The Causes and Cure for Spiritual Inconsistency

Welcome Summit Church.

Good morning at our campus locations in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary. If you got your Bibles this weekend, I invite you to take them out and open them to the book of Judges. The book of Judges, which is in what we call the Old Testament, the first of the Testaments that God gave. I think it's like the seventh book, Genesis, Exodus, Davidicus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges. Take out your Bible and open it there.

If you'll find it, you can keep your place there for the next several weeks. Because we're doing a, beginning a series through it called Broken Saviors. As you're opening your Bible there, I will tell you that my wife and I always say that we have been married for 12 wonderful years. Even though we've actually been married for a total of 14 years, we've just had enough rough seasons that we can't honestly include them in the 12 wonderful years.

So we say we've been married for 12 wonderful years and two other ones for a total of 14. For a few of our first years, those rough seasons involved, ironically enough, are vacations. We could not be more opposite when it comes to a philosophy of vacations. My wife likes to have no real plan going into a vacation, which is what in her mind makes it a vacation. She points out that's what the word means is that you vacate. So her daily activities are get up and get a bagel.

That's it. That's one day of vacation. Me, I'm the opposite. I have our day planned out in five-minute increments. I get up and I think, well, if we get out by sunrise, we can see the turtles do their morning routine and then head over to the planetarium at 10.05. We can see a movie there, come home for 18 minutes of downtime.

Then there's a new hot dog place I heard about, and just that's how the whole day goes. So it has caused a considerable amount of strife and annoyance, but we couldn't be more opposite. One redeeming thing that has helped, though, is that we both have a love for museums on vacation. I know that puts us in total nerd life, but it's kind of the foundation of our relationship, a love for history and anything, but it annoys our kids. They're not into it yet.

But we both love going in and catching a snapshot of an entire epic of history, understanding the people, a movement, just all kind of in a glance. Well, the reason I share that is because the book of Judges is somewhat like a museum of Israel's spiritual history, particularly the first two chapters that we're going to look at today, because in them, you're going to see a snapshot of Israel's rather rocky history with God. You're going to see Israel go up and down in their faith. You're going to see how they're sometimes hot, sometimes cold.

Most often, they're just lukewarm. There are certain temptations that no matter how hard they try, they just can't seem to shake them. I feel like it's something that most of us can relate to. Do you ever find yourself asking, why is it that you go up and down so much spiritually? A lot of us feel like we are spiritually bipolar. You're like, is that even a spiritual condition? If it is, that's what I am. One week, you're super Christian.

The next week, you're not even sure you believe. Or do you ever ask yourself, why are there some sins that no matter how many resolutions I make, I just can't seem to get rid of these things? Why is it that I have so little joy spiritually? Everybody else seems to have so much joy.

I see them at church, and they got their little Bible, and they got their smile on their face, and they're saying, bless you, brother. I just don't feel like that all the time. I struggle.

I feel like I drag myself along. Those people, by the way, are liars and fakes, just so you know. One of my core principles as a pastor is, everyone is screwed up once you get to know them. If you can't see that they're screwed up, you just don't know them that well.

That includes me. That's where most of us are, which makes these first two chapters of Israel's spiritual struggles, I think, so helpful for me. You're going to see, I think, your struggle and their struggle. Out of their struggles, we're going to draw three guiding principles that the writer of Judges used to shape the rest of the book. The book opens like this, chapter one, verse one. After the death of Joshua, Joshua, you might recall, is the mighty warrior general who had led Israel into Canaan. He had led through things like the Battle of Jericho. He was a very victorious captain. He was a hero. But when he died, there were still large parts of the area of Canaan that had yet to be conquered.

It was a huge area, so they weren't done. So the people of Israel inquire of the Lord, verse one, who will go up first for us against the remaining Canaanites to fight against them now that Joshua is dead? The Lord said, Judah shall go up, the tribe of Judah. Behold, I've given the land into his hand.

