Well, go ahead and turn in your copy
of God's Word to the book of Judges.
To the book of Judges, chapter 19.
And as we read, and as I'm sharing
with you, I want you to ask this
question.
How did the situation in Israel become so
dark?
People ask that about America.
People ask that about, you know, you've got
documentaries on Rome.
Well, the Bible has a whole lot to
say about Israel.
And at different places and different ways, it
might explain the root problem leading to the
darkness in a certain way.
And something devotionally stood out at the start
of Judges that we're going to look at,
that I think is going to answer the
question of how did it get as dark?
As it does.
Now before we look at how it got
that dark, we're going to look at some
of the darkness here in Judges chapter 19.
And remember, this is all very applicable for
us.
Old Testament history, Paul is very quick in
1 Corinthians 10 to tell us that these
things are written down for our example.
And so it's so helpful to look at
examples, right?
Even in parenting, that's one of the things
you do.
You might re-illustrate whatever the child did.
Re-enact it in order for them to
really recognize, oh, this is what happened.
You know, the parent said, come.
And I went and picked up a toy
and then came.
I didn't come right away, or whatever.
You're re-enacting that.
You want the person to see a visualization
of what happened.
And so Paul, he pulls in Israel constantly
at different points.
And so this is for us.
You might say, as we look at Judges
19, and you might think, you know what,
this doesn't have anything to do with our
church.
There's no sort of darkness to this degree.
But, we're going to look at where all
this started, and you're going to realize it
wasn't that dark initially.
It got there at some point.
And I would argue the same thing with
the churches in Revelation.
They didn't get as dark as it was
in some of them.
Overnight, there was a progressive change to get
to that state.
So, Judges 19.
And let me pray, and then we will
read from there.
Father, Lord, we do thank You for history
that's in Your Word of God.
Lord, we find great encouragement from history, seeing
Your utter, incredible faithfulness.
Finding that not one good promise of the
Lord our God failed.
Yet, Lord, we also find in Your Word,
terrifying, horrible, and dark examples of where sin
can lead.
And Lord, we start Your Word out, and
what do we find?
We find within one generation, there's already the
first murderer, because of some sibling rivalry.
And Lord, we look at Cain killing his
brother, and it's just shocking.
Lord, it doesn't shock us enough as it
should.
And so Lord, we want to be kept
from subtle areas of drifting that could lead
to such darkness.
So Lord, help us.
Pray You'd quicken these thoughts from Your Word
and make them real for Your people this
morning, and for my own soul.
I ask this in Christ's name.
Amen.
Well, Judges 19.
We're going to skim a few of these
verses, and then read eight of them.
So verse 1, In those days there was
no king in Israel.
That's mentioned often.
Verse 2, this is the whole situation with
the man with the concubine.
Verse 2, And his concubine was unfaithful to
him.
Or she was playing the harlot.
Some versions render it.
Others try to make it sound like she
just got angry at her husband and she
left him.
But the ESV puts she was unfaithful to
him.
What did she do?
Verse 2, She went to her father's house.
She was there for four months.
The end of verse 2 says, Then this
husband arose, verse 3, he went after her
to speak kindly to her and bring her
back.
And so you've got a bad marital situation
right here, and why is all this being
put here?
Well, let's go down.
He eventually leaves his father-in-law's home.
And you know, the father-in-law kind
of kept wanting him to stay longer, longer
and longer, and they finally left.
Verse 10, But the man would not spend
the night.
He rose and departed.
And he arrived opposite Jebus, that is Jerusalem.
He had with him a couple of saddled
donkeys and his concubine was with him.
When they were near Jebus, the day was
nearly over, and the servant said to his
master, Come now, let us turn aside to
the city of the Jebusites and spend the
night in it.
And look what his master said.
His master said to him, We will not
turn aside into the city of foreigners who
do not belong to the people of Israel,
but we will pass on to Jebus.
Now, take note of that.
You could have stopped somewhere.
They didn't.
Why?
It's a place of foreigners.
We want to stay somewhere that's owned by
the twelve tribes.
We want to stay somewhere that is of
Israel.
What's the assumption?
We stay somewhere where people are of our
nation.
How are they going to treat us?
They're going to speak good treatment, right?
We're all in this together.
We're the twelve tribes.
It's going to be a really good time.
Well, that's not what we find out.
In verse 14, They drew near to Gibeah,
which belongs to Benjamin.
So you can see, it's part of the
nation.
Now, verse 22.
We're going to read from verse 22 to
30.
And we're looking at where this darkness has
gotten here at this point in Judges.
As they were making their hearts merry, behold,
the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded
the house, beating on the door.
And no, I didn't just turn in my
Bible to read about Sodom and Gomorrah.
Right?
In Israel, in the city of Benjamin, the
exact same thing is happening.
You see?
Very similar language and situation.
They said to the old man, the master
of the house, bring out the man who
came into your house that we may know
him.
And the man and the master of the
house went out to them and he said
to them, no, my brothers, don't act so
wickedly since this man is coming to the
house.
Do not do this vile thing.
Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his
concubine.
Let me bring them out now.
Violate them and do with them what seems
good to you.
That's a shocking statement.
Seems good to you?
But against this man, do not do this
outrageous thing.
Verse 25, but the men would not listen
to him.
So the man seized his concubine and he
made a girl out to them and they
knew her and abused her all night until
the morning.
And as the dawn began to break, they
let her go.
And as the morning appeared, the woman came.
She fell down at the door of the
man's house where her master was until it
was light.
It doesn't seem like the man's watching out
the window looking to intervene, wondering what he
can do.
Verse 27, her master rose up in the
morning.
And when he had opened the doors of
the house and went out to go on
his way, behold, there was his concubine lying
at the door of the house with her
hands on the threshold.
He said to her, Get up.
Let us be going.
But there was no answer.
Then he put her on the donkey and
the man rose and went away to his
home.
And when he entered his house, he took
a knife.
Taking hold of his concubine, he divided her
limb by limb into twelve pieces and he
sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.
Verse 30, And all who saw it said,
Such a thing...
We're going to have to look at what
the thing is.
It's not the man cutting up the concubine.
You can tell that from the context.
It's what the minute Jebeah did.
Such a thing has never happened.
This seeking to rape the man, this homosexuality,
this wickedness has been seen from the day
the people of Israel came up out of
the land of Egypt until this day.
And then the people, all who saw it,
they're saying, we've got to consider this.
We need to take counsel about this.
We need to get together about this and
we need to speak about it.
Like something has to happen.
And that's exactly what continues on in chapter
20, which we're not going to read chapter
20, but they get together.
They do take counsel.
Verse 7 of chapter 20, Behold you people
of Israel, all of you, give your advice
and counsel here.
They get together.
They have this counsel.
Verse 6 of chapter 20, Because they have
committed an abomination and an outrage in Israel.
And then even in chapter 20, The tribes
of Israel sent men through all the tribe
of Benjamin.
So that's the tribe where all this wickedness
happened.
And they said, what is the evil that
has taken place among you?
How did this evil happen?
And if you know the chapter well, the
men of Benjamin, they defend Beah and there's
a war and there's slaughter.
But brethren, I don't know about you.
I mean, some of you might even, if
your kids are in here, you're thinking, I
don't like this chapter being read with my
kids in here maybe.
I don't know.
That's in God's Word.
It shows the significant darkness that has gotten
to this point.
Now regardless of how you might respond today,
my question isn't how do we take this
and how do we respond to it.
We have a document right here saying how
they responded to this outrage.
Right?
And that's something we want to consider.
How did they respond?
And think about it.
It had been maybe about 300 to 400
years if you do the math, since they
left Egypt.
And now at this moment, it's gotten back
to the point where they were seeing the
acts of wickedness.
And look at v.
30.
It reminded them of the land of Egypt.
It took a couple hundred years here and
now it's like, wait a minute, look what
just happened.
Are we living in Egypt?
Remember the guy?
He didn't want to stop at a town
that wasn't a part of Israel, because he
thought he'd get better treatment going to Gebeah
because it was a tribe of Benjamin, right?
Under Benjamin's reign.
And he goes there and looks at the
treatment he gets.
He gets treated like Lot and Sodom and
Gomorrah.
And so we've got this reemergence of profound
darkness centuries later and the people, they're right
to say, consider it, take counsel, and speak
about it.
We've got to do something about it.
So quickly though, because when you look at
v.
30, if you're just reading this and you
say all who saw it said such a
thing has never happened.
You could easily take the it meaning the
guy cutting up the concubine.
Right?
You could think that's the great wickedness.
But just to make sure in your mind
you realize that's not the thing.
I think we get so shocked by that
that we think, oh wow, that must be
what he's talking about.
No, the focus is on Israel, a nation
in Israel, a tribe in Israel acting as
Sodom and Gomorrah.
We see where their anger is directed as
you read on.
The tribes, they rally to avenge the wickedness
and punish Gebeah.
They don't get angry to go punish the
man, the Levite.
The Levite's head is not on the chopping
block.
It's Gebeah.
It's that city where these men sought to
Sodomize this man.
That's where their anger is fueled towards.
And think about this.
This happened in Gebeah.
The city of Benjamin.
Hosea even speaks about it in chapter 9,
verse 9.
They have deeply corrupted themselves.
And then he has a reference point right
then to refer to, and he says, as
in the days of Gebeah.
He will remember their sin.
He will punish their sin.
That's a point.
You know how the Bible will refer to
Sodom and Gomorrah?
Well, Hosea's referring to this time in Israel.
That's how dark it was.
It became a point of reference for the
depravity that the nation had got to.
And we should be asking, how did it
get to this point?
What's going on here that we would avoid
that as well?
Them exchanging natural relations.
Them having absolute violence towards a person.
And I don't even think that...
There's one other verse in the narrative I
was going to read, but the man who
he stayed at his house wasn't even from
the city.
Which verse was that?
Verse 16 of chapter 19.
Behold, an old man was coming from his
work in the field.
The man was from the hill country of
Ephraim.
He was just sojourning in Gebeah.
You see, he's not even from the city.
This place has gotten to a point of
total darkness.
These acts are so wicked that it brought
about God's divine judgment of fire and brimstone
from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah.
And this man, he had no angels there
to deliver him from the wickedness of these
people.
Now, is there a great indifference in this
Levite as well?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you,
when you read verse 28, he walks out
the door and he says, get up, let's
get going.
It's just shocking.
The same man who spoke kindly to her
in the chapter before to get her to
come back with him is now saying, let's
get up.
This woman, it's like he's treating her like
there was just some boxing match and got
knocked down and it's like, hey, get up,
let's get out of the ring.
I mean, this woman was just severely abused
and harmed and ultimately murdered by these men.
This is an outrageous thing that is happening
right here.
It's absolutely horrible to think about this happening.
Alright, now, as horrendous as that is, what
the man's treatment of the woman is, it's
nothing compared to those of Jebeah.
Now, this Levite then, he cut up sacrifices.
This Levite, who would usually cut up a
sacrifice, he's used to doing that.
What does he do here?
He cuts up his concubine.
He just was at the father-in-law's
house.
He cuts up her body to send one
piece of the body to all of the
different tribes.
And I think this implies that there is
a letter that was attached, right?
If you look at v.
30, all who saw it, they said, well,
let's consider it, take counsel and speak.
Clearly, just receiving some body part isn't going
to make you understand what's going on.
Right?
I think it's implied there was something communicated.
So I look at the body part.
It's like an attachment to the letter in
order to provoke an outrage in the people
to recognize this is as dark as it's
got and we've got to take counsel.
We've got to consider it.
We've got to do something about it.
And that's exactly what it brings about as
we see in chapter 20.
You know how it is.
You get some email and it has something
in there about the atrocities that are happening
in some foreign country.
Well, that email has pictures attached to it
of kids being brutally harmed or women being
brutally harmed.
That kind of makes that email have a
greater weight to it.
I think that's the whole idea here.
Here this letter is, listen to what happened
in Gabia.
This is happening in Israel.
I stopped her to get hospitality.
This is what I got.
And here this attachment is, this member of
my concubine, for you all to recognize the
absolute darkness and to count on a moral
outrage being awakened in the people, which is
exactly what happened.
There is an outrage.
They do get together.
They do counsel.
And that is applicable to us, right?
There are certain things that it's kind of
like child training or other areas where you
don't deal with it severely enough, right?
Eli disciplined his sons, but it wasn't severe
enough, so their wicked behavior continued, right?
The same type of thing can happen in
the church or anywhere in life where something
is so severe and you don't have the
right response.
Well, this guy, it's like he's provoking them
to have a serious response.
I mean, this is Sodom and Gomorrah v.
2.0. We've got to do something about
this.
So there's times that you need to be
a whistleblower, so to speak.
You need to expose the corruption on a
grander scale.
And you need to sound an undeniable alarm.
That's how I take him getting home, thinking
about all of it, and he doesn't just
do nothing.
Verse 29, divides his concubine up limb by
limb and sends her to the territories.
And for chapter 20, you can see what
it led to.
It led to war.
Sadly though, the nation's already this dark.
They didn't wipe out all the Benjamites.
They didn't kill them all.
What, 600 were left alive?
And what happened next?
They had made a rash oath that we
can't let them marry any of our women.
Remember, this is people supporting what happened at
Gebeah.
And what does Israel then proceed to do?
Let's get these guys some wives.
And hey, you know what?
There's this one tribe, they didn't actually come
to the battle.
Let's go kill all their men, kill all
their women and their children, but keep all
the virgins and give them to these Benjamites.
And they did that.
How many women did they get?
400.
So they didn't have enough.
They needed 200 more women.
And you know what this dark nation at
this point did?
They sanctioned abduction and kidnapping of women.
And there's this festival going on and they
just tell them to go out there and
kidnap those women and take them away.
And you know what?
As I was reading that, I thought that's
almost exactly what happened in Israel at that
festival.
Hamas comes into the festival and they start
kidnapping these different women and taking them back
to the Gaza Strip.
I mean, that's what this nation is doing
to try to keep this one tribe alive.
Imagine.
Imagine all of this happening right here.
All this evil taking place.
Verse 21 is where all that happens.
Verse 20, go lie in ambush in the
vineyards and watch.
They're endorsing kidnapping these women.
Well, you had some type of oath, right?
We better not break the oath.
But you know what?
We'll sanction a little trick here.
You can go and just take these women
away from their families and then we're going
to tell the families they can't do anything
about it.
It's dark.
I mean, do you want to live in
this nation at this point?
You want to move there?
This is how the news is?
You guys want to relocate?
To Gabiah?
To Benjamin?
To Israel?
So, how did it end up like this?
And they were even sending people to Benjamin.
I pointed out chapter 20, verse 12.
Similar question.
What evil is this that's taken place?
How did this evil take place?
They're asking that question.
How could such a wicked thing take place?
So I'm asking the same question because they're
asking that question.
And I trust you're asking that question as
well.
So that's when I want to now transition
to look at one of the answers that
I think really stands out that is given
leading in to all of this.
And so turn to Joshua.
Go back to the left.
Joshua 24, and then we're going to look
at the start of Judges.
Everything is not at this point yet right
here, but something stood out devotionally where I
thought this is very interesting.
This gets brought up at the end of
Joshua.
It gets brought up at the start of
Judges.
This keeps getting mentioned here.
And I think this is application for us.
Joshua 24, verse 29, After these things Joshua
the son of Nun, the servant of the
Lord, died, being 110 years old.
They buried him in his own inheritance at
Timnasera, which is in the hill country of
Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gath.
The hill country of Ephraim.
That's where that one guy came from who
was staying in Gebeah.
Verse 31.
This is the verse.
Look at verse 31.
Israel served the Lord all the days of
Joshua and all the days of the elders
who outlived Joshua and had known all the
work that the Lord did for Israel.
That's interesting.
Some versions they render it all those who
had personally experienced the power of God.
The works of God.
Who personally knew the Lord.
And look at verse 31.
They served.
That word is worship.
They worshiped the Lord.
But it stopped at some point.
What led to the diminishing of the worshiping
of the Lord that is mentioned right there?
Joshua dies, and then all these other people
who were alive and had witnessed firsthand the
power of God, they die.
They die.
Now, let's go further into judges.
Real fast, another version.
Renders verse 31.
Listen to this.
These men had experienced firsthand everything the Lord
had done for Israel.
When you take out the people who firsthand
had experienced the power of God, who walked
with the Lord, who knew the Lord, you
take them out.
Look where Israel ends up.
The interesting thing is when those men were
alive, their influence was powerful enough that a
nation of people was at least going through
the motions and doing the very things that
they supposedly were supposed to be doing.
But you take those men out of the
picture who truly knew the Lord, something right
here that happens.
It seems like their worship it hinged upon
Joshua and the elders who firsthand had experienced
the Lord.
Meaning, they were just going through the motions
like a child with their parents.
You remove the parents and you see what
the child truly desires.
And we see for a younger generation to
continue in the path of the older, they
need to not only inherit the knowledge and
the truth in the head, but the younger
generation has to personally experience and know the
reality of the Lord and know the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Did not Christ say, this is eternal life,
that they might know Me, the one true
God, and Jesus Christ Whom I have sent.
Salvation is to know the Lord.
It's not just in the head.
The Pharisees are a New Testament example of
people who had a lot of intellect.
They had a lot of head knowledge.
And so, you can just have traditions.
You can know truth.
You can look up to good, wise people.
But that is not enough if it isn't
a reality in your own life.
And everything doesn't just nosedive into a crash
right away.
There is a drifting.
And if you look at the start of
Judges, you see what he said right there.
And then you go into the start of
Judges.
We're going to see the same thing mentioned
in a minute, but look at chapter 1.
Look at this issue of partial obedience that
really starts to happen.
Verse 27, Manasseh did not drive out the
inhabitants.
Okay, well, you know Manasseh.
They did that.
Verse 29, Ephraim did not drive out the
Canaanites.
Okay, now it's just two of them.
Verse 30, Zebulun did not drive out the
inhabitants.
Verse 31, Asher did not drive out the
inhabitants.
Verse 33, Naphtali did not drive out the
inhabitants of Bethshemesh or the inhabitants of Bethana,
so that they lived among the Canaanites, the
inhabitants of the land.
Nevertheless, they ended up putting them to forced
labor.
Right in verse 34, the Amorites pressed the
people of Dan back into the hill country
for they didn't allow them to come down
to the plain.
And the Amorites persisted in dwelling in Mount
Geriz.
So you've got this partial obedience.
Then you go to chapter 2.
Now the angel of the Lord, verse 1,
went up from Gilgal, and he said, I
brought you up from Egypt, and I brought
you into the land that I swore to
give to your fathers.
I said I will never break My covenant
with you, and you shall make no covenant
with the inhabitants of this land.
You shall break down their altar, but you
have not obeyed My voice.
So they're not obeying.
They have a partial obedience here.
And then look what he brings up.
Verse 6, When Joshua dismissed the people, the
people of Israel went each to his own
inheritance to take possession of the land.
Verse 7, And the people served the Lord.
He's basically reiterating the same thing.
All the days of Joshua and all the
days of the elders who outlived Joshua who
had seen all the great work that the
Lord had done for Israel.
Verse 10, And all that generation were also
gathered to their fathers, and there arose another
generation after them who did not know the
Lord or the work that He had done
for Israel.
They hadn't personally known the Lord.
They didn't know His work.
You remove the people who do, and then
you see who's really going through the motions.
Or who's just going through the motions and
who isn't really walking in an intimate way
with Christ.
And we read these sad words, Judges 2
.17, They soon turned aside from the way
in which their fathers had walked, who had
obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they
did not do so.
To me, that's just a scary verse, right?
Especially even being a father, and you think
of trying to instill the truth and the
Gospel in your children, and the last thing
you want to do is you die and
you're the influence holding those children's religion together
and it's not something that they have as
a reality of them in Christ.
And all of a sudden, that restraint is
now removed.
And they go and live in sin.
I've seen that happen.
And some of those people thankfully got converted
at a later point after their parent died
and was gone.
Then look at v.
19.
But whenever the judge died, they turned back
and were more corrupt than their father.
So again, restraint.
When one of the judges is alive and
he's leading, there's restraint.
But you take them out of the picture,
and they're not going to drop any of
the practices or their stubborn ways.
And so, it's clearly showing that individuals can
end up mechanically adopting their leader's beliefs and
values similar to shadowing their footsteps without genuinely
grasping the convictions for themselves.
That metaphor of shadowing someone's footsteps, it underscores
the idea of you're following closely behind someone.
You're mimicking every move without engaging deeply or
understanding the path you're actually on.
You're following it, but you don't understand it.
It's not personal.
It's just doing something because someone else does
it, not because you really believe in it
yourself.
You could say it's like copying someone else's
homework.
You might get all the right answers, but
you're not actually learning anything.
You're getting it in the head.
It's not in the heart.
It's short-term memory.
And the real test is, let's say if
you're a kid at school and someone was
actually copying all the answers, you get the
kid who really knows the material, you remove
him, what's going to happen to the person
who's left?
Do they themselves know that material?
And I would say clearly, to truly experience
and know the Lord is to be truly
born again.
To have genuine faith.
The problem with Israel is we find even
Paul saying most of them died in the
wilderness in unbelief.
You have a nation of people who are
a part of a physical nation, but most
of them had not been circumcised in the
heart.
And what does the law even produce?
What do we see the law doing in
the New Testament?
It's arousing sin in different people.
Israel kept getting darker and darker because the
majority of Israel did not truly know Christ.
They didn't know the Lord.
They didn't have a new heart.
They didn't have a different spirit.
It says Caleb is a man with a
different spirit because he's followed Me wholly, therefore
he will enter the land.
So this is a caution for our church,
for all of us.
If we forget what it truly means to
be a Christian, or if we drop our
standards of what genuine conversion is and what
is an authentic characteristic of someone who's following
Christ, and we just start adhering to traditions,
we stand a generation away from vanishing.
And look, that happens.
You get churches, they lower what it really
means to be a Christian.
And not to harshly pick on Presbyterians, but
this happens more with Presbyterians because they already
have the idea of our kids are part
of the covenant and in some way they're
good to go.
So they're already lowering a standard right there
where these kids kind of grow up with
some expectation, well, I'm part of God's covenant
people.
It's all going to be okay.
And you look at church history and you
look at those who embrace some of those
views, you don't find generations and generations lasting
there.
You find compromise happening.
I'm not saying that can't happen in a
Baptist church.
It absolutely can if you lower the doctrine
of regeneration and don't talk about what true
conversion is.
But a few leaders can influence a whole
nation, yet the whole nation not have reality.
And I remember getting converted when God saved
me.
That was one of the things I had
to ask myself.
I thought, what if all the men I
really respect became an atheist tomorrow?
Would I still follow Christ?
I played through that scenario in my own
mind.
And the whole point of it was to
ask myself the question, is my knowledge of
Christ personal?
Or have I just heard all this truth,
heard all this doctrine and with joy received
it, but there's nothing in my own soul
of me walking personally with Christ for myself?
And yes, thank God that when you're saved,
you have older Christians and they could be
like big trees, that they're sturdier, their root
system is bigger, and when the winds of
trials come, the little trees are being protected
and everything, but eventually when those old trees
die out and all you've got is the
younger generation, you're going to find who really
has a deep root.
But some of those trees, they might topple
over with those winds of trials and the
cares of this life and it proved that
the faith there wasn't the real thing.
So do you firsthand know Christ for yourself?
Or do you live off the reality of
others?
When you think about firsthand, firsthand experience, it
refers to knowledge gained through direct involvement.
It's not second-hand sources or accounts.
It's a direct involvement of you walking and
knowing and believing in Christ for yourself.
Brethren, it's amazing.
Joshua alive and those elders alive and how
much Israel was towing the line.
And yet, they die off and it's just
like...
vanishes into depravity.
Now this in no way means we don't
tell the works of God to those who
have yet to know the Lord.
We do that.
We better do that.
Listen to Psalm 78, verse 3.
What we have heard and learned, and you
know why we tell people the works of
God?
You know why us as parents should try
to journal and remember the great things God
has done and relay that to our children
and read our children biographies where they see
the great things God did in the lives
of other individuals?
And why you should rejoice at the Thanksgiving
prayer meeting?
Or why we should ask for praise requests?
Because that's going to show people as they're
seeing what God is doing, the kids are
going to realize this God has a value
and He is worthy.
He's worthy.
And that might be the very catalyst to
get them to trust the Lord, is they
recognize His faithfulness in your own life.
And so just because there's a danger where
people live off the reality of others, it
doesn't mean you conceal all of that.
But Psalm 78, what we have heard and
learned, that which our ancestors have told us,
we will not hide from their descendants.
We will tell the next generation about the
Lord's praiseworthy acts, about His strength and the
amazing things He has done.
He established a rule in Jacob.
He set up a law in Israel.
He commanded our ancestors to make His deeds
known to their descendants so that the next
generation, children yet to be born, might know
about them.
They will grow up and tell their descendants
about them.
I mean, are we doing that?
That's one application here.
You know what you could do?
You could all the more talk about the
Lord, talk about His praiseworthiness, talk about His
deliverances, testify to His name before your kids,
before brethren in this church, not grumble, not
be anxious, not complain.
That's what the Israelites did and it spread
like a canker sore to all the other
individuals.
How long did Moses have to be gone
for Israel to decide that there's someone else
worthy to worship?
Forty days.
And they were impatient with the delay and
they went up to Aaron and they said,
get up, make a golden calf for us
to bow down and worship.
Forty days.
Isn't that incredible?
Joel 1 says tell your children about it.
Have your children tell their children and their
children the following generation.
So yes, we've got to be taking the
truth and communicating it to the younger generation.
As Paul said in 2 Timothy 1, I'm
reminded of your sincere faith, Timothy, a faith
that first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and
your mother Eunice.
Now listen to this.
And now I am sure it dwells in
you as well.
Paul is certain.
The true, saving faith and the knowledge in
the walk with the Lord Jesus Christ that
Lois and Eunice had, Paul could look at
Timothy and it was evident enough in his
life that he was sure that that dwelt
in him.
It wasn't just head knowledge.
It wasn't just going through the motions.
It wasn't just cheating on someone's homework.
It wasn't just following someone else's footsteps.
But Timothy was going in his own path,
he and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But Judges 2.10, all that generation that
gathered to their fathers, there arose another generation
who didn't know the Lord.
They didn't know His words.
They hadn't experienced His goodness themselves.
They didn't feel deeply moved by how great
He is.
They didn't feel thankful for worshiping Him for
the amazing things He had done.
There's a generation that forgot God.
But they didn't know they were forgetting God.
By the fact they didn't annihilate the Canaanites
and they didn't fully drive them out, right
there you knew they forgot God.
Where on earth do you get the idea
that you're supposed to wipe out all of
them?
Don't you remember what others have done who
didn't fully annihilate?
That's what the Lord told them to kill.
Don't you remember what happened to them?
It's easier once the first group, well, they
didn't drive them fully out, so you know
what, I guess we don't really have to
drive them fully out.
It just trickles down.
It corrupts the nation as a whole.
So brethren, this is a call here to
truly pursue God.
We're not going to coast in on the
coattails of any other person.
It's going to be you and the Lord
Jesus Christ on that great day of judgment.
I'm going to be there.
It's not going to be you all.
It's going to be me and God.
It is appointed for James Jennings once to
die and after that, the judgment.
And all of my thoughts, my motives, of
my heart, they're going to be disclosed.
And if Paul, the mighty apostle, would even
say he doesn't judge himself yet, he says,
let the Lord judge me on that great
day.
Because Paul recognized some things in his life
might not appear to be what they really
are.
But it didn't mean he didn't have confidence.
He did.
He said, I don't know of anything against
myself.
But we've got to pursue God.
Think about it in this way.
In your house, you've got some sort of
background noise, right?
You move into a new home.
They already have a fridge.
Wow, that fridge is really loud.
It kind of draws your attention, right?
Well, what happens five months in?
It doesn't draw your attention anymore.
You're not thinking about how to fix it
unless you did fix it.
It becomes background noise.
Well, it blends in.
Things that used to bother you, your neighbor's
barking dog, is now background noise.
Brethren, that's what happened in Judges with so
many of these people.
It was at the forefront when Joshua was
there.
But you start taking all these old leaders
out who it was a reality to them.
They spoke about it in a way where
they really believed what they were talking about
and they really believed what they were saying.
And you strip all that out of the
nation and all of a sudden, it's not
drawing attention like it used to to their
souls.
It's not awakening them as it was.
It no longer commands their attention.
It's lost its ability to command your attention.
You and I don't want that to happen.
We don't want that to happen where you
read about the divine, powerful works of God
in the Scriptures, and it doesn't have any
impact upon your soul.
This is an issue of whether or not
you and I see the Lord as worthy
to worship.
That's what happened to Israel when Moses has
gone 40 days.
They had hearts that wanted to worship something.
And he's taken so long.
I noticed this worship of a golden calf.
How stupid as that is that they did
that.
They didn't do that.
It only took 40 days.
And they'd just seen miraculous deliverances and Red
Sea split in half.
How on earth do you do that?
That shows how much we need reminders.
Turn it back a couple pages.
Joshua 23.
You see, this is really an issue of
worship.
This is really about worshiping and serving the
Lord.
In these verses, the ESV renders it serve.
But many versions render it worship.
Your heart is prostrate and bowing down to
that which you find is worthy of your
heart's affections.
Right?
Joshua 23.11 Be careful, very careful therefore,
to love the Lord your God.
For if you turn back and cling to
the remnant of these nations, and then he
goes on right there.
You see the issue there?
Careful to love.
Verse 24, I am about to go the
way of all the earth, and you know
in your hearts and souls, all of you,
not one word has failed.
I mean, they knew it.
He's saying you guys know it.
Not one word has failed of all the
good things the Lord your God promised concerning
you.
Everything has come to pass.
Not one of them has failed.
You'd think that would be enough for them
to trust God once He's dead.
And it wasn't.
Chapter 24, verse 14, And
therefore, fear the Lord and worship Him, serve
Him in sincerity and in faithfulness.
And then the evidence you're doing that is
you put away the gods, right?
If you're saying you worship God and you're
holding on to false idols and sin, it's
not sincere.
That's his point.
Pretty simple, right?
Verse 14, there's a true repentance.
There's an evidence of that.
Verse 21, And the people said to Joshua,
No, but we will serve the Lord.
See in this dialogue here, they're saying we
are going to serve the Lord.
And then Joshua said to the people that
they're not going to serve the Lord.
Verse 19, he says that you're not able
to serve the Lord.
And then that's when we led into verse
31 that I already read.
They served all the days of Joshua.
My point is, it's an issue of worship.
It's an issue of who do you find
worthy and valuable of serving.
It's not just does the older generation find
the Lord worthy of serving and valuable, but
do you yourself?
And I thought this is actually very similar
to Romans 1.
It definitely connects.
Okay, homosexuality is now in Israel.
How did they get there?
And you could say, well, they didn't give
thanks to God, right?
Romans 1 says they don't give thanks.
They don't honor God.
God gives them over to depravity and they
exchange natural relations.
Well, it's the same idea.
It's an issue of worship.
Right?
They don't give thanks.
And they don't honor God.
And God responds and He gives them over.
Well, that's exactly what happened to the judges.
I'm not going to worship this God.
He's not faithful.
I'm going to question Him.
I'm going to grumble at Him.
I'm going to be anxious and question Him.
Matthew 6, Jesus connects anxiety to unbelief.
That's what the devil wants us to do
to doubt the character of God.
The moment you and I can't thank the
Lord, brethren, if you can't thank God, you
can end up at the end of the
book of Judges.
Just not thanking God.
That's the whole point of Romans 1.
They don't honor God.
They don't give thanks.
God gives them over.
You know how important it is that you
thank the Lord and thank Him for trials
rather than we grumble?
So what does this mean for you and
I?
First, to know the Lord, we must face
trials.
Look at Judges 2.22. This is very
interesting.
He says, I will no longer drive out
before them any of the nations that Joshua
left when he died.
Why am I not going to drive the
nations out?
Verse 22, in order to test Israel by
them.
Whether they will take care to walk in
the way of the Lord as their fathers
did, or whether they will not.
God allows these nations to remain to see
what they're going to do.
You think of your trials like that?
There's trials that you've got, that I've got.
God has that there to see.
Do we find Him valuable of worship?
Do we personally know this Christ and find
Him worthy?
Isn't that what James 1.3 says?
The testing of your faith produces what?
Unbelief and doubt and morbidity.
What's it say?
The testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
Trials have a purpose.
You and I have to personally experience the
Lord.
And you know what?
I can read every biography on planet earth
of every missionary who got martyred.
And I can read the whole Old Testament.
And I can read everything about the Apostle
Paul.
Not law.
Apostle Paul.
10,000 times over.
Does that mean I'm still going to have
to experience something to know the Lord?
God's going to still have to test me.
I can hear of others' tests.
I can hear of others' trials.
I can read about them.
And yes, I can glean from that that
God is faithful.
Wow, if I face that, I can trust
God.
I don't have to doubt.
Look at Him.
Look at how He delivered this person right
there.
But we're still going to have to personally
experience the Lord in the face of our
trials so that He doesn't become background noise.
When a trial happens, certain truths from the
Bible that were starting to become background noise,
it's like they get amplified all of a
sudden.
It's like loud again.
And you're gripped with the reality of that
truth.
That's the means of God to keep us.
We even looked at that at Grace Group.
God putting a thorn in Paul's flesh to
make him weak because the Lord's power is
manifest when we're weak.
I mean, the Lord has a purpose of
giving you a thorn.
And you're asking Him to remove it.
And the Lord is saying, no, it's actually
for your good.
And the moment you get content and you
rejoice in the thorn, whatever it might symbolize
in your life, then you're going to find
a nearness to the Lord.
So another thing, what can I do to
know the Lord more?
Well, Psalm 78 said, make known His deeds.
Brethren, we want to be a people who
make known the deeds of God.
When you're at Grace Group or somewhere and
one of us asks you, does anyone have
something that you want to praise God for
this week?
Or anyone have a testimony of some way
that God has delivered you?
Don't just look at that and say, oh
yeah, I'm shy, I don't want to share
that.
That right there can be used to stir
up and show an impact to all those
other people there and help them in a
way that you might not see.
And if you shut your mouth, because you're
going to take the card if you have
a shy personality, you might be preventing others
from being edified and exhorted and their hearts
from being hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
I mean, we've got to exhort one another
every day.
We need each other speaking the praises of
the Lord Jesus Christ into our lives and
telling others of what He has done.
Who knows what the year 1900 is known
for?
Anyone?
The year 1900 is the year that 2
,000 Chinese Protestant believers were killed, 93 missionaries
were martyred, and 74 of their children were
murdered.
Right?
The Boxer Rebellion in China.
Up until that point, Hudson Taylor, he had
taken comfort in the fact that in 32
years, not one missionary had died from violence
from the Chinese.
And here, in one year, 93 died, 74
of their kids.
One of them, Lizzie Atwater, a young pregnant
woman.
Here she's facing this trial.
She's going into this.
It's her and the Lord.
And she writes this letter, August 3, 1900,
Dear ones, I long for the sight of
your dear faces, but I fear we shall
not meet on earth.
I'm preparing for the end very quietly and
calmly.
The Lord is wonderfully near, and He will
not fail me.
You hear that?
He won't fail me.
I was very restless and excited while there
seemed a chance to live, but God has
taken away that feeling.
I now just pray for the grace to
meet the terrible end bravely.
The pain will soon be over.
Oh, the sweetness of welcoming love above.
In 12 days, she wrote some more.
I don't have time to read that, but
12 days later, her and her unborn child
and six missionaries are hacked to death by
a bunch of guards in 1900.
And you read about all of that and
you hear about these trials and you find
God was faithful to them.
They personally knew the Lord.
They walked with Christ.
They found His promises to be such that
you can trust Him when you're standing in
the furnace.
It's not a matter of in that moment
believing that.
You've got to be walking in that way
prior to that.
We're about out of time.
What does it mean for you and I?
We need to pass the baton well in
our church, and I'd say this, in our
parenting.
We don't want to be people who make,
as they call it, making little Pharisees.
Making kids who it's all about rules and
regulations and laws and you can see all
that happened with the Gotherdite movement from that.
You see what it created.
It created a generation bitter at the God
of the Bible, because they had the God
of the Bible wrongly represented to them, because
it wasn't about Christ.
It wasn't about personally walking with the Lord
Jesus Christ and knowing Him.
It was about all manner of external dos
and don'ts and all of that.
And that has the appearance of stopping the
indulgence of the flesh, but it is of
no value.
So you and I, we've got to look
at our parenting, right?
You will have an impact, either for good
or for bad, on your children in your
own life.
The same goes for me.
So we want to pass the baton well.
Maybe what you need is a renewal.
What do I mean by renewal?
You need your own walk with Christ to
be revived in your own life.
You remember Josiah when they found the book
of the law and they read it?
Remember the impact it did upon that man?
He said, go inquire of the Lord for
me, for the people concerning the words of
this book that have been found.
I mean, he was struck by the Word
of God in such a way.
Listen to Duncan Campbell.
God used Duncan Campbell in a mighty way
in different revivals.
But look at a point that he got
to in his own life.
He described his heart condition as a barren
wilderness in which it had been for years.
He felt that he had to make a
move from his present situation.
This was a great crisis of his life.
You see, it's not enough just I've been
walking with the Lord near in the past
and I had reality then.
It's got to be maintained.
Campbell was preaching at a conference on having
a deep spiritual life.
He says this, as I sat listening to
Dr. Fitch giving his last message, I suddenly
became conscious of my unfitness to be in
the pulpit.
I saw the barrenness of my life and
ministry.
I saw the pride.
That's what led to it.
The pride of my own heart.
How very humiliating it was to discover that
I was proud of the fact that I
was booked to speak at five conventions that
year.
That night, in desperation on the floor of
my study, I cast myself afresh on the
mercy of God.
He heard my cry for pardon and cleansing.
And as I lay prostrate before Him, wave
after wave of divine consciousness came over me,
and the love of the Savior flooded my
being.
And in that hour, I knew my life
and ministry could never be the same again.
If any small measure of God has been
pleased to use me, it all is because
of that night.
Then he goes on, the author, Campbell remembered
that his young daughter Sheena had asked him,
Daddy, God used you in revival in the
past.
