Stirred...Not Shaken

Bible's to Judges chapter 6 this morning, and I'm excited to talk about Stirred.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

And the title of this first session in Stirred is Stirred Not Shaken.

And I've got a picture of a porch they're going to throw up on the screen for me.

And I want you to look at this in as as we do.

I was thinking about my porch in Connorsville.

And when I lived in Indiana, it was very common for people to sit and uh real good picture, but anyways, you can see my porch.

That was something that I was proud of at my house.

And when I first got there, that thing, the the red that you see was like mint green.

Okay?

So I didn't live there real long before I decided to get in and get the porch painted.

And uh it's kind of like the great theologian Alan Jackson said about porches.

Where I come from is cornbread and chicken.

Where I come from, there's a whole lot of front porch sitting.

Anybody like a porch?

Raise your hand.

All right.

But while I lived there, I had to paint that thing three to four times.

So the first time I went over it and made it red.

Now look, I didn't do it the right way.

So I didn't get in there and primer.

I just put red paint over top of the green first go, and uh, it was better than it was, but then I came upon the the second time that I had to paint it, and I still had some paint left over.

So I said, okay, I'm gonna come out here.

I got my paint, and I poured it into the tray and dibbed my paintbrush in, and I just started going.

I'm rolling back and forth on this porch.

And as I was doing that, I started noticing this does not look like it looked before.

And I'm like, what has happened?

In fact, that red really kind of looked pink.

And I'm like, Heather is not gonna be okay with this.

And so I'm rolling it, and and and then in places after it sort of dried, it was getting bubbly, and I'm like, oh no.

And so I go to Ken, my guy down at the Sherman Williams, and I tell him what's happened, and he goes, hmm, that's strange.

And he looks at me and he said, Did you stir the paint?

I'm like, Ken, come on, I'm a man.

Come on, I know how to paint.

Did I stir?

And he hand me a stick.

He said, You gotta go back and stir your paint.

He said, Every time you use it, it needs to be stirred.

Now I thought about that.

There was a lady back in the days of Billy Sunday who asked him a question.

She said, Why do you keep holding revival meetings everywhere when it doesn't last?

And Billy Sunday looked her right in the eye and said, Ma'am, why do you keep taking baths?

Even if you did it before, we still need to do it again.

And so, as I was thinking about that, this idea of stirred came across me.

And I want you to look in the Bible in 2 Timothy chapter 1.

2 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

This is what it says.

Therefore, I remind you, chapter 1, verse 6 and 7, therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God, which is in you, the laying of hands.

For God, now listen, has not given us a spirit of fear, but a power, love, and a sound mind.

And so I want us to understand through this study that we need to be stirred.

There needs to be a stirring that happens.

And today, I want you to understand, we need a stirring, not to be shook up, to be stirred up.

And so when we catch up in Judges chapter 6, I'm gonna read to you something.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

Then we got a lot to unpack to build the foundation for the next few weeks.

It's really gonna be the study of a man named Gideon in the Bible, who was a judge, but we have to unpack how we got to this point.

And so in Judges chapter 6, this is where they're at when Gideon comes on the scene.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the Lord delivered them into the hand of Midian for seven years.

And the hand of Midian prevailed against Israel because of the Midianites.

The children of Israel made for themselves dens, caves, and strongholds in the mountains.

So it was, whenever Israel had sown, Midianites would come up, Malachites and all these from the east, and they would destroy and take all of their harvest and their livestock.

And it says they were as numerous as locusts.

Let me pray, Father.

I pray that you help us as we try to unpack your word this morning.

And Lord, I pray that you would speak truth to your people.

And God, help our hearts to be in tune.

And Lord, I pray you would stir us up.

Stir us up, Lord.

So that we can see a move of you.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So how do we get to that point?

Number one this morning, if you're taking your notes, is this Israel was a nation founded on covenant and conquest.

Covenant and conquest.

If you look back in the history of Israel, there's four foundational covenants.

You have the Edenic or Adamic covenant, which is basically if I will give you dominion over the land, and as long as you don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then we will continue in perfect peace and harmony.

Obviously, that was broken, sin came in.

And so the next covenant that we see is the Noahic covenant, and that was a grant covenant where God said to Noah, I will no longer destroy a land through a flood.

