The Consequence of Compromise

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, May 15th. God often gives specific commands and choosing to ignore them invites divine discipline.

Today's podcast helps you learn how to recognize and avoid the consequences of compromise. There are times in our Christian life when we think, God, why do I keep having the same old trouble? Why don't somehow I get the victory in my life?

And why is it I'm bothered by the same old things? And we ask ourselves the question, why can I move ahead in my Christian life and enjoy it like I anticipated it? So I want you to turn, if you will, to the book of Judges. And in the book of Judges, I want us to read in the second chapter the first five verses of this chapter. And here is the account of God's people having come into the land that God had promised them through Abraham and now in the process of taking it, and they're having a real major problem.

And so chapter 2 verse 1 begins, Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochaim, and he said, I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you. And as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land. You shall tear down their altars, but you've not obeyed me.

What is this you have done? Therefore, I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you. And it came about when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept. So they named that place Bochaim, and there they sacrificed to the Lord.

Now let me give you a little background of what's happening here. This book of Judges really covers about three hundred and fifty years from the time the people of Israel come into Palestine out of Egyptian bondage, and then Joshua has died. And after Joshua dies, the spiritual life of the nation of Israel just sort of spirals downward.

And it's amazing how when there are great spiritual leaders and somehow God takes them off the scene, the very people who were taught, the very people who understand, the very people who know the truth, somehow so quickly are able to drift back where they were before that person ever came on the scene. And you recall what the Bible says about the Pharaoh who came after Joseph died, and there rose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. And of course, then began the captivity of the nation of Israel, or the people of God, later becoming a nation in Egyptian bondage.

And now Joshua has passed off the scene, and so their spiritual life begins to spiral down. But all the things that God warned them not to do, they begin to do. And if you'll recall that Moses reiterated again and again and again the law of God because he says, I know what you're going to do. And what Moses said about the nation of Israel is exactly what happened. The best way to describe this whole book is in the last verse. So if you'll turn to the last verse in the book, it's said in here twice, but the last verse, the 25th verse of the 21st chapter of Judges, look at that. The Scripture says, In those days there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. You see, this is before the time of the kings, and so they had military leaders and civil leaders who acted as judges, and so they sort of led the people and ruled the land. And then, of course, we come to the time of the kings. So this is that period of time when they've come into God's promised land.

They're in the process of taking it and driving at all the enemies. But between that time and their first king, 350 years of turmoil, heartache, defeat after defeat after defeat. In fact, this book is a picture of the cycle of constant defeat, judgment, repentance, defeat, judgment, repentance, defeat, judgment, repentance. And in the course of that, there's a principle here that I want us to see in this second chapter, and I want to title this message The Consequences of Compromise because what happens to them is exactly what happens to us.

And so I want to couch it in those terms. Now, first of all, God gave them a command. Look at this, if you will. The scripture says in verse one, the angel of the Lord, who was probably Christ at this time, came up from Gilgal to book him. And he said, I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you. So here is a covenant keeping God who said to them, I want to remind you that what I promised you I would do, I will do.

You can bet your life on that. And as for you, you shall make no covenant with inhabitants of this land and you shall tear down their altars. So he says the command I gave you is very simple. First of all, God says you to come into this land and you to drive them out. Look back, if you will, in the first chapter for a moment. Let's look at the 28th verse. It came about when Israel became strong that they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely. Neither did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites.

And so Zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants. And verse 31, Asher didn't do it. And verse 32 and verse 33, Naphtali did not drive out the inhabitants. So what we have here is God gave them a very specific command. When you go to the land that I've given you, he says you to drive them out.

They're not to remain there, you to drive them out, command number one. Secondly, he said you to tear down all of their altars. Everything that looks pagan, everything that they served, everything that looks adulterous, you to destroy it. I mean, make powder out of it.

But get rid of everything that would hinder you in any way or tempt you to be adulterous. And so what happens? They do exactly what God told them not to do.

They get in the land and then they change their mind. Now, this is exactly what God has said to you and to me as believers. Now, I want you to look at two passages of scripture that best describe this.

