The Judges Deliver (Part A)

God wanted His people completely separated from the people of the land, and He wants us to be the same way when it comes to thought and acceptance. He doesn't want us separated from them because we are here to engage them.

And I'm sorry, you know, I've talked about this before. I have a good friend, a good pastor friend, and they meet and they hand out tracts on Coney Island. I've never seen tracts work in this country.

I've never met anyone that said, came to Christ because I read a tract. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Judges.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. The Judges delivers the title of Pastor Rick's message, and today he'll be teaching in Judges Chapter 3. Judges Chapter 3. The Judges deliver. That's what we're going to come across in this third chapter.

We are finally getting to the Judges. I think of all of America's generals. General MacArthur, one of my favorites, very controversial figure.

It seems that people either that know anything about him either love him or hate him. And one journalist that was covering the war in the Pacific and was assigned to General MacArthur had an interesting thing to say about him. MacArthur was so disliked because he was considered arrogant. He was extremely brave. And the journalist said about those people that were attacking MacArthur, he said, how would you like to go into battle with a general that had an inferiority complex? And he had the right stuff. He got bad press.

Big surprise. And there were those that thought he was quite cowardly, but he was not. And as I think of MacArthur, I think of what it took to do what he did in the Pacific and in Korea with what he had to work with especially.

And it brings to mind these three judges that we meet in this chapter. They had the right stuff. They did not have an inferiority complex. When they were called to deliver, that is just what they did. One in a very extraordinary way. Another in a very powerful way.

And the other, the first that we'll get to, in a very predictable way. These are the three men that we have before us, and they each delivered crushing blows to the enemies of God's people. Now, the people, of course, kept slipping back into sin.

God would deliver them. These cycles continued. They continued throughout the Book of Judges. And yet God never abandoned his people.

He withdrew at times, but he never abandoned them. Otherwise, he never would have raised these judges. And that, of course, is informative.

It's instructional. It tells us about the character of our God yet again. And so we look at verse 1. Now these are the nations which Yahweh left that he might test Israel by them. That is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan. And so the Lord using adversaries to develop our faith, our walk with him. And here we see it at work right now in this very first verse. In fact, the very first two verses, without testing how there's no development. And there's no positive growth.

At least they're very unlikely. And this generation now had not seen war in Canaan. They'd been there a while, and they're going to see it now. Verse 2, this was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war. At least those who had not formerly known it. Well, verse 2 is a parenthesis.

It's just an insertion. This is important. Remember this as we go forward. Psalm 18, verse 34, he teaches my hands to make war so that my arms can bend a bowl of bronze. God certainly has a militant side to him, and we are too. We are to be militant against that which is against Christ, spiritually. And it is true that hardship and necessity teach us to pray, often force us to pray.

And it drives us to our knees, we might say. Even if we have made poor choices and suffer from self-inflicted wounds, we still pray to a God who we know is not going to abandon us because of these things. And when we encounter affliction, God says, oftentimes, I'm going to use these things if you let me.

Or, maybe you won't let me and I can't use them. The choice is going to be ours. The psalmist captures that in the song about the word of God, Psalm 119. He says, before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.

God put some pressure on that man. Psalm 119 verse 71, it is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn your statutes. The suggestion is, without affliction, I would not learn. I would go in the path of least resistance and be crooked.

My flesh. Again, verse 75 of Psalm 119, I know, O Yahweh, that your judgments are right and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Here's a psalmist that says, I have hard times too in life, and rather than turning on God, I turn to God.

Rather than allowing what God allows in my life to drive me from Him, I'm going to let it drive me to Him. And this is what is here in these first two verses, that God is saying, I want to develop you as a people, I want to develop your faith. If Israel should learn war, it would learn to keep the commandments of God at the same time.

This makes her different than everyone else. The pagans' motivations for war was gain or defense. God really wasn't a part of, their gods weren't a part of their wars except to protect them in war, to give them victory.

God is telling His people, I'm going to make you strong because I want to use you. The Jews never, we should never lose sight of this, they were supposed to shine the light of Yahweh. And they very seldom did. Isaiah brings it back up to them enough times so that none of them are without excuse. Their learning of war was again not like or was unlike the other nations in that it included spiritual warfare.

This should be the case with us also. How to wage spiritual war, how to fight the unseen forces, as Paul said, the principalities, powers and spiritual wickedness. Because you think about what is a temptation, it's invisible most of the time. It's an invisible thing and yet we respond to it because we are spiritual. And the devil knows that we have this spiritual side and he looks to exploit it. And he says here in verse 2, at least those who had not formerly known it. Each generation must establish themselves.

So the younger Christians have to experience conflict and struggle in Christ and faith just like the older ones. You don't get a pass. You're only 14, Satan's going to say, I'm not going to bother you, I'll wait until you get to 15. No, he's going to hammer you any chance he gets. God is going to help you and be there with you. Spiritual war is very hard and if you think it's not, you have not a clue what spiritual war is. It's long and one of my struggles is that, Lord, I feel like I put so much into my faith and get so little back. Is it a chastisement from you or is this how it is? It is how it is. God can chase in me other ways.

