The Canaanization of Israel: A Lesson for the Church

to the book of Judges, chapter three of the book of Judges. This book is a if you read through it, it sounds like when you're reading just one repetitious story after another. And it seems sort of when I read it, it seems kind of boring because the same thing happens over and over again. You think how many times you have to hear this story to realize what's taking place. But the book actually has a very important outline in what's taking place. It starts in chapter two where the writer is giving us an indication of what's going on. In chapter two, verse twenty three, he says, let's see if I read that right. Chapter two, twenty three. The Lord had allowed these nations to remain. He's talking about the nations in the in the land of Canaan. The Lord had allowed these nations to remain. He did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua. So we see a clue as to what's taking place. God has not driven out all the people who are pagan worshipers. He's allowed them to stay. He's giving this to them for a particular reason. In chapter three, verse four, the Bible says they were left to test the Israelites to see whether they would obey the Lord's commands, which had been given their forefathers through Moses. The reason the people were left there was to see if in the middle of the temptation to be worshipers of idols, they would resist that and instead be followers of Yahweh God. It was a test for Israel to see what would be taking place. Now, in the story of the book of Judges, which we're going to start on the first of these stories, he's talking about he's addressing an issue that was earlier presented to that the nation of Israel would do evil whenever they entered the land of promise. Judges two, chapter seven, he said the people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and the elders who outlived him. And they had great thing and they had seen all the great things that God had done. Joshua, son of the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten and they buried him. Joshua was already gone. He had done his work, did what he was supposed to be doing and was gone. Now, a new generation takes over. Chapter three, verse seven, it says the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. They forgot the Lord, their God, and served the Baals and Asherahs. The test, he tells us in the beginning, they failed. They didn't do what God wanted them to do. And because of that, they did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Chapter two, verse eleven, he said the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals twice in this introductory section. He makes it clear to us that the story you're going to read is a story of the failure of people of Israel to be obedient, obedient to what God asked them to do. In these stories, as we read each of these stories, there's going to be a particular direction that the stories take. They all take the same kind of line. They're not arranged in chronological order. So when you read through the book of Judges, it's not like it's one year after the other. They're instead arranged in rhetorical order. In other words, they're arranged to make a point. It starts out with people who are more obedient to God. And with each of these stories, the nation of Israel gets more rebellious and less obedient to God. Until the very end, the last stories are terribly tragic. What he's trying to show us is that the failure to be submissive and obedient to God was devastating to the nation of Israel. Now, in each of these stories, there's a series of things that are discussed. For example, when we look at those, we see that it starts out by talking about the Israelites. The main idea, the point of all this is that the nation of Israel became Canaanized. They became like the people who were in the land of Canaan. Now, you remember that the people who were living in Canaan, God was going to drive them out, destroy all of them because they had been so wicked. He'd tried his very best to get them to change their lifestyle and their nature and character, but they refused. So he finally decided the only way he could do it, like the great flood of Noah, where everyone on the earth was killed except those who were righteous, I'm going to drive everybody out of the nation of Canaan, and I'm going to plant my people there so I can have you in an isolated place and teach you how I want you to live. But instead of driving out the people, they didn't do that. So they were living among the people. And what the story of Judges is about is how gradually the nation of Israel, the people of God, became Canaanized. Instead of planting a place where they became the people of God, they became just like the people of Canaan. It's like you would take a bucket of water and put a piece of ice in the middle of the water. For a little bit, the ice would make the water cold around it. But as time goes on and the ice melts, after a while, when you look in the bucket, it all looks the same. It's just water. The people of Israel came into the land of Canaan, and when they went in, they were faithful to God. They were doing what God wanted them. They were holy as God was holy. They had the commandments and they had the law, and they were focused on that. And they did this as they fought the battles to drive the people out. But when they went to settle the areas, they began to compromise with God. And what this story of Judges shows is how, little by little, the people of Israel changed from a nation of holy followers of God to a nation who is just like the Canaanites who