Judges 10 - How Does God Respond To Sin? - Sermon
A semi-accurate transcript is below:
Good morning.
If we are honest, sometimes the Bible is hard to understand and sometimes it’s just straight up confusing and dark and we go… what are we supposed to do with this? The book of Judges is dark and twisted and R rated in some chapters. And today's chapter is perhaps one of the more bleak ones. It talks about the seriousness of sin, how evil it is. It talks about how turning your back on God is a heavy thing.
And as I was preparing this week I was nervous at a point because this is heavy stuff and difficult for us to work through, and I kept thinking this text requires a bit of pastoral authority for people to trust what you have to say about this very difficult text. And I know many of you don’t know me and pastoral authority and trust is earned, not assumed or taken. And so all I know to do is to say this:
I don’t come here to beat you over the head with a heavy text about sin and God’s discipline. Rather, I’ve tried to let God work me over with this text. I’ve submitted myself to these tough truths. I’ve come to Him with open hands and tried to, in humility, say “God, what do I need to gain from this? What do I need to learn about myself and you?”
So, let’s approach the text together. In humility and ask God to teach us. Is that fair?
The Cycle as a mirror
There’s a repeated cycle in the book of Judges that the author is trying to make us aware of, we saw it the last two weeks of Gideon and the judges before him. Israel turns from God, to other idols. God gives them over to what they want. They become oppressed by the surrounding nations and cry out to God. God raises a judge to save them. Then the judge dies and the cycle begins anew.
And of that cycle, chapter 9 shows the spiral into how dark it gets, but chapter 10 shows us the whole cycle. So that’s what I want to look at today. What can we learn from this cycle of Israel as a mirror for us? Let’s turn and read Judges 10:5 -6a
Now if you circle or highlight in your bible, I would encourage you to circle “again”. It's a repeated cycle.
Our Cycle
Have you had a moment in your life where you again fall away from the lord? Again go to sin, when you said you wouldn’t? Again, I struggle to read and pray daily. Again struggle to pursue God.
Are you aware of this type of cycle in your life? This ebb and flow of faithfulness? This follows after God with real passion but over time it just tends to fade. This desire to fight sin but continually falling back into it? Have you felt the strain of not being perfectly obedient and faithful and passionate to God over the long-haul?
If we have a perfectionist view of Christianity or don’t understand that growing into who God wants us to be takes time, we can really be thrown for a loop and cast into despair by this cycle.
But our lives are much more complex and our hearts are far more fluid than we like to believe. Doesn’t the old hymn say “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love...” ? Have you lived long enough to feel that? Prone to drift away from intimate relationship with God into apathy and sin?
The cycle, it resides within all of us in some variation. If we use this story of Israel’s cycle as a mirror for us, I believe we can learn four lessons that will help us navigate that cycle within our own lives.
1- Sin Makes Promises To Your Heart
What’s one reason the cycle begins? Because sin promises us things we desire.
Judges 10:6 (ESV)
The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve him.
Who was Baal?
They worshiped another god. Baal. We see this god in the Bible a lot, but what actually is it? Why are they worshiping it? I mean this is a constant struggle for Israel, idol worship, from the time of the exodus. Why? They weren’t drawn to it because it’s physically attractive.
Baal is a deity of the Canaanite people, you know, the people Israel was supposed to clear out of the promised land and now they are surrounding them? Baal was a fertility god which was worshiped because it was believed that making this god happy would increase the fertility of your crops and of your people, both of which make nations prosper in that time period.
As we use this as a mirror for our own lives: This is key to understanding the complexity of sin in our human hearts. It’s not often that we wake up one morning and just bent on turning our backs on God. Often, we turn and we do evil because sin has promised us things.
Baal is promising them Good crops. Bigger nations. Which means safety, security, stability. And with these promises, it’s wooed them and drawn their hearts away from trusting God, to doubting God’s ability to keep them. They begin to think, maybe this will make me happier, more stable, give more pleasure than following God. This is how it starts.
Baal and us
What’s one thing we learn from Israel here about our own relationship with sin? It’s that we sin when we are enticed by the deceitful promises of sin. So I ask you, what lies do you believe about sin? (slide)
That it will make you happy?
That it will solve your loneliness?
That it will take away your pain, even for a moment?
That God is holding out on you?
That you know what’s best for your life?
That immediate pleasure is more important than anything else?
That flourishing comes from freedom, not proper restriction?