Well, things start out great. Judah went up and the Lord gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand and defeated 10,000 of them at Bezak. Verse six, Adonai-Bezak, which literally in Hebrew means the king of Bezak, Adonai-Bezak, he fled and they pursued him and caught him and cut off his thumbs and his big toes, because that's just what you do. Verse seven, Adonai-Bezak said, 70 kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off, used to pick up scraps under my table, as I have done, so God has repaid me. If you will allow me to digress for just a moment, one of the problems that people sometimes have with the book of Judges is they ask, how could God send an Israel to conquer a people?

This looks like a religious crusade and it looks unjust. That is a good question, but let me at least point out to you King Adonai-Bezak's perspective on this whole ordeal. He did not say, God, this is so unfair. He said, God, you have repaid me for my wickedness. Listen, in Deuteronomy 18 and Leviticus 18, God made clear to Israel that he was driving the Canaanites out because of their excessive wickedness. Israel was his instrument of judgment. These were not innocent people that Israel was stealing land from. They were cruel and wicked people that God was bringing judgment upon and Israel was his instrument of justice. Now, you say that sounds like a very dangerous mentality, people taking on themselves the mantle of God to be his instruments of justice, and that is true.

People who adopt that mentality today commit horrific acts of injustice. The difference is that Israel had a very clear mandate and very clear instructions from God. God simply does not do that anymore. With the coming of Jesus, God began a new way of working in the world. Jesus came on a saving mission and those who follow him participate in that saving mission. He did not come to bring justice, he came to extend mercy.

He did not take life, he laid his life down. So those of us who follow him today are not the instruments of judgment on the world, we are the instruments of mercy. It is true that one day King Jesus will bring judgment and justice to the world, but our role now is dispensing mercy, not judgment, and anyone who today claims they are on a mandate from God to bring judgment is either lying or they are pathologically deceived. You say, but surely in these conquests there were innocent people affected, like if no one else the kids were innocent, and that is true. Innocent people sometimes get caught up in judgment. But realize that that is not just something that happens in judges, it happens today. For example, if a man cheats on his wife or cheats in his business and he loses his marriage and his job, you might look at him and say, well, he brought that on himself, and you would be right.

But what about his kids? They suffer too, and the suffering they endure because of the sins of their father they had no part in. Well, there are multiple ways that the Bible answers the question of why God allows the innocent to be caught up in someone else's judgment. But one thing that it assures you is that before the throne of God everyone receives full, complete, and impartial justice, and that what we inherit in eternity is going to make anything we experience in our earthly lives seem rather trivial. Think of it like this.

This is the best analogy I could come up with, so it's not great, but bear with me. Imagine that you discovered the post office had overcharged you $0.48 on a stamp. So you go down to the post office to complain, and in response to your complaint they absolve you from any future responsibility to pay income taxes. You would say that on the whole your interaction with the U.S. government was fairly positive, am I correct? It's not that you couldn't complain about the stamp, it's just that in light of what you received, it's hard to complain about $0.48 when they've forgiven you thousands of dollars of income taxes. By the way, that's never going to happen.

Don't go try it and then send me a note and be like, it didn't work, okay? I'm just using a ridiculous hypothetical. Well, see, what happens to us on earth compared to what we receive in eternity is like that $0.48 versus the huge gift of the freedom from income taxes. All people die, and so when these kids died in this, caught in this, it's like God was collecting them early. And what they received before the throne of God was full and complete and fair, and what they receive in eternity makes anything they experience on earth seem rather trivial. I know that doesn't answer the question fully, but hopefully at least gives you a place to begin thinking or to do further research.

But let's get back to the story, okay? Verse 19, And the Lord was with Judah. He took possession of the hill country, but He could not, the word could is really key, He could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron. Well, that makes sense, of course, chariots of iron.

These were like the tanks of the ancient world. Just a couple dozen of them could mow down thousands of foot soldiers, and all Israel had were foot soldiers. So, of course, they could not conquer these people because these people had chariots of iron. That's why they couldn't drive them out. Verse 27, And Manasseh, the tribe of Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shean and its villages or Tanakh or Dor or the Klingons and the Ewoks and all the rest of the people that are mentioned there.

