JUDGES 2\u20133<\/b><\/p>\n
Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders<\/i><\/p>\n
(Judges 2:16)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
We saw yesterday that each generation must affirm its faith in God anew. Shortly after Joshua and the generation he led passed away, the new generation rapidly drifted into syncretistic religion. The human heart is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) and runs swiftly into idolatry unless deliberately and self-consciously restrained. We saw this same phenomenon in the New Testament, as Paul wrote to the Galatians, \u201cI am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel\u201d (Galatians 1:6).<\/p>\n
God is faithful even when His children try to cast Him off. God graciously raised up raiders and foreign nations to plunder Israel in order to wake them up and drive them back to Him. The principle God used was simple: \u201cIf you like the gods of the heathen, then you can live under the culture produced by those gods. You like the gods of Ammon? Well then, have fun living in the culture of Ammon.\u201d Of course, the cultures produced by these idols were cruel and Israel suffered under their domination. Soon they were crying out to the Lord and promising never to commit idolatry again.<\/p>\n
The Lord was more than ready to hear their cry. When the Israelites broke their idols, God broke the yoke of the idol-culture that had enslaved them. When they returned to Him, He gave them gracious liberty under the fair and equitable rule of His holy law. God did this work of deliverance by raising up one of the judges in Israel to the position of supreme judge, who would, with God\u2019s help, summon the army and with God\u2019s help drive the invader out of the land.<\/p>\n
Judges 3:1\u20134 provides another slant on why God raised up these enemies. It was so that each generation should learn how to \u201cmake war.\u201d The spiritual application is that we are to live in a state of war against sin and idolatry. We are to prosecute holy war against our own sin, and in our communities against depravity and corruption. If we don\u2019t prosecute holy war against our own sin, God will raise up external scourges, using them to teach us the difference between right and wrong and the importance of making war on evil. One way or the other, God trains His host to war against sin.<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
Psalms 1\u20133<\/p>\n
Acts 16:1\u201315<\/p>\n
List several \u201cbesetting sins\u201d in your life against which you need to make holy war. Now make a list of the most flagrant specimens of corruption in your community, against which your church needs to make holy war. As you pray, consider them in terms of these two fronts of your holy war.<\/p>\n
For further study: 1 Timothy 4:6\u201316 \u2022 Hebrews 3:12\u201314<\/i><\/p>\n
thursday<\/p>\n
july<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JUDGES 2\u20133 Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders (Judges 2:16). We saw yesterday that each generation must affirm its faith in God anew. Shortly after Joshua and the generation he led passed away, the new generation rapidly drifted into syncretistic religion. The human heart is … Continue reading “THE FORBEARANCE OF GOD”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}