were there already in the beginning. The tragedy of what happens to the people of God when they acclimate themselves to the culture in which they live, instead of being a transforming agent in the culture in which they've been placed. Now, this is a message to all the people of God, the church certainly. We're placed in the world, in the middle of a culture that is violently opposed to God. And we're here to begin to reflect the nature and character of God, so that all the people around us would see that our lives are different. The Bible says we are to be holy as God is holy. We are to be separated from the world. We're to live in a different way than the world lives. Separated not in the sense that we isolate ourselves, but separate in the sense that wherever we are, we are obedient to God. We're living his character so that all the people around us will see our lives and recognize that the life we're living is different than the life that they're living. Their home is different. Their marriage is different. Their finances are different. Their character and nature reflect something different than the rest of the people around them. And what God wants to do in this is say, okay, you live this way, and then people will say, how can I find life like you have it? That's our witness. It's not that we go knock on doors all the time, even though there's nothing wrong with that. But in the normal course of life, people should look at the followers of Jesus and discover that there is something very different about them. Because if you yield yourself to God, and you do what he tells you to do, and you think the way he tells you to think in all the areas of your life, he will make your life good. And he does this because he wants to reflect that obedience to him changes your life for the better. Now, whenever you set yourself in the middle of a culture, and then you begin to adopt the ways of the culture instead of the ways of God, then in your ways of thinking you become the same, in the ways of acting you become the same, so that your finances are the same, your relationships are the same, your marriage is the same, you're raising your children in the same kind of values as the rest of the world around us. You can see a lot of surveys that are being done reflect that there's not a lot of difference between people who go to church all the time and people who don't go at all. This is the canonization of the church. What God's intention was, was far different than that. He was true for the people of Israel, and it's true for us. So we learn a lesson from these stories. How is it that we're placed in the land of promise? For us, and he's not talking about necessarily the nation of the United States, he's talking about we're being placed in the world to live in the kingdom of God. In such a way so that people would see that those who live under the authority and control of God are different than those that are not. This is really what Jesus meant when he said, at the end of his life, go into all the world and make disciples. And every one of them you make, you baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and then you teach them to do everything I've told you to do. So that every one of those new disciples are learning to think as God thinks, act as God thinks, and make life decisions as God says we should. Because we've taught them how to do that. Live the way God wants them to live. And that's the way you make disciples. So other people then will see what it means to live under God's authority. And he made this promise. If you do that, your life will be like a house built on a firm foundation. No matter what happens to you, your life will stand strong. So everyone around you will look at you. When you go through the same problems they have, now get this as the truth here, he wants us to build our lives on the stone foundation. But he also wants us to endure everything else the rest of the world has to go through. So Christians are going to have cancer. They're going to have financial problems. They're going to have all the problems the rest of the people in this world have. But what he wants to do is to show in this testing period, this house built without God as a foundation, this house right beside them built with a foundation which is on God. The difficult times come. That one crumbles. This one stands. That is your witness. You know, you're just like all the rest of the people around you, collapsing when difficulty comes, throwing up your hands whenever problems arise. Then you don't have a witness. Our witness is when the torrents of rain comes, our life stands firm. That's our witness. So you have your house here, another house beside it. A storm comes and blows yours away. You go to your neighbor and say, how did you build your house so it didn't blow away? Give me the secret. So that's what you're doing with your life. I build my life, my home, my marriage, raising my kids. And you have the same problems everybody else doesn't. And they see the difference and say, how did that happen? And you can say, I planted my life on the promises of God, and I tried to live in obedience to him, and he made this result. This is what our witness is. Now, if we tell people that, and our house crumbles just like theirs, they say, well, what's the difference? You know, I mean, it didn't help you. It didn't help you. There's no attraction to God. So the point of all this that Israel is facing is you go into this land, and I'm going to test you to see if you really will live in the middle of these people what you were supposed to be doing. Now, as we go through