It was a peace covenant, and so that was with Noah.

And then we see the third covenant with Abraham, and he says, I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky if you follow me.

And then the fourth foundational covenant that we see there in the Old Testament before we get to the Judges is the Mosaic covenant.

It's all through Deuteronomy chapter 7, but it says, if you will do these things, there will be blessings.

Deuteronomy 7 · chapter mention

If you obey, blessings, if you disobey, cursings.

And so then we see the Ten Commandments.

And so I want you to understand the foundations of these covenants, and I found something that was really interesting.

There's this idea, there's been archaeological digs and finds in ancient Near East, and they found something much like the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was a great find.

And so the documents were treaties.

And in the treaty, there's two characters.

There's one called the Suzerain and one called the Vassal.

And in these treaties, they're not, you don't see them listed in the Bible, but they're all through that time period.

And what that treaty was was the suzerain would act like a king of an area.

Someone who had wealth or who had leadership over a certain area, a piece of land, and a vassal would come, and maybe they wanted to live in that land or partake in that land, work in that land.

So a vassal would come and ask the suzerain if they could make a covenant and live together on that land.

And so the suzerain and the vassal would then go into what was almost like a, for lack of better terms, like a wedding ceremony.

And they would have an introduction, then they would make vows to one another.

It was a relationship covenant.

And so, in fact, the vassal would change their name when they would enter into a covenant like this, showing others that they were a part of now this suzerain nation, this covenant.

And so somebody would do that, and then they would take a heifer, a cow, and they would split the cow, and many times they would take a hand, each of them, and dip their finger in blood, and it would be a blood covenant between two people.

And they would say, as they walked through this, let it be the same to us as is this cow, if we do not keep to the covenant.

That's how serious they were about this covenant.

And so we see this relationship that's formed through this covenant.

And this is the same thing if you go back and look in Genesis 15, that Abraham and God have this same process.

We don't have the time to read it all, but there's an animal that's slaughtered, they walk through, and so we see something that's been found archaeologically that was happening in the Bible between the Suzeraim and the vassal.

Well, I want you to understand those covenants or how a nation was founded, and then the second thing was conquest.

Letter B, the freedom conquest this morning.

If you looked at your Bible in Deuteronomy chapter 7, and for time's sake, we won't go through all of it, but chapter 7, verses 1 through 5, we see a list of when you were to take over a land, this is how you were to do it, and you were to rid all of the inhabitants, and Israel was supposed to go through, rid all of that, so there wouldn't be any leftover opportunity to go and worship another land's God.

Deuteronomy 7 · chapter mention

And so they were told all through there in Deuteronomy how to take over a land.

And so they went on this freedom conquest.

Israel in their history had 400 years.

Think about that, as you think about the time you've lived and the time that you've seen in our nation, 400 years of slavery and wilderness living.

And then God rose up Joshua after Moses.

He was a leader who marched them conquest after conquest.

The whole book of Joshua, again, we're unpacking to get to a point.

Conquest after conquest.

They go in and they do what Deuteronomy 7 says, and they're going through the land and they're battling.

And the common thread here was there was a general, a man of God, that was walking them through these conquests.

But then we read Judges chapter 2.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

I want you to turn over there, and we see they were on the right path, they were doing the right things, and you see it as they come into Judges chapter 1, all the way up to verse 23.

Judges 1 · chapter mention

In chapter 1, it says, So Judah, so Simeon, so they're coming in and they're conquesting.

They're doing exactly what God says.

But then in chapter 2, look at what it says in verses 1 through 4.

Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal and said, I led you from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers.

And I said, I, the suzerain, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with other inhabitants of the land.

Don't you should tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice.

Why have you done this?

Therefore I also said, I will not dry them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side, and their God shall be a snare to you.

So it was when the angel of the Lord spoke these words, that the people lifted up their voices and wept.

And so we see they've been conquesting, but then there's a halt when we get to the book of Judges.

Why?

Because they disobeyed, they broke the covenant, and they let their allegiance to God and country falter.

I thought about for us today, 245th birthday of the independence of the United States of America.

This is a country that was forged in the Word of God, founded on truth, and walked through by faith-filled men.

Men of God that held tightly to their convictions.

And I still believe, and I hope you do too, that this is the greatest planet.

This is the greatest country on planet Earth.

