When You Find Yourself In A Hole (Jake Enns)

When you find yourself in a hole, sometimes people feel like

they're in a hole, and sometimes they are, figuratively speaking,

in a hole. Do you find yourself in a hole

today, squeezed and pressured and confined and hemmed in?

Maybe you find yourself in the place you can't get out of, or

you wish you were not in stuck in a hole and the hole is deep

and you feel there's no way out unless someone helps you out.

The word quote UN quote in a hole is figurative language, but

we can get ourselves in a hole in many different ways.

Maybe you're in a financial hole in the place where you thought

this deal was going to be in your favor and it was going to

bring you so much prosperity and only to find out it was a scam.

It's amazing how many people I meet with who fallen for quick,

easy get rich quick schemes and they lose thousands.

They're worse on worse off than they were before.

Maybe it's a different kind of hole.

Maybe you got yourself stuck in a relationship that you should

never entered in the 1st place. It felt so good.

The chemistry was right until it wasn't.

Everything got messed up and this person who you thought was

going to be true and committed and loyal wasn't.

But now you've made your promises, maybe even married.

You're emotionally in a dark hole.

You can't get out. Maybe you're even warned about

that relationship shouldn't do it.

But you did, and now you can't get out.

Or at least if you do, it's going to be catastrophically

painful. And it can be a whole of many

different kinds. Maybe compromised convictions,

compromised boundaries. You promised yourself never to

do this or that or the other because you have convictions.

But you got pressured, pushed, and pulled, and over time they

wore you down. You started doing things,

participating in things, engaging in things, and now

you're in a hole. It's so easy to destroy our

lives, so much easier than we realize, whether it is through a

long line of small, incremental decisions or through a few big

jumps. Compulsive impulsive jumps.

How it happens is not really the big issue, although that does

play a role, but it happens one way or another.

A question we might ask is how does it happen that people and

communities and societies and whole nations end up in a whole?

You know how much money our government owes taxpayers have

to foot the bill for these things?

It's over a trillion dollars by now, I hear.

I don't know how that's going to work out.

Often times people have it good. Over time, they forget to have

it good because they get used to having it good and they start

taking it for granted. And as pastor Pastor Joel

preached last Sunday, they forget to remember.

We forget to remember over time. We forget the lessons, the

experiences, the teachings, the values, the traditions.

And we don't guard them, protect them anymore, and we part with

them. And then we start bringing new

things into our lives, different things that we have no way of

knowing where they'll take us, not thinking maybe these are

traps. Maybe they'll get us in a hole.

Servitude, bondage, whatever it may be.

It often happens when there's this lure, this way of doing it,

ease the easy way and each one doing as they see fit.

And as we read the book of judges, we'll go there in a few

minutes, out with the old, in with the new.

And getting into a hole is not new.

It's as old as humanity. People have gotten themselves

into holes in Bible times, and we get ourselves into holes

today. Today, nothing has changed in

Bible times. Those people went after idols.

What do we go after? We go after idols too.

And the idols of our time, There are many a long list, and it's

growing, not getting smaller. And the holes we find ourselves

in are increasing and becoming closer together and getting

deeper. We look at the idols of the

people of the Bible and think, oh, we would never bow to a

statue of stone or wood or things like that, but we do.

What do we look for? What are we ambitious about?

We chase for money and power and control and domination, our

homes, our institutions, the business world, in our country.

Just listen to the top leaders, not just in our country, but

different countries. What's humanity after?

Look at how countries operate, how communities operate.

We chase the gods of money, wealth and luxury.

Just look how we chase convenience, easy living,

earthly temporal security. We chase after the God of

appearance, looks, and beauty. Just look at what people do to

deny the reality of physical appearance and ongoing aging.

And then our culture chases the God of sex and perversion.

I can't begin to describe the horrible sins that are committed

in the name of my body, my choice.

But let's remember, God remembers.

He doesn't forget to remember. We learned last Sunday

forgetting God comes at a high cost.

In the Book of Judges, we find that the stories were written

down South. Future generations would hear

and they would listen and they would learn and apply.

And it got to the point, not only did they not apply, not

learn, not hear, not listen, not hear, they didn't even hear.

As we're going through the Book of Judges, the lessons in this

book are for us to learn from so we do not have to go through the

same cycles of rebellion, repentance, and rescue that they

did. I mentioned at the start of our

series, we're not presenting history lessons as it were.

We want to preach these sermons from the perspective of learning

God's principles of truth that He wants us to live by, wants us

to love Him. Repent when we sin, yes, but

depend on His mercy and justice, His wisdom and direction, and

not go into all these trails that are full of holes.

The book of Judges itself is not a history book.

It is not a prescript. It is history book.

It is not a prescriptive book. It's a history story of what God

did in the times of the Israelites in those days.

But the world as such has not changed our time.

It is not as though the problems are erased.

We're now brand new in a brand new time.

It's as old as the Bible. Let's look at today.

We don't know how much longer we will have freedom in our land.

We have to admit we're not the culture we once were.

Our freedoms in our country are increasingly coming under

pressure and the pressure to conform and given it's

increasing, different beliefs and world views are being

pushed. The Christian faith is being

marginalized increasingly. We as people of faith in God,

believing the Bible, we do well to prepare ourselves, get right

with God, live in obedience now so we don't have to say later we

wish we had. Who will get us out of this

hole? This morning in our series in

Judges, we'll be going through Judges chapter 3, verse 12 to

Judges 3:12–31

31. And we learned last Sunday in

Chapter 2 and the first part of Chapter 3, how the people had

sinned, gotten themselves in trouble and in a hole.

And once they were in misery and distress, they remembered that,

forgotten to remember. Isn't that interesting?

And then they did what they should have done before they

even got themselves in the hole, before they even turned away

from God. They should have corrected

themselves and said something like, you listen guys, unless we

hold steady, we're going to go off track.

But they didn't do that well. They got themselves into bondage

and to into sin and then into bondage and then they repented

and God raised up often Neil and he helped them out of the

problem. There was war and God rescued

them and then they had a 40 year time of peace.

Lesson learned. OK, now we won't do that again,

right? Wrong.

After 40 years they took their freedom for granted again and as

of the first time they forgot to remember the blessings of God.

They went right back into what their forefathers had done, just

as their forefathers had done. So this morning our story is the

story of a man named Ihad. I don't know if I pronounced him

correctly, but that's the way I learned to pronounce him when I

was young. Ihad, whom God used to free his

people, Israel, from the hand of Eglon.

Eglon, king of Moab. And the reason they needed to be

freed was exactly because they had forgotten to remember.

They had grown careless, had fallen into sin, had done evil,

and God punished them for it. So let's read Judges 12 verse,

Judges 3 verse 12, rather Judges 312 to 14.

Judges 3:12

And the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the

Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon

king of Moab against Israel, because then they had done evil

in the sight of the Lord. Then he, meaning Eglon king,

gathered, gathered himself, the people of Ammon and Amalek, and

went and defeated Israel and took possession of the city of

Palms. So the children of Israel served

Eglon king of Moab 18 years. Do you see what's happening

here? From the first oppression when

it ended to the oppression described here, the in between

time was a 40 year time span. And after the 40 year time span,

it was back to sinning again. And that's how long it took for

them to read, to forget, to remember.

This time God gave his people over to be oppressed by a

different ruler. This was the king of Moab,

Eglon. And I could go into the meaning

of the words and all that, but our sermon time is too short, so

I'll leave those things out. But Eglon's oppressed the people

of Israel 18 years. He he made war against them,

overpowered them, and now it was an 18 year oppression.

