Turning to Idols

This is week two of our Bible study in the book of Judges, which we call the time of turning. And this particular week has a title of turning to idols. That's not a super catchy title. Like if you put that on a YouTube title, everyone will go right past it and say, I don't want to read about that. I don't have a problem with idols. No one thinks they have a problem with idols. I don't. You don't. You're my friends. Idols are not an issue in our life. But we'll probably find out differently as we get into this lesson. So remember last week we had, we asked those two questions. We said, does a person turn to idols because they turned from God? Or does a person turn from God because they turned to idols? Let's talk about that. When a person turns from God, and what I mean about that is that we no longer honor God and worship God in the way he is intended to be honored and worshipped in our life. That creates a void in us. It creates an emptiness in us. We were not created to be empty. And so we naturally seek other things to fill that with. The same thing is true that if a Christian begins to fill that space with idols and we honor things and we worship things in the way that God was intended to be honored and worshipped in our life, then our spiritual space gets crowded. We were not intended to be crowded. And we begin to edit something out. And we often begin to edit God out of our life. And that is how we start to forget God, which is the phrase in our study. So what are we created for? We are created to love and to serve God. This is what Joshua had told the Israelites. I'll put it on the screen for you, Joshua 23, 11. He told them, be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. Because that is what people are created for. Now back to the word idols. Okay, since no one ever thinks they have a problem with idols, let's kind of define it a little bit. So I wrote a definition of idols for myself. This didn't come from any theology book. This is just my definition. I thought I'd share it with you. An idol is some idea or ambition, some pursuit, possession, or person that ranks higher than God or is achieved apart from God. To me, that's what an idol in my life would look like. And in these chapters, we see Israel turn to idols. I don't think for a moment that they got in the promised land and that their attention was captured by little statues. You know, turning to idols is not an infatuation with an image, but rather it is an affection toward any possibility apart from God. So Israel incorporated the ways and the people of Canaan into their community life rather than destroying them, which God had instructed. And so now the demon gods of idolatry became common to them. They became comfortable to them. And this produced in them this crowded spiritual space that we talked about. And when your spiritual space is crowded, you edit something out. And so Israel turned from God as they turned to idols. So Judges chapter 1 gives us a little bit of a history lesson on how this crowded condition came about. And so I'm going to read, not all of Judges chapter 1, you already studied it, but I'll read the first four verses this morning.

All right, four verses. All is well. There's only a tiny little compromise in there because God told Judah to go up. And the first thing he did was turn to Simeon and said, let's go together. No big deal. Compromises are no big deal, right? And so you read the chapter and you saw there's a lot of history given to us there. It began with some successes, drop down to verse 19, and that's an example of one of these successes. And the Lord was with Judah and he took possession of the hill country. And then after that verse, almost the whole rest of the chapter is a downhill slide beginning with the end of verse 19. Look at that. But he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron. That was very intimidating to them. The chariots of iron represented to them something stronger in their life than they believed God to be. That happens to us, doesn't it? We come up against something in our life that we just say, I don't think God can handle that. That's too much. That's too big. That's too strong. So we can relate. We can relate to that. I'm just going to go through and edit some of these, give you some bullet points of almost all the tribes who did the same thing. Verse 21, the people of Benjamin did not drive out the Jebusites. 27, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants. Verse 29, Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites. 