Here's why. For the Canaanites there were determined to dwell in that land. You see, these people were just really difficult. Israel asked them politely to leave, then they raised their voice, then they sent some angry letters, then they mounted a few attacks, but these people were stubborn. They were just determined to stay. So eventually Israel said, OK, well, let's put a line, a little piece of tape in your room, and you stay on your side, I'll stay on my side.

You don't bother me, I won't bother you. That makes sense. Ah, even better. Verse 28, When Israel grew strong, they put those Canaanites to force labor. Well, that's a win-win, right?

That's even better. Now we get some free labor out of it. Tim Keller, who wrote an excellent commentary on judges that I will be using a lot during this series, says, taken on its own terms, chapter one of the book of Judges reads like a collection of Israel's press releases about their campaign. It's their spin on why they weren't as successful as we and God might have expected. As you read Judges chapter one, we are lulled into sympathy with the Israelites.

We are told they could not drive out the Canaanites, and we are inclined to agree. They did their best. And they found a more economical solution to boot.

They got some free labor out of the deal. All in all, pretty savvy if you ask me, but then comes God's assessment. Verse two of chapter two, You have not obeyed my voice.

Period. Look at that, verse two. I brought you up from Egypt. I brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers, yet you have not obeyed my voice. What is this that you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your side, and their gods will become a snare to you.

Here is lesson number one. Small areas of disbelief produce large areas of disaster. These Canaanites that they left in the land became a thorn in the Israelite side, a source of constant warfare. Eventually, some of these people, like the Philistines, would rise up and subjugate them. Israel's response to God is, but God, we couldn't drive them out.

We tried. God says, actually, it's not that you can't. It's that you won't. It has nothing to do with you not being strong enough because it's never been about your strength.

It has only to do with you not being confident enough in my grace. Don't you remember Jericho? Was there anything about your strength that had to do with the walls falling down? All you did was march around it seven times and holler. I was the one who knocked the walls down. If I knocked the walls down at Jericho, don't you think I could continue to take care of these Canaanites?

Here is a question that you and I should ask ourselves. Where are we saying I can't, but God says in actuality, you won't? You see, you need to start looking at your life like the unconquered territory of the promised land of Canaan. And you need to look at those areas of your life where you feel like I can't obey God here and realize that where you say can't, God says won't. Where are you saying that in your life?

Here are a few areas that I thought of by way of example. Maybe it has to do with your integrity. You say, well, God, if I were totally honest in my job, I would lose it.

You can't be expected to play fairly in this career field and survive. Maybe it has to do with extending forgiveness. God, I know that I'm supposed to forgive him or her, but I can't. I'm just not there yet, God.

Maybe it's avoiding some kind of sexual temptation. You say, I know the Bible says it's wrong, but I just can't say no. A lot of times people will begin to rationalize their behavior and they'll say, well, the Bible can't really mean that this is wrong because it just feels so natural to me. I love the person that makes me happy. Doesn't God want me to be happy? It's just who I am. I really can't say no. Maybe that compromise is being in a relationship you know you shouldn't be in.

I know all kinds of single people who get in or stay in relationships that they know they shouldn't be in because, well, God, I'm just afraid of being lonely. So I'm going to have to do this my way in this section. I'm not going to trust you to provide because I need this. One of the most common compromise areas I see is in the area of financial faithfulness, generosity. Well, God, I can barely afford things the way they are, much less be generous, give you the first fruits of what you give to me.

I can't afford that. I know wealthy people who say I'm just not sure the church is the best investment for the future. I know people who begin to cut out interaction with God's kingdom in their life with God's people because they say I got to work all the time. All these areas are areas that the enemy sets up a little camp where you say I can't, and God says, nope, it's not that you can, it's that you won't. And these areas become the areas of defeat where the enemy brings cursing into your life. A great example of that is that forgiveness one. Paul said in Ephesians that when you refuse to forgive somebody, it becomes a foothold, a literal outpost in the promised land of your heart that Satan puts his soldiers in that he uses to tear apart the entire land.