And I work really hard to try not to let him do that. Verse 3, namely, five lords of the Philistines. These are the opponents that are being left in the land that God is going to use. Namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, the Hivites, who dwell in Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal-Herman to the entrance of Hamath. Well, the five lords of the Philistines in Ashdod and Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza, we'll say those names because we'll get them as we continue to move through the books of Samuel. They are to the west of the Promised Land towards the Mediterranean Sea and they will be adversaries of the Jews for centuries.

They will inflict much damage and they will be the Philistines that kill King Saul and his sons. He says here all the Canaanites. Now, the Canaanites were a distinct people in the land. They were a dominant people in the land and so oftentimes all of the peoples, the Philistines, the Amorites, the Hivites are loosely called, referred to as Canaanites because they dwell in the land that the Canaanite peoples dominate.

But they are still a distinct people and they are throughout the land. And in a display of God's mercy when we get to the New Testament concerning the Canaanites, we have an interesting moment that Matthew records for us. We find the Lord Jesus reaching out as he always wanted to do in the land of these Sidonians, a Greek Syrophoenician woman. But Matthew says that this woman was a Canaanite.

Canaanites were a people marked for destruction by God. And yet here's God showing incredible mercy to her. She came to him concerning her daughter who was demon possessed. Christ was not reluctant to heal, but he took the opportunity to extract from her a confession of faith that we have to this day. Why should I give to you what's reserved for my people?

Why should I give to the puppies what's for the children? And she said, even the puppies get the crumbs. Jesus was impressed by that. And of course he said, go, your daughter has been freed. Matthew 15, 22, and behold a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to him saying, have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.

My daughter is severely demon possessed. The fact that Matthew says that she is a woman of Canaan, her ethnicity is really not that important. The fact that he just inserts that word, associates the Canaanites with this remarkable deliverance is an expression of God's mercy and grace. And we should never ever lose sight of it. No matter what we're going through, we just by faith claim it.

I don't have to see it at this point. I'm being crushed, Lord, but I know by faith that you are great and merciful and kind. And if I don't see it in this life at my last breath, I'll see it at my first breath in eternity. And that's what faith does. At some point, faith has to kick into action. It's not just a philosophy.

It's not a poster on a wall or something. It is something that is painfully expressed in our lives. And that is what verse one and two are saying.

It's painfully expressed because it meets with combat, conflict, struggle, and uncertainty and fear. Verse four, and they were left that he might test Israel by them to know whether they would obey the commandments of Yahweh, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. This expression here, they were left in the land that he might test them.

It is stated three times in the book of Judges in chapter 2 and verse 22 and again in verse 31. And God, again, using the enemies to develop and to address their faith. Faith has to be addressed by pressure. Part of, I don't know, I try to make decisions based on trying to break the solution. If I can't break the solution in my head, then I go forward with it. So if I say, well, I'm going to do this, but let me see how that might not work.

I think we all do this. I'm just talking about it. We're going to get that in a minute with Eud who addresses the situation, comes up with a solution, and works his plan. So they had to learn this meaning of trusting God through war because they weren't learning it through peace. Interesting. What an interesting thought. Here they were in the land, it was going well, but they kept going towards the pagan gods because they did not dislodge the people whom God told them to get rid of. And so war would come. Life under the curse.

It is spiritual, it is emotional, it is physical. And I think if the Jews, we really don't read about them having a standing army until the times of the kings. But in hindsight, looking at the story, I can't help but thinking, they would have benefited from a standing army, a regular force, rather than just blowing the shofar to rally the men, drop your rakes and get to the battlefield, just to have an army. And when they did have a standing army under Joshua, they were very successful. There are lessons in that. The church needs a standing army.

The church needs regulars. Those who are not quick to retreat, are not fragmented from the body, we are always more effective when we are that way. The principle of the doctrine, not the biblical doctrine, but the teaching of divide and conquer, it works, and so we try not to be divided so that we will not be conquered. Verse 5, thus the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Pezorites, the Hivites, Jebusites. And the reason why we are reading about these names here, the children of Israel dwelt among the names that we just read, these peoples, these surviving nations.

Well, they adopted that old time good neighbor policy, that well, we are part of the same community now. Well, that kind of thinking got them defeated. Eventually, Israel was defeated from within. The same thing with the church. When the church allows unbiblical ideas and philosophies to come in unchecked, she is destroyed from within. The next thing you know, who needs the Bible? We've got all these other wise people and their writings and their ideas. We see it all the time, all over the place.

God made it very clear to the Jews that they were not to have comparative religious studies. Have you ever come across somebody who says they took a class on religion in a university? Sometimes they're strong enough and they said, I just wanted to see the junk they were dishing out.

But most of the time, they're people that just become irretrievable because they're so leavened. They think they know something when they know nothing. And I say it from time to time. I don't teach calculus from the pulpit, and I would appreciate it if they did not teach Christ from the universities. The church is ordained. And once it gets into the hands of the world and they can tell the truth about Christ, you've got a problem, and that's why Jesus was telling demons to shut their mouth when they were saying, we know who you are. And Jesus said, be muzzled. I'm not interested in a testimony from you. And yet Christians can't seem to learn this, or people cannot seem to learn it. Comparative study about religion, I'm just curious.