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. And in verse 34, we read the Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country. Almost universally, all the tribes had the same experience. And we read a phrase in some form very often in this chapter that went something like this, so the Canaanites lived among them. It became crowded. Oh, but they became subject to forced labor, so it was all okay. That little compromise made it all okay. Perhaps forced labor might be useful in this land because it seemed right in their own eyes to do that, to keep them around. I doubt that Israel knew in this moment the disastrous consequences of this compromise, and we never see in the moment the disastrous consequences of our compromise either. Now, I want to pause from this main story. You can see where we're going with the main story, but I want to pause and do what I'm going to call a Pixar short right here, because there's a little pleasant story in the middle of chapter one that I don't want us to miss. It's a story of romance, a story of chivalry, and I want us to enjoy it. So, chapter 1, verse 11. It's the story of Ophniel and Aksa. Verse 11 says, they, which means Judah, they went up against the inhabitants of Debar. The name of Debar was formerly Kiriath Sefer. Caleb said, you guys remember Caleb, right? Joshua and Caleb, those two faithful spies. Caleb said, he who attacks Kiriath Sefer and captures it, I will give him, Aksa, my daughter as a wife. All right, so we have a father who loves his daughter and is seeking for her the best, the bravest man that's around. Someone who can capture a city would be valuable enough to give his daughter's hand in marriage. So, enter verse 13. Ophniel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, captured it. He did the deed. Now, Ophniel is related to Caleb. We don't know, we can't really read for sure if he is a nephew or a stepbrother. It just depends on, I guess, maybe where you would, in English, where you would place the comma. But if Ophniel was the son of Kenaz, who was Caleb's younger brother, that would make him his nephew. But if Ophniel was the son of Kenaz and he was Caleb's younger brother, he would be a stepbrother, which makes sense also. We know from Joshua, Caleb was the son of Jephunneh, but he could have died and his mother could have remarried this Kenaz guy. and started another family. So either he's a stepbrother, a younger stepbrother, or he's a nephew. But the point is, he is from the same family. And so it says that Caleb gave Axa his daughter for a wife. Now, this woman must have possessed some level of charm, some value, some virtue that she inspired a man to take a whole city, to become a worthy soldier to win her hand. So we see this really sweet story here. And remember, where we're at in the whole history of the judges here, this is still either the time that Joshua was alive, or the people that were outliving him. So there is still a desire here. They're still living off of a godly heritage. Look at verse 14, and when she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. And she dismounted her donkey, and Caleb said to her, what do you want? And she said to him, give me a blessing, since you have set me in the land of the Negev, give me also springs of water. And Caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. So this woman was loved, she was cherished, she was blessed, she was given a whole ranch. She had the land and the water to go with it. Set her up for life to be a Proverbs 31 woman, what more could you want? I wanted to point this out, and I want us to remember this story, because the farther we get into judges, women will not be treated this way. The farther people turn from God, and the more a society turns to idolatry, women suffer. And by the time we get to our last lesson, it is gonna be devastating. So I wanted to point this out so that we see the contrast here between a godly society and one that has turned from God. Okay, so now we're gonna keep moving on and ask the question, so how did God respond to the actions of Israel that we read about in chapter one? So turn to Judges chapter two. It says, now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and he said, it's what the angel 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 altars. But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you. The angel of the Lord said exactly what Moses had told them back in Deuteronomy chapter seven, what Joshua had warned them about in his last two farewell speeches. Both of those are referenced in your study guide. So how did Israel respond to the voice of the angel of the Lord and the actions of the angel of the Lord? Look at verse four. As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words, all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and they wept, and they called the name of that place Bochim, which means weeping, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. So in this moment, they were very sad about the distance that they were seeing and feeling from their God as spoken by and demonstrated by the angel of the Lord. And what had happened was God had been edged out of their congested spiritual life because of their compromise. And so this, the way I see it, this sacrifice that they do right here is an attempt to bring him back in. We'll sacrifice to the Lord. Now, what would have been awesome to see is you are right. Let's go tear down all of those idols. Let's go tear down all of those altars. That would have been a great response, but we don't see that they did that. All they did was tried to add God back in to what they were already doing. How do things get so sad and messy like that? How do they get so sad and messy in our lives? It usually starts and it boils down to people doing what seems right in their own eyes. That's the beginning of things getting sad. I wanna take just a little history walk so that we can think about Israel and where they have been. You remember they were slaves in Egypt. God came and he delivered them out of Egypt. They had