these, we're going to see everything is focused on this first one. The chief point that Israelites, spiritually and morally, fail to live up to the promises or to the commandments of God during the time they were in the land. The second thing we're going to find in all this, there's examples of oppression and deliverance. They're going to get into trouble and be able to find an answer to it. God's going to deliver them from it. The third thing they're going to talk about in each of these stories is that there's a point to be made in the story of the nation of Israel being in that place. So we'll see the timeline as to what happens and how the nation of Israel deteriorates and becomes canonized. We're going to find in each of these, there's a cycle of what takes place. There's 12 stories, and each of those stories has a place in this chronological, not chronological, but logical order of presentation. It starts with Othaniel, and it ends with Samson. Some people think that it's kind of like the months of the year. The one starts in the fall, and it goes all the way through and ends with Samuel in the summertime. I'm not sure that that's accurate, but we'll see as we go on through. Israel follows the features that were set out in the beginning. We'll see how that works, that they become evil in the eyes of the Lord. And the final one is this final element. They prove that their failure to follow God is destructive. Now, on chapter 3, Othaniel is the first of these stories. In this story, every single one of these principles is outlined. It starts with this refrain. The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord. Now, how did they do evil? He tells us, they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. He didn't mean, now, he didn't mean to say that the people of Israel did not remember God so that they would say we don't remember God bringing us here, who He is or anything like that. What they mean is, they forgot Him as the Lord. He is not the ruler of their mind and their choices. That's what they mean by that. And instead of setting Him in the position of ultimate authority in their lives, they made Him one factor in their lives among other factors in their lives. So, they never ever tore up the temple or quit offering sacrifices to God. It wasn't that they just quit those things, they kept doing them. But what they did was they added the authority of Baal in their life. And if you put it sort of this way, they worshipped God in all the ways that they had worshipped Him before except they took on Baal for the financial part of their lives. They worshipped God about a lot of the Old Testament commandments, but they've trusted Baal for the crops and for the cattle to make them wealthy. So, they compromised not putting God out of their lives, but they compromised by saying we are trusting Baal for the financial things of our lives. So, you'll find, you know, in a part of a lot of followers of Christ, they end up with the same thing. They are willing to follow God, but when it comes to choices about the jobs that they take or the hours that they work, they say, okay, that takes priority over anything that God would want me to do. I don't mean you have to live in the church, not trying to say that, but if you really know that God wants you to teach or to take that job in the church and you have a choice between doing what you know God wants you to do and taking extra hours to work, then you've made a choice. Is God going to control my choice or is my financial circumstance going to control my choice? See, those are hard choices because when you look at your bills and you say, I need this much more money and if I take this job working in the church, it's going to take my time and I can't spend the extra time at a job. So, it looks like when you're faced with that choice that you're either faced with financial disaster or spiritual service. And the reason God puts us in that position is He wants us to understand, if you do what I tell you, I will provide for you. That's one of the covenant promises. I will provide for you. So, when you're faced with those, what God is asking you to do is make a choice. I remember I went to seminary and I didn't have a job in Fort Worth, Texas. And I applied at all the places I knew how to apply for. I didn't have very much money left over from when I was working that summer. But I got an offer to work at a drugstore. And it would require me to work on Sunday. And so, I thought, you know, if I have to work on Sunday, I can't take an opportunity to go preach anywhere and I can't be in church on Sunday morning. And I really agonized about what to do. I never been in debt in my life. I had school bills to pay. But I was confronted with the responsibility of making a choice that looked like it was financially irresponsible. This was the first time maybe in my life in which I felt like I had to decide whether or not obedience to God was more important than getting a job. Those are the choices God gives us sometime in our lives because He's testing us. Do you really believe, if you do what I tell you to do, that I will take care of you? Now, I knew what God had asked me to do, to preach. And I knew that if somebody wanted me to go preach in their church on Sunday, I would need to be able to go. So, it was my calling, not just a lifestyle, but my calling. And God put me in a position to test me to say, do you really trust me to take care of you? And He'll do that to every one of His followers. In every circumstance of life that you have a test. And what you look around you and you see what happens in the lives of