This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day two of our look through the book of Judges, week
one. We're going to look at chapter one, verses 21 to 26 today. And in these
verses we're going to look at the danger of compromise.

Yesterday the people of Israel had a great start. They started with prayer and
obedience, but very quickly they hit one of the greatest dangers to our faith.
They decide to compromise.

And this danger isn't just true back in their day, thousands of years ago. This
danger is just as true today. Now there's two major ways that they decide to
compromise and we can learn something from each of them.

First way they decide to compromise is they didn't completely drive out the
enemy. They didn't completely drive out the enemy. Let me just read you some
verses about this.

In verse 21, "The Benjamites, however, did not drive out the Jebusites who were
living in Jerusalem. To this day, the Jebusites lived there with the Benjamites.
" But it wasn't just the Benjamites, the tribe of Benjamin.

If you go down to verse 27, "But Manasseh did not drive out the people of
Bethshan or Tanakh or Dor or Ibliam or Megiddo or their surrounding settlements,
for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. And when Israel became
strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor, but they never drove them
out completely. " Now it wasn't just these tribes.

Down in verse 29 it says, "Nor did Ephraim drive the people out completely. " In
verse 30, "Nor did Zebulun drive the people out completely. " 31, "Nor did Asher
drive out the enemy completely.

" Verse 33, "Nor did Naphtali drive out the enemy completely. " They drove out
the enemy in some ways, but not completely. They didn't do what God had told
them to do.

In Deuteronomy chapter 7 verse 2, way back when Moses was giving the law to the
people, he told them what to do when this happened. But when the Lord,
Deuteronomy 7. 2, "When the Lord your God hands these nations over to you and
you conquer them, you must completely destroy them.

Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy. " They didn't do what God
asked them to do. I know there's something in all of our minds that says, how
could God ask them to do this?

How could God ask them to destroy a nation completely? Well, obviously only God
could ask this. Only God could say this because only God could know that that
nation and everyone in it was beyond saving.

I believe he would not have asked this if he did not know that. We see that from
several evidences in the Old Testament. Only he could know the devastation that
had only come from these nations because of the hundreds and hundreds of years
of patience he had been giving these nations.

Only he could know the babies that had been killed, sacrificed to false gods
over those hundreds of years while God had been patient. And only he could know
how the terror that those nations were bringing upon themselves was going to be
spread to other nations. And because only God could know that, only God could
ask this.

And so he tells them, you need, because of what's happened in these nations, you
need to wipe them out completely. And they did not. They did not.

Sometimes they lived alongside of them. Most of the time they made them
laborers. It was a halfway measure that continually resulted in the
faithlessness of Israel and it eventually resulted in the destruction of the
people of Israel.

So you and I, we look at this story and the question is, what needs to be driven
out that hasn't been driven out completely? In verse 21, when the Benjamites
didn't drive out the enemy completely, the verse says, so to this day, they
still live together in the city of Jerusalem. What is there in my life, in your
life, where you'd say, so to this day, this is still there in my life.

That enemy hasn't been driven out completely. Now, the first kind of enemy we
think of, I think when I talk about this, is the enemy of maybe some persistent
sin in life that hasn't been driven out completely. And you may struggle with
that sin the rest of your life.

But my question is, have you settled for that sin? You see, once you stop
struggling, you've decided to not drive that sin out completely. None of us are
going to be perfect in this life.

We're all going to struggle with sins in this life. But that's not the question.
The question is, have you settled for that sin in your life?

Well, that's who I am. I'm just not going to battle that one anymore. If you've
stopped battling, you've settled.

You've decided it's not going to be driven out completely. So the first thing
you think of is some persistent sin. But there are also other attitudes in our
lives.

There's attitudes of fearfulness that need to be driven out. There's attitudes
of doubt that need to be driven out. And yes, we're never going to become
perfect in this life.

But are you still struggling? Are you still praying? Are you still looking for
God's victory in your life in that area?

What needs to be driven out that hasn't been driven out completely? Instead of
settling, keep struggling, keep battling for God's victory in your life. Where
is it, these verses also cause us to ask, that you may have taken halfway
measures?

Like they took halfway measures and said, well, the people can live here and
they can be laborers. That's sort of doing what God said to do. Where is it in
my life, in your life, where we've said, "God, this is sort of what you asked,
but deep in your heart, you know, you haven't obeyed completely.

