God's Unbreakable Covenant and Our Trust

Judges, chapter 2, beginning at verse 1. The first chapter in the book of Judges is sort of a recap of how the people of Israel came in to possess the land of promise, and it's kind of going back to the book of Joshua telling how this conquest took place, and it starts by the beginning to say, here is what God wants you to do. They had Moses as their leader, Joshua as their leader, and now they didn't have a leader. But instead they were to be directly related to God. So they were to ask God what he wanted them to do. In the first verse of Judges, chapter 1, they go to God and they say, who is the first tribe that should be able to start the conquest, and he points out to them, Judah. And then the first chapter describes how the people of Israel failed to keep the commitment that they'd made to God. God said to them, when you go into the land of promise that I give you, to Canaan, I want you to make sure that every person in every town that you go to, all the people are killed. Don't ever make any contract with them, or covenant with them, or arrangement with them, because this was the time of judgment that God was bringing on Canaan for the sins that they had committed over the years. So it was a time of judgment for God, and they were the instrument of judgment. This judgment that was coming was to be total and complete. In the first chapter, he starts by saying there's compromise, showing that there's compromise. For example, they did capture Jerusalem, and did exactly what God wanted, and he blessed them. But as they began to spread out and extend their fighting to the other communities, they slowly began to back away. Instead of destroying everybody there, they made contracts with them. Some of them, they couldn't win the battles because they were afraid to try, because the enemy had chariots of iron. So all the way through the first chapter, they drift farther and farther away from what God told them to do. Now, chapter 2, beginning with verse 1, sort of mimics what took place in chapter 1, verse 1. After the death of Joshua, the Israelites ask the Lord, who will be the first to go up and fight for us against the Canaanites? Going up sort of seems like a theme throughout this book, for they're moving from the place where they crossed over near Jericho, and doing battle all over the land of Canaan. So they use that language. Now, in verse 1 of chapter 2, the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim and said, I brought you up out of Egypt and led you to the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make any covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars. This is a repeat of what had taken place in Exodus, when this promise was made, in Joshua, whenever the conquest was taking place. All this is a repeat of what God had said to them in the book of Exodus. It was clearly spelled out what they were supposed to do, and now they come to the place where they have failed to do it. The angel of the Lord, the word, the angel of the Lord, there are three times in the book of Judges where God comes directly and addresses the people of Israel. He confronts them with what he wants to say to them about what they've been doing. This is the first one. The first one, it says, an angel of the Lord came to them. The word for angel is simply, really, the word for messenger, and it could be a person or it could be an angel, but the word, the messenger came in this instance. In the next one, it's a prophet of God who comes. And then the final address God gives to them, it is God himself. Sometimes the messenger of God and God himself are sort of intertwined. It'll say the messenger of God, say, in the beginning of a passage, and then as it gets on it will say the Lord said, so that it's difficult in some of the times when the messengers of God come to distinguish between whether it was a human or whether it was an angel or whether it was actually God. The idea, though, is the same, for in each of these, God has extended himself to bring to the people a direct confronting message. Here is what I have to say to you, and I come to say directly to you what I want you to hear. Here he's coming to address the beginning of their conquest and to draw attention to the failure that they've had to do what they were supposed to. He starts by talking about in the past what he's done. Whenever you want to get on to someone, you can jump right in and begin to tell them what's wrong with them. Or if you're a friend of theirs, and it's something that's sort of offended you, you might say, you know, we've been friends a long time. Remember times that I helped you? Remember the times that we did these things together? Remember the good times that we've had? And if it's something that you've done for that person, you might say to them, remember the time that you were sick and I helped you? Remember the time that my car broke down and you helped me and get it running again? And then you can say, after you've built that kind of relationship, you can deliver the message. In this one, that's what the angel is doing. He comes to say, I brought you. Now notice it says the angel of the Lord came, and then immediately it changes to the first person. I brought you out of Egypt. Now we all know that if this is a messenger, human being, or even an angel, the human beings or the angels didn't bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. This was God who did that. That's why this idea of the messenger is sort of hard for us to nail down as exactly who it is. For this is God speaking. I brought you up out of Egypt. He's describing now the power that he had and the concern that he had for them. And I led you to the land. He's talking about through the desert wilderness, how God guided them step by step. I delivered you by my mighty power. I've guided you. Remember, the covenant promise is, I will guide you, I will provide for you, and I will protect you, and I'll make you a great and mighty nation. So he already starts here. I brought you out with my power. I led you or guided you. I swore to the land. I swore to your forefathers. I'm