Israel at this point, listen to this, had not ceased to be zealously religious. They just ceased to walk by faith, and there is a huge difference in those two because the mark that you are walking by faith is full and absolute and unconditional and uncompromised obedience. You see, there are two ways to approach a relationship with God. One way is a way that you really do your own thing, but you do enough that you feel like you'll keep God happy so that you can use Him as a safety net. This is the vast majority of people in church. The other way to approach God is you yield Him complete and total control because you trust Him completely. The only question you have in every area is, what does God want? Over the years, I've used an illustration to kind of depict these two ways of approaching God, and it has a story to go with it.

If you've been around here, you've heard me use it before, but I'll review it for you again. The illustration is repelling. When I was 16 years old, I was with a group of friends that we used to rock climb on the weekends. It probably wasn't the smartest activity that we did.

None of us knew what we were doing, but I'm alive today. Anyway, one of our friends read something in the book about going repelling and managed to convince the rest of us that he knew how to repel. We all gullible 16-year-olds go up to the Hanging Rock State Park and we're going to repel. Somehow I volunteered to go first, which I'm not sure still how that happened, but I remember standing there as he kind of ties it into the little belay system, whatever they call that, and he tells me, I've got a 75-foot drop behind me. He's like, now you're supposed to just lean back. I don't know if you've ever done this or you remember that moment, but you're like, what? Just lean back and the rope will catch you. There's nothing in you that is going to do that. If my manhood had not been on the line, there is no way that I would have done it.

But at 16 years old, your manhood is always on the line. So I stood there and I remember everybody was just kind of staring at me and I was like, and I remember, I kid you not, I asked Jesus to come into my heart again because I just wanted to make sure. This was a long time before I wrote that book, Stop Asking Jesus in Your Heart. I did this just in case those guys were right.

I just wanted to have all my bases covered. And I remember holding onto that rope and I remember leaning back and I kept rocking and eventually I felt the weight give and I'm falling backwards and it's just like, here it is, this is the end. And then you catch and there I am, I'm like perpendicular with the rock and parallel with the ground and I'm looking straight up into my friend's face and he's like, okay, now you got to jump and let go of the rope. So I worked up every ounce of courage that I could muster and I leaped with all of my might and I jumped probably an inch and a half.

I mean, you're barely perceptible. He's like, did you jump? I was like, yep. He's like, you got to do it again.

So I did it again and I had five feet, 10 feet, 20 feet because I'm a really fast learner and get down to the ground. Well, my best friend was next. My best friend was even more afraid of heights than I was.

I say best friend. He was better looking than I was. He was more athletic. Girls were more into him than me.

I hated this kid, but he was my best friend. And so he was, like I said, scared of heights. I can see him from 75 feet below. I can see his whole body just like shaking. And he stood there for, no lie, like 10 minutes, for 10 minutes. He didn't move.

He just stood there. And eventually I saw him take his leg and kind of reach it down the rock face and find like, you know, one of the foothold. And he reached his other leg down and he found another foothold and he begins to work his way down the rock face. Well, he gets to a point on the rock face. The rock face was kind of shaped like this, like a real sharp angle there and then it curves and then it was inverted.

If you're a decent rock climber, you can climb on this angle, but unless you're built like Chris Gaynor, you're not going to be able to climb on an inverted rock face. And so he gets to that vertex in the wall and he kind of hovers there and he looks for a foothold and eventually he just climbs back up. Now, if you had been watching us from a distance, it would look roughly like we were doing the same thing. We're both using a rope.

We're both coming down the mountain, but there's a world of difference between rock climbing and using a rope as a safety net and actually repelling because when you're rock climbing and using the rope as a safety net, your confidence is really in your arms and your legs to move up and down the rock and you're just using the rope there if you fall, whereas when you're repelling, you have shifted the weight of your body off of your arms and legs and onto the rope entirely. There is a picture in that for you of what it means to walk by faith versus being religious. There are a number of people who are religious, people using their arms and legs to get through life and they got God kind of tipped off so that he's there when they need him, but that is not the life of faith.