Sin whispers all kinds of things. Though these are promises, they are lies. They are not true. They, like all of Satan's temptations, are trying to distort your trust of God.
For those of us who have taken the path of sin further than we wanted to, what was at the end of it? Not the promises that wooed me into sin in the first place. So what do we do with all this?
Mature Christians are marked by becoming increasingly aware of the promises of sin they are tempted to believe and working to trust God in those areas. It helps you fight against them. Repent at this level. Repent upstream.
Sin will own you, you will not own it.
Application: Could I encourage you to include this in your prayer times? Pray and meditate on why you go to sin is a good thing and something we learn in this text, sin entices us with false promises.
Let’s keep reading:
v6
2- Sin is Forsaking God
What does the author say about this worship of baal? that it was “evil in the sight of the Lord”.
I’m not saying this because you don’t know it, I’m saying it because we all, myself included, are prone to forget the weight of this. Sin is evil in the sight of the Lord. What does this mean? God is not apathetic towards the sin in our lives. Why? Just because he wants to rule with an iron fist and doesn’t want you to have fun? No, it goes much deeper than mere behavior, it goes into the heart of humans.
Look at the wording here “and they forsook the Lord and did not serve him” Choosing sin is a display of how you view and trust God.
Sin is turning our back on God
There is a theme in the old testament, will Israel turn her face to God in worship or her back to Him in sin?
When you and I sin, we are turning away from our loving God. It’s not just a behavioral issue, it’s a heart and how you view God, issue.
When Israel sins and when we sin, we are like little kids looking at our parents who keep us alive, and we scream at them “I don’t care what you say, I will do things the way I want to do things. And we spit in their face and turn and walk away.”
It’s hard to see sin like that in the moment, isn’t it? Because we get seduced by those lies and promises and it feels right… I’m not oblivious to that. But in our hearts, if we are honest, there’s a lot of justification of sin. And I'm not saying that as a dig at people, I’m saying we all do it. Who justifies sin to you more than you? But using this text as a mirror helps us see sin rightly. It’s a turning our back, not just behavioral issue. Relational issue with God.
My Story, moving into Spurgeon Quote
There have been times in my walk with God where I have seen with a clarity how evil and dark and heavy my sins are. And it was hard, it was not pleasant being confronted with how evil my rebellion against God actually was. And it’s even harder when some of your worst sins come not before you were saved, but after. But it was good for me. It’s good for us, from time to time, see the weight of our sin.
This quote has been helpful for me in giving clarity to how weighty sin is:
There was a day, as I took my walks abroad, when I came by a spot forever engraven upon my memory, for there I saw this Friend, my best, my only Friend, murdered. I saw that his hands had been pierced with rough nails, and his feet had been rent in the same way. His back was red with bloody wounds, and his brow had a circle of holes about it: clearly could one see that these had been pierced by thorns.
I shuddered, for I had known this friend full well. He never had a fault; he was the purest of pure, the holiest of the holy. Who could have injured him? For he never injured any man; all his life long he ‘went about doing good;’ he had healed the sick, he had fed the hungry, he had raised the dead. For which of these works did they kill him? He had never breathed out anything else but love.
Where lodged the traitors? Let me seize them, and they shall be put to death. Oh! What jealousy, what revenge I felt! If I might but find these murderers, what would I not do with them!
And as I looked upon that corpse, I heard a footstep, and wondered where it was. I listened, and I clearly perceived that the murderer was close at hand. It was dark, and I groped about to find him. I found that, somehow or other, wherever I put out my hand, I could not meet with him, for he was nearer to me than my hand would go. At last I put my hand upon my breast. ‘I have thee now,’ said I; behold he was in my own heart! The murderer was hiding within my own self, dwelling in the recesses of my inmost soul. Ah! Then I wept indeed, that I, in the very presence of my murdered Master, should be harbouring the murderer, and I felt myself most guilty while I bowed over His corpse, and sang that plaintive hymn:
“‘Twas you, my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were; Each of my crimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear.”
My sins were the whip which lacerated those blessed shoulders, and crowned with thorns those bleeding brows. My sins cried, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ and laid the cross upon his gracious shoulders. His being led forth to die is sorrow enough for one eternity; but my having been his murderer is more, infinitely more grief, than one poor fountain of tears can express.”
Sin is not small, it is evil. It is forsaking God and turning your back on Him. Our sins are what killed Jesus, the one we say we love. Do you see how in every one of our choices to sin, is a rebellion and a “I don’t care about you God” attitude? That should prick our hearts.
