Judges: Chap 2: The obviousness of the blessing and the curse given to all generations.

Title: Judges: Chap 2: The obviousness of the blessing and the curse given to all generations.       

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

 

What they did have:

 

The following judgments are threatened, not for single breaches of the law, but for contempt of all the laws, amounting to inward contempt of the divine commandments and a breach of the covenant - for presumptuous and obstinate rebellion, therefore, against God and His commandments.

 

LEV 26:14 'But if you do not obey Me and do not carry out all these commandments,

 

LEV 26:15 if, instead, you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My ordinances so as not to carry out all My commandments, and so break My covenant,

 

LEV 26:16 I, in turn, will do this to you: I will appoint over you a sudden terror, consumption and fever that shall waste away the eyes and cause the soul to pine away [Heb: sorrow of heart]; also, you shall sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies shall eat it up.

 

The physical maladies that God brought upon them would have become great sorrow in the heart ("soul to pine away"). We do not see church age believers who are rejecting the plan of God always coming down with fevers or being thrown in prison or forced into paying higher taxes that the positive Christians, but we do know that they have a great malady in the soul, which is loss of the fruit of the filling of the Spirit and the love and joy that is in Christ. They are in Christ forever, but they have lost all enjoyment of that reality. Their souls also pine away.

 

No fruit for their labor ("sow your seed uselessly"); is to work in the hope of success and finding none. Without God there is no success, even when there is temporary pleasure.

 

"sow your seed uselessly"; is to work in the hope of success and finding none. This is the height of frustration - hope unfulfilled.

 

When following God we count on success, and we know it will come in His way and in His timing. This is true hope.

 

We see the fulfillment of this curse during the age of the Judges.

 

"you shall sow your seed uselessly, for your enemies shall eat it up."

 

JDG 6:3-4

For it was when Israel had sown, that the Midianites would come up with the Amalekites and the sons of the east and go against them. So they would camp against them and destroy the produce of the earth as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel as well as no sheep, ox, or donkey.

 

LEV 26:17 'And I will set My face against you so that you shall be struck down before your enemies; and those who hate you shall rule over you, and you shall flee when no one is pursuing you.

 

"you shall flee when no one is pursuing you" - living in fear throughout life. Danger is often perceived.

 

LEV 26:18 'If also after these things, you do not obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins.

 

LEV 26:19 'And I will also break down your pride of power [imagined power]; I will also make your sky like iron and your earth like bronze [drought and economic depression].

 

LEV 26:20 'And your strength shall be spent uselessly, for your land shall not yield its produce and the trees of the land shall not yield their fruit [hope unfulfilled].

 

There would be times of faithfulness in the land and blessing would result, however, these times would be temporary and end in apostasy, until the final apostasy leading up to the captivity of Judah. Their future, due to their rejection of God's law would be barrenness of the land, extermination of their cattle by beasts of prey, childlessness, war, plague, and famine, destruction of their idols, overthrow of their towns and holy places, devastation of the land, and the dispersion of the people among the heathen nations. That's a seven fold increase in divine discipline. In this way the Lord would punish their stiff necks.

 

The pain of God's judgment and discipline is very real. No apostasy is exempt.

 

HEB 12:7

It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?

 

It is not difficult to draw the analogy of these curses to our own condition of soul when we forsake the spiritual life.

 

However, the Lord is not content to leave His people to justice alone without mercy. His mercy is always available to the living.

 

As Elijah would learn, the Lord is not all fire and brimstone. His mercy is always available to the living, even the very evil living. God raises up judges due to His love for Israel just as He continues to appeal to us whenever we reject Him. It is certainly true that He judges and does so justly, but He is also exceedingly patient and longsuffering.

 

No one could blame God if He did not call out to Israel, but He does so time and time again.

 

He has warned them so many times that is would almost be comical if it weren’t so tragic. And alongside the written word they have the living witnesses of the Exodus generation who were their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. And yet they still reject Him. Who would blame the Lord for allowing the other nations to completely destroy Israel? But He does not allow this.

 

If a weak believer who doesn’t follow Christ is alive there is always hope.

 

God is faithful to His covenant with Abraham, and so the Lord raises up judges to deliver them from the very people that God allowed to plunder them.

 

DEU 7:6 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

 

DEU 7:7 The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples,

 

DEU 7:8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

 

DEU 7:9 Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

 

DEU 7:10 but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.

 

DEU 7:11 Therefore, you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today, to do them.

 

It is important to understand that God is not simply a bleeding heart who feels bad for the people, but that He is faithful to His name. He promised Abraham and He is faithful to His own promise. Only in the Lord is faithfulness to self a virtuous thing. He does what He does for His name's sake, and since God is love, He is patient and merciful.

 

JDG 2:16 Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them.

 

JDG 2:17 And yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers.

 

This unfortunate cycle of repentance followed by apostasy would continue until the Babylonian captivity. Though in Judah especially, there were times of faithfulness, but it always faded and the Jews for the most part returned to idolatry.

 

Ezekiel prophesies from Babylon during the captivity.

 

EZE 16:30 "How languishing is your heart," declares the Lord God, "while you do all these things, the actions of a bold-faced harlot.

 

EZE 16:31 "When you built your shrine at the beginning of every street and made your high place in every square, in disdaining money, you were not like a harlot.

 

EZE 16:32 "You adulteress wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband!

 

EZE 16:33 "Men give gifts to all harlots, but you give your gifts to all your lovers to bribe them to come to you from every direction for your harlotries.

 

EZE 16:34 "Thus you are different from those women in your harlotries, in that no one plays the harlot as you do, because you give money and no money is given you; thus you are different."

 

God continues through Ezekiel to announce to them that they will be judged by God and He will used the very nations that they played the harlot with to do so.

 

This is not new news to them:

EXO 34:14-15

for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God —  lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they play the harlot with their gods.

 

They also know the history of the golden calf incident at Mt. Sinai where three thousand died by Moses' command. They also know the history of the Jews at the Jordan who played the harlot with the women of Midian and 24,000 died of plague, a plague that was only halted by the zeal of Phinehas.

 

Is there ever a generation in the history of the world where the issue concerning life and death is not clearly and abundantly exposed?