nothing when they were slaves, but as they left Egypt, they had plundered the Egyptians and now they had all this stuff. And what was the purpose of it? It was to be used for the Lord. A lot of it was to build the tabernacle and to have what they needed to sacrifice to the Lord. God provided for them through that wilderness journey. We studied it in the wilderness way. He gave them water from the rock. He gave them manna every morning. And now they had come into a land that was different than they had known. Now in this land, in the promised land, rather than just tents, there are cities. And rather than just herds, there is farmland. And there's all these people and all this stuff and this civilization. And we don't begrudge them wondering, well, God was pretty good in the wilderness. Is he going to sustain us in this situation? Because everybody around us seems to claim that it's Baal and Ashtoreth that are giving them prosperity in this space. And they are prosperous. They have a lot of stuff. It's going well for them. Could all of these people be wrong? Should we maybe include that just in case, right? We can get that. We see how that may happen. Plus, the men probably couldn't help notice the sexual perks of honoring these gods in their way. So that's how Israel may have started doing what seemed right in their own eyes. These gods could be useful to us. These Canaanites could be useful to us. It's only a small compromise to what God had said. But as we look at the whole history of God's plan of redemption, it's difficult for us to overemphasize how significant of a turning point this is right here. This inclusion of spiritual idolatry into the nation of Israel, this is gonna follow them for centuries and for centuries. This will not be resolved until the exile. And it all started right here, doing what they thought was right in their own eyes and compromising God's word. It's a very important turning point. I'm gonna use the word Canaanization. Israel was Canaanized here. I'm gonna use that word throughout this Bible study to refer to this concept of turning from God and turning to idols. When we read Old Testament, New Testament, part of what we want to do is see ourselves in the passage as well. We want to apply it to our lives. And so this beginning of our message today is a warning for us against idolatry. None of us think we have a problem with idolatry, but we all do. And the apostle John knew that. When he wrote, as an aged man, when he wrote his last epistle, or I should say to 1 John, look at, I wanna show you on the screen, the final words of that letter. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. He knew that we have a propensity. And so we should pause here as we're looking at this, apply it to our lives, and to ask the question, how does one become Canaanized? We do it by absorbing some idea or ambition or pursuit or possession or person that ranks higher than God in our life or that is achieved apart from God. That is our idol. And rather than destroying that idol, we tend to do what we think is right in our own eyes. We merge it into our lifestyle, and then it gets crowded. Remember, we're not built for crowded. And so the natural response is we have to edit something out and we begin to edit God out of our life. But then we feel the distance. As a Christian, we feel that distance, and we don't like it. It makes us sad, and we start weeping. And then we have two choices. We can either destroy the idols that we have allowed in, but what we often do is we just do some spiritual things. We just add in, like Israel did, some sacrifices. So I need to go to church. I need to do this. And we add in some things that we think will please God, but we miss the mark if we don't destroy the idols. So, do you remember last week? I said, as we did our opening, I did our introduction from the middle of Chapter 2, weird way to start a Bible study, and I said that was kind of like we're breaking the Oreo, and we had all the white stuff last week. Okay, we just had the one cookie right now, and this cookie that we just had, Chapter 1, and this part right down to Chapter 2, I would probably call this a personal warning against turning to idols. This is our personal warning. Israel turned to idols. We are warned. Don't do it. Don't turn to idols. Now we're going to switch gear, and our second cookie that we're going to have this morning is going to be Chapter 3, and I would probably, we're completely switching gear here. I would call this, how do we live in a society? How do we live in a nation that has turned to idols? Okay, this is really relevant to us. Let's be clear. We live in a nation that has turned to idols. How does one navigate that sort of situation in life? So this is our other cookie this morning, Judges Chapter 3.

All right, so it begins. What happens to a person or a nation now when their idols finally disappoint them, and they realize now that they have served them in a way they didn't want to for eight years? That is the moment of grace. That's what I'm going to call the moment of grace. We see it over and over in the book of Judges. God's grace, God's mercy, God's rescue. It is the moment when we have an opportunity to turn to God. God himself creates these moments, and we'll see them often. Look at verse nine. Here we go.