The life of faith is a life that has yielded full and complete confidence and trust onto the rope that is God's promises and your only question is where and how. So if you are a religious person, what you find is that you're going to come to some points like that vertex where you can no longer go on in obedience and that's when you just go back the other way. You stop obeying God financially.

You stop obeying him in the area of waiting on him if you are single for the choice that God has. Any number of areas you're going to just not be able to obey and you're going to feel like you can't, but God said it's a more fundamental problem and that is you won't because you've never actually learned to trust me. Israel's compromise started with a failure of belief. All sins start with a failure of belief. It's like Martin Luther said, every sin springs from a wicked heart of unbelief and these small areas of unbelief become large areas of disaster. Again, you've got to start seeing your life like the unconquered promised land of Canaan. Lurking in every crevice of your heart are your own little Canaanites of unbelief and sin and you've got to send out warriors of faith to subjugate them, which is why we say you've got to preach the gospel to every part of your life, to your worries, your ambitions, your goals, your temptations, your security, your needs. You've got to drive out the enemy from your heart because those areas of unconquered territory become the means by which the enemy enslaves you.

Well, it gets worse. Verse 12, chapter 2, After the people of Israel abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, they went after other gods and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them because that's what plunderers do. Israel started to go after the gods of the people around them and those people enslaved them. Number two, we choose, we must choose between the God who saves and gods that enslave.

If there were ever a place in the Bible that demonstrated that sin leads to slavery, this would be it. You give yourself to an idol because it promises you power and freedom. If you want a definition of an idol, there it is.

An idol is anything that promises power and freedom and happiness apart from God. But what it does is put you in chains. Back in those days, it was the promise of security.

It was the promise of rain. Now, it would be something for us like money. Money says to us, I can give you power and freedom. If you have enough of me, you have all the power you need, you have all the freedom you need. So you give yourself to pursue it, but you never seem to have enough. And it destroys your family, then it destroys your integrity, then it destroys your health, and it is always demanding more.

It promised power and freedom and happiness, yet you were never satisfied. You're always jealous. You're constantly worried. This is not the life of a free man. This is the life of a slave. You gave your life to build your reputation because you thought you would have power and freedom and happiness when you could walk in a room and everyone said, well, there is so-and-so and he or she is just awesome. But instead of finding that power and freedom, you became really sensitive to criticism. You became obsessive of what people thought about you.

You were always bitter that people don't recognize your full worth or the accolades that you think belong to you get put onto someone else. That is not the life of a free man. That is the life of a slave. The way we sing it here at our church is the sin that promised joy and life only led us to the grave. Well, in contrast to these false gods that enslaved them, the writer of Judges gives you a glimpse into the heart of Israel's God.

Now, I warn you, it's a little unusual, so I need you to follow me through it. Verse 14. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he gave them over to plunderers and they were in terrible distress.

Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the land of those who plundered them. There are three things in those verses that reveal God's heart toward his people, a heart of passionate love. The first stage of those three stages is anger, which is why I said it might be a little unusual. But make no mistake, God is righteously angry at sin and that's because God is a jealous God and he is jealously angry over our betrayal because jealousy is a necessary part of love. When you love something passionately, you are jealous for its affection. You may have heard that the opposite of love is not anger.

The opposite of love is apathy. If God did not love us, he would not care. But because God does love us, there is a jealousy that he extends to us that when we betray him, there is a righteous anger. A lot of people don't understand God's jealousy because they think of jealousy like we mean when we say that somebody else has something that you want and so you hate him for it or you're just obsessive about somebody's attention. But there's a good jealousy. There's a jealousy that is a natural part of love. I am, for example, righteously jealous about my kids. I'm jealous that they learn to love the right things. Every parent that I know thinks a lot and worries a lot about the influences on their kid.

Why? Because they want their kids to grow up knowing what is right and loving what is right. That's a good jealousy. I am right to be jealous over the affection of my wife. I want her affections to center on me and not on another man.

That is as much for her good and my family's good as it is mine. Now obviously it is possible to be way obsessive about that, but that's not what God is. God is jealous to be our only God, to be our only real object of worship because he passionately loves us and he knows what is good for us.