But as you look at, I was looking at a picture of the Declaration of Independence and just reading through.

Listen to these words and think about where we are now in the Declaration of Independence.

As we hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal.

They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That we know, that we learn in fourth, fifth grade.

But listen to this next part.

To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of those governed.

And whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute new government.

And so we think about where we are after 245 years of independence, and it was an independence from tyranny.

It was independence from being told that you can't live in certain freedoms.

And so as we look at Israel and we look at America in this plight, I thought about what Sir Edmund Burke said.

He said only one thing is necessary for evil to triumph, and that is for good men to do nothing.

That takes us to point number two this morning.

Point number two is this a nation flawed on complacency and compromise.

See, Israel began to compromise, their beliefs began to compromise what they were told to do.

They began to break that suzerain covenant.

If you look at Judges chapter 1, verse 27, I want you to see how that takes place.

Judges 1:27

As you go through all the way through chapter 26, somebody was told to conquest, and they went through a land and they did, they drove everyone out.

They drove everyone out.

But verse 27, however, is a big important word.

This is a literary device here.

However, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants.

Manasseh did not.

However, he did not.

God says, This is the covenant.

Obey this, blessings will come.

However, Manasseh did not.

You see, my kids are able to make some money doing some work around the house.

And but being the almighty judge of that money flowing out, I have some rules.

Okay?

And my wife and I have some rules, and so you have to do the work, of course, to get the pay.

Can I give an amen?

Work equals pay.

And so we have to work.

And then they have to take it upon themselves to write down what they did.

Well, payday came.

Two, three, four weeks, we go to the bank and we ask, where's your list?

And the kids, oh, oh, I don't I forgot, I don't know about it.

Can I have a piece of paper?

I'm like, you better hurry, because when I hit that ATM, the money's gonna be dispersed.

And if you have no lists, then you'll get no cash.

And so they're scrambling and trying, and more than once, there have been kids in my car that have been very upset with me because they got no money.

I'm kind of happy, you know.

Hey, you forgot.

Part of the deal, blessings happen when you obey.

But you didn't obey.

You might have done the work, but you didn't follow through.

And so what happens here, difficulty letter A, determines disposition.

A little bit of difficulty takes place.

Let's continue in verse 27.

It says Manasseh did not drive out those inhabitants.

Well, why?

If you go about halfway through the verse, it says, the inhabitants of Megedo and its villages.

Now listen, for the Canaanites were determined to dwell in that land.

Difficulty changed the disposition.

The Canaanites, it says, were determined.

They were determined to stay there.

It's like when I went off to Tennessee Temple University, I had a lot of eye-opening experiences.

Um, I went to a small Christian school my whole life.

I was sort of in this sheltered bubble sport athletically, uh, uh in school classes, grades, dating, all of it.

I was led to believe that I was something.

Okay.

Maybe in my own mind, maybe in others, but I believed it.

And so I got to Tennessee Temple and we went swimming one day, and I I had been in some fights growing up, but I'd always won.

It was very quick normally, you know, one punch and they were gone or whatever.

And so I got in a pool and we're like wrestling around, and this guy evidently didn't know who I was.

Because I was trying to dunk and baptize him in the pool, and he was not cooperating.

I'm like, I'm Rick Wright.

Go down.

And nothing.

He's just strong, standing there.

I'm like, my whole world is imploding.

I thought I was like the strongest person there was.

And so I kind of like swam off to the corner and didn't continue wrestling around.

I kind of like pouted to myself.

I can't believe this.

And so I remember that in Israel, conquest after conquest for a very long time.

They're coming through, they're wiping out inhabitants, conquest after conquest, they're just winning, one punch and they're out.

But then they hit difficulty.

You ever felt like that in your Christian walk?

Like it's all good with God unless it's hard.

As long as you're reigning in the blessings, man, you are good.

But when you flatten my tire, God, don't you know how this works?

Keep giving me good, and I will keep being determined.

Well, God bring me the good stuff, but don't mess with me.

Israel makes a decision here because it was difficult to back out of the fight.

And they go over, like I went over to the corner of the pool, and they sort of pout.

See, Israel begins a problem that would continue throughout the book of Judges.

The problem is they had an incessant inclination to forget who God is.

Do you?