Implications of the weight of sin
So what are the implications of this heavy truth?
As we peer into the mirror of Israel here it gives us space to ponder: How do you view sin? As not a big deal? Light? As long as you aren’t murdering people or stealing money, that you’re ok? Have you grown comfortable with any sin in your life, not just big ones, but the culturally ok ones too? That’s a good thing to ponder.
Read v7-14
This isn’t getting any better, is it? We see with clarity how serious God takes sin.
Take stock
Before we move on, let’s pause and take stock of what may be going on in our hearts. We’ve seen the evilness of sin, we’ve seen that God is angry... I mean, come on. This is hard, isn’t it? Anyone else feel the weight of this?
I imagine for some, you feel the sting of sin in your life. Some may feel guilty and have a desire to repent. But my fear, and this happened to me, my fear is some of us, maybe if you tend to be more severe with yourself, is that conviction of sin has begun to move into condemnation of self. Especially if you have some deep sin in your past, this has kind of rubbed the scab of that memory and made it bleed.
I told you at the beginning I submitted myself to this text, so I’m not unaware of how it makes us feel and how it can bring up difficult thoughts for us. Let me be pastoral for a moment:
My heart, and I believe God’s heart, and the point of this text, isn’t to heap condemnation onto you and to leave you dejected. Yes to hating sin, no to hating self. Because that’s what condemnation is, an over fixation on self and how broken you are, instead of God.
And after hearing all this you are just going… there’s no hope. I’m sinful and I've tried to stop and be better, but I just can’t. And if sin is this bad then I’m terrible and God would be right to just be done with me… because I have forsaken him and turned my back so many times. How could he love me?”
I know that feeling, where you just go… is this the rest of my life? Am I hopeless? Is my version christianity just broken? Is God here? Have you felt confused, wrestling to know how to properly balance seeing sin as serious but also not crushing yourself under guilt?
Oh it is good that the Bible does not shy away from hard realities. What does this text do for people who, in the cycle of sin and drifting, are unfaithful to him? What does it teach us to do?
Look at verse 10.
3- We cry out to God, moving our gaze from ourselves onto Him.
Israel Cries out
If you feel stuck in sin, if you go “I’m in that cycle”! If you have felt conviction slide into condemnation and you are just hopeless and beating yourself up, learn from Israel here this is the one thing they are good at. Cry out. Don’t give up crying out to Him. I can’t save you, the right mentor can’t save you, trying to clean your life up can’t save you, fixating your eyes on your mess ups and past mistakes can’t save you, you can’t save you! But God can. Get your eyes off of yourself.
Crying out to God is the admission that we cannot save ourselves, that we need Him. Think about how counter that is from giving into sin. It’s trusting God again over the promises of sin. We often think crying out is just something that we do after we mess up and fail. That it’s a sign of our weakness.
But I think that’s an act of Satan to devalue the beauty of crying out and of repentance. Don’t devalue how good and trusting and the faith it takes to cry out to God. It's no small thing, it’s a good thing. Yes it’s hard, but it brings gain, not loss. Restoration. Brings us home. v10
Crying out is good for your soul, because it moves your eyes from yourself, onto God. We are so prone to live in our past failures. To replay them in our minds.
As Christians, God would have us glance at our sins then stare at Christ. But we often glance at Christ and stare at our sins. Do not stare at your sins. Look at them, yes. But look at them long enough to know you need outside help, then look up and cry out to God.
An old puritan Thomas Watson wrote a book about repentance, in it he says:
Spiritual sorrow will sink the heart if the pulley of faith does not raise it up. Just as our sin is ever before us, so God’s promise must ever be before us. Just as we greatly feel our sting, so we must look up to Christ.
Spiritual sorrow over sin must be balanced with the pulley of faith. What’s our pulley of faith in this text? That will help us not slide into despair but give us hope? Because if you’re paying attention to the text, he doesn’t respond so well at first glance.
read v10-16
4- God Disciplines us for our good out of love.
Now, I know that may seem hard to grasp for some of us. We’ve talked about such heavy things, and in v11-14 God rebukes them and doesn’t listen to them.
but notice v16. Israel cries out again and God’s heart for Israel is revealed. And what is revealed? “He became impatient over the suffering of Israel” One translation, which I think is more helpful, says: “he could no longer bear to see Israel suffer” That’s peculiar isn’t it?
