Please would you turn with me to the book of Judges chapter 2. We're looking at verses 2, 2 verse 2 through, I'm sorry, 2 verse 6 through chapter 3 verse 6. As Brian said, we've started into the book of Judges, a book considerably more contemporary in its themes and challenges than one might think. of a book that is thousands of years old. We're in part two of the introduction, not my introduction, not the scholar's introduction, but the author's introduction. Part one showed us the setting. We saw last week of the call of God to go into the land and to drive out the peoples there so that they might have a place that was secure, a place of peace. But since they didn't, it's left with snares and thorns for the people. Now we get the second part of the introduction, an overview of the book, the pattern that will repeat in ever deepening circles of degree, in an ever deepening circle, a degree of loss and sin. From Judges Chapter 2, beginning at verse six. Follow as I read. When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. And Joshua, the son of Nun, The servant of the Lord died at age of 110 years, and they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath Aras, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaash. And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and they bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress. Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. And he said, because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died. in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not. So the Lord left those nations, driving them, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua. Now these are the nations that the Lord left to test Israel by them, that is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan. It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war to teach war to those who had not known it before. These are the nations, the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Hermon as far as Nebo Hamath. They were for the testing of Israel to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods. Pray with me, please. Father, open our ears and our hearts to your word now. Lord, help us to see the truths here. both the hard ones and the wondrous ones. And so, Lord, lead us and bring us, Lord, out of that distress that we know as well. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I always read introductions to books. Well, I always do that now. I admit I did not do it in junior high and high school. No one was going to test me on the introduction. So you skip those couple of pages. What good are they? Well, what good are they? As I say, I always read them now because the introduction often tells us why the author took up this issue or topic in the first place. Why is it important? Why should I read this? Why should I study it? I read the introduction so I know where I'm going. Well, Judges gives us that introduction, telling us the dangers that those who call upon the Lord in that land are going to face. A land that has not been sanitized, where the idols of the nations are always before their eyes. As we work through this passage, we're going to look first at the degeneration from a people who knew the Lord to a people who don't know the Lord. We're going to look at the pattern of that downward spiral and then we're going to look closely at the pattern of God's mercies, his severe mercy and his tender mercies. And finally look then at the solution, at the work of God to change our patterns by the power of his own deliverance, the regeneration that he brings. But this introduction tells us of a rapid degeneration. I hope you saw that. We begin with a people, it says, who served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and we end with a people who served foreign gods, the last verse of our text. A new generation had arisen. The legacy of faithfulness in Joshua and the elders who had come with him into that land? What's happened? They were they who served the Lord. And Joshua died and was buried, and the elders who came with him died in that land as well. And what followed them, these grandchildren, if you will, of those who had come out of Egypt and those who had grown up in the wilderness, We find a lost generation. Verse 10, a generation that did not know the Lord. What a sad statement. Now, they knew about him well enough. I have no doubt about that. Oh, yes. It wasn't like their parents never told them of those wondrous acts of God on their behalf. It's not like they never told them about the manna that God provided. But they weren't at Jericho. And they weren't with Caleb, when he came and conquered those sons of Anna, they weren't there. They didn't see it. And so they didn't, we're told, know God. They didn't know the Lord. That is, they had no real knowledge of him or regard for him. Many of you learned a couple of weeks ago an awful lot about Martin Luther, right? So you know about Martin Luther, but I don't think many of you were actually in fellowship with him during that time. I would really like to meet you if you were, but I don't think so. So in a sense of knowing him in that intimate way, they didn't. And because they didn't know him, we read in verses 12 and again in verse 13 that they abandoned the God of Israel, Yahweh. Interesting abandonment, an interesting word to use there because I do not believe that they stopped believing in Yahweh, the God who brought their fathers and their forefathers out of the land. Oh, they believed. I mean, they knew who it was and they could tell the stories. And of course, he's the God who parted the Red Sea for them. But now they're in the land where they don't need the sea parted, they need rain. And the gods around them are the gods who theoretically will provide that, because they're fertility gods. And so we'll need to add those to it. Now, that's exactly what the Canaanites were content with. You don't have to