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TITLE: You have not obeyed
TEXT: Judges 2:1-3
PROPOSITION: Our failure to obey God can turn around and cause us pain.
QUESTION: How?
KEY WORD: Responses
SCRIPTURE READING: Same

INTRODUCTION:

  1. God gave a command – utterly destroy all the nations in the land.

  2. Israel did not do this. See Judges 1:28-36

  3. There were four responses from God.

 

A Troubling Question

  1. Many ask why God would order the total annihilation of nations – women and children and animals

  2. Many see God here as a cruel, vicious, murderer. (I had one compare Him to Hitler [wiping out the Jews].

  3. This is not a proper view of God.

  4. Think of a surgeon – removing the diseased tissue; amputating a leg; removing organs, etc.

  5. There is a difference in a home invasion where a man comes in and attacks with a machete and cuts off a man’s arm vs. a doctor amputating an arm to save a life

  6. God is not a maniac, causing havoc. He is a doctor seeking to save a life.

 

Four responses to our incomplete obedience:

Covenant is Covenant – Judges 2:1

  1. God made a covenant and will not break it – no matter what.

  2. Judges 2:1 – Then the Angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you.

  3. God does not make promises lightly.

 

I won’t do your work – Judges 2:3

  1. “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

  2. There are some lessons that we will only learn if we have to solve on our own.

  3. Don’t think that you can do anything you want, and God will get you out.

  4. Judges 2:23 - Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you.

 

These nations will be a snare to you – Judges 2:3

  1. These will be your enemies for the next 1,500 years

  2. Judges 2:3b - and their gods shall be a snare to you.

  3. Their gods will cause you more pain than you can imagine

  4. Look at the list – read about them all through the OT

 

I left them for you to learn – Judges 3:1

  1. God did not protect them from harm.

  2. He did turn the bad (failure to obey) into something useful (helping Israel learn)

  3. Judges 3:1 - Now these are the nations which the LORD left, that He might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan

  4. Study Romans 8:28 – All things work together for good

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