The opposite of love would be apathy. God is angry because he was passionately in love with us, the way the father loves a son and the way that the husband loves a bride. So God is angry.

But then, did you notice what happened next? He feels pity. He sees them in distress. Verse 18 says he was moved to pity because of their groaning. By the way, the word for groaning there in Hebrew doesn't mean repentance.

It just means a cry of misery. It moves God emotionally to see his people hurting even though they had brought that suffering on themselves and they weren't sorry for it yet. But it's like me seeing one of my children in suffering even if it's their fault. It doesn't make me cease to love them.

In fact, if anything, it makes me love them more. So God sees them and before they cry out for repentance, he acts. He sends judges, verse 16. He raises up judges to deliver them and that's the rest of the book of Judges.

Ah, but you see, there's a dilemma. These judges are gonna turn out to be broken people themselves. They're gonna fall prey to the same problems Israel had. They are inconsistent, unbelieving, cowardly, greedy, rash, immoral. So there's a question that begins to emerge from the book of Judges and it's this. How can these men and women be Israel's saviors when they themselves need to be saved? How can they deliver us when they got things that need to be delivered from themselves? How can they save us when they got the same problems that we have?

I've used this story with you before but I think it illustrates it well. A true story, I heard about a grandmother in California who looks out of her back window in her house and sees to her horror her two-year-old granddaughter stumble into the deep end of the pool. She rushes out to save her granddaughter.

Three hours later, the EMS pulls out the bodies of both the grandmother and the granddaughter out of the pool because the grandmother couldn't swim either. The one who would do the saving can't have the same problem as those who need to be saved. The ones who would save us can't have the same issues as we have. Otherwise, how could they actually be our savior? That's why every other religion in the world doesn't work for me, y'all. Because the people that are claiming to do the saving have the same problems of those of us who need to be saved.

I got two problems. One, I need to be delivered from sin. Two, I die. So if somebody's gonna save me, they can't have a sinful heart and die. Buddha may have taught some good things, but he died.

Muhammad may have taught some good things, but he died. If somebody's gonna save me, they're gonna have to live a sinless life and to be able to come back from the dead and there's only one person in history who's done that and that's our savior. So the book of Judges sets up this question that points you to the story of another judge whose story is not gonna be recorded in Judges. Furthermore, there's another dilemma presented in Judges and that is, if you read the first two chapters, God appears to be on the horns of a dilemma from two contradictory promises that he made.

Did you catch this? Verse 1, I swore to give that land to your fathers. I will... What's that next word?

We can read, right? What's that word? I will never break my covenant with you. But verse 15, I'm gonna reword this, but this is essentially what God says, I have sworn to punish injustice and sin because I'm a just and righteous God.

He uses that word swear again. Well, how can God keep both of those promises? How can God say that he will never break his covenant with us but also be a God who has sworn to punish injustice?

You see the dilemma? Well, the answer is that God is gonna send a judge that is going to both deliver us from our enemies and he is going to suffer the punishment for our disobedience. Throughout this passage, God keeps referring back to a covenant that he made with Israel. Let me quickly take you back to one of the first places where God makes this covenant because I wanna show you something absolutely fascinating about it that will help you understand the rest of the book of Judges. The situation is when God makes the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15. That's one of the first places he made this covenant that he keeps referring to.

You don't need to turn there in your Bible, I'll summarize it for you. God makes a promise to Abraham that his descendants are gonna be his people forever and that Abraham's response is, we're gonna follow you forever. So Abraham and God are gonna solemnize the covenant through an ancient ritual called the cleaving of the animals.

