Judges: Chap 2: Tests reveal true desire. The way of God is to follow His commands by faith.

Title: Judges: Chap 2: Tests reveal true desire. The way of God is to follow His commands by faith.         

 

Announcementsopening prayer:

 

 

The Mosaic law as well as the commands for the NT believer reveal that God cannot fellowship with a standard of unrighteousness, which is what any plan that man creates will be. God cannot and does not arbitrarily choose who He will fellowship with, nor who He will spend eternity with. God has a standard of righteousness and it must be fulfilled in any creature if he is going to be in heaven with God or if he is going to fellowship with God in time. No man can make or create or determine anything of perfect righteousness.

 

Sin is confessed or acknowledged and the results of sin, which is more sin, is halted, and the believer recovers his fellowship with God without looking back in guilt. He is free to follow Christ through the power of the filling of the Spirit and he knows it. He also knows that God's standard of righteousness cannot be compromised and so he acknowledges the times that he fails that standard and continues to walk in that standard, which is God's perfect righteousness.

 

The wages of sin is death. We are forgiven of all sin and so we do not die a separation from God when we sin. Yet still, we cannot fellowship with Him when we are sinning.

 

In eternity fellowship will be eternal and perpetual. In time it is lost by our own decisions against Him, but we are fully forgiven and so we can recover that fellowship without guilt or condemnation. Our commands are all based on maturing to the stature that belongs to Christ through full knowledge of Him. Are commands are His way, which is the very righteousness of God and that cannot be compromised. We understand when we fail and we do not hide that from God nor blame another nor make excuses. We thought it, we did it, and we bear the responsibility for it. We agree with God as to the sinfulness of sin and we enter into His wisdom and will. One would only do this consistently if he loved God's way and desired it more than anything else.

 

The law revealed the standard of righteousness that God demanded from His people in order to have a proper relationship with Him.

 

JDG 2:19 But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways.

 

JDG 2:20 So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, "Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to My voice,

 

JDG 2:21 I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died,

 

JDG 2:22 in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not."

 

God allowed the foreigners to remain in the land so that every generation would be tested. Obstinacy needs opposition.

 

Because Israel oscillates from faith to apostasy the nations are left among them by God to serve as a testing ground for their faith. Lip service will not suffice against the enemy.

 

Fallen man is so good at convincing himself that he is something that he is not. We are good at day dreaming and imagining how good we are and professing that to ourselves and others. That is nothing but words.

 

Faith in execution of truth demands action. Example: Sermon on the Mount.

 

MAT 7:24 "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine [MAT 5:1 to this point], and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock.

 

MAT 7:25 "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house [conflict, testing]; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock [hearing and acting].

 

MAT 7:26 "And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand.

 

MAT 7:27 "And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and it fell, and great was its fall."

 

The destruction of Jerusalem in both 586 BC by the Babylonians and 70 AD by the Romans are the greatest of falls since their height was to be the blessedness of God's elect.

 

Through lip service and going through the ritual motions, Israel would convince themselves that they are worshipping God properly if they lived in a constant tranquility and ease, but this is not the case. The presence of enemy nations become the true testing ground of their faith. If they have faith these nations will be defeated and if not they will be oppressed.

 

As for us:

1PE 4:12-13

 Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing; so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exultation.

 

It is clear in JDG 2:22 that the generations in Israel after Joshua's are to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did.

 

Keeping the way of God really consists in observing the commandments of God.

 

The way of God is simple and pure. It seems to me that man wraps himself up in theological knots which ends up complicating the issue and all so that he can find a way to do what he wants to do outside of God's will and still convince himself that he is spiritual. What did Jesus say to Peter when he wanted to complicate the simple and straight forward prophecy by Christ that he was going to be led to a place that he did not want to go and die there by asking about the plan of God for John? "What is that to you. You follow Me."

 

This was the thought which floated before the writer's mind. The thought expressed in Judges is that Jehovah would not any more exterminate the Canaanites before Israel so that He would test them whether they would keep His commandments. The fulfillment of the unconditional covenant would have to wait. The Canaanites would remain from generation to generation in order to test each generation. Such generations would vary from such extremes as David's reign verses Zedekiah's time as king. 

 

Such testing was also done to the Exodus:

DEU 8:2

And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.

 

In the same way God had previously caused the people whom He brought out of Egypt to wander in the wilderness for forty years with the very same intention.