Think about it. This is now more than twice the

previous time. The first one was eight years

when Othneil became the judge, when the king of the north from

Mesopotamia had oppressed them. Now it's King Eglin from Moab,

he's further to the east and it's an 18 year oppression and

says the Lord strengthen him. Here was a Pagan king whose

heart was not focused on God. He was an evil ruler, but God

removed the barriers, remove the boundaries of safety and

protection over his people and says he strengthened the king of

the Edom Moab and King Eglon came in, attacked and he

oppressed them. And that oppression lasted 18

years. What is noteworthy, as we go

through the book of Judges, we see these cycles enjoying rest,

forgetting to remember, then sinning, then in their sin,

remembering and then repenting. Why not just skip that part?

Why not just keep remembering and skip the sin part?

Well, it's easy said, right? How easy it is in our lives.

The nation here was in a downward spiral, steadily

spiring down, and they would get rescued again.

And we'll go into that in a minute, but this was going to

repeat itself repeatedly. And they would spiral.

And what's interesting to note is it was not like every spiral

was smaller. They learned some that spiral

was smaller. They learned some more.

And eventually there's no more spirals anymore.

No, it's the other way around. The spirals got bigger and worse

and more destructive. And we're going to see some very

horrible things that these people did.

The children of Israel, what they did in their promised land,

toward the end of the book of Judges, we see they repented,

God responded. And whenever they did cry out to

God, he would listen. At the same time also, the moral

standards just kept shrinking, eroding, declining continually

as the judges came and went. And some of these judges, they

were not that great either. Think of Justa or Samson.

Some of those guys were just not that great.

So let's look at what's going on here first.

We don't need help to get in the hole.

Ever thought of that? Anybody can fall in.

What do you do? How do you get into a financial

hole? Nothing, just let yourself go on

your suspending, borrow, spend like there's no tomorrow and you

will get in a hole. Absolutely.

Doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank.

Depends on your habits. You can get into a hole very

quickly. Just stop being on guard.

Do nothing. Nowadays we have self driving

cars. Almost not every car is like

that, but some are. But back in the day every every

car was built. Oh, you have to hold on to that

wheel and you have to look ahead on the road because if you

don't, it's going to go in the ditch.

There's never a time to just let go, to get into the hole.

Just let go. Financial, just let go.

You'll be in a financial hole. The path to sin is often slow

and easy, smooth and comfortable.

No resistance, no pressure. Just follow the drift.

Soothing, relaxing. Until one day.

What happened? How'd they get up with end up

with this massive debt? I don't know what to do with.

That's a financial hole. This was not a financial hole in

the book here, but that's what we sometimes do.

We're sinful by nature. We can sin all by ourselves,

don't have to listen to anybody. We don't need courses, don't

need training, don't need diplomas or degrees for this.

It just happens. Breaking God's commands is

something we can all do and easily do.

We don't need instructions, no advice, it just comes naturally.

We can do it all by ourselves, but then getting out of the

hole, that takes help from the outside.

Once a person's deep in trouble, deep in the hole, the fun is

gone. The sin has kind of soaked you

in. And what sounded so inviting, so

promising now is dark and bitter and fearful and scary and was so

innocent and benign now. And so now it's just a dark

hole. It's going to swallow you alive.

You know what we can do then what the Israelites did?

Repent. Remember to remember.

Oh, yeah, we had a good at one time.

Repent. And when you repent of

something, it simply means you have been going one way and now

you start going the other way. That's what repentance means.

You do the other thing. God's intention is not good.

Intentions are not the definition of repentance.

One man said. Repentance is when you stop

doing the things you say you're sorry for.

I talked with someone some time ago, very dear to me, and he and

I were talking about this and he said something very deep and

profound. He said talking about somebody

who was constantly confessing but not changing anything.

He said they're good at confessing, just not repenting.

I thought, wow, that's pretty deep.

Just saying, Oh yeah, I sinned, sorry, that's not change.

There has to be a decision that has to be implemented.

Repentance means doing something about what we did.

And of course we need God's help.

We can't just one day say I won't sin anymore, as good as we

may intend to not sin anymore. We're human sinful nature.

We have to have Christ. We have to surrender.

Lay down our pride, set aside our ego, lay down our weapons,

our arguments, our rationalizations, our

justifications, and just say, Lord, here I am.

