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Written by Pastor Darrell Cooper
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Thursday, 09 April 2009 14:36 |
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Judges 2:7-23
March 22, 2009 - Lindsborg Cov.
“Which Chair?”
(Teaching children)
Sermon
This morning I want to begin by describing a people, a culture, a nation. As I do that, I would like you to try to guess in your own mind what nation I am describing. OK? Ready?
This nation started out strong. In fact, it had a rather dramatic beginning. Some would even say that the origins of this nation were ordained of God Himself.
It was one nation under God. It was founded by godly men. Its founding national documents expressed their faith in their sovereign Creator. Their legal system used to be based on God’s laws drawn from the Word of God.
As a culture, they used to have a shared set of moral values. For example, there was a time when it was commonly assumed that marriage was between one man and one woman, for life. And they honored the marriage bed by keeping it pure. Children were considered a blessing, a heritage from the Lord, so couples tried to have lots of them and large families were common. God was once honored among these people. Most people participated in corporate worship regularly. And they did not work on the Sabbath.
Their national holidays were often religious and were also based on the teaching and traditions of the Word of God. One of the most prominent of their holidays was Independence Day. It was an annual celebration of the day they threw off the chains of tyranny from the nation that had oppressed them and declared their independence and celebrated their freedom and acknowledged God’s role in granting them that freedom.
That is the way it used to be. But it is not so anymore. Over the years they have gradually drifted further and further from God. God is no longer honored in the public square. People seem greedy to pursue wealth. In fact, materialism has become like a god in the culture.
Pluralism and multiculturalism reign. Whereas they used to respect and worship the one true God of the Bible, now many foreign religions have crept in and it is not politically correct to criticize or reject any of those other religions.
Tolerance has become the most honored virtue in the culture. Behavior that a generation ago would have been considered an abomination to God and created a public outrage is now not only practiced and condoned, but actually celebrated!
Truth has become relative. It used to be based on what God said in His Word, but now it is whatever each individual decides for himself. “Just because it is true for you doesn’t mean it is true for me.”
Situational Ethics has become the norm. Each person not only determines his own truth, but designs his own morality as well. “No one is going to tell me how to live my life! I can do whatever I want. It is a free country!”
Many people pay lip service to the God of the Bible and claim to believe in Him, but you can tell by the way they live their lives that they don’t love or obey Him. Their behavior is often just as immoral as their pagan neighbors and you simply can’t tell the difference anymore between the believers and the heathen.
Children are no longer considered a blessing. Now they are considered a burden and a blockage keeping preventing people from reaching their goals. So, believe it or not, it has become quite common for parents to actually kill their own children in order to pursue a higher standard of living.
Now the economy has begun to collapse. People are in great distress. They are afraid, worried about the future. There hasn’t been an economic crisis this bad in a couple of generations. There is no telling how long it is going to last and it looks like it might get worse before it gets better.
They also find themselves at war with a strange country. The enemy is foreign and fierce and blatantly evil. It is an extremely expensive war that further cripples the economy. They don’t seem to be winning the war and they are not likely to.
There are some in society who are calling for reform, calling the nation to get back to its religious roots, to return the law and the culture back to the days when people feared and honored God. There are preachers praying for revival and calling the people to repent. But these voices are in the minority now and are often ignored as fundamentalist drivel from the religious right who just want to impose a theocracy on the rest of the nation.
Those who stand opposed to the one, true God of the Bible seem to grow in number and strength year after year, while the godly remnant seem to shrink and lose their influence, becoming more and more irrelevant and more and more hated.
Do you know what nation I am talking about? Does anyone want to guess what nation I am describing? If you guessed America, I would not blame you, but that is not the culture I am describing. I am not talking about the United States. I am talking about Israel, not modern day Israel, but ancient Israel, in the time of the Judges. Everything I just said about the culture was true of Israel at that time. Eerie, isn’t it?