You only got halfway to what God asked you to do. Maybe it's in the way that you
treat the people around you, in your own family. You're better than you used to
be, but you're not where you need to be.

Maybe it's in the way that you have integrity in your finances. You do it
differently than you used to, but you still know God's speaking to you about
making some changes. " And you say, "Well, God, I met you halfway.

" Well, you don't meet God halfway. You go all the way to Him because He's the
one who has the gift of grace. He is the one who has the gift of power.

Anytime you say in your mind, "I've met God halfway," you've missed the point
because the point is we want to go all the way to all that He has for our lives.
Where have you taken halfway measures? So the first thing that they did to
compromise is they drove out the enemy, but not completely.

The second thing they did is they tore down what was evil only to rebuild it
somewhere else. They tore down something that was evil to rebuild it somewhere
else. And this happens in a place called Luz.

In verse 22, "Now the tribes of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the Lord was with
them. And when they sent men to spy out Bethel, formerly called Luz, the spies
saw a man coming out of the city, and they said to him, 'Show us how to get into
the city, and we will see that you are treated well. ' And so he showed them,
and they put the city to the sword, but spared the man and his whole family.

He then went to the land of the Hittites, where he built a city, and he called
it Luz, which is its name to this day. " Now we just read earlier that God had
told them to make no treaty with these people, but they made a treaty with this
man. Luz was a city that was destroyed, an evil city, but it was rebuilt
somewhere else.

When they said, "We will see that you are treated well if you let us into the
city," they did not have to say you could rebuild the city somewhere else. In
fact, that word "treated well" is the idea of hesed or covenant. They pledged
loyalty to this man.

They made a contract with this man, which God, we just read in Deuteronomy, had
expressly told them not to do. And so evil was torn down, only to be rebuilt
somewhere else. How often does that happen?

Where you tear down an evil in your life, or you help someone else to tear down
an evil in their life, and then you see it rebuilt again immediately in some
other place. There's an important point here, because it would have been okay
for them to talk to this man and allow this man to give them help. And like
happened at Jericho, show kindness, as happened with Rahab as she told the spies
how to be protected.

But the principle behind this is, when you act kindly towards sinners, you end
up inviting their commitment. But when you act kindly towards sin, you end up
compromising your commitment. And in the way they treated this man, they weren't
just acting kindly towards a sinner, they actually acted kindly towards sin.

They allowed him to be in a place where he rebuilt exactly what was there
before. When you act kindly towards sinners, I'm a sinner, you're a sinner,
everybody you meet is a sinner, you better act kindly towards sinners, or you
won't act kindly towards anyone, you end up actually inviting people's
commitment. God acts kindly to us even while we were yet sinners, showed us the
grace of the cross.

But when you act kindly towards sin, that's something very different. Of course
you can act kindly towards sinners and not sin, that's exactly what God does.
When you act kindly towards sin, it will compromise your commitment every time.

So as we come to the end of this look at compromise, the questions are, what has
been rebuilt in your life that never needed to be rebuilt? Or what right now
maybe are you rebuilding that doesn't need to be rebuilt? Maybe it's a
relationship that's taking you to the places you know you shouldn't be going.

Maybe it's a habit of going to a certain place that always gets you in trouble.
Maybe it's a contract, a business contract with someone who actually is going
to, you know, going to stain your integrity one more time. What are you
rebuilding that doesn't need to be rebuilt?

You say to yourself, well, it'll be okay this time. But all of a sudden you've
rebuilt love, you have the same thing in your life that was there before. These
are great verses about the danger of compromise.

What I love is the power of God's Spirit to cause us to live in a different way.
So let's ask for that power right now. Father, this is a world where it's easy
to compromise.

There's so much struggle around us, there's so much sin around us. And we can so
easily get confused by the bad advice that we get or the temptations that we
have. Lord, we don't want to compromise.

We want to be men and women of faith. And so we pray together right now that you
help us to choose faith instead of compromise and help us to see these places in
our lives where we might be allowing the enemy to stay in our lives and we
should have never allowed that to happen or allowing some evil to be rebuilt in
our lives that took years to tear down. Help us to see that right now and to
trust you again in a fresh new way.

We trust you. In Jesus' name, we trust you. Amen.

Tomorrow, together, we're going to see how God responds to their compromise.