I messed up. I, I, I repent.

I ask you to forgive me humbly with a contrite heart.

I've said on different occasions, and those of you who

know me well know this true repentance has no demands, no

conditions. Simple, humble surrender.

That's it. There's a story in the Bible

what we call the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15 where Jesus

Luke 15 · chapter mention

tells 3 parables. Each story illustrates God's

love for his people. And the third story, Jesus tells

the story of a man who had two sons, and the younger son

demanded his future share of his inheritance.

The father gave it to him and the young son went and

squandered it with wild, righteous living and time.

The money ran out as it always does.

He became destitute, poor, broken, alone, got himself in

the hole financially, socially, relationally, spiritually and

emotionally in every which way, when he was at his lowest

working for a pig farmer, which Jews abhorred.

And that's why the story is written that way.

Taking care of pigs was the last thing he would have ever done.

He remembered that he had forgotten to remember.

He suddenly remembered how good he had it back home, living with

his father. He remembered he had dishonored

his father by demanding the inheritance.

He remembered how he had squandered his father's money

with carnal living. He remembered he had gone wrong.

He took stock of the situation, realized because of his own

sinful decisions, he was here with the pigs and he was

starving in a deep hole. He decided to do the right

thing. He decided to repent.

He got up, left that hole, went back home to his father, and he

confessed, got himself a little speech ready.

He was going to repent before his father.

He started repenting or confessing.

His father said quick, bring the fat, bring a robe, the fatted

calf in a ring, and he had a son back.

He began to celebrate. He was going to have food again.

The Father saw him for what he really was.

He was his son. The Father never stopped loving

him. And just because we're in a hole

doesn't mean God doesn't love us.

Not at all. He grieves, He misses us.

He wants us to get out. The Pharisees didn't want the

young son to get back He. They wanted him in the hole.

Do we sometimes wish people were in a hole?

Anyone who repents and returns to Christ will receive

forgiveness, but he has to do that for us.

The point of the story is God will receive whoever turns to

him, and he will restore that person.

But there's a past. There's a thing that we must do.

We must want it. We must want to repent, and then

we must repent. Think for a moment any of the

stories of the nation of Israel. We do not find, I do not find

one story where restoration ever happened without repentance.

It's not how it works. We must hate the sin.

If you love this sin, it's not going to work, then align

ourselves with God outside of an alignment with God, it's not

going to work. Then we must confess and say,

Lord, I sinned here I am surrender to Christ, turn away

from the sin. That's how it goes.

But how many people do they just love their sin?

They don't like the product of the sin, the fruit of the sin,

the consequence of the sin. But the sin, it's fun.

The sin itself, hey, I love it. That's how it goes.

Expect no help. If that's your thought.

They have no intention of going back.

The idea is Lord. Lord, can you just make it work

for my favorite while I'm in it like this, Like this couple, a

man and a woman, go for marriage counselling and the council kind

of think something's off here is are you guys married?

No, no, not to each other. We have separate spouses.

I'm married to a woman and she's I'm married to another man.

But can you counsel us to make this work in the whole?

But wanting to make it work, that's not repentance, that's

pride, rebellion. We are living in times of moral

chaos and confusion the likes of which we'd have never dreamed

would happen. The children of Israel had

gotten themselves into a whole. They're in deep oppression. 18

years it says. And they cried out to God and

asked for help. And God was ready.

Let's read 5 verse 15. But when the children of Israel

cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for them.

He had son of Guerra the Benjamite, the left-handed man.

By him the children of Israel sent tribute to Eglon, king of

Moab. As I mentioned a bit ago, we do

not need help in sinning. We can do that all by ourselves.

But we do need help in getting to where we truly want rescue,

where we know we believe God can and will rescue us.

And usually that's hardship. God could have said, all right,

you chose this mess. You did not want my rule of law

in your life anymore. You're attracted to the ways of

the culture around you. Go and do that.

I'm done. But he does not do that.