What happened? How did this happen? If you were here last week you might remember that Pastor Jeff told the story of Rahab, about the battle of Jericho. It is a great story about how God led His people into the land of promise for the first time. Israel was full of faith and courage and boldness as they attacked Jericho and then Ai and had a long string of brilliant military successes in the early part of the conquest. After conquering much of the land they divided it up 12 ways and assigned a tract of land to each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
But there was something that they did not do. They did not finish their assignment. God had given them explicit instructions. They were to go into the land and kill everybody. They were to show no mercy. They were to drive all the inhabitants from the land. All means ALL. But they didn’t do it. We find out that not a single tribe finished their assigned task. They all failed to clear their plot of land of the pagan inhabitants, and so they resigned themselves to coexisting with the enemy.
They should not have done that. God warned them what would happen if they did failed to accomplish their mission. He said in Numbers 33:55, “If you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live.”
And that, of course, is exactly what happened. They allowed the enemy to live among them. It was not long before the men began to notice that the pagan women were beautiful. Instead of killing the heathen women they married them, and they gave their daughters in marriage to the men of Canaan. It was not long, of course, until the heart of Israel turned away from God to worship idols.
One of those idols was known as Baal. Baal was a storm god. The pagans believed he was in charge of the weather. Because this was an agricultural people, they depended on the rain to water their crops and herds and flocks. This is how Baal became a fertility god. The people worshiped Baal in order to appease him and persuade him to grant them the right amount of rain at the right time so they could prosper. The goal was to manipulate the deity to give you what you want so you could become rich. In essence, the people were pursuing what we might call a prosperity gospel, a gospel of health and wealth. But note: they were doing so by worshiping a FALSE GOD! We will come back to that later.
So, when we come to the book of Judges we encounter a cycle. Here is the progression: The people turned away from God to worship other gods and idols, so God withdrew His hand of protection over Israel and allowed the surrounding peoples to grow stronger and attack them and enslave them. Their slavemasters were so cruel that Israel would eventually cry out to God for help. God’s heart would be moved with compassion for His people and He would send them a deliverer called a judge. This was typically not a judge in the modern sense of the term, like in a court of law. Usually a judge was like a military general. He or she would lead the people into battle against their enemy and God would help them win. Once they had conquered their oppressors they enjoyed a season of rest and peace. This season of restored relationship with God sometimes lasted for a few years, sometimes for a few decades, but inevitably it always ended. Eventually their hearts would once again turn away from God and they would plunge back into the wicked worship of idolatry. Then the cycle would begin all over again.
Not only does this cyclical pattern happen over and over in Judges, but each cycle gets worse than the previous one (Judges 2:19) so that they are not just in an endless cycle, but in a downward spiral. “But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices and stubborn ways.” Israel is in a full-scale tailspin into an abyss of darkness and depravity.
Again, I ask the question, How did this happen? How did Israel get here? How did they go from conquering the land to being conquered in the land? Well, I think verses seven and ten of chapter two give us a hint. Let me read these two verses for us.
“The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:7) Joshua was a great man of God. The people loved and respected him. As long as Joshua lived the people followed God by following Joshua. But then he died.
Joshua’s contemporary leaders, the elders of Israel, were also men of God. The people admired and respected them as well, so as long as they lived the people continued to obey God.
That brings us to verse ten. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10) Now this is a very significant statement. Notice that two things have happened in this new generation: 1. They do not know the Lord, and 2. They don’t even know ABOUT the Lord. They don’t even know their own history. They don’t know the stories of what God has done for Israel. Something went terribly wrong in Israel, but it did not start with this generation, but with the previous generation - their parents. Somehow their parents failed to teach their children.
This brings us to the chairs. As you can see, I have placed three chairs on the stage: Chair #1, Chair #2, and Chair #3. Everyone in Israel was sitting in one of these three chairs.
The ones who are sitting in Chair #1 (sit in that chair) know the Lord AND what He has done for Israel. The ones sitting in Chair #2 (sit in that chair) know what the Lord has done for Israel, but don’t know the Lord. They know the facts. They know their history. They know the stories, and they might even believe them, but they don’t know their God. The ones sitting in Chair #3 (sit in that chair) don’t know the Lord OR what He has done for Israel. This is where most of the people were sitting during this time in Israel’s history.
So, the people sitting in Chair #1 know about God and they care about Him. The people sitting in Chair #2 know about God, but they don’t care. The people sitting in Chair #3 don’t know and don’t care.