Now, where do you think he gained the experience to go out to war? It's because of that pretty girl that he loved and wanted to get married to, right? And the Lord gave the king of Mesopotamia into his hands, so the land had rest for 40 years, and then Ophniel, the son of Kenaz, died. And so the Lord used a previous experience that Ophniel had gained in his life for God's use in this time. God uses previous experiences in our lives. He will draw upon them to be useful in his kingdom in the days in which we live. Some of you are gaining experience in this moment that God may use in the future. No experience that we go through is wasted in God's kingdom. In your study guide on page nine, there's a chart that I really want to encourage you to continue to fill out as we go through the judges. We're doing three of them today. I love charts, timelines, graphs, tables. We can see in a picture that way a lot of things that escape us in a long narrative, so don't skip that part. We're going to get to the second judge here now. This is the most colorful story. I hope you enjoyed this. Verse 12, the people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, against Israel because they had done what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Stop. We learn things about God by reading his word. Does your theology allow for this? Does your theology allow for the fact that God would strengthen the enemy? But he does right there. It says he strengthened Eglon, the king of Moab, who was the enemy of his people. Would he do that in your life? Would God do that in our nation? Would God do that in his church in order to humble and strengthen his church? Verse 13, Eglon gathered to himself Ammonites and Amalekites and went and defeated Israel, and they took possession of the city of Palms, which is Jericho. You remember Jericho from our study of Joshua. It was the first major battle that Israel had won and seized this ancient city, and now it's a Moabite city. And the people of Israel served Eglon, the king of Moab, 18 years. Okay, it's 2021. I want you to walk back to 2003. If you in your world had a foreign conqueror that had set up in your city or your state or your country since 2003, the last 18 years, like none of my grandchildren would have known anything different. That would have been their life. Half of my children wouldn't have really known much different in life than serving a foreign entity. That's a long time. When we're talking about 350 some years, 18 years doesn't seem like much, but when you think about your own life, then it's like that is a long time. It's almost a generation that doesn't know anything else but being oppressed in this way. Verse 15, then the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the son of Gera, the Benjamite, remember that please, a left-handed man. All right, a left-handed man, the scripture doesn't tell us any more than that, but we have, we can apply a little bit of reasoning and we can make some guesses. 10% of the population is left-handed by choice. You just sort of come out of the birth canal wanting to use your left hand instead of the others, only 10%. 1% of the population can really use either one fairly effectively. We call that ambidextrous, okay? I think, just my opinion here, I think it's unlikely that Ehud used his left hand by choice. I think it's more likely that his right hand was either missing, mutilated, or something. I think he, I just think he only had a left hand. Because of this, the people of Israel sent tribute by him to Eglon, the king of Moab. Now, if I was Eglon, the king of Moab, I would want all the money, all the taxes to be brought in by a handicapped person. I'll let him through my gates. That seems like what I would do. But the scripture doesn't tell us, this is just according to Sue, but it says, and Ehud made for himself a sword with two edges, a cubit in length, and he bound it on his right thigh under his clothes, and he presented the tribute to Eglon, king of Moab. Now, Eglon was a very fat man. And so the tribute comes in, and of course, it's not a, you know, it's not a, it's boatloads of money. Like, you know, it comes in, and then everyone leaves. Ehud leaves, all the people that were, anyone who was with him, they leave. And then it says, Ehud turned back, and he comes back to Eglon. He said, I have a message from God for you. Has that ever happened in your life? Oh, you're like, what? You know, you want to hear right away. And so they go up in the upper chamber, and Eglon's like, so what does God have to say to me? And then you know what happens. It says, verse 21, with his left hand, he took the sword from his right thigh, and he thrust it in his belly. And then we have to read about the fat and the dung and all of that. You read it once, we won't read it again. And then he leaves the king, and he locks the door, and he starts making his way. And the servants of the king think he's going to the bathroom. So they're waiting a long time, because they don't want to embarrass him. Have you ever done that at Christmas? The house is all busy, and the bathroom door is closed, and you're in the hallway, just waiting for a long time, because you don't want to embarrass anyone. And then you finally knock on the door, and no one was in there ever. But anyway, that gave Ehud time to get quite a ways away before they discovered that their king was dead. And so the second half of verse 26, he passed beyond the idols. I wanted us to read that part. What in the world? What were idols doing with God's people? But there it is, almost matter-of-factly. Oh, and he passed by the idols, and he escaped. to Sira. When he arrived he sounded the trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim and then the people of Israel went down with him and he was their leader and he said to them follow after me for the Lord has given your enemies the Moabites into your hand. So they went down after him and they seized the