And if you'll turn to Ephesians chapter 4. When you and I became a Christian, you and I know that the Lord Jesus Christ forgave us of all of our sins. And we began a brand new life because we're new creations in Christ Jesus. Christ is our Savior, our Lord in our life. We've become children of God. We are sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.

He's living within us. We're to walk by His Spirit. We're to rely upon Him moment by moment, day by day. We're to live a holy life, a godly life, a life of obedience to Him, a life of joy in following His will. And so what God wants in our life is a clean life.

And He knows that if you and I tolerate anything in our life on an ongoing basis that we're going to have a problem. So He said through Paul to the Ephesians, if you'll look in verse 25, Therefore, laying aside, what, falsehood, speak truth, each one with his neighbor. Then He says, Don't let the sun go down on your anger. He says in verse 27, Don't give the devil an opportunity. Verse 29, He says, Don't let unwholesome speech proceed out of your mouth. He says, Don't grieve the Holy Spirit. Verse 31, Let all bitterness, wrath, and anger and clamor be put away from you. And in chapter 5, verse 3, He says, Don't let immorality or any impurity or greed even be named among you as is improper among saints.

Don't put up with any filthiness or silly talk or coarse jesting. So He gives us a long list of things that don't belong in the life of the believer. Once we're saved with the grace of God, there's some things we don't put up with. There's some things we don't allow in our life. And the reason we don't is because they give Satan a foothold in our life and it becomes a stronghold.

And before long, we likewise will be in the same condition that these people were in. And you recall, He says in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, look there for just a moment. There are lots of verses that relate to this. He says, if you'll notice in verse 3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification.

Then He names several things there. The will of God is our sanctification. That is that the Holy Spirit sets us apart from all sin unto God for God for His holy purpose. That's God's will for every single one of our lives.

Now, if we tolerate on an ongoing basis anything, we're going to get ourselves in trouble. So He says, first of all, here's the command. He said, I told you, drive them all out, all of them, because this is the promised land, promised through Abraham, and the promise belongs to you. And secondly, He said, tear down their altars, destroy everything that looks like anything pagan. Now they compromise. Here's what they did. They did the same thing we do. They, first of all, they refused to drive out the enemy. Now, some of them did. And if you turn to the first chapter there, that you'll find out that some of the tribes did. But then we just read a few moments ago how many of them, but they didn't drive them all out.

They left them there. And so here's what they said. Wait a minute, look, you know, we fought long and hard and we've lost a lot of people and lots of death and bloodshed and after all, we've conquered these people. And so why go on fighting and driving them all out when we are in control and therefore if we're in control, we shouldn't have to worry about it.

And so besides that, here's what we're going to do. We're going to force them to serve us. And that should be just as good as driving them out of the land. So what we're going to do is we're going to put them into forced labor. Look in verse 28 of chapter 1.

It came about when Israel became strong that they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely. Now, what they did is they rationalized the command of God. God said, I want them out of there, destroy them. They said, well, here's what we'll do, God. We'll drive some of them out and then the rest of them, we will dominate them, we will conquer them, we will enslave them and then they will be able to serve us and we'll be able to serve you better if we have them serving us. Well, that sounds pretty good. At least they've been conquered and now they have become slaves and they're serving the people of God who are serving God.

There's only one thing wrong with that. Compromise is rebellion against God. Compromise is sin. That is when God says, I want you to walk one mile and you walk four-fifths of a mile, that's not obeying God. He says, I want you to drive them out. They said, we've driven most of them out or some of them out and we've conquered the rest of them.

Now they're going to be our servants. That's not what God said. And so what they did is they compromised the command of God. Yes, God put his finger on something in your life and he says, I want that out of your life.

And you said, Lord, got rid of most of it. And you see, one thing that we lapse into sometime is we think if we do enough of this over here, which looks so good, a little bit of this over here never hurt anybody. But here's a perfect example of what rationalizing, compromising with those things in our life. And listen, some of the things that God may want out of our life may not even be wrong. It just may be something that is going on in your life that isn't necessarily a sin, but God knows that it's just not best for you. It may be a relationship. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just that God knows it's not best for you.

