Repentance without deeds
Contents
* (4) Judges 2:1~23 // Repentance without works
We were able to see the brave young warrior Caleb who saved the nation and his tribe by showing off his 85-year-old old man last time. In the process of the tribe of Judah, to which Caleb belonged, waged the war for conquest of the land of Canaan, all the inhabitants of the mountainous areas were driven out, but the inhabitants of the low valleys were struggling because they were armed with 'iron chariots' and resisted them.
However, Caleb conquered the Promised Land by faith alone, drove out the descendants of Anak and their sons, and saw how he led the war of conquest to victory, unlike other tribes who had incomplete conquests in the Promised Land.
Dear all! Faith transcends age. Caleb was 85 years old when he won the victory. Moses was 80 years old when he was called by the Lord. Age has nothing to do with God's history. It is the judgment of the world and the standard of the weak. Abraham also had Isaac when he was 100 years old when he thought he had no hope. A person of faith does not live by the age of the world, but by faith. I hope that your life of faith will start anew from now on, and that all of you will become servants of faith like Caleb who are beautiful and courageous and write a new history of faith.
However, in the last part of Judges chapter 1, that is, verses 22-36, the tribe of Joseph, following the tribe of Judah, goes up against Bethel. The tribe of Joseph was also with the Lord, and in particular, the tribe of Ephraim was able to conquer Bethel.
However, the other tribe of Joseph, the tribe of Manasseh, could not drive out the Canaanites, but lived with them. It is also recorded that the other tribes, Zebulun, Asher, and Naphtali, also did not drive out all of the Canaanite inhabitants, but settled together in the land.
Worse still, not only did the tribes of Is fail to drive them out, but on the contrary, the Amorites among the Canaanites drove God's people, the Danites, to the mountains and prevented them from descending into the valleys.
Dear all! When God's people, who must obey the Lord's commands with the determination and determination of faith, fight spiritual battles, and gain victory before the Lord's commands, eventually fail to obey the commands to the end and live in a weak state and compromise with the world. , rather, they fall into challenges and tests from the world and show a shameful appearance being dragged by them.
Their problem was not their strength, but their distrust of God's presence and the resulting loss of courage. Loss of faith in God leads to fundamental dissatisfaction in human life. Those who have lost their faith in God cannot help but fall into mental weakness.
Gentlemen, we must become Christians with faith and spirit, not flesh and blood. God is telling us to fight the good fight of faith today. Me and you today, we must cast off, boldly defeat the spiritual and physical enemies that we must fight to defeat, and become servants of faith that please God as the faithful and valiant soldiers of the Lord.
*However, in verse 1, the beginning of today's text, when all the tribes of Is did not completely conquer Canaan and lived with them in moderation, and their faith toward God gradually weakened, the angel of the Lord sent by the Lord Come and preach the word of God to the Is people (1). Of course, their failures were not due to their lack of courage and spirit, but rather their lack of faith.
Here, Jehovah's 'messenger' (Malak, a man sent with a message, a prophet, an angel as God's messenger) is God's spokesman who spoke the word of God from Gilgal to Bochim. And Gilgal was where Is first fortified after crossing the Jordan River. Here Is is the place where twelve stones were erected as a monument, where all men were circumcised and the Passover festival was celebrated. Although the Ark of the Covenant was moved to Shiloh, Gilgal was the place where the will to obey God's command to conquer Canaan was burning.
But Is forgot the grace of God at Gilgal, the covenant and the promise, and failed to keep the word of the Lord. Therefore, the messenger of God proclaims the word of God's judgment from the land where he believed and promised victory in Gilgal, a land where God's promises were vivid and God's guidance was revealed, and where he enjoyed serving God.
Dear all! Faith can turn a place of death into a fountain of life, but unbelief can turn even a place of blessing and joy into a land of curses and weeping. Gilgal, which used to be the land of victory, the land of glory, and the land of liberation of joy and emotion, has now been transformed into a land of curses, a land of destruction, and a land where God's words of discipline fall. May the land you and I tread on always be a land of blessing, a land of emotion and joy, and a land of glory to God.
The angel of Jehovah first gives the word of judgment that God will deal with Is' disobedience in two main ways (2~3). One is that the Lord will no longer fight against the Canaanites on behalf of the Isites. It means that he will refuse to become the source of Is's power.
The second is that the Canaanites, whom they did not cast out, will bring limitations and pain in their lives like thorns in their side, and the gods they worship will deceive Is and promote corruption and corruption. In other words, they live by worshiping vain things, and they cannot find true life, and they will only perish in death and ruin forever.
This shows that God's disappointment was as great as God's grace to Is was great. Dear all! We should not only be grateful for the grace we receive from the Lord, but we should also ask for the ability to meet the duties that naturally accompany that grace. It should be remembered that the greater the grace received, the greater the gratitude we should give to Jehovah. It is true that the greater the love received, the greater the love to be repaid for the love received.
Instead of disappointing the love that Jehovah has received, we should rather be people of faith who know how to repay that great love.
The angel of the Lord said that the Lord would no longer fight for them, that the Canaanites they could not cast out would bring pain to their lives like thorns in their side, and that the gods they worship would deceive Is and promote corruption and corruption. Proclaiming words of chastisement and curses.
The people of Is who heard the words of the judgment of the angel of the Lord were so great that all the descendants of Is could not help but fall into a great shock (4-5). Because there can be no hope for Is without God's support. Is, where God is not with us, is only one of the countless nations, one of the small and lowly peoples. So the people had no choice but to raise their voices and cry.
But paradoxically, their tears are the basis for recovery. Gentlemen, the Lord does not want people to perish, but because He wants them to turn from the way of sin and return to the way of life. The descendants of Is called the place where they cried aloud together, 'Bokim' (weeping), and they contrite for their disobedience. Also, they decided to worship God anew and offered sacrifices.
However, the continued passage reveals that the Is people wept loudly at the words of the angel of the Lord, but did not truly repent and return to God (10). The Book of Judges is the story of God sending judges to save Is. In other words, it can be said to be the story of the sins of the people of Is. The crime of Is is mentioned in earnest from 2:11.
The people of Is, even after weeping in Bogim, did not truly repent and still sinned. It was repentance without works. The text says that when Joshua was alive, everyone ?쐓erved the Lord.??When Joshua was present, God showed great works, and Is served God. As long as those who experienced the Lord's grace like Joshua lived, they remembered God's love and worshiped the Lord.
The problem is that after Joshua and the elders who worked with him returned to their ancestors, the new generation did not know God's mercy, nor did they know Him. This is not simply to say that there was no ?쁪nowledge??of Him and His history, but that there was no experiential faith.
Faith is an experience that comes when you fully trust and rely on God, and it leads you into a deeper ?쁪nowledge?? People who do not have this experiential faith lose their trust in God in the moment of crisis and cannot even think and worship the Lord in normal times. Is fell into such a desperate crisis.
Dear all! can't even cry don't even try can't stand it only believe to live Is did not properly educate his descendants on religion and history. Failing to pass on a legacy of faith forced their entire nation to fail.
Everyone, before you beat your breasts and weep, I pray in the name of Jesus that you can become parents of faith who pass on the legacy of faith, the legacy of faith and the experience of faith.