give up your god, but you're just going to have to bring him along. You're going to have to accept that there are other gods here, and you need to bow down to them, too. None of this exclusive worship stuff, this God and this God only. None of this absolute allegiance to the exclusion of everything else. No, just bring it along, you know? So we can worship, we can all worship together here. As I say, it sounds very, very contemporary. They abandoned God by adding. to him, and in so doing, abandoned him. It's the fear of every believing parent that my children will not follow in my faith. And some of you know the grief and sorrow of that sitting here right now. Here were children of a generation that didn't know that intimate relationship with God. They didn't know the separation that their parents had known. In the wilderness, they weren't surrounded necessarily. They had that defined community. There was a separation from the world around them because God had them there in the wilderness to teach them, to work with them, to care for them. But when they came into the land, they didn't eradicate the threat, and so their children were raised in the midst of those unbelievers, much like our children are as well. And unfortunately, as I said, they weren't at Jericho, they weren't with Judah against Adonai Basic, so they had no personal knowledge of this God who worked so mightily. They were never themselves in a position where if God didn't If God didn't provide, there was no way for them to provide for themselves. And so they abandoned the faith. We strive to avoid that, don't we? Of course we do. If we want to avoid it, I don't have the definitive steps here, brothers and sisters, but I know some things that we can do and some things that we must do. We can't, of course, claim Proverbs 22.6 as the absolute promise. Train a child up in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Well, that's a principle, but it's not an ironclad promise, so I can't say, well, I took them to Sunday school and I sent them to Bible Day camp and, you know, they came to church with me and so they've been trained up, right? And so they'll absolutely have to come back to the Lord someday. Did they see in us faith in action? Were they hearing from our lips God being praised for his hand, his work in our lives? Were we recounting his mercies? When we were under his discipline, did we acknowledge that? and confess it. Do they see that in us now? Do they see God active not only in the church, and us active in the church, but in the world? Deuteronomy 6 talks about when we walk and when we sit and when we work. In other words, we're proclaiming, we're bowing down, we're submitting, we're exalting God all the time. And he's at the center of what we're doing. Big decisions, small decisions, normal activities of the household. He's real. He's real. We talk about... How do I want to say it? In our culture today, many of our young people in churches are not thinking very differently from the culture around them. if I believe any of the studies, and you've probably seen them too, I'm sure you have, you know, that their behavior isn't any different in the church or out of the church, that they don't think very differently about economics, about environmental issues, about ethics or medical ethics or scientific inquiry or development or economics or politics or government, you know, They're not thinking, they think like the world, as opposed to thinking and pursuing these things biblically. The Lord says we need to submit that the Lord might be renewing our minds, transformed by the renewing of our minds. In other words, we pray that they see a lively, engaged, full-orbed faith in us. Again, no guarantees. No guarantees. And so not a guilt trip, brothers and sisters, when our children do not follow that faith that we have sought to set before them. And so I pray that we are really praying for one another when we struggle with those things. But we need to be taking our children to places where they can really experience God at work. where we are so stretched, and they with us, that they can tell, unless God acts here, we're in big trouble. And you don't have to go out of the country to do that. And I pray that as a church, we'll think carefully about how we present some of those opportunities to you and to our children. Because we don't want children who don't know the Lord, because we know where it leads. Very specifically, this pattern that's set before us, where does it lead? Well, it leads to unfaithfulness. And it's a gross unfaithfulness. As we read in verse 17, they did not listen to their judges and they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. Strong language. They prostituted themselves is a way we would translate that. They sold themselves out to be used. Because that's what prostitution is. You are used, taken, in very intimate ways, but with no intimacy, with no love, with no tenderness. And the gods that they would serve could not offer that intimacy, or any real life, or hope, or love. That picture is used throughout the scriptures, by the way, Old Testament and New Testament. God considers his people to be his bride. Whether it's Jeremiah 3, verse 8, when he speaks to the Israelites, to his people, of all their adulteries of the faithless one Israel, and he sent her away with a decree of divorce. You send your wife away with a decree of divorce. Ezekiel. 