For our students, you know, we go to camp every year, and it's almost for some of them like this big reminder oh yeah, this is where I meet with God.

But I haven't met with him since the last time.

And I explained to them God is not at a camp.

It's exciting, and you're gonna wake up and go to worship at 10, and you're gonna have breakouts, and you're gonna go to worship at you know, evening, and your regular life doesn't look like that.

You don't have a band sitting in your garage ready to play worship before you go to work, but the spirit of the same God lives within you.

And so when things get hard, do we forget him?

You see, nowhere in this scripture does it say after that, somebody rallied the troops.

It doesn't say that anybody said, Remember Egypt.

Remember the plagues and the God we saw.

Now, guys, we can go back and come after him.

They're determined, but let's go fight.

Remember the Red Sea?

Anybody remember that?

No, it doesn't say that.

Remember Jericho when we marched, blue trumpets, and walls fell down?

None of that.

It says, they're determined.

What are we gonna do?

They're determined.

Church, when some determined, godless person tells you you can't stand for God, what do we do?

What happens when they say you can't say Christmas?

Okay, try to stop me.

You can't have the Ten Commandments showing.

You can't be politically incorrect.

Oh, you Christians, you need to, you better stop talking about sin.

One thing you better not do is ever preach on hell.

Not in America, not today.

That's old-fashioned.

We don't do that anymore.

Church, I submit to you when the heat rises, that we don't get shaken.

We don't cower and we don't run.

We get stirred.

Together, hand in hand, we have to get stirred.

Can you look at the person next to you and say, Would you get stirred?

We need a stirring, we need to band together and have some prayer.

We need to warn against evil because my Bible says the gates of hell will not prevail against his church.

We need to get stirred.

Well, what happens here is that there was a disobedience in duty.

Judges chapter 2, verse 2, it said, And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.

Judges 2:2

You shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed.

It said, No other covenants.

The word covenant means bear it in Hebrew, to eat with, fellowship and agreement.

It means to bind or to feather together, which means commitment to a lot, which is a suggestion of sharing.

When God enters into a covenant with a people, he enters into an agreement, a relational agreement to commit himself to what he promises.

And he said to them, But don't you have any other covenants?

Married man, would you raise your hand?

Would you agree with me in saying the covenant and the vow you gave before your wife is a covenant that you don't want her to have with anyone else?

Can I get agreement?

Like I used to see where scripture would say that God was a jealous God and kind of think.

Does this mean God is somehow sinful?

No, it's so opposite when I think about our covenant with our wives, because man, when God is jealous and he wants our attention and our promise, it makes me think of what I want with my wife.

And my right, man, is the affection of your wife for you?

Can I get an amen?

It's for you.

That's right, brother.

It's not for somebody else.

Jealous, right?

There's a right way to be jealous.

So God is jealous of his covenant with us.

And God's not into any two-timing.

Can I get an amen?

He loves his creation with a jealousy.

He shares that affection.

He gets angry when his church doesn't want all of him.

It's the suzerain and the vassal.

He entered into a covenant that he meant.

Have you?

And so we see further, this disobedience affected some things.

Look at Judges chapter 2, verse 10.

Judges 2:10

When all that generations had been gathered to their fathers, another, listen to this, this is one of the saddest verses here.

So they had gone through, they had conquest, they had continued through the land, and it says, When all the generations had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord, nor the work which he had done for Israel.

And so what we see here is a deficiency, letter B, in discipleship.

There's a deficient discipleship.

In one generation, they were not taught and did not carry on Christianity.

Man.

I thank God for the Christian heritage of this nation.

I thank God for the Christian heritage, even in my home.

I thank God for the ten men in the church I grew up in that would say, Praise God, hallelujah.

Bless you, Lord, that would continue to talk and yell things through the sermon.

I praise God for what that did to this young mind.

I got a picture.

Some of y'all, maybe you grew up like this.

Um I praise God for some of those church scenes.

Y'all remember the old pews?

Show this picture.

Man.

Y'all ever sat in something like that?

Man.

Well, you better be getting something from the sermon because you're getting a backache, otherwise, starting to get itchy sitting on that wood.

And then what about the next picture of the offering thing?

Remember this?

Anybody remember these?

Remember that?

Man, there are churches still today.

You can walk in them.

They're a little cