you see it all the time because you see people whose lives are caught up in trying to live beyond the resources that God has given them. Now here's the point. God says in a contract he makes with us, I will guide your life. I will provide your needs. So he gives us a provision, but we don't accept the provision he gives us. We instead feel it's inadequate and we need more. I saw a survey that someone did one time, and they did it for all levels of income for people. And on the questionnaire they asked them if they were satisfied materially or financially, and most of them were not. But from the wealthiest people to the ones at the bottom of the line in terms of finances, they all thought I would be satisfied if I had just 5% more. That was a key ingredient. I talked to a man, was in a meeting where a man was lecturing, he was a financial advisor, and he worked only with wealthy people, and he was telling about going out to the house of the family and sitting down talking to them, and they had an estate of like two and a half million dollars. And he said to them, you know, the key ingredient here is to be sure that when you die you have enough to take care of all your needs. How much do you think you'll need to be able to take care of this? And they said, well, I think three million would be enough. So two or three years later he comes back and sits down with them and says, now we want to go over your estate plan to see if you're satisfied with it. How much do you think you'll need, you know, to make sure you take care of yourself and your needs when you retire? And they said, well, I think maybe five million would do it. He went back sometimes later and he kept going up. He said, the last time I went they said 25 million would just about do it. See this is what greed really is. It's a feeling that my life cannot be complete or safe until I have more material things. Now the bales of the world in which these people lived was a God that promised material success. Now the God of the Bible never promised material success. He promised, I will provide for you. That is, I will give you enough to be able to live. The God of Baal promised them, I will give you more than you need. And so they were attracted by this because of the greed inside of themselves. We need this, what God of Baal offers to us, and we need this, the God who says he's going to take care of us and provide and has the power to protect us. So whenever you look at the things God promises, and provision is one of them, I will guide you. That's a promise God makes. But there are many people who get guidance in their lives not from asking God what they should do, but from talking to their friends. I talk to people quite often who are in a great dilemma about what to do with their children, with their business, with their home, with their own lives, with their marriage, whatever it is. And they're in a real dilemma because they look at one thing and they say, maybe I should do that, and another, maybe I should do that. And they're torn all the time because they can't get a clear focus. What God expects us to do is to find from him the answer to those dilemmas. What should I choose? How should I manage this situation? Throughout the Bible, there are circumstances that all of us meet are addressed, and God gives clear direction as to how we should handle those. And if we don't take those as the instructions from God, then what we do take as our instruction becomes a substitute for the God of the Bible. So whenever God says, I will guide your life, what he expects us to do is to learn what he says we should do and use that in application to the circumstances we're in. But there's one big difference. Once you surrender, this is in the New Testament, once you surrender to Christ, you say, I give my life to you, what he does, John says, to as many as received him, to them he gave the power to become the children of God. And when Jesus left, he said, I'm leaving so the Holy Spirit will come to you. So every person who surrendered their lives to Christ, the Holy Spirit of God enters you. So when you read the Bible and you read a passage of scripture, if you're reading it and you think, my goodness, I'm doing some things wrong. That's the Holy Spirit directing you. And when you face a problem and you don't know exactly what to do and you look at two or three options and you ask God to help you with them, one of those will become a little more clear than the others, and you'll know that that's God's guidance for you. Many people find different ways. They go to counselors who may not even know God or care about that. They go to their friends. That's another big source. You go to people who've been through these problems before and listen to their advice. You see, what's happened is then you have said, okay, I believe the God of the Bible, but I'm not going to ask him for advice or direction. That's one of the contracts he makes. I will guide you, but I can't guide you unless you trust me. I can't guide you unless you read so you know what I say you should do. I can't guide you unless you sit down before me and say, God, give me direction. Sometimes God does not give those to us immediately, and we get impatient and we act on our own, which means that we put ourselves in the place of God. I'm smart enough to know how to do this, and so we just jump out at it. That means that we have done what the Bible calls idolatry. We have become God instead of waiting until he tells us what the right choice is to make. So many people, church people, make decisions, important decisions, without consulting God, without knowing what God wants, without trying to find the answer to what God wants them to do. They're religious, but they're making decisions based on other things other than God's instruction. Did you get the Holy Spirit? He had one over here. I thought you were going to hit your husband in the head, and