1632, adulterous wife who receives strangers instead of her husband. We have the book of Hosea that lays that out in such vivid terms, such stirring, gripping way of God calling Hosea to marry a woman who would be an adulterous woman. He would have to buy her back as she has sold herself into prostitution and in the slavery that comes with it. Think of the New Testament. When Jesus lays out in Ephesians 5 the relationship, that one flesh relationship of a husband and wife, and then Paul says, that is a great mystery. As anybody who is in that relationship knows, it surely is. 43 years into it, I'm still trying to figure it out. But what he says is even more mysterious is that is a relationship, a picture of Christ and his church. because he's purifying that bride. Married or no, brothers and sisters, here we are as the bride of Christ being purified so that we might be prepared, adorned for the marriage feast of the Lamb. That's the image. So when we see this downward spiral in verses 16 and following, We see the degeneration of those who have abandoned the Lord, who have prostituted themselves to other gods and name them. Anything that supplants God as first in our hearts and the righteous one who has called us to himself is an idol and it is worship and it's adultery. And what it brings is that degeneration, downward spiral. Here's the pattern that we see in judges. They abandon the Lord. The Lord as we'll see in a moment faithful to his word. Brings judgment on them. It's what he promised in Deuteronomy 28. It's what he promised right back in here and judges in Chapter 2. If you're not going to drive if you're not going to drive them out then I'm not going to drive them out. And so the experience the oppression and the distress that comes as they are weighed down by their sins and the judgment that has come upon them, they cry out to the Lord. Now, it doesn't say that they repented, but it says as they cried out, they were suffering, they were struggling, and God responds to send judges. And all the years of the judges, all the days of the judges when they lived, the judge knew his favor, and guarded and watched over them. But every time that judge died, do you see what it said? They spiraled down a little farther. In verse 19, whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So every time, it was a farther drop. And every time, as we'll see as we go through Judges, the pickings for the Judges became worse and worse. And so that spiral continues. Until finally, we read that last verse, and their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served other gods. It's almost a quote. Deuteronomy chapter 7. Oh, we go back to that and we rejoice because it says there, you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. And he says in that same chapter, You shall not, well, you shall make no covenant with those peoples, any names, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, the Jebusites. You shall not make a covenant with them, show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons. For they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you and would destroy you quickly. But thus you shall deal with them and shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their asherim and burn their carved images with fire. Did they? No. They worshipped their gods. What we have to see is there's another pattern here as well. From the eyes, from our eyes, the perspective of what takes place for us, we abandon the Lord, there's punishment, there's oppression, judgment there, there's distress, crying out to the Lord, and then comes deliverance. But what does the picture look like from God's perspective? The people fall away, there's a jealous anger. And I say a jealous anger. God's anger is spurred by his love. His beloved is chasing other suitors. This is a holy jealousy. He's not coveting someone else's house or wife or husband or servant or job or properties. It is a jealousy for what is rightfully, lovingly his. If your spouse commits adultery and you are not upset, There's something dreadfully wrong there. My wife, my husband, whom I have loved, whom I love as my own body, with my own body, has betrayed me. And if there is not a jealousy, if there is not an anger attached to that, then I say there's no love. And so God, in jealous anger, in a righteous anger, a holy jealousy, fulfills his promise. Disobey. Leave me. Worship other gods. And the curses of Deuteronomy 28 are going to fall upon you. Don't listen to my word. Don't obey me. That you should make no covenant with the inhabitants of the land but break down their altars. He says I will not drive them out and they will become thorns in your sides and their gods will become snares to you. You see God is being faithful to his word. He's keeping his promise here in that judgment. And so what we see Romans 1 unfolding, they get what they wanted and they reap a whirlwind. And what does it do? It brings them into great distress. Understand what is happening here from God's perspective. I call it a severe mercy For God in his holy jealousy and anger would bring his people to a place where they suffer to cry out to him. He uses his own righteous and holy ways, his own promise to bring that about. And they cry out. And what does the text say? For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning. Here is his compassion. Now his tender mercies are poured out. The distress of his people, his bride, moves him to pity. Once again, we're back in Hosea. Hosea has to go to that slave block to buy back his people. At the end of the book of Hosea, when his people have prostituted themselves, what does God say in chapter 11? I cannot leave you. because of his tender mercies. His pity isn't just emotional, it's active. He raises up judges. He delivers them to lead them. And so the cycle is one of the distress that God brings his severe mercy and the deliverance he provides his tender mercy. How the book shows the great need for that cycle, our cycle to be broken. And so God shows them mercy in that testing and in that warfare. He says he tests them to know whether Israel would obey. Now, who is that for? As if God doesn't know. It's not for his benefit. It's for ours. I don't think of testing these sometimes severe mercies of the Lord as something for my good. But he will keep me from abandoning him. Through them to test me. To test us, it was for Israel's benefit to see God's mercy at work. Will they stand and trust