Now I am going to take a bit of a leap. Perhaps it is more like a small step. I want to bring this a little closer to home, because I believe that we too are sitting in one of these three chairs. In fact, everyone is always sitting in one of these three chairs.
The people sitting in Chair #1 (sit in that chair) are what I would call fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. These are people who not only know about God, they know their God.
The people sitting in Chair #2 (sit in that chair) are also called Christians, but in name only. They have been to church and Sunday School or Bible study, so they may know a lot about God, but it hasn’t made any real difference in their life. The word of God does not order their life. The Gospel of Jesus has not transformed their life. The Spirit of God has not shaped their heart or molded their character. They know about God, but they do not know Him personally.
The people sitting in Chair #3 (sit in that chair) are simply unbelievers. They don’t know much about God, nor do they care to.
Now, let me ask you a question. If you were to evaluate our culture here in the west, which chair would you say we are sitting in? I would argue that more and more we are sitting in Chair #3 (sit in that chair). We are becoming a thoroughly secular culture. As a people we don’t know much about God anymore and really don’t care. That is exactly what was happening in ancient Israel.
Let’s bring it a little closer to home. Where would you put the Church? Now, when I say Church, I mean Church with a capitol “C”. I mean the universal Church, at least the Church here in the west. Which chair do you think the overall Church is sitting in? Well, I would argue that more and more we are sitting in Chair #2 (sit in that chair).
We still hold church services and teach Sunday School classes and Bible studies, so we still know some things about God and His Word, but it doesn’t seem to make any real difference in our lives. I say this because of all the studies that have been done on the church in the last few decades. They all say the same thing. I have yet to read a single exception. All the statistics show that there is no measurable difference between the values and behavior of Christians and non-Christians. We are just as likely to get divorced. We are just as likely to have an abortion. We are just as likely to live together before we get married. It has gotten to the point that you just can’t tell the difference between the believers and the heathen in our culture.
The other indicator I would point to is the preachers on TV. If you turn on a Christian TV station you will see that the most popular preachers, by far and away, are the ones who preach the prosperity gospel. The message they preach is essentially that if you worship God in certain ways then you can manipulate the deity to give you lots of money and possessions, because after all, God wants you to be wealthy. I want to go on record as saying that this message is not new, because it is Baal worship. In order to pursue this gospel you must bow down and worship a FALSE GOD.
So, I would say that the Church in the west is sitting firmly in Chair #2. We still know some things about God, but it is pointless and irrelevant to our real lives.
Let’s bring it a little closer to home. Where is our church? (Move over to sit in Chair #3) For a number of reasons, not the least of which is our children’s Sunday School curriculum, I doubt anyone would argue that our children are sitting in chair #3. We are too good and teaching the Bible. So, kudos to the curriculum writers, and thank you to those of you who teach Sunday School. You are doing an outstanding job teaching our children the Word of God.
So, the question is not, “Are our children sitting in Chair #3?”, but rather, “How many of our children are sitting in Chair #2?” (sit in that chair) Are we perhaps producing well-informed apostates? After all, what good does it do if our kids can always win every Bible Trivia game, but it doesn’t change their hearts? Are we growing up a new generation of really smart pagans? Do our children and youth know and love God Himself, or do they just know a lot ABOUT Him?
(Move over to Chair #1) We must not just teach our children - tell them facts about God and His Word, but we must also disciple them - model for them and nurture in them an authentic relationship with God Himself.
Now, let’s bring it another step closer to home. Where are your children?
This is really tricky. I am about to walk down a very narrow road and I have to be very careful what I say here because I can easily fall off on one side of the road or the other.
Some people think that we can completely control the way our children turn out. Their favorite Bible verse is perhaps Proverbs 22:6: “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” Some people see this as a kind of money-back guarantee. It is like a recipe. If you follow the formula carefully you will get a predictable result. Of course, if that were true, then the reverse would also be true. If your children turn out terrible, it is all your fault because you must have somehow failed.
Other people perhaps think that parenting is just a roll of the dice. There is no direct connection between how we parent and how our kids turn out. It is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and therefore not our responsibility.
I will argue that neither of these two philosophies is true. On one hand, there is no magic formula. There is no money-back guarantee. There is nothing we can do to coerce or manipulate our children to love and follow Jesus. Sometimes the most godly parents have godless children. But it is also not true that we bear no responsibility or that what we do as parents has no influence on the way they turn out.
