WHY ?
"The Anger of God"
Did you know, that for Israel's own good, God chose not to drive some inhabitants from the promise land, even though they would prove to be thorns in Israel's side. "And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land. So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord which He had done for Israel. Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was one hundred and ten years old. And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Heres, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gash. When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which He had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals; and they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they provoked the Lord to anger. They forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Whenever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed" (Judg. 2:6-15).
The faithfulness of Israel was enmeshed with Joshua as the principal leader and with other leaders who participated in the conquest of the promised land. Despite the presence of Joshua and the other leaders of that time, a generation arose that did not know the Lord, or what He has done for Israel. Every generation is dependent on the prior generation. One generation lifts up the faith and the experience of another.
When the prior generation died, so did the faith of the last generation. In reality though, the people served the Lord while Joshua and the other leaders were alive. They worshiped the Lord, but their worship would be redundant if they lost their faith, they didn't have much faith to lose to begin with. Then they stopped believing in the Lord, they started believing in something else: the gods of the pagans who lived around them and promised to meet their needs and satisfied their passions better than the Lord who brought them out of Egypt.
Therefore, instead of being victorious in battle, Israel suffered defeat after defeat. The Lord, in fact, had warned Israel of this eventuality if she forsook Him to worship other gods. See Lev. 26:17 and Deut. 28:25, 31:16-21,and many other places where this is documented.
Israel paid a high price for worshiping other gods. She suffered great distress. Just as Israel became dependant on Joshua and others, some in the Church today, I'm sorry to say, have become overly dependent on their spiritual leaders. We are impressed by their faith, their charisma, and their words so much that sometimes we are not able to separate the truth from untruth!
We also cannot have a relationship with the Lord our God through someone else's relationship with Him. That doesn't work. At their best, spiritual leaders teach a moral dependence on the Lord our God. The goal of spiritual leaders should be to help others become dependent on God's Word.
If we stop looking to the Lord to meet our needs and to satisfy our passions, we will start looking elsewhere. Today we live among people who worship gods that go by the names that are not found in Judges chapter 2, such as Baal and Ashtoreth, but by names very common to today's language; such as money, power, sex and success. These are the "gods" of today's time. And when we look elsewhere, other than our God to things that will destroy us - our God gets angry, yet He loves us. In His loving anger, He leaves us to worshiping false gods. Did you know that one of the pleasures of sin is that you are free to sin more? Anything that is both pleasurable and repeated becomes enslaving, and in the case of sin, increasingly shameful. We know that the punishment for sin is more sin and then death. Like Israel of old, we today, also pay a high price for worshiping other gods. Sin, like the enemies who surrounded Israel, is an attacker - it takes away our freedom and liberty.
Our Lord not only gets angry, He also feels compassion. "Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they would not listen to their judges, but they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked, in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do so. And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed them and harassed them. And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they reverted and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, by following other gods, to serve them and bow down to them. They did not cease from their own doings nor from their stubborn way" (Judges 2:16-19).
The Lord, warning Israel against worshiping other gods, said "You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments" (Ex.20:5-6).
In His anger, He handed His people over to their enemies, but in His compassion He raises up judges to deliver His people from those enemies. Nevertheless, they despised the Lord's intervention on their behalf. The Judges equates the worshiping of other gods, not with adultery but with the even more severe sin of prostitution. The people instantly and continuously offered their worship to other people, and to other gods. Furthermore, whenever a judge died, the people became even more corrupt, just as they were dependent on Joshua and the others, they became dependent on the judges, not on their Creator God, who raised up for them leaders, like Joshua, elders and judges.
Our Lord is a God of deep feelings. He gets angry and He also feels compassion. Why? Because He is passionate about us, but His anger and His compassion are expressions of His love. In His anger, He hands us over to sin so that we might cry out to Him and in His compassion He delivers us in surprising ways, example, often in times of crises, He would delivered Israel through the Judges.