fords of the Jordan against the Moabites and did not allow anyone to pass over and they killed at that time about 10,000 of the Moabites all strong able-bodied men not a man escaped so Moab was subdued that day under the hand under the left hand of Israel and the land had rest for 80 years. Which is a long time that's a whole generation now that didn't really know oppression. Now the lessons that we gained from the book of Judges is not as we apply this the lesson is not so be like the judges okay because they've become progressively ungodly people. However we can be inspired as we see them yield themselves to the Lord. The important part about the lesson to the judges is these phrases that we see the Spirit of God was with him or that a judge says you know for the Lord okay. So the first judge Othniel he had this godly heritage of Caleb and personal experience that he submitted to God. This judge Ehud he had a handicap but he had courage that he submitted to God. Now this last judge Shamgar he has a stick let's read verse 31. After him meaning Ehud was Shamgar the son of Anath who killed 600 of the Philistines with an ox goad and he also saved Israel. We don't know what tribe he was from we don't know if he was even Hebrew his name seems to be a Canaanite name his father's name is the name of one of the gods of Canaan. So his family did not prepare him likely to serve God but God prepared him. God prepared him for that day. Now if weapons had been available or legal for Shamgar he probably would have used weapons but he didn't seem to have one all he had was an ox goad which was about an eight foot stick with a pointy end on one that you would prod the oxen and like a shovel kind of thing on the other one that you would turn and scoop off the plow and keep the plow working good for you. That's what he had. Now we find out later in stories and we get it when we get into like the days of David we find out that the Philistines were ones that had seemed to collect weapons from everyone they wouldn't let anyone have weapons they had no concern for Second Amendment rights or anything like that and it occurred to me that we spend so much time worrying about strength what we perceive to be strength taken away from us when all the while God is completely prepared to use weakness and we're so uptight about holding on to the things that we think make us strong. God doesn't need our strength. God will use our strength as like Othniel the experience that he had but God uses weakness and this is what we see throughout Judges and this is what the Apostle Paul told us in 1st Corinthians I'll put it up for you but God shows the foolish things in the world to shame the wise God shows what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Alright what are we to take from this these chapters I just thought of a few things number one when a nation has turned to idols God creates moments of grace that should be watched for in those moments of grace God will use some of the most unlikely people God uses them despite their strengths and despite their weaknesses God is looking for people who will submit what they have to him and I also thought that these unlikely leaders they inspire others around them now it seems like Shamgar did all his work by himself but in the other examples they the leaders the judges they inspired others to come alongside now we're probably not going to be called on in our lifetime to do these great exploits like a judge but in all sorts of humble ways at many times in our life God will call upon us to serve him it where we're at with our strengths and to serve him with our weaknesses if you have a godly heritage use it for the Lord if you're handicapped but you have guts use it for the Lord if all you have is a stick but you're a little bit crazy use it for the Lord right whatever we have I want to leave us with one last point and that is our potential to inspire others okay to inspire others today or to inspire others long beyond our lifetime and this is just a fun little thing that I want to leave us with that we find in Scripture I'm rolling all the way forward to the days of David he's not King yet he's still running from Saul this is in 1st Chronicles 12 if you want to read it later on and David is gathering for himself these men at Ziklag mighty men he calls them and they're helping him and there's a really neat sentence that says they were bowmen and they could shoot arrows and sling stones with either the right or the left hand and they were Benjamins now interesting only 1% of the population is ambidextrous how did David get all these fighting men that could do the right in the left hand the Bible doesn't tell us but I would like to think that somewhere along the line their ancient ancestor Ehud had inspired them to build on their strength and shore up their weakness and I wonder if it was kind of a dynasty thing with the Benjamites that they just worked that in their fighting for decades to come whether that's the case or whether it's not the point for us is that we want to specifically train our strengths and yield our weaknesses to the Lord I think that's what he would have us to do father thank you so much for these opening chapters of judges Lord help us not leave here and not take to heart the warnings against idolatry Lord we always should be assessing what we've done in our lives and and maybe those areas that we've moved forward in what seems right in our own eyes and make changes where they are necessary and the Lord I thank you for these stories that remind us that we are your kids and that you will reach out and use us in whatever way you choose at whatever time you choose and Lord we just stand before you today and we yield our strength to you and ask you to build on it and we yield our weaknesses to you and we say if that's what you're going to use that would be just fine too we will credit it all to you Lord thank you for this study we pray in Jesus name amen