other people around you. And sooner or later, those people those things are going to happen to you. Because what He's trying to see is, are you canonized or are you a follower of me? And I want you to know that the choices you make reflect who controls your life. And if you really allow me to control your life, you won't be canonized. You won't act and think and do the things that the other people around you are doing. So, what God did with the people of Israel, He still does with us. And the worst thing that can happen is that God would say, and He did evil in the eyes of the Lord. And that's an important thing to see. It's not that we do evil in the eyes of ourselves. You know, I could sit down in that time and say, anybody listen to me, I had to take that work at the drugstore because I have to have money to go to school. Nobody would say, well, that was a stupid choice. Most people would say, gosh, I understand, you know, you've got to pay your bills. But in the kingdom of God, He asked us to do what we know is right, even if it means the apparent financial loss for us. The reason most people have trouble giving what they think God wants them to give to the church is their fear that God will not keep His promise to provide for them. It's one of the most common tests that a follower of Christ has. Because it's so concrete and real. I mean, you know how much money you have. You know what your bills are. And if you have it in your mind that God wants you to give this much, you can just add it up and it doesn't fit. And it doesn't work. And you just, you know, it doesn't work, but you can look and see. But He's asking you to say, if I ask you to give $10 and it's the only $10 you have, do you really trust me to take care of you? And that's a test. All of us are facing these as we try to follow Christ to see if we really have learned to trust God over the things in the minds of the people around us. So the very first one he comes up with, he lets us know that the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, not the people around them nor their friends. And they did evil because they forgot the Lord's authority and power. They didn't think that the Lord could give them the financial things that Baal could give them. They forgot the power of God and they were persuaded by all the people around them who worshiped Baal and swore that Baal would give them good crops and productive animals. So they listened to their neighbors about how they lived their lives instead of how God said His people should live their lives. So they served the Baals and the Asherahs. Now the immediate response that comes in the second issue that takes place is that they were living outside the authority of God. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that he sold them into the hands of Cushon Rashathim. Now the name here Cushon Rashathim is really a nickname sort of. It's not the name of a man that we know anything about. But it was a man whose name here is called Double Wicked. It's not really his name. It's the name that the writer calls him. So here's Double Wicked, the ruler of some nation we don't know very much about him anywhere in the Bible. But God sold the people of Israel to this Double Wicked man who was the king. Two things about that sentence are frightening to us. One is that God sells His people. Now He's already told them that He would give them the land and provide property for them and take care of them. But what they did was they broke their contract. The covenant that they'd made with God, they said, We will do everything you tell us to do. And God said, Okay, I'll guide you, provide for you, protect you, and make you a powerful nation and a great influence on the world. They broke their side of this. So when they did, throughout these stories, it's either going to say God gave them over to the enemy or that He sold them to the enemy. It's like you have a cow and it never has a calf. What do you do? Get rid of them. He had His people there and they were not living like He wanted them to live. They were not demonstrating to all of the pagan people around them who God was by their lifestyle. So He said, Okay, you take them. And that language sell doesn't mean He got anything in return for them. It just means that He turned loose of them. He saw that it was time to clean out the shed and throw away the things that were not useful. And the people of Israel were one of those. Now, when the Bible uses the word anger about God, it tells us in the Bible that we're not to be angry and that it's a sin for us to be angry. But when the Bible uses this word about God, it's not that God is angry so that He retaliates to people or gets even with them. What the Bible always means by this anger of God is that the people who He's angry with have broken the contract they made with Him. He took them at Mount Sinai and He told them the Ten Commandments and all the laws. And He said, I will be your God, which means He would guide them, provide for them, protect them and make their great nation a great influence. What I have to ask of you is you do everything I tell you. And the people swore with one voice, we will do everything you tell us to do. Now, before He went into the Promised Land, He gathered them together again on the side of the Jordan River. They read all the law, read through all the law in the Old Testament Moses had written. And He said to the people, I will give you this land if you will do what I ask you to do. Keep my commandments, every one of them. And they swore that they would. Let this stone here be a witness against us if we fail to keep your