This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back for day three of our first week of looking through the book of
Judges together. Yesterday on day two of this week we looked at the compromises
that the people of Israel made that started to get them into trouble. Now we're
going to see God's response to that compromise.

And when we see God's response we actually see some of the ways out of our
compromises. It begins chapter two verse one. The angel of the Lord went up from
Gilgal to Bochum and said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the
land I swore to give to your ancestors.

I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a
covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars,
yet you have disobeyed me. ' Why have you done this? And I have also said, 'I
will not drive them out before you.

They will become traps for you, and their gods will become snares to you. ' And
when the angel of the Lord had spoken these things to all the Israelites, the
people wept aloud, and they called the place Bochum, and there they offered
sacrifices to the Lord. " Now the word Bochum literally means weepers.

Here they are weeping in the presence of God's judgment. What we're going to see
as we go through this book, they're not going to change. They're weeping, but
they're not going to change.

They shed tears, but tears are no substitute for repentance. You see, there's a
difference between tears of regret and tears of repentance. Tears of regret are,
"I'm sorry this happened.

I wish it had never happened. I wish maybe I'd never hurt God. " But that's
different than tears of repentance which say, "I'm going to change.

By God's power and strength, things are going to change. " So many times we have
tears of regret and not tears of repentance, and nothing ever changes. They shed
tears, but tears are no substitute for repentance.

And they offered sacrifices, but sacrifice is no substitute for obedience. God
says that again and again and again in the Old Testament. Sacrifice is no
substitute for obedience.

So how does God respond to this compromise? God says, "I kept my covenant with
you, but you made a covenant with others. " And so he says the result is going
to be that you're going to be tempted by these people.

You're going to have to struggle with these people. They're going to actually be
a trap for you because of the decision you've made. And God says, "Let's go back
and review.

" And he goes through a long review, and we need to go through this review as
well because it explains the entire book of Judges. In verse 6, God says, "Let's
review. This is what happened, and this is what's going to happen.

" After Joshua had dismissed the Israelites, they went to take possession of the
land, each to their own inheritance. 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. Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of
the Lord, died at the age of 110, and they buried him in the land of his
inheritance, at Timnath Harys on the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount
Gaiash.

And after the whole generation had been gathered to their ancestors, another
generation grew up that knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel.
And then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and they served the
Baals. Now down in verse 16, "Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out
of the hands of these raiders.

Yet they would not listen to their judges, but prostituted themselves to other
gods and worshiped them. They quickly turned from the ways of their ancestors,
who had been obedient to the Lord's commands. Whenever the Lord raised up a
judge for them, he was with the judge, and he saved them out of the hands of
their enemies, as long as the judge lived.

For the Lord relented because of their groaning under those who had oppressed
and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even
more corrupt than those of their ancestors, following other gods and serving and
worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices in stubborn ways.

Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and said, "Because this nation
has violated the covenant I ordained for their ancestors, and has not listened
to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left
when he died. I will use them to test Israel, and to see whether they will keep
the way of the Lord and walk in it as their ancestors did. " And so the Lord had
allowed those nations to remain.

He did not drive them out at once by giving them into the hands of Joshua. Now
in that long section you see this pattern that's the pattern of the book of
Judges, an all too familiar pattern, a pattern of spiraling down spiritually.
They disobeyed God, they got into trouble, they cried for help, God sent them
help through the judges, they trusted until things seemed better, but then once
that spiritual leader, the judge was gone, they disobeyed again, even worse than
before.

Now this isn't just about their lives, it's about my life, about your life,
because we get into sin patterns as well. We get into patterns of walking away
from God rather than towards God as well. How do you break out of that pattern?

Sometimes how do you break out of it even before it starts? There's a reminder
here that what we're talking about, it's not only your life that's at stake as
we talk about this, it's an entire generation that's at stake. These verses say,
"Another generation who did not know the Lord.

" Your lack of faith can easily become the next generation's absence of faith.
So how do you break out of this pattern? This might surprise you, but one of the
keys to breaking out of the pattern is the word that we read in verse 20,
"Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel.

" One of the keys to breaking out of this pattern is understanding God's anger
against sin. Of course God is angry against sin. Sin hurts his children.

So of course God is angry. And when you can sense how God feels about a
persistent sin or a continual falling away in your life, you can begin to break
out of that pattern. Because step one is to take sin more seriously.

Satan says, "Hey, that sin is no big deal. " But you need to sense God's anger
over Satan saying that. You think about that sin, "Well, I know it's bad, but I
also know that I'm forgiven.

" You need to sense God's anger over that kind of statement. Now listen very
carefully. It is not that God is angry with you.

In fact, the Bible very clearly tells us he is not. That's the difference now
that Jesus has come. In this case, Jesus had not come yet.

God was angry against the sin, he was angry against them. Now that you're in
Christ Jesus, he loves you. He has forgiven you.

There is no condemnation for you because of Jesus Christ. God is not angry with
you. You might think he is.

And if you think he is, you want to stay as far away from him as possible.
Because who wants to talk with somebody who is angry with you? No, I don't want
to be close to God if I think he is angry with me.

God is not angry with you. He loves you. And because he loves you, of course he
is angry at sin and what sin does to you.

And if you can begin to sense what that anger means, then it grows out of seeing
what you could be that you're not. What you could be doing that's not happening
in your life right now. The ways you could be growing.

The impact that you could be having on others. If you could begin to sense that,
you could begin to take the faithlessness, that sin, that falling away more
seriously. And when you connect with the heart of God about your sin and about
your growth, you will inevitably begin to change.

You see, as long as you go through the cycle, God is mad at me, I'll change.
I've changed. I've sinned again.

God is mad at me. You're going to be in the same trap the people of Israel were
in. You're trapped into thinking you have to trust someone else because God is
too mad at you to help you right now.

God is not mad at you. If there could be a change in your thinking, to begin to
think God loves me and God hates what sin does to me. God is never angry with
me.

God is always angry with sin. And if you can begin to agree with God about both
of those truths, I can see how deeply God loves me and I can see how deeply God
hates sin. When you can hold both of those in your heart, in your mind at the
same time, then you're drawn closer to God, who is the solution.

Then the truth will set you free. But this truth that we're talking about, in
essence, is not a concept or a principle or even a way of thinking. It's Jesus.

It's in Jesus that we see God's love for you and I as sinners and God's hatred
for sin through his death on the cross. So you look at the cross. You see his
love for you there, you see his hatred for sin there, and you see the power to
change in the cross of Jesus Christ.

I just invite you to pray with me. Father, help me to see it. Help me to see how
deeply you love me and that you will never stop loving me, that you will never
be angry with me, you will never condemn me.

And help me to see how deeply you hate sin and what it does to me and to all who
are torn apart because of it. Help me to see both of those truths at the same
time. And let that truth set me free, I pray.

In Jesus' name, I pray this, amen. Well join us tomorrow. We're going to see how
God saves the people as he sends the first judges.