Is there something in your life that you may be trying to persuade him about and he's not being fully persuaded, but still you're holding on? Well, here's what happens. What are the consequences of that kind of compromise? Well, let's look at what happened to these people for just a moment, because it's the same principle.

The principle doesn't change whether it's with a nation or an individual. Here's what happened. God said, because you won't drive them out. Look in chapter two. He says, verse three, therefore, on the basis that you've not obeyed me, I will not drive them out before you. That is, you're going to lose my power to drive them out.

They didn't even want to. And because they didn't want to, they lost the power of God to do it. He says, first of all, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become as thorns in your sides and snares to you. Listen to this.

Let's keep going. Verse 14, and the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he gave them into the hands of the plunderers, so they plundered them. And he sold them into the hands of their enemies. Listen, they became slaves to those whom they had conquered so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Verse 15, wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had sworn to them so that they were severely distressed.

Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. And what happens? They turned right around and did it again, and you can just read all the way through this book. Almost every single chapter, it's the same story. Every time they compromised with what God told them to do, what happened?

Same thing. Now listen, he says, because you've left them there, then I'm going to see what you can do. Second, he says, they're going to be a snare to you. They're going to trip you up. They're going to be like a thorn stuck in your side.

And not only that, you think you have them conquered, they're going to conquer you. Look, if you will, in chapter six, I believe it is, of judges. And this is the time when God called Gideon.

Listen to what's happening to them. The Midianites come. Verse one, then the sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hands of Midian seven years. And the power of Midian prevailed against Israel because of Midian the sons of Israel made for themselves the dens which were in the mountains and the caves in the strongholds. For it was when Israel had sown that the Midianites would come up with Amalekites. And the sons of the east and go against them so that 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. But they would come up with their livestock and their tents and they would come in like locusts for number. But they and their camels were innumerable and they came into the land to devastate it.

Here's what we forget. What we allow to remain in our life that God says must go ultimately conquers us, ultimately enslaves us, ultimately becomes that snare to what God wants to do in our life. And the book of Judges is a book of continuous description of the cycle of disobedience, the judgment of God, repentance. Disobedience, the judgment of God, repentance, or the discipline of God. It's a simple principle.

And you know what? Starting in Genesis, you can go all the way to the book of the Revelation and it's the same story. When God gives us a command and we don't obey the command, what we do is we compromise that command. And what we have to ask is this, God, am I willing to suffer the consequences of a compromise of what I know you've said to my heart?

And you see what they were doing, they were making their decision based on what they could see right then. Well, what's wrong with having a few Canaanites over here or Perizzites or Hivites or Jebusites and all the other-ites? What's the problem with having a few of them here serving us? It's just like sin.

You think you have it and the next thing you know, it has you. And God said to them, I don't want them there. Anything that looks like paganism, I don't want it. So what happens? They serve the Israelites and the next thing we read, then the Israelites look at some of these women and they want some of these women as their wives so they take some of them. What do they do? They give their daughters to them.

Then what do you have? The one thing God said to them, I'm going to judge you if you do it. They began to intermarry with the pagans. And you see, Israel was to be a peculiar people, set apart by God, for God, a sanctified people. And their reasoning and their rationalization and their compromise brought them where they would deny that it would ever happen.

Oh, this won't happen to us. If we don't deal with what God says deal with, we suffer the same consequences. You cannot compromise, rationalize the Word of God and expect and anticipate the blessings of God in a person's life.

So I simply want to bring you that simple principle and ask you a question. Is there anything God's put His finger on? And you know He has.

You've sort of covered it up and hid it away and you've colored it and camouflaged it and spiced it up and rationalized it. You've got a great long list of reasons why it's not the worst thing in the world. But God says, you want my best? Drive it out. And if you don't drive it out, you have to suffer the consequences. And my friend, the consequences of obedience is God's best. And the consequence of disobedience is all that you and I can do minus the blessing of God. Wise men and women obey God. Foolish men and women ignore the warning of God.

And that is always a disaster. Thank you for listening to The Consequences of Compromise. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.