instructions for us. They didn't keep them. So when they broke the contract, God then takes back His part of that contract. It's like you went to buy a car. You say, OK, I'm going to pay $300 a month on this car every month. You miss two or three payments. The owner of the car is going to come out and get your car because you broke the contract. That's the same thing God is doing here. The people of Israel had broken their contract and God was angry with them because they had violated the contract. Here's the reason for it. He was trying to build this nation of people who would be a great influence in the world. He planned through the people of Israel living in this land to be His people and to demonstrate to all the nations of the world what God could do in the lives of people who submitted to Him completely. Now His whole plan for the nation of Israel came apart. He didn't give up on them but He knew that these people because they had given up on Him were no longer going to be able to be useful to Him in the purpose that He had. Everything He was trying to do now was violated and so He was upset because the nation of Israel was to be a tool for the transformation of all the nations around them. And now His plan had collapsed because of their failure to pass the test. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel so that He sold them into the hand of Cushon Rishab Rishathim the king of Aram and Naharam to whom the Israelites were subject for eight years. Now the plan that God had was to make sure that this nation would be an example and instead it becomes an example for what happens when His people violate the covenant. God responded to the nation of Israel. Let's look at the next line of what He talks about. But they cried out to the Lord. He raised up for them a deliverer Othaniel, son of Kinnas, Caleb's younger brother who saved them. Notice in this passage that He doesn't say the people of Israel repented. He just says that they cried out to Him. And the phrase that's used for cried out is a not just hey God but people who were in agony and difficulty in trial who were crying out in their pain and agony about the circumstances they were in. They did not repent of failing to be obedient to God. They were simply saying we are in trouble and we need help. So God sent them someone to help them. It wasn't that He turned against them. He didn't want them to be destroyed because He was not through trying to accomplish with them what He wanted. So when their pain got so great, so powerful and so strong, He stepped in to rescue them even though they had not repented of what they had done. Even though they had not repented of what they had done. And He sent them someone to rescue them or to save them. It was the Deliverer, the younger brother, who came to be a Savior for them. What the passage talks about is the great not only anger God has when we disrupt what He's doing and wants us to do. But the patience and kindness that God has for us. If you're following God and you find yourself making choices that are really you know are wrong and you feel guilty inside because of that and you just keep on making the same kind of mistakes and choices and you feel terrible about yourself. You may find in the middle of all this that God is still with you and you see signs of His presence and help with you. It doesn't mean He approves of what you're doing. It just means that because you have made a promise to Him, He's not given up on you. And every person that walks with God comes to a time someplace in your life when you discover that you're really not living the way you know you should. And God's told you certain things in your life are not like it should be. And you're in the middle of all this agony and difficulty but still you see every once in a while the hand of God in your life. You know that He's with you. And in those moments you say, God has not forgiven me. He's not forsaken me. And it's because God has heard of your pain and He says you're not what I want you to be yet but I haven't given up on you. And every one of those moments in which something good comes in your life is one of your recognitions that God has heard your pain. And He says, I'm not interested in destroying you. I'm only interested in redeeming you. Getting your attention so you'll say, okay God, I see you still love me. Help me to be more dependent on you. That's what God was trying to do. Let's pray. You may see in some of these stories about things that's happened in your own life. Maybe you've been through a time in your own life when you did evil in the eyes of God. You forgot the Lord. Went off and strayed doing things that you know that weren't quite right what God wanted. It does upset God especially if you've ever made a promise to Him. Say, I give my life to you. He gets upset with you. So you're going to have some bad times. But in the middle of all that, you may see that He's still there. He's helping you. Even though you've been contrary to what He wants. It is the mercy and grace of God. It is always with us. All that He wants is for you to stop and say, God, help me to be obedient in the areas that I fail to obey. And the mercy and grace of God will be there. Thank you, Father, for loving us, caring for us. And for having a big plan by which our lives will make a difference. In this world, help us to be obedient so that our lives would be clearly lives of holiness. Directed by you. Not just so we would have a good life. But so that we would help you fulfill the purpose you have for us in this world. That is to bear witness to your power and your greatness. Amen.