Promise Breakers

“Promise Breakers” Judges 1:1-2:23

This morning we open our Bibles to the book we know as Judges. Judges, the book, is not familiar to most of us, although its characters are. We have heard of Gideon, Samson, Deborah and the rest. For most these characters are spiritual heroes, people for whom to name our children and examples we believe we should follow. Nevertheless, the actual history told in Judges is far from that popular conception and nothing like a tour de force of Israel’s most virtuous leaders. Instead what we read about is Israel’s spiritual and moral failure and momentary leaders who themselves are deeply flawed. According Judges 17:6 & 21:25, it was a time when “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Sound familiar? For these reasons, Judges speaks to the world we live in—a time when God’s people feel threatened and are seduced by the idolatries of the day. Let’s pick up the action in chapter two.

Introduction:

We’ve all heard variations of the joke about the catholic priest, the Jewish rabbi and Presbyterian pastor who were together in the fishing boat or in the airplane. Those jokes are usually good for a laugh; they poke fun at our differences and often remind us of how much we share in common. Today, however, such jokes require even greater representation of diversity. According to one pastor, now we have to add to the priest, rabbi and preacher, “a Buddhist monk, a Muslim imam, an Indian guru, a New Age spiritualist, a Wiccan witch, a Native American elder, a Mongolian shaman, an African witch doctor, a Haitian voodoo practitioner, and an aggressive atheist.” (from Chuck Warnock’s blog). Somehow the humor in this gets lost, doesn’t it?

It is a fact of our modern world; the dominant trait of our cultural world is pluralism. Regardless of our convictions about such things, there is no longer any one privileged morality, rational explanation for the world, political philosophy, or favored religion. We live among peoples who serve a wide variety of rival gods—not only those formally recognized by other religions, but also the secular gods of wealth, achievement, science, perfection, power, pleasure and celebrity. Not just in our biggest cities, but everywhere everyone experiences the dissonance and difficulty created by the confluence of the world’s diversity in our culture.

Of course, there are many advantages to this situation. We can learn wonderful things about far away cultures that have come to our doorstep. We get to eat exotic foods. We can tell that many more people about Jesus Christ. We don’t have to get on airplane to do cross-cultural ministry; we have only to walk out our front door.

Still, among those committed to the historic Christian faith the more common responses are either 1) fear over the loss of privileged positions of power and/or 2) yielding to the temptations the pluralistic culture presents to us. As the quote by James Hunter in the bulletin makes clear, pluralism makes it hard to remain faithful. As the quote by James Hunter in the bulletin makes clear, pluralism makes it hard to remain faithful. 

A clear example of compromise is illustrated by the World Council of Churches who in 1983 declared:

Nevertheless, we sometimes forget that pluralism and the challenges it presents are not new to the people of God. Enter the book of Judges. In this book, which could be better titled the “Book of Deliverers,” we witness God’s people confronting a time remarkably similar to our own. As a consequence of Israel’s failure to complete its Divinely-mandated conquest of Canaan, their world became a mixture of threatening powers and seductive idolatries. In what many have described as a “downward spiral”, Judges recounts the spiritual failure of the Israelites. Still, they remain God’s chosen people. And even though they are “promise-breakers”, God cannot break his promises. By his grace, “judges” are raised up to deliver Israel from its oppressors. Amidst this swirl of political powers, idolatrous temptation, moral and spiritual failure and God’s conquering faithfulness, we today learn how to faithfully live for God amidst the myriad of spiritual, secular and political ideologies that vie for our allegiance in the 21st century.

Key Question: That is the question; isn’t it? How do we faithfully follow the Lord Jesus Christ amidst all the options that vie for our allegiance? Chapter two of Judges does a lot to answer that question.

1) Recognize that God’s call does not change (2:1-9)

Before we explore the specific nature of the challenges that pluralism presents, we first need to recognize that God’s call had not changed. No matter what, the Israelites were to remain faithful.

In the first two verses it is clear that that the Israelites had not kept Joshua’s command; they had made alliances with the Canaanites. However, this was disobedience. This demonstrates that the call for them to be a people set-apart or holy to the Lord had not changed. In fact, this call from the Lord and Israel’s failure is really what the entire book of Judges explores.

Yet, how did this situation arise? How did the Israelites come to experience a pluralistic environment? The first nine verses highlight Joshua’s death; this certainly played a major role. Joshua, their great leader, has passed on. After his 110 years, his work was done. In his farewell address, Joshua notes that God had given the Israelites rest from their enemies and “not one thing has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you” (23:13). Still work remained for the Israelites. Now, it would be up to Israel’s tribal leaders to build on the victories secured by Joshua. Israel’s enemies remained in the land and needed to be dispossessed. Their victory had yet to be fully consolidated in every region.

The situation in Israel at the close of Joshua’s life was not unlike the situation our country has faced in the Second Gulf War. Politically, we can argue about the wisdom of President Bush declaring victory so quickly, but the truth was the United States had gained military ascendency. Still, achieving dominance has not removed every challenge. Consolidating that victory has been necessary, which hasn’t been easy I might add.

Application:

The challenge of living between initial victory and its consolidation is a continual theme in Scriptures. It is something parallels are own experience. For example, like the Israelites who were living between the great victories of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan and the eventual Davidic monarchy, we too are mid-story. As Christians, we have experienced and even greater exodus and conquest, the one achieved by Jesus Christ on the cross and through his resurrection. Still, there remains the work of the Gospel to go forth. We have received a great

Conclusion:

So, where does all of this leave us? I suppose I raised more questions than I have answered. What I want us to see this morning is that the world we live in has been lived in by God’s people through the centuries. Though, the challenges are real our God remains true to his promise. For this reason, we don’t have to follow Israel’s example. More and more, by his grace, we can be come promise-keepers too.

But if that is going to happen, we must take an honest inventory of our hearts and examine where the allure of the secular gods actively tempt us, and how we have turned away from the Lord.