Now it's a little gross by our standards but it worked like this. You would cut five animals in half, you would lay the halves of their body in two rows so that their blood flowed into the middle and formed this river of blood. And then the two people making the covenant would put their arms around each other and walk through the blood so that the blood was splashing up on their robes, basically signifying that if I don't keep my part of the covenant, this is what will happen to me, this blood splatter. So right before Abraham and God get ready to go into this covenant together, Genesis 15 says a deep sleep falls upon Abraham and God comes down and Abraham's laying there in a deep sleep but this doesn't stop God from going through the middle of the animals, God goes through by himself. And what God was showing to Abraham is I'm not only going to be responsible for my side of the covenant, I'm gonna be responsible for yours. Not only will I shed my blood if I fail to keep my part, I'll shed my blood if you fail to keep your part. This is a promise that God is going to ensure the fulfillment of all by himself. You see that deep sleep that Abraham fell into, commentators point out that that symbolizes the deep sleep of sin, the slavery of sin that we would put ourselves into. God says, but I set my love on you and I made this promise by myself so I'll pay the price for your disobedience and then I'll pursue you when you don't pursue me.

I'll draw you to myself. I'll seek you before you seek me and then I'll sustain you by my grace. When you are faithless, I'll be faithful. I'll persevere with you to the end and I'll promise that the good work that I began in you, I will complete it until the day of redemption.

That's the message of the book of Judges is that God is faithful when you are not. That's the message of it. So listen, I know that some of you feel weak. I know that you feel like you can't overcome a certain temptation.

I know you feel like you'll never make it. God says, but I determined it. You weren't there when I made the promise. You didn't hang on the cross helping me pay the penalty for your sin.

You didn't help bring Jesus back from the dead. I did all that by myself and so I will see it through to the end. What I have determined will come to pass. So the message of the book of Judges is first to rest. Rest in the promises of God that he that has began a good work in you will complete it.

He will never let you go any more than I would let one of my children go. Romans 8 says those he foreknew, those he predestined, and those he predestined, those he called, and those he called, those he justified, and those he justified, those he glorified. There is an unbroken chain between the foreknowing and the glorification.

Once God puts you on that train, he's taking you all the way to the station of glorification. And the book of Judges says you rest in the promises of God because what God determined he will bring to pass. The writer of Judges says you gotta choose between these two types of gods. You choose the gods that enslave or you choose the god that saves. You choose a god that will put you in chains or a god that will love you like a father, a god that will pursue you like a husband, a god that will love you and forgive you when you turn your back on him. Some of you are making that very decision this weekend. You've gotta choose which god you will worship. Some of you say, well, I just choose neither. I'm just not that religious of a person. No, it's like I always explain to you the human heart doesn't give you that option.

It's like breathing. You are an instinctive worshiper. You could no more turn off your drive to worship by not being religious than you could turn off your sex drive by not getting married.

Your soul will always find something to cherish, something upon which to build your identity, something that you determine will give you happiness and power and freedom and peace and security. The question, as I often tell you, is not if you'll worship. The question is only what you will worship. If you give yourself to the gods of the Canaanites, which may have a different form today, but they're the same things, money, fame, security, romance, family, respect, you will become a slave to those things. But if you give yourself to God, this God that's depicted in Judges, you will find the most satisfying, freeing, forgiving, victorious love ever known. It's like Tim Keller says, Jesus is the only God who, if you find him, will satisfy you. And if you fail him, will forgive you.

If you run from him, he'll pursue you. Which brings me to the third and final thing that these chapters teach us. Number three, amnesia leads to apostasy. Amnesia leads to apostasy. Did you notice that when God confronts them, do you notice what he says in chapter two?

I'm the God that brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Why does he start there? Did they not know that? Does he need to distinguish it? No, of course they knew that. It's just that they were no longer thinking about them, those things. Again, in chapter two, look down at verse 10. There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or remember the mighty things that he had done for Israel.

What did he mean? Had this generation never heard of the Passover? Had they never heard about the Red Sea? They never heard about the walls of Jericho?

Of course they had. They knew those stories. Listen, the word know in Hebrew, the word that's used there, the word yada, has sexual connotations to it. Adam knew his wife Eve, which means he had sex with his wife.

To say that they knew they did not know the Lord means they may have known about him here, but they'd never learned to trust him and cherish him, and so there arose a generation that was not intimately familiar with these things and these things were no longer precious to them. That's why God starts by reasoning with them. He says, I brought you up out of Egypt. If I knocked the walls down in Jericho, don't you think I could handle these Canaanites?