That's not his character. That's not his nature.

God knows we cannot rescue ourselves.

God knows when the human heart falls into this hole, when that

we are truly just desperate, we need him.

He knows we need him. We have to have him.

And so the second point is we can't get out of the hole by

ourself. God listened.

He had compassion, he tells us. He raised up a deliverer named

Ihad. Ihad was a clever man, but he's

also a left-handed man. Commentators say that in that

culture, to be left-handed was out of ordinary, was not normal.

Fighting men would be normally right-handed, but for Ihad his

left handedness would be to his advantage.

God was going to use this man to do his work.

He was going to rescue his people through Ehud.

And so he had the left-handed man from the tribe of Benjamin

went to work. It tells us, and Judges

misspelling there Judges chapter 316 to 19.

Now he had made himself a dagger.

It was a double edged and a cubit in length.

Some writers say it may be between 18 to 22 inches.

And fastened it under his clothes on his right thigh.

This is key. So he brought the tribute to

Eglon king of Moab. Now Eglon was a very fat man.

And when he had finished presenting the tribute, he sent

away the people who had carried the tribute.

But he himself turned back from the stone images that were at

Gilgal. And again, his geography won't

go into that. And he said, I have a secret

message for you, O king. He said keep silence.

The king said that and all who attended went out from him.

Dagger simply are short swords for close combat.

He made himself one fully knowing what he was going to do.

He fastened it to his close and fastened it on his right hip.

So he would grab the dagger with his right hand and use it with

his left. If he was right-handed, he would

have put it on his right hip and use it with a left hip and put

it on his right hand. So there was a reason for this.

So he goes to the king with his people to bring what would be

the taxes. And of course, the king has

bodyguards and the king would be protected.

And so they would most likely have frisked him.

Where would they frisk him? On his left side?

Because that's where he would wear that sword if he had any

weapon at all. But he's got nothing there and

was safe on his right hip. That's what commentators

suggest. We don't have definite

confirmation for that. But there's a reason why this

part of the story is there. And that's a good, that's a good

explanation. After he had and his men have

brought tribute to King Eglan, he said as they're turning back.

I have a secret message for you, O King.

So he's he's drawing the King in and the king listens and king

did not suspect anything wrong. He commands the silence.

He does not want anyone else to hear the secret and all who are

attending the king went out. This is now coming to the

crucial point in the story. Would he be able to get close

enough to the king to be able to king him A long short would not

have been good. They would have caught that

right away, but a dagger hidden on his right hip used it with

his left hand. That was feasible.

So let's look at Judges 3 verse 2023.

Now it gets interesting. So he had came to him.

King egg on that is now he was sitting upstairs in this cool

private chamber. Then he had said I have a

message from you from God for you.

So he arose from his seat. Then he had reached with his

left hand no suspicion, yet took the dagger from his right thigh,

thrust into his belly. Even the hilt went in after the

blade in the fat closed over the blade, for he did not draw the

dagger out of his belly, and his entrails came out.

Then he had went out through the porch and shut the doors of the

upper room behind him and locked them.

When he had gone out, Aglon's servants came to look, and to

their surprise the doors of the upper room were locked.

So they said. He is probably attending to his

needs in the cool chamber. So they waited till they were

embarrassed and still he had not opened the doors of the upper

room. Therefore they took the key and

opened them, and there was their master, fallen dead on the

floor. There he was, King Eglin of

Moab, oppressor of the people of Israel, now dead. 18 years had

had come and gone since he had taken control and started

oppressing the Israelites. Eglin was an evil Pagan king.

God had given the opportunity and enabled him to oppress

Israel, and Israel had rebelled. That walked away from God and

gods and God was no longer present with them.

So his lack of presence was taken over by King Eglon.

And for 18 years now they had suffered well.

Now through the repentance, their cry for for for rescue,

God has rescued them and Ehud now has to run.