What is this whiplash of a text doing? From seriousness of sin, to anger, now to God’s heart going out to them?
I believe this text is trying to expand our theological framework to see that God can have both fatherly displeasure over our sin and a love for us that leads us into better.
That’s what discipline is.
We so often think in extremes, God is angry, wrathful, mad and if you sin he casts you away. or God is all grace and all sappy and is just happy i'm here and sin is small. But life isn’t like that and God is much more nuanced than that. Let your theological framework expand to fit the God of the Bible, don’t try and make one up. And I think sometimes the reasons texts like this jolt us a bit and we don’t know what to do with it is because the God of the Bible is bumping into some of the containers our minds and our culture put him in.
Putting it together
So how do I see that God’s discipline is for our good and out of love in this text?
Look at 13-14. God didn’t listen to them at first, did He?
What if God’s refusal to listen to them the first time had little to do with their purity of repentance and more to do with He had purpose in the silence and refusal? Was this silence and refusal the necessary discipline Israel needed to be pricked in the heart to see what they deserve and the worthlessness of their idols so they would turn more fully to God?
Because look at their response, v15 and 16 “so”. All that God did lead to 16. There was purpose in the tough words and discipline. It wasn’t just anger, it was a design of love and wanting better for them.
God’s discipline shows His love for us:
We often have a hard time putting these two things together. But God is good if he disciplines us. And he is unloving if he just lets us go… What loving parent who sees their child in self-destructive ways, doesn’t come in and correct? Catch this and be encouraged and infused with hope: What is underneath every tough word about your sin, is love. Because God wants better for you. He isn’t out to abandon you. He is about the business of restoring you.
I know this is hard for us to grasp, because we just don’t have theological categories for this.
God’s discipline in your life is not wrath, but love.
Hebrews 12:6–7 ESV - For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
God’s discipline leads us to him, not away
How do we apply this?
God’s tough dealing with you and I, regarding our sin, is never meant to lead us away from Him, but towards Him. V16 - it leads them to his heart.
If you are in your room late at night and repenting, and you feel the sting of your past sins and conviction and you know you need to change. How can you decipher, is this discipline leading me to better or condemnation leading me to despair?
***You will know it’s discipline from God when it leads you to Him . You will know it’s condemnation from Satan when it leads you away from God.
Discipline always leads us back to God. And leading us back to Himself is the truest form of love.
this is how we’ll end
God disciplines us because He wants better for us.
God disciplines you because He wants better for you than self-destructive sins and darkness and distortions of living that do not lead to flourishing.
God’s discipline leads to v16, they put away their sins and served Him.
There’s one reason you should leave your sins: God is better. Because fellowship with him is more sweet to you than the pleasures of sin. If you can cultivate that, it will be a game changer. I don’t say this arrogantly, but recently when I feel pulled towards sinful ways, my heart has gone “I love God and I love our peaceful fellowship, I don’t want to jeopardize that by turning my back on Him”.
I’ve thought of it like this before. If you’re at a party that is bad and sinful and you partake of that sin, but then you come to your senses and realize I don’t want to be here, and you call your dad to come get you. and you say dad, I screwed up but im at this party and it’s bad, and i’ve done bad, but I want to come home, I don’t want to live like this.
And your dad comes and gets you and it's a real awkward silence when you drive home. But if our dad has the story of the prodigal son in mind, when we get home he hugs us and says “I’m glad you’re not there but home. Your safe here.”
And we sit on the couch and he says - we’ll have some conversations in the future, tough ones about that being wrong and how it's destructive and how you should know better, I have some tough things to say to you because you know better than that. I do have a fatherly displeasure over that. But it’s because I want better for you.I want better for you.
These truths help us fight the cycle to drift within us.
So what is God asking of you in this moment?
Do you need to repent of a specific sin in your life and come home? Maybe Text a friend right now that you’d like to talk to later.
Maybe you’re on a good path of obedience and you just needed to be reminded of the danger of sin and the necessity of daily submission to God.
Sin is serious but God is good and he disciples us out of love. And he wants better for us, and he wants us to come home to Him. We are never at home when we are sinning.
When does God's heart go out to Israel? When they have been unfaithful. You are not too far gone this morning. You have not walked further than his grace. In the eyes of god they are not defined by their unfaithfulness. Neither are you.
9 He will not always rebuke,
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
So equipped with grace, we fight the cycle. And we daily submit to him.
His arms are open, He is beckoning us to leave our sin and walk into his embrace, will we come home?