him now? Those testings are not given to crush us, but to help us see the power of trusting in God. You see, the gods that they would go after to serve didn't ask you to trust them. You would coerce them to do the things that you want them to do. Show the bales and the asterisks. You want them to be fruitful and to bless. You want them to, you know, they're fertility gods. Let's show them what fertility is. And suddenly that worship looks like a lot of fun. But you're coercing God to do something for you instead of trusting God to do what He's promised. Again, they're not given to crush us, but to teach us to trust God. God has us here in this place, this time, In the midst of this culture, for a reason, the challenges we face we acknowledge are hardly unique in the progress of the good news. We do live in the midst of a culture filled with idols. The sexual mores and practices of Canaan have nothing on us. We worship the temple of self and there are no limits to be placed on that worship. And the pressure to conform to the culture is relentless and heavy. And we are told, hey, you can keep God. You can keep your values. Just keep them in here. Don't take them out there. Keep the doors closed. Keep our loudspeakers low enough that nobody has to listen to it out there. You can keep them. That's great. But we have to support, we have to endorse, we have to encourage the idols and the ever-proliferating sacred cows of the culture, too. If we do that, then we can just join in there with the Canaanites. Yeah, bring your God with you. But none of this exclusive stuff where there's only one God, and he makes all the rules, and he holds all the cards. No, we'll just add that one in and put him in his place. We must be careful that our attempts at a peaceful coexistence with the world, and we need to be, you know, a light in the world, but we need to be able to live among those people. We need to make sure that our attempts at that peaceful coexistence don't lead to cohabitation and a complacency, a compliance with the world. For what judges demonstrates, if nothing else, is that the rule stands pretty hard and fast. We will adapt to them, not they to us, unless we stand fast and present that. Try and buddy up with them, you know, find that quote-unquote common ground when God says, no, be distinct. There's a great danger there of our being absorbed, our children being absorbed. And so we're called then to recognize that the war continues. They were called to warfare, not so they knew how to handle a sword, but so they would see God battle for them. God says, that's why I left the nations there. Are you going to be faithful? Are you going to work to drive them out? And we know it's not just driving them out of their midst, but driving them out of our hearts. That test is going to continue. And our war continues. We live now in the midst of those nations of the world. Will we obey the commandments of the Lord and trust his promises, walk in his paths, doing all that Jesus commanded? We engage in warfare. Look at Ephesians. And we know that warfare is spiritual warfare that we fight. not with swords, but the principalities and the powers that are fighting even in the heavenly realm right now. But what are the weapons that we take to warfare here? It's all wrapped up in our armor. Our armor is a reflection of the fight that we wage. So put on having the belt of truth That's what we're fighting for, the truth, a breastplate of righteousness. Yes, it protects us, but it's what we're setting forth, showing and carrying into the world. Our feet are shod with the gospel of peace. That's what we seek to proclaim. We rest in a shield of faith. Can we show the world that we don't coerce God to do anything? We stand behind what he has promised. And faith shines forth. We rest under a helmet of salvation that everyone in the world needs and we stand fast on the word of God. That's the fight we're taking to the world. And our victory is assured. The downward cycle of apostasy and judgment and distress will be broken ultimately. by God who will send a judge who will not die. And so, brothers and sisters, there is for us the hope of that, of regeneration. Judges shows us that pattern, that cycle of rebellion and judgment and distress and deliverance. Will it ever be broken? We sit here rejoicing because the perfect judge who does not, who will not die, who has risen from the dead, who has borne that punishment that would fall upon us, in his own body rises and lives. He deals, did he deal with his people in mercy because they were so deserving? Hardly. He deals with his people in mercy because he's faithful, because he has promised. and he will keep that promise. He kept his promise because through them a righteous, holy, perfect judge would reign and rule over his people. It was mercy and love, not just for them, but for us who are blessed through his preserving of them. God chose those people, his people. A nation is an instrument of blessing. He wouldn't let it be destroyed, even though at times it seemed that that's exactly what needed to happen. And God himself would break the cycle by sending one who would live without compromise, without sin, who would trust and obey perfectly and completely, who would deliver his people from bondage, defeating death, rising from the dead, ruling with a jealous love, By the power of the Spirit, we then are delivered from that death. By grace, you have been saved. Rejoice when God's severe mercies, and I don't mean be happy, but I mean give thanks that God has seen fit to draw you back, that he might pour upon you his tender mercies. Father, how we praise you for our Savior, whom you have sent a perfect judge who will not die, who does not die. Oh, we rejoice and delight and give you thanks for all that you have done in keeping your word and promise and bringing it to fruition. through our Savior Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Amen.