I just want to see how they do it. Why? God says, don't. Becoming interested in the pagan practices is deadly. That kind of curiosity leads to conformity.

We tracked that last session in Judges. If you have the only true God, then other ideas of God become contemptible to you. This is why Ezekiel was scathing in his mention of the pagan gods. He was lampooning them every chance he got. Elijah mocking them on Mount Carmel. They were contemptible. They were not man-made. They were demonic.

They were made in hell. And men were the ones that fell for it. And the difference, there's a great difference between seeking knowledge and seeking truth. And this is why so many are always learning and never coming into the knowledge of the faith, because the truth is not what they're after.

They just want to learn anything. And we should know better. We have filters. We filter it through what Jesus says. This irritates those who are confused about knowledge, who think learning everything is a good idea, even though they are the ones that want to censor other people from learning everything. Some things don't need to be shared. I don't want to read a book, Ten Ways to Build a Bomb.

I mean, why? Okay, I digress. Bildad, one of the three, well, four speakers to Job during Job's crisis, Bildad was incensed that Job held them in contempt. I mean, here was Job suffering, and you come to my house, and you just make it worse for me. You're talking about things that you know nothing about, as though you were some sort of authority. You don't understand.

You're hurting me. And so Bildad, when he picks up that Job just has contempt for what they're saying, Bildad responds, why are we counted as beasts and regarded as stupid in your sight? Job's answer is this, because you are.

And that's what we have to say to any lie about Christ, and they mock the Bible, and they tout evolution and all the other crazy things they come up with. And they say, why are you Christians so obnoxious? Well, define for me what obnoxious is. How do you mean I'm obnoxious? Because I don't agree with you? Because I think your views are dumb? You think my views are dumb? But I can't call you obnoxious because you say, what kind of Christian am I?

I'm so unloving. So let's just get to the point. Your views are dumb, I love you. Hopefully that will create more conversation. God wanted his people completely separated from the people of the land, and he wants us to be the same way when it comes to thought and acceptance. He doesn't want us separated from them because we are here to engage them.

And I'm sorry, you know, I've talked about this before. I have a good friend, a good pastor friend, and they meet and they hand out tracts on Coney Island. I've never seen tracts work in this country. I've never met anyone that said, I came to Christ because I read a tract. I met people who've come to Christ because somebody got in their face with the gospel. I don't mean with an obnoxious kind of thing. It works sometimes too.

And other countries, it does work because the people are just completely, not every other country, but many third world countries, the tracts go a long way because they're not getting anything. But here, the Bible's everywhere. Christians are everywhere. So I bring this up to say, to encourage you, engage them, eye to eye, contact.

Get close enough to know whether or not they're using deodorant. That's what it takes. Imagine if, I think of my own self, the people that God has allowed me to preach the gospel to, imagine if I just stayed home and didn't get in front of them. It matters. You matter. That's why Satan messes with you, because he's afraid that you may unleash the gospel on somebody. Now to do this, you cannot be somebody that's icky. Your hygiene is important.

Praise the Lord, brother. Whoa, whoa, wait. That won't work. You have to take care of yourself. You don't want to give them a reason to justify cheap shots. They're going to take shots. They're going to mock you. Don't make it easy for them. Get to work on time. Be a hard worker. Don't let an unbeliever outwork you, and you watch what God will do.

I was talking with someone about this Sunday. As a steelworker, I can think of two, three men that gave me a challenge for working. One of them was a Christian. And I felt God gave me that principle.

Just outwork everyone, and I'll send them to you. And that's exactly what he did. Well, the Jews were no better than the pagans, as we're no better than anyone else. But our God is better, and that matters everything. That's the whole story right there. Who is your God?

It means everything. Verse 6. And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.

They waved the white flag. I surrender. My God is not as good as your God. Your God is more fun. During this time of the judges, this adopting of the gods of the land was such an insult to the God of truth. I got you in the land. I brought you here.

Do you think your parents were lying to you when they told you about the wilderness and crossing over, and the monuments you think they just grew out of the ground? The law that you have, no man wrote that. God gave you the law. Everybody else, they wrote it themselves.

And you're willing to throw all of that away. And so they surrendered. And any high place they could put themselves on to worship the fake gods of the land, they would do it.

And this was the outcome of not paying attention to what God was trying to say to them. So as I'm standing here speaking, you have to say to yourself, or you know, hopefully people always say this, or get where I'm going, is, do you get it? Is it sinking in? Or is it just someone else's words? Are you getting the faith? Do you talk to God? Are you ever moved by a Christian song, emotionally? Or are you just flat all the time? Many times you just don't feel like it, or maybe, but there are...

I don't know how you can be born again and have no fire at all. And if you don't have it, ask for it! James said, God gives wisdom. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross-Reference Radio.