How is it that you don't see revival
now?
The question devastated him.
Alone with God that night, he saw thousands
from the highlands and the islands of Scotland
going to hell.
He had to go to them.
There, in the presence of God, he went
through an upheaval of enormous dimensions.
This was a pivotal point in his life.
The battle was on.
It was a night of encounter with the
Almighty.
God touched his life again and restored him
to full fellowship and blessing.
He would ever after say how glad he
was that God was the God of new
beginnings.
Look, that experience he had was unique and
it might not be the same thing, but
you get the point.
You had a man who God had used
in many ways and he was getting in
the season for years of dryness.
It was to the point he didn't even
recognize it like Samson, the Spirit of God,
had left him and he was unaware of
it.
He could get up there in a pulpit
at a conference and he could preach at
these five conventions and here, the Spirit of
God, that one meeting just shows him this
isn't real in your life.
It's up here.
You're just following in the steps of another.
It's not a personal, experiential walk with the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And here God decks his pride and draws
him near.
And so that's good news for us.
The Lord is not one to leave us.
So, one other thing I think.
I've got a couple more minutes.
What can you do more in your own
life to know the Lord in a deeper
way?
Yes, be in this book.
Yes, love the brethren, specifically those who are
difficult to love in the church.
Like me, probably.
And my son Boaz.
But, I was just listening last night, laying
in bed, chapter 11 of Hudson Taylor's biography.
And you know what Hudson did?
He wanted to go to China so bad.
But he thought, if my faith fells over
there, it's one thing for it to be
a trial here.
And so he put a test.
He determined he was never going to remind
his boss to pay him.
He wasn't going to do it.
He was going to pray.
Every time his boss forgot to pay him
on a quarterly basis, he would pray for
God to provide.
And it's a lot longer in context.
But it's just remarkable the test of faith.
And after he went through all of that,
he ended up giving all his money away
to a family that he was initially reluctant
to and then he couldn't get food, he
couldn't pay his rent.
And you know what the Lord did?
His boss then remembered he needs the money,
and then Hudson's all excited and then he
says, oh, but I already sent it all
to the bank.
And so Hudson wasn't going to have the
money for that day and he was praying.
And one of the richest men that was
a client came at 10 at night.
Who gets a rich man at 10 at
night to come pay a bill?
The Lord does.
And that man paid the bill and then
the person Hudson worked for, he went and
he gave him that money and Hudson was
able to pay all of his bills.
And he realized at that moment, he knew
God can be trusted.
And so think, brethren, are there ways in
your life that you could more trust the
Lord and step out in faith?
It almost sounds presumptuous to say I'm not
going to remind my boss to pay me,
I'm just going to pray.
Is that presumptuous?
Doesn't the Bible talk about God controlling the
hearts of kings?
So, I thought that's a creative thing Hudson
Taylor did.
And it drew him nearer to the Lord.
He wasn't walking in the footsteps of someone's
biography.
He was creating his own biography as he
walked with the living God.
Let's pray.
Father, Lord, we don't want that to happen.
We don't want the Joshua's and the leaders,
those who walk near to God, to die
off in this church.
And then the younger generation, they don't drive
out the inhabitants of sin in their heart.
They don't cut off the right hands that
caused them to sin.
They lose a radical desire for holiness.
For love.
Lord, what an emphasis You put on loving
one another.
Lord, that city in Gibeah, they didn't love
that man.
They didn't love that woman.
They were selfish animals.
And that man threw his concubine out like
a piece of meat for a bunch of
wolves.
Lord, we look at that.
It's so dark.
It's so disgusting.
It's so depraved.
And yet, Father, here we've looked at the
beginning of it.
These men died off.
And the generation had not seen the works
who didn't personally know the Lord.
Look where they ended up.
Lord, we want to personally know You.
We want You to prove Yourself faithful in
our lives as we walk with You, Lord.
We want to know You in a personal
and an intimate way.
And so, Lord, I pray You would do
certain things in my brothers' and sisters' lives
for them.
Lord, I know as a parent, there's times
that I want to get alone with one
of my kids and maybe pray or take
them somewhere and talk.
It's just me and them.
It's not all six of them.
And Lord, we're thankful for the times when
we're all gathered and You draw near.
Lord, I pray You would draw near.
Not in some false emotional false fire, but
Lord, a real drawing near as Romans 8
.16 says, Lord, the spirit bearing witness with
their spirit that they are a child of
God.
Lord, where You just pull out the papers
and You just put it right in their
face and You show them, You are my
adopted child.
It's done.
It's finished.
It's the real deal, Lord, that they would
experience the witness of the Holy Spirit in
their heart.
That there would be an inner reality of
knowing that You are their Father.
That You love them.
Lord, is that something too small to ask
that You would do for Your people, Lord?
That it would give us a greater boldness
in our own lives to honor You in
every way we can?
And so, Lord, do help us.
Help us, Father, to be like Eunice and
Lois and so instill the truth in our
kids that we can look and we can
say, I'm sure that faith dwells in them.
Lord, not maybe or whatever, but there's a
certainty of it.
So, Lord, help us.
Help us to walk with You.
Lord, help us to stand in all of
Your works to worship You.
Lord, You are worthy of worship and praise.
Lord, forgive us the times we don't worship
You as we ought.
Father, we don't hold You in honor as
we should.
We don't give thanks.
Lord, there's times we don't thank You.
We don't give thanks.
Lord, I repent of that.
Help us to be a thankful people, a
people who wants to praise You among the
great congregation, to lift our lips in praise
of You because You're worthy.
Lord, show us more of Your worthiness.
We thank You in Christ's name, Amen.