I was going to have to stop and deal with that. So, idolatry is an easy thing to slip into because God's instructions are always pretty clear, and they're pretty demanding. Idolatry, that is, finding someone else who will give you choices to make that are more pleasing to you, that everyone around you agrees with, so that you don't seem like you're out on a limb, is always more appealing than what God has to say. The other promise that God makes is, I will provide for you. And many people do not accept the reality that what God has given me, I must live within that boundary. It's true for everybody. I asked me to come to Topeka three or four weeks ago and meet with a group of pastors and talk to them about finances. And they're just as clueless about how to manage their money as you can imagine. They live day to day. They don't have any retirement plans. They're not saving their money. They're spending everything they get. God makes a promise, I will provide for you, and what he means by that is, I will give you enough for all the things you need to do. House, food, transportation, a nest egg for safety, and retirement money. So, most people spend all they've got and then say, I don't have enough for these other things, like an emergency fund or retirement. Well, what Jesus said was, we're not to worry about this because he takes care of the birds in the air, he takes care of the flowers, and he'll surely take care of us. So, you sit down and say, okay, I'll live within the structure that you've given me. I may not be able to do everything everybody else does, but we can get by. We moved here. We had gone to Sears before we left Fort Worth and bought a TV that somebody had brought back. They had a store there with all the stuff that was broken, and they fixed it up. It was a black and white TV, and we decided we weren't going to make any debts, and we'd live within the means that we had. So, we didn't have a washing machine, so Carol went down and washed it at the washeteria until we got enough money saved to buy that. But the TV was just, you know, not that important to us. And our kids, at the anniversary, I think one of them mentioned this, but Betty and Bud Allen came over and babysat for us one Christmas. We went out to do something, and they were aghast that we had a black and white TV. It was not only black and white, but it rolled the picture a little bit, you know. But if you worked at it, you could get it to stay still, but we weren't going to buy anything until we had the money to do it. So, God gives us the opportunity to have what we need, but He expects us to be disciplined by it. Now, what happens is the rest of the world will say, go ahead. You can always do it tomorrow. You can always save your money tomorrow. You can always provide your retirement tomorrow. But God says, I have given you enough for everything you need. Now, when you decide you need more than you have, what you've said to God is, you're not doing your job. The rest of the world doesn't live within that structure. They're instead buying everything that they can, with all the credit that they can get, until they have constant turmoil in their lives and their family. God's answer is very simple. I'll give you enough to live on. You just live on this. That's a simple answer. But you have to say no to yourself about a lot of things. The other thing He promises is, I will protect you. What He means by that is, I will keep you from being destroyed. So, whenever you have a conflict with somebody, and you think you have to fight them to be able to win so you're successful, then you've said to God, okay, I'm not going to take your advice about this. Here's His advice. If somebody fights you, and they hit you in the face, don't fight back. Just turn the other cheek. Well, that doesn't go very far. So we think, okay, God, I know that's probably a good idea. But you know, if you don't take up for yourself, no one else is going to, or some kind of saying like that that people have. And so we start fighting. We fight with our family members. We fight husbands and wives with each other. We fight with our neighbors. We fight in the church. It's just rampant everywhere. And you know why we fight? We are trying to make everyone around us fit what we think is the right thing in our eyes. What Jesus said about this was, I don't want you to fight to win and beat other people and make them do what you want. I want you instead to say it doesn't matter what people do. I can live with them. That goes against our human nature. So here we are in church, church people, read the Bible, talk to God, pray. But when we get out and we go to work and somebody does something there we don't like, you know, we get mad at them. We say nasty things. We talk behind their back instead of just saying, okay, God, you've given me clear instructions. I'm not going to say anything nasty about them. I'll treat them the way I want people to treat me. I'm not going to get even with them. See, idolatry is saying there is a different way than God's way of living. That's what idolatry is. You don't have to have a stick or a stone. You just have to say God's way of living is not acceptable. I won't win that way. And all the fighting that goes on all around us everywhere is a result of people saying I must have life the way I want it. And if I don't, I'm going to make somebody else's life miserable. What you see in Jesus' life was he never returned evil for evil. He shows us on the cross what he means by this. You just receive whatever punishment comes to you, and instead you pray for your enemies. Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing. See, the world says you don't say that. You say, if you don't take up for yourself, no one else will. Think about that. If you don't take up for yourself, no one else will. What that means is you can't trust God to take care of you. That's idolatry. You have the responsibility to win this battle, to make the people around you conform to what you want. It's just a powerful thing that we have a demand to make sure that we ourselves get our way. I heard this song on the radio. I thought I'd like to play it at church sometime, but it has too many bad words in it. But I'd probably be fired if I tried to play that here. But the song was simply about a guy that has a woman he's dating, and she doesn't like country and western music. She didn't know who didn't like Willie Nelson. She didn't know who some of the famous singers are. I wish I could remember the names of them. She didn't know any of those. He took her out to eat, and they were talking about the music, and she didn't know any of these country guys. And he says, I just took her in the car and took her home, and she didn't like my music. I don't have anything to do with her. I thought, that's pretty shallow, you know, that I'm not going to be married or date a woman who doesn't love the kind of music I love. And then I thought, that's what a lot of church people do. Some churches even have it such so all people that like one kind of music go one time, so they don't have any association with those that like another kind that go another kind. What's that mean? That our own desire to have everything exactly the way we want it is so important to us that we turn away from a fellow follower of Jesus Christ? It's that spirit that causes divorces in families. It's that spirit that causes neighbors not to get along with each other. It's that spirit of, I must have my way. Now, here's what God says. Humble yourself before me and serve me. Think other people are more important than yourself. So what he wants me to do is whenever there's a difference between my wife and I, I'm always right, of course, but I'm always right. But I have to say, okay, Carol, I'll let it be your way, and I'm not going to complain, and you'll never know I want it another way. And if that's what it takes, I'm going to do that. Why do I do that? Because love means I put other people's interests and needs ahead of my own. That is really dangerous living. Because you won't have everything you want when you're in love. You won't have everything you want when you do that. But what you will have is peace and the approval of God. But see, our human nature says you've got to fight to get what you want, and you've got to make sure everybody does it the way you want them to do it. The idolatry of the people of Israel, we look back on it, and we say, wow, those people were so pagan. But that's what we have in our own country, in our churches, too, where people have to have things their way, or they go to another church. It's denying the reality that God can allow me to love somebody who's different than me and thinks differently than me. What God wanted to do in His church was bring all kinds of people together, Jews and Gentiles even. I mean, people that really couldn't accept each other. And He wanted to put His Spirit in both of them until the barrier of being a Jew and a Gentile did not exist. They were one in Christ. And then He could say to the whole world, look at what I can do. What God wants in the churches is for us to love one another. That means give ourselves in self-denying service to others. Not get your way, but give your way away. So the idolatry that was true in the nation of Israel is not closed with this book. It is an ongoing, eternal problem for us. I will guide you, I will provide you, for you, and I will protect you. And the last thing He said is I will make you a great nation. Your witness, wherever you are, is for other people to look at you and say that person is different. And you know how you're different? It's when other people say to you, I don't know how you put up with that. I wouldn't stand for it. That's your witness. If you're living so that God guides you and you're making choices as you want Him to, people would say, I don't know how you can make that choice. I don't know how you can put up with that. I tell you, if I were you, I'd just tell them what to do and I'd put them in their place. They see you living a different way. Your opportunity is to say, let me tell you why I'm doing this. You live within this means that God gives you. And people around you, your kids come in and say, well, so and so, they have this and they have that and they get to do this and they get to do that. So you get to explain how it means to live under the provision of God. And that's your witness. So your children growing up in your home understand what it means to live under God's authority. Other people around you will say, well, you can afford it. Go ahead and do this, that or the other, whatever they're wanting you to do. But you have an opportunity to say, no, I'm not. That's why you do that. Well, God promised he'd provide enough for me. And if I have all these things I pay for and I'm taking care of my fund for the rainy day and taking my retirement, and this is all I can afford. This is why God takes care of me. That's your witness. You see, when you live contrary to the rest of the world that's controlled by pagans and pagan thinking, you will stand out. But what makes the church in such a difficult position is so many of us are living exactly like them, except we go to church sometimes. They don't see any difference. God never got mad at the Canaanites, at the Israelites, because they had abandoned him. He was angry with them because they kept acting like they were obeying and worshiping him when they were really trusting in Baal at the same time. You cannot have two bosses. The Bible over and over again tells us that. You can't have two bosses. So in the middle of all of this, they provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Asteroth, two of the gods. In his anger against Israel, he got mad, angry. He was rejected as the authority of the world. He made