The Lord's intervention is in such a way, He allows us a spiritual confidence and make us feel that all is well. But, the spiritual confidence that it is given us, doesn't last forever. A few of us quickly, easily and continuously return to our previous ways unless we commit ourselves with the help of the Holy Spirit to obey God's laws, statutes and judgments.
We can see that in Judges 2:20 all the way to Judges 3:6. "The anger of the Lord was hot against Israel; and He said, "Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not."
In response to His people increasingly corrupt ways, the Lord gets angry again, although now He is very, very angry. I suspect our Lord's anger intensifies along with His peoples' corruption. The people broke the covenant by worshiping other gods. He stopped calling them "my people." In His anger, He will cease driving out the inhabitants of the Promise Land. He will simply raise up judges who will only temporarily keep them at bay.
Nevertheless, do you realize that our Lord has redemptive intentions for allowing the people to remain in their land? First, He leaves the nations in their hands to test the people to see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and obey the His commandments. In other words, to see whether they would worship Him, or in the face of persistent oppression would the people turn to Him? That was the question and that was the test. By the way, it is not a test our Lord wants to give, but in view of the nature of the apostasy and for the sake of His chosen people, it is a test He must give.
The members of the next generation, not only need to know what God had done for Israel, they also needed to know what He can do today for Israel. They need to take up the sword (God's Word) and know their Lord.
In a blink of an eye, the Israelis lived among the in habitants of the land instead of fighting against them. They not only settled down with pagans, they also married them in violation of the law! The Lord warned them that involvement with pagans is the most intimate relationships would turn their hearts away from the true God. You can read that warning in Ex.34:12, also in Deut. 7:3-4. Indeed, as the verses read, the Israelis served the gods of the pagan nations around them.
Remember the warning issued elsewhere in the Hebrew scriptures applies to today also. Believers in Jesus Christ should not marry outside the faith because by doing so they place their own faith in jeopardy. For example, Solomon's foreign wives turned his heart away from the Lord (1Kings 11:1-8). The Israelis also failed at this.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves us in a world dominated by sin, which God, for our own good, chooses at this time not to vanquish. He ceases to drive sin out just as he ceased to drive out the inhabitants of the Promised Land. He leaves things for two reasons: to test us and to teach us. God uses sin to test us so that when we return to Him in the face of oppression, we will do so sincerely. False worship can be thrilling. Money, sex, power and success has its appeal. That's why we choose them, but in the end they don't liberate us, they enslave us and oppress us! One day, false worship just might surprise us and then we have a choice to make. We can return to our Lord by repenting, or we will just remain unrepentant?
God also uses sin to teach us spiritual warfare. The Israelis who only trusted their leaders had to learn war and we as followers of Jesus Christ, need to learn spiritual warfare. If we seem strangely bent toward sin, towards worshiping false gods, even though we endeavor to worship the true God, then we have something to fight against. And if we have something to fight against - something that we can't conquer of our own, we need help? We find in spiritual warfare that we need our Lord Jesus Christ. In the apostle Paul's words we find"Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil"(Eph.6:11 ).
We need to know, not simply what the Lord has done, but what the Lord can do. Remember that God has not delivered us at least in the way that we have asked Him to. He has done something better. God is teaching us and testing us to show that He is not just giving deliverance; He is giving Himself to us through the Holy Spirit.
We need to learn that as we press forward in our journey, we need to come to understand that every one of our hairs is numbered, like every grain of sand. Many people feel God hasn't delivered them, so they have given up completely on Him - they have lost their faith. All people are weak, but most people don't feel free to open up about their weakness. Therefore, the place where we have been tempted the most, where we have wrestled with God the most; may be the place where we have the most to offer.
God leaves false gods and sinful tendencies in our lives in order to test us so that we might return to Him. That He might teach us spiritual warfare and for the sake of knowing Him. So, if you have been denied the deliverance that you have craved, perhaps our Lord, for your own good, is testing you and teaching you a lesson. Perhaps, He is whispering in your ear, "come closer."
Martin Martinez
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