Perhaps the best way to say this is that while we are not ultimately responsible for the outcome of our children, we are responsible for the input. And here is where a whole generation of Israelite parents apparently failed. Going back to verse ten: “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.” Not only did they not know God, in the sense that they had no real relationship with Him, but they didn’t even know about God. They didn’t even know about the things He had done for their people Israel.
This should not have happened. God had given them explicit instructions to teach their children. You might remember a few weeks ago when we talked about the Shema. Remember, the ancient Jewish creed which began with “Hear, O Israel,”? Let’s say it together again. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”
Very good. He goes on to say, “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. (Deuteronomy 6:4-8) God commanded them to teach their children, tell their children, train their children. Apparently, they simply didn’t do it.
Coming back to our own children, (sit down in Chair #2) if our children are going to be likely to sit in chair #1, and again, I stress the word likely, we must teach them about God, but we must move beyond that. (Move over to Chair #1)
I want to suggest that we need to do at least three things. We need to pray for them. We need to pray for our children because ultimately only the Holy Spirit can do a transforming work in their hearts. We need to pray for our children, both our own and each other’s. And we make a promise to do that at every dedication and baptism.
Second, we need to disciple them. This moves beyond teaching, which is mostly about head knowledge, to training them how to follow Jesus, how to worship God, how to serve the Lord. We want it to move from head knowledge to heart experience.
Third, we need to model it for them. Discipleship is better caught than taught. If we don’t walk the talk, our children will balk and walk. If we don’t walk the talk, then our children will walk away from our talk. If you want your children to sit in Chair #1, then you need to sit in Chair #1!
Which brings the issue all the way home, now. Which chair are you sitting in? Which chair?
Perhaps you are sitting in Chair #3 (sit in that chair). You really don’t know much about God or the Bible, and more importantly, you don’t know God.
Or maybe, if you were really honest, you would admit that you are really sitting in Chair #2 (sit in that chair). You have been around church enough to know a few things about God, but it hasn’t made any real difference in your life. You do not order your life around God and His word. You are not really following Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has not transformed your heart and molded your character.
Or are you sitting in Chair #1? (sit in that chair) This, of course, is God’s desire and purpose for His children. This is what Paul said in Philippians when he wrote, “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord . . . I want to know Christ”. (Philippians 3:7-11)
I want to close today by making just one last point. When we come to the book of Judges we discover that it is a really dark book.. It is really kind of depressing to read. It is discouraging to see the people of Israel turn their backs on God and make the same mistakes over and over again. This book is filled with storm clouds.
However, there is a silver lining in these clouds. Woven throughout this story is a hint of hope. We can see that hope if we keep our eyes on God and watch where He is throughout the book. As Israel goes through each cycle, notice where God is. When they reject Him and turn away into their sin, there is God. He is waiting, watching to see if His people will soften their hearts and come back to Him. And then, at the first sign of repentance, He springs into action and provides a deliverer to rescue His people from harm and destruction. He did this over and over, displaying His heart for His people and demonstrating that He still loves us and will take us back if we will turn back to Him. This is the heart of our God, and this is the source of our hope.
So, regardless of which chair you are sitting in today, there is hope. If you are in Chair #3 today, (sit in that chair) there is hope. You can turn around and come home. You can turn your back on a life of sin and selfishness and come experience the love and grace of God and become His child if you will trust and follow Jesus. There is hope for you today.
If you are in Chair #2 today, (sit in that chair) there is hope. Begin to seek to know the God you know so much about. Perhaps begin by asking Him to show you His heart for you. Begin to obey the things you already know He wants you to do. Find ways to serve Him and build up His kingdom. There is hope for you today.
If you are sitting in Chair #1 today, (sit in that chair) then rejoice because you have already found your hope! You are in a place where your identity, your purpose, and your destiny all meet together in the person of Jesus Christ. He is your hope! Stay there and pray that others will join you.
Which chair? Which chair are your children sitting in today? Which chair do you want them to sit in? Which chair? Which chair are you sitting in today? Which chair do you want to be sitting in? Which chair?
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