everything. He gave them this land. He did everything for them, and they turned around and spit in his face. In his anger against Israel, the Lord handed them over to raiders. Now you see, when you look at people who are living contrary to what God wants, what they have is they have trouble. They have financial trouble. They have relationship problems. They have all these things that are common to so many of our people in our world. And it's because God has said, OK, you can make the choices you want with your money. You can fight with whoever you want to. Have at it. Are you enjoying this? Everybody's mad at you. Your house is all in turmoil. Is this wonderful? He turns loose. He doesn't protect you because you've moved outside this boundary. And so in them, he's talking about the enemies around them. The Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He took his protection off of them. He quit providing for them, and he quit guiding their choices. And they had disaster. He sold them to their enemies. He says, they don't want me anymore. You can have them, Baal, if you want them. They don't want to follow me anyway. You can have them if you want them. And they no longer were able to resist. And because they had given themselves to Baal, there was no resistance to it. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them so that just as he'd sworn to them, they were in great distress. So what he did was, he said, okay, you can do this. But I promised you before that I would help you to be able to fight against your enemies. But you have joined the enemy. So now when you come to fight, I'm not on your side anymore. As a matter of fact, I would like you to discover how disastrous your choices have been. So it's like, you know, you're raising children, and they do something that you know is not going to be good for them. And you say, well, they need to learn. So you let them make their choices when they're kids, and they learn that the choice is bad. I mean, not that it risks their life, but you know, this is what makes problems for them. Because you want them to face the problems so they'll know that the choice they made is wrong. That's what God does. And many of the people around you who are having all these problems are having them because God has said, I'm through. And I'm going to try to make you understand that the choice you've made is difficult, and it's wrong. And I want you to have trouble. Because if you have enough trouble, maybe you'll stop and say, why didn't I follow God, Yahweh, God of the Bible? Yahweh, God of the Bible. So He wants in your distress for you to stop and say, there has to be another way than this. And they were in great distress. God had not abandoned them, they abandoned Him. And so much of the distress that we have in our own lives is the result of idolatry. You ask people, how do you make choices in your life? Not many of them will tell you they seek God's advice about them. They'll think, you know, they're based on good finances or whatever. You say, how do you settle difficulties when you have conflicts with people around you? And they'll say, well, I don't have, I don't stay around people like that. They'll talk about how they separate themselves or are separated because of the conflicts with other people. Ask them how they make financial choices. Most of them are making all these decisions based on human wisdom, ignoring the wisdom of God. What God does then in the middle of all that is just withhold Himself from the people and let them go, hoping that one day they will wake up and say, like the prodigal son, I made some pretty stupid decisions. My dad's rich and I'm here eating pig food. What is wrong with this picture? Maybe if I went back to my dad and listened to him again, my life would change. That story is what God wants to happen. The father could have kept looking up his son and sending him a little money along to keep him out of the hog pens, but he didn't. He said, you've chosen this life. Now, I want you to see where it leads. But he knew that there was a different life back home and that's what God wants to do. When we read the stories of idolatry in the Old Testament, in the New Testament even, we should not look at that as if it were not a part of our lives because all of us are tempted to these very things. Just think about it. Sometimes you spent more money than you need to on things you didn't need to buy. Sometimes you got mad and fought with people when you shouldn't have. And sometimes you've made decisions that you didn't stop and ask God about. We've all done that. But what God wants us to do is to say, okay, I made a mistake. I didn't stop and make you the Lord of my life. And the more we look like different people than the rest of the world, then we have a witness. My life, my family, my finances are the result of God. He guides my life. And that's our witness. And we're to go into all the world and be witnesses as to what it's like to live under the authority of God. And the world then will say, I want that. I want your God. Would you join me in prayer? Father, you know what it's like living in this world where you're a minority. When we try to listen to you and others around us aren't. We seem out of step sometimes. When we believe the things that you say are right and we try to live by them, there are people around us who think it's foolish and stupid. When we don't stand up for ourselves and fight, people think we're weak. We believe that you alone have the wisdom to live in this world because you have actually seen millions of people live their lives on this earth. You know what works and you know what doesn't. You know how you made us and you know what you made us to do. Give us trust in you that we wouldn't try to reinvent the human life all over again. In the name of Christ, we ask that our lives would reflect to the world the God who saves, protects, and cares for us. Amen.