keeping the promise that I made, and I will never break my covenant with you. God addresses the covenant he made with them with the language, I will never break my covenant. Now, if you and I made a contract to do business together, if I said, OK, Wayne, I'm going to buy something from you, and we made a contract, I would sign the contract, you would sign the contract, and the contract would be as much yours as it was mine. In other words, I'm going to buy your car, and so you say, OK, I'll sell you this car, and it's a good condition, and I say, I'm going to give you so much money, so we both have an input into this. Here, God calls his contract with Israel his contract, as if their side of it was not an issue for him. What he was really saying was, I have made promises that I intend to keep. My promises will never be broken. The side of the contract that's God's side will never be broken. This is where the idea of the security of the believer comes from. The idea that someone who trusts God is trusting someone who will never fail to do his part of the deal. So if you commit your life to Christ, and you say, I give you my life, and I want to live in obedience to you, and God says, I will guide you, provide for you, protect you, and make your life a wonderful influence in the world around you, those four things he will never stop doing. Now, what God is saying is, my contract is always in place. Now he's saying that, but he's going to talk about how this contract does become invalid because of what they have done. So I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars. They were the people who had the side that God had to worry about. You're never to make a contract with the people who are around you, because I do not trust them, and I have passed judgment that they should die. Now if you look back in the beginning, in chapter 1, you find out that when they came to capture one of the cities, they found a man coming out of the city, and they said to him, if you will help us know how to get into this city, then we will not kill you or your family, but you'll be free to go. So he was let go, and he built another city, the same as the city they were going to destroy. This was in direct violation of God's instruction as to what they were to do. They made contracts with people. In the first chapter it says they never were able to drive out some of them because they had chariots, and yet in chapter 4 of Judges, it describes how when they did go out to fight an enemy who had chariots, God overcame the chariots. So it shows us it's a lack of confidence in the people who were fighting the battle that God would really take care of them that kept them from being able to do it. So some of them, they lived among the people, they made contracts with them, they allowed some of the cities to remain in direct violation of the instructions of God. So they had violated the contract or the covenant that they had made with God and His instructions to them. Now you have disobeyed me. You have not followed the instructions that I gave you. The key ingredient here could look as if it were, how do you work hard enough to please God so He'll do His part of the deal? But that's not the issue. The issue is they didn't trust God. When they came to situations where they didn't know how to get in the city, they were faced with a choice. We could either ask God, which they did at the beginning of chapter 1 verse 1, what should we do? But instead they saw a man coming out and their own mind said, you know, we don't have to ask God about this. Here is a man who will tell us how to get in the city and we can win the victory. But we've got to make a deal with him. So we're going to say, you can go ahead and live. We won't kill you and your family if you'll tell us how to get in the city a secret way. So their strategy was to trust their own mind and judgment about how to do what God asked them to do instead of depending on doing what He said. When they came to chariots of iron, they looked at the chariots who were steel and they looked at their own implements of war and they decided this was too much for God to do. So they decided that they would just run away and not fight the battle for the land that God had given them where the chariots were. When they came to the place, they thought God is not big enough to do this job. We were okay when we fought other people with swords and spears, but now here are metal chariots. Now, they weren't solid steel. They were usually wooden chariots made of wooden and leather, but they were reinforced like we would say a person has a body armor on. So in place of the driver, they would have some metal in front of him so whatever spears or arrows were shot at him, he could hide behind them. So the chariots were a great advancement in war, but they saw those and when they saw that difficulty, they couldn't imagine how God could help them defeat the chariots armed that way. And so they lost faith in God and decided that they would do it themselves and they just ran away. Each of these instances, they lost trust in God. They knew the promise God made to them, but they understood that what he had said didn't match what they expected to take place, and in that moment their faith was stretched. Do I believe that God can do this? I know what God said, but maybe this is a better way to do it. I know what God told us to do, but this is just too hard for us. In each of these instances, they compromised obedience for what they thought was a reasonable thing to do. And it ended up that the people of Canaan were not driven out of their cities and they were still there. So verse 3, this is God's conclusion. Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you. That was the promise he made in the covenant. I will not drive them out before you. God is not changing what he said in the covenant. What he's saying to them now is, you will have the consequence of having to face these people without having them driven out of the land. I am not going to do the job you refused to do yourself. I told you what I wanted you to do and you didn't do it. He's not changing the covenant. He's saying I'm going to force you to live with the consequences of breaking the contract that you had with me. That's the first of the things he says. Now therefore I will tell you I will not drive them out before you. The second thing that happens is they will be a thorn in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you. They will be a constant irritation to you all the time you're in this land and their gods will be a problem for you all the time. Now when we read the book of Judges all the way through, we find out what happens over and over again. The people of Israel are surrounded by these pagan people. They begin to be attracted to their gods and they start worshiping Baal. They never leave worshiping God, but they mix God and Baal together. So they worship Yahweh God and they worship Baal too. So that they were violating the very first commandment, you should have no other gods before me. And then God just turns loose of them. And as he turns loose of them, he doesn't give them guidance. He doesn't give them protection. He doesn't provide for them. And they fall farther and farther into trouble. Then what happens is they sit down and think, how did we get in such a terrible mess as this? They start looking back and saying, when we started it wasn't this way. Maybe we have quit following God alone. And then there will be a great change in the nation of Israel. They will say, we're going to serve God and him alone. God would bring up a judge who would lead the people and say, we must restore our obedience to God. And so they will have a revival, we might call it, where the nation comes and dedicates itself to doing everything God told them to do. And then they will drive out the enemy that's invaded them and they will live in peace for a while. And then slowly, slowly and slowly, they begin to compromise their obedience to God until all of a sudden they find themselves in the same situation they've been in before. Here's a great story about how God deals with us. You come to God and you say, God, I give my life to you. You stand in the waters of baptism and you say, Jesus Christ is my Lord. A lot of people think of Jesus as their Savior, and that's true. But he only becomes the Savior after he becomes your Lord. So when we ask people to say this profession when they're in the baptismal waters, we say, Jesus Christ is my Lord. That means he's my ruler. He's the one that's in charge of my life. I submit myself to his authority. So we're like the people of Israel entering the land of promise. You do everything that I've told you to do and I'll be with you. I'll guide you in all the choices you make. I'll provide your needs. I'll protect you from the things around you that would destroy you. And when your life is over, you can say, my life really stood for something. It had a great impact on the world and people around me. But we are surrounded by pagans. They don't read the Bible every day. They don't read it at all. So when you're reading the Bible every day, you look around you and other people are not reading it. And you get feeling like, you know, this is maybe not necessary every single day. And whenever you're around people who are enjoying their life and the weekends come and they're gone to the lake or they're gone to the ballgames or they're doing the other things that they're doing, the temptation is to say they seem to have a nice family. They live right next door to us. Why can't we do the same things that they're doing? In the intensity and the promise that we make to God, we begin to compromise by beginning to act like the people around us. Here's what God wants us to do. I want you to listen to my word and obey it. It means you have to keep learning from the Bible what God wants you to do. Now the world around you will not encourage this. In fact, they will discourage it. And if you're in a family and you make a promise to follow God, you might try to go to the church every week, every Sunday, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And you may hear some of your family say, why do you have to go to church so much? That's not necessary. Because they see in your life something that's different than theirs and they can't see any value in it. And oftentimes you see people who make this promise to God. And then they become less and less interested in Bible reading and Bible study. Less and less interested in being with other believers. Less and less interested in their own spiritual lives. Until they finally are living just like every person in their neighborhood who doesn't even know Christ. They may be good people, but they don't go to church. They don't read the Bible. They're not praying for others. They're not making disciples. They're just living a good life. What happens, you see, is they've gotten in the same position the people of Israel did. Here are the things I tell you I want you to do. Hide my word in your heart that you will not sin against God. That means we make a lifetime of trying to learn what the Bible says about how to live. Each of the instructions that God gives us, you take the Sermon on the Mount, you can take the Ten Commandments, each of those become things that we pledge our lives to do. And when you look around at people who claim to be Christians, followers of Christ, you see that many of them live exactly the same kind of lifestyle that the people around them who don't know Christ live. What happens is the same thing for us here. God doesn't say, okay, I'm going to break my promise with you. But what he says is you will suffer the consequences for the steps that you take. I'm not any longer going to give you wisdom about your choices. Many times people that are really having a lot of problems and trouble in their life, it's the result of choices they've made. And nobody sits down that I know about and says, okay, I've got three choices, good, worse, and terrible. I think I'll make the terrible choice. They don't do that. What they do is they sit down and look at the choices they have, and they try to figure out what it is. And sometimes the worst choices they have to make are the same ones