He leaves in a hurry. The King's attendance know

nothing of what just transpired. For all they know, he's tending

to his personal needs. Commentators say that this

description rightly talks about he's not going into the

bathroom. There's so much more that could

be said here, but leave it at that.

The death of this king is a gruesome story, not a pleasant

story. When the people enter a life of

sin, there's no telling where those paths will lead to and

what pain and destruction that will bring.

And sometimes God uses sinful people in their rebellious state

to bring his attention, other people to attention.

And we don't know exactly how God does all those things, but

we do know it's never safe to rebel against God.

So God used this rebellious king.

In the end, his life was ended too.

For the people of Israel help had been sent, but now the hard

work of repentance had to be done.

The man behind the oppression was now dead, and now it was

time to celebrate, right? Nope, not yet.

There was work to do. Let's continue verse 26.

But he had had escaped while they delayed and passed through

the stone images and escaped to Sierra.

And it happened when he arrived that he blew the trumpet in the

mountains of Ephraim, and the children of Israel went down

with him from the mountains and he led them.

Then he said to them, Follow me, for the Lord has delivered your

enemies, the Moabites, into your hand.

So they went down after him, seized the Fords of the Jordan

leading to Moab, and did not allow anyone to crossover.

And at that time they killed about 10,000 men of Moab, all

stout men of valor. Not a man escaped.

So Moab was subdued that day under the hand of Israel, and

the land had rest for 80 years. Killing this king was the start

of the task. Now the clean up work began for

everyone. He had led by example.

He took out the key figure of this oppression, the evil king.

Now the mop up. The mop up work was still left

to be done. Notice how this unfolds.

The rescue mission involved the very same people who had earlier

walked away from God. They were now in repentance mode

in walking with God. The journey to freedom was not

free. It took their involvement, their

participation and engagement in the process.

That's our Third Point. The way out of the hole is hard

and costly. It's not that you can short

circuit it. OK, now let's just skip that

part. No, no, you walk 10 miles the

wrong way. You got to walk 10 miles the

right way. When people sin, they come to

their senses. They did what was wrong.

They need to deal with the fact where sin happens.

For restoration, cleanup has to follow.

It can't be left as if nothing happened.

And it often does not just cost the person who's getting

rescued. Often there's others who have a

huge price to pay as well. In this story, they did the

right thing by crying out to God for rescue.

But God did not just magically make it go away.

Tada, it's all better. No, now the painful journey

begins. In this passage He had led by

example. Now we got to get rid of the

enemy. The road back to God is very

different than the road away from God.

The road away from God to the whole nothing, just drift.

Just just go with the flow. Do what's easy, all downhill.

Doing that you're back. Ruin and destruction happen

naturally. The road to God is a road of

self evaluation, admitting we're sinners, humbling ourselves,

repenting, aligning ourselves with God.

Walk in His ways after the people of Israel truly repented

and turned back to God. God that he had to rescue them,

but they had to have a part in it.

That's not pleasant. Then we have one final passage

here, one final verse. A man named Chandler stands up

for Israel. Verse 31.

After him, meaning after Ehud, was Shamgar, the son of Anath,

who killed 600 men of the Philistines with an ox code.

He also delivered Israel. So it's an ongoing process, an

ongoing journey. Just because they are now back

in control does not mean there's no struggle, no fight.

Very little is known about Shamgar.

It only tells us this. He was the son of Anath.

He fought for Israel and he had an ox go not even a military

weapon. Ox goes were sticks about 8 inch

8 foot long sticks with a sharp point to go the ox when you were

plowing and to clean the clean the plow and so on.

But judges 5 or 6 to 8 does talk about him a little bit.

And song of Deborah, let's read that Judges 5 or 6 to 8 in the

days of Shamgar, son of Anath, in the days of jail, jail, the

highways were deserted and the travelers walked along the

byways. Village life ceased.

It ceased in Israel until I, Deborah arose, arose a mother in

Israel. So we're going to get there yet

in our preaching. But here's a little window into

what life was like during the days of Shamgar.

Sure, they were not under the oppressors anymore, but still

life wasn't easy. Life was still a struggle.

That's how often life, how life often goes.

There was peace and rest in a sense, but still there was work

to do. God used Chamgar to bring peace

into the community as well. How does all this make a

difference for us today? How often do we not just want to

carve out our own way and after repeated tries we find it just

doesn't work and then we want a shortcut back to where we went

off track originally? It doesn't work that way.

We can't just bypass the hard work that we got our that it

takes to get ourselves away from this hole that caused so much

pain and misery. Let me put it this way, I do not

find in the Bible a single shortcut to the path of

repentance. Not a single one.

It's not an easy path, but it is the only path out of a whole.

Repenting is hard, it's humbling, it's not fun at all.

And those who've done it, they know from experience the flesh

doesn't want it. In our time, repentance is not

preached much anymore in many churches.

Oh, people make poor choices, and then we find ways to

mitigate the problem. OK, We'll just do this and that

and the others so they don't have to deal with their issues.

What if God had said to Adam? Eve.

Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have put that on

you. Oh, yeah, I know you ate fruit,

but that's OK. We'll give you another chance.

It's not how it worked. Adam and Eve faced the

consequences of eating the forbidden fruit.

That rule applies. Does God show grace and give us

second chances? We can repent and come back all

the time. If we find ourselves in the

whole of sin of any kind, let's not pretend it's OK.

It's not so bad when we live with unrepentant sin in our

lives. Let's not expect God to give us

peace or blessings. God will give us grace to

repent. Opportunity margin.

He'll give us space to do it, which we pray for.

But that's not so to make the road easy.

That's just so we can walk that road.

The Repentance Rd. is not easy. As I said, there's no shortcuts

to this in the Bible. How could this have all been

prevented? How about if after the 18 years

that the Israelites were, when did the 40 year time of peace

they had before? How about if they as a nation

had said, you know what? We know what happened before off

Neil was a judge. We know what happened then.

We're not going to take chances. God's number one, anything that

does not align with him, does not honor him, does not enhance

our worship, we're not going to do.

But they did. They compromised inch at a time

when sin at a time and time got them to a whole.

We as a culture doing the exact same thing.

We're allowing ourselves things we know are not right.

We're allowing ourselves to engage in activities that we

should have convictions of but don't.

Oh, we won't lose control. I'm just watching a little bit.

I'm just going a little bit beside the truth.

I'm just compromising a little bit.

And little by little we chip and chisel away at the values and

the moral principles until one day, oh, how do we get here?

I'm reminded of many stories in the past when wickedness is

ignored here, ignored there, left to grow here, left to grow

there. In time that chokes out

everything that God has for us. History's littered with stories,

little compromises here, little change here in the moral

standards are wiped away and finally nothing is left anymore.

When trust in God, commitment to God, dedication to God, loyalty

to God, when that is compromised and favored to have a little bit

easy, it's a road that will lead to ruin into a hole that we

can't get out of by ourselves. We want to spare that ourselves.

This we're not called to wallow in the holds of sin and shame.

We're called to be image bearers of God, reflecting His goodness

and grace and glory in a dark and sinful world.

God's desire is that His grace will reach to our hearts, and we

repent and realize that without Him we're nothing, that He will

lift us out of the whole of sin. And it's only as we walk by

faith we have firm foundation under our feet.

Walk in humility and repentance, and then we can succeed.

May God give us grace to that end as we seek to avoid the

holes of sin. And if we're in them, it's not

too late. If there's time today and

there's opportunity, we can repent and begin the journey to

repentance. Get back in relationship with

God. Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for your grace to us, for your blessings and

goodness to us. Help us, Lord, as we have seen

in your Word. You're serious about Your word

when you call your people out on their sin, you want them to

repent, to listen, and instead of deciding to go their own way,

you want to help them to walk your way.

Or help us to be mindful of what it took you to save us when you

died on the cross. What you expect from us.

Lord, thank you for saving us and giving us your word as a

lamp to our feet and a path to walk in Jesus name.