If I split the Red Sea and defeated the most powerful army in the world, don't you think I could conquer these little bands of people everywhere? Let me ask you a question. I want you to really think about it. Why would you trust God with your eternal salvation and then not trust him with your day-to-day life? Why would you believe? You say, I believe he paid for my sin, but I don't believe that he can take care of the needs that I have in the future. A God that you can trust with your eternity is certainly a God that you can trust with your budget. A God that you believe suffered the penalty of sin in your place is a God that you can believe will provide for you emotionally, will provide for you in your marriage, will provide for you in your parenting.

If he did not withhold the greater, surely he will not withhold the lesser. You gotta think about that. And then parents, you gotta teach these things to your children. Parents, I want you to consider this. In one generation, one, you go from a group of people who saw God knock the walls down to a generation that doesn't even know God at all.

One generation, that's how fast it is. Parents, if I could be the voice of your children for a minute, if your children could suddenly get a perspective on life and speak with an adult voice, they would probably say something to you like this, Mom and Dad, you are the only one that can teach me to know these things, to think that they are precious. Yeah, I can learn about them at church, but you're the one that's gotta show me what they look like.

You ain't gotta show me what it means to trust you. I've gotta see him reflected in your priorities. I gotta see him reflected in how you pray. I've gotta hear it in your passion. When I look at how you structure my life, I've got to be able to tell that God is the priority and that he's most important.

I've often said this to our parents, and I don't say this to smack you in the face, I just want you to be sober about this, that based on how you set your kids' extracurricular activities, many of your kids could rightfully conclude that where they go to college is more important to you than where they spend eternity. Because you may say one thing with your mouth, but your life sets up a priority structure that instructs them to know money and romance and success and to only know about God in the mental sense. Well, when God said these things to Israel in chapter two, the people began to weep. They looked with regret at what they had done, but evidently they didn't repent. Why?

Because nothing changed. You see, I know that there are people who even right now you listen to me and there's a sense of regret. Weeping is good and repentance is better. Repentance means that you change. Repentance means that you begin to look into the unconquered territories of your heart and you send out gospel warriors to preach the gospel over your worries, over your fears, over your ambitions, over your goals. You say, God, search me and know me, show me what areas I've never learned to trust you in. Where am I worried? God, can I trust you there?

Where do I have idols? Will I submit to you there? That's what it means to repent. As a family, your repentance may look like, God, we need to rearrange our priorities, we need to rethink our budget, we need to make the people of God the center of our community. It's like I often say, the church needs to be not an event you attend on the weekend, it needs to be a community that you belong to, that reflects your priorities and the value you give to God. I don't know where it is, but I have a sense that the Holy Spirit is saying the same thing to many of us that he said to the children of Israel. And you have a chance to make a choice they didn't make or they refused to make, and that is to actually follow God and see this victory, this abundant life that he wants to bring into you. But it starts with a decision of faith, it starts with repentance.

So why don't you at all of our campuses, bow your heads if you would. And I'm just gonna turn this over to the real preacher of the Summit Church, it is the Holy Spirit. And I just want him to give you a minute to call out things in your heart. Let him right now bring up two or three things into your heart that he just wants to identify and say, there, there, this is an area you don't trust me.

Where is that? I will say this, there are many of you in here that have never begun this relationship with Jesus. It doesn't begin with you promising to be better, it begins with you understanding that God is a savior who did your salvation all by himself, and he offers it to you as a gift if you'll receive it. You can't save yourself, Jesus did. He says, if you will receive me, to as many as receive me, I'll give you the power to become the sons of God. It's repentance and faith, repentance means you surrender control to him and you receive him personally as your savior.

If you've never done that, you do it right in this moment. I'm just gonna leave you here with the Holy Spirit, all of you, and just let him search your heart. Let him bring these areas where he says, follow me, trust me. Father, I pray in Jesus' name that you might have your way, that you might identify areas of disbelief and compromise, that we would be a people who walk in victory because we walk in confidence in your grace.