that everybody around them is making, with their time, with their money, with their lifestyle. So because there are so many people making those same choices, and they seem to be doing okay, we forget what God said the rules were for us to live, and we begin to do that. And God says, okay, if you want to live that way, go ahead and do it. You can live with all the greed you want, spending your money on everything you want to have. Just go right ahead. And whenever financial crisis comes, and whenever the pressure of trying to pay for all the stuff you're trying to get presses in on you, that is your problem. And so many people are caught in these financial problems because they're not doing the things that God says they should do, financially. Greed is taking over. I want more and more and newer and newer, until they're overwhelmed with this. God's way of dealing with those who make a profession or a commitment to Him, is He says to us, if you do opposite of what I tell you to do, I will withdraw my promise of guiding you, providing for you, protecting you, and making your life a powerful influence. So you can live that way if you want, but you will have the consequences of this disaster. Now verse four in this story, And when the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the people wept aloud, and they called the place Bochim. There they offered sacrifices to the Lord. Now this sounds like a wonderful thing. They all started crying whenever they were convicted of their sin, as we would call it. They said, You're right. We didn't do these things you told us. How terrible this is. They broke down and cried. I meet a lot of people who come to talk to me, and many of them are in tears. And they know they've done things they shouldn't do. And they're desperate because of the consequences of their behavior coming home to roost. I mean, I have people walk in off the street I've never met before and say, You know, really my life's a mess. If you turn your life over to Christ and live for Him, they say, You want to do that? Yeah, I want to do that. Well, let's kneel here and pray. Okay. They kneel in my office and pray, and they feel better. And they go home, and they do nothing different. You see, there's a difference between a person who's caught in a disaster, and you suddenly see the consequences of it coming to you, and you don't want to face those consequences, and a person who sees the consequences and knows why the consequences are coming, and who wants to change their life. One of them wants to avoid the consequences for what they've done. The other wants to change their life because they know there's a better way to live. And at the moment when they're both crying and upset, it's difficult and impossible to tell. And you can even say to people, Now listen, this means if you say you're going to give your life to Christ, that you have to change. You have to start going to church. You have to start reading the Bible. I give them a Bible. Tell them where to start reading. But all they wanted was to get out of trouble right then. And once they're out of trouble, they forget it. This is exactly what happened to the people of Israel. The whole book of Judges is a story over and over again. When you read this book, you start shaking your head and saying about the third or fourth time, Why do these people do the same thing over and over again? They leave the Lord. Their enemy comes over and takes over their land. Everything goes to disaster. And then all of a sudden they say, Wait a minute. We left the Lord. Let's turn back to him. And they do. And then he rescues them. And then three verses later, the same thing starts over and over again. And you have to realize now that these stories, one after another, don't happen in the same year. You have one people who say, OK, one generation, we trust the Lord. We realize what happened to us. Then the next generation who never had that bad experience starts compromising. The next generation compromises more. The next compromises more until finally disaster comes. It is a slow thing that happens, but it's certain. And what the Bible is telling us is how God does it. He doesn't look at your life the first time you say, OK, God, I know I'm supposed to read the Bible, but I've got a busy life. And first thing you know, you've gone six months and haven't opened the book at all. He doesn't bring disaster the day you do the wrong things, but he turns you loose. Now the six months gone by and you've made a lot of decision without sitting down and reading the Bible and talking to God about your choices. In six months of that, you've made a lot of really bad choices and you've planted a lot of bad weeds in your life. And harvest time comes. God wants us to experience all the things that he wants to give us. But there's one thing he needs from us. Keep our side of the contract. Do what I tell you is right. And don't stop. Let's pray together. You have to ask yourself, are the things that I know I'm supposed to do, am I faithful in them? They're simple. Every day start your day talking to God, telling him what you've done, asking what he wants you to do, confessing the sin that you have. Every day you read some out of the Bible, read enough so you can get the instructions from God, faithful in being a part of a family of believers so you can share your life with them and get support and encouragement from them and examples, listening to the teachers and preachers that God has gifted and sent to you to help you know his will and being faithful to be a disciple maker, looking for those who need to be disciples and trying to help them find God's way of life. Those are simple things. And without them, your life will come to disaster. So Lord, give us wisdom, wisdom to trust you and wisdom to know when we've strayed from what you want. We don't want to end up at the end with disaster, but we'd like to see the signs long before then so that we can correct the things that you want corrected. Thank you for the example of these people who walked with you many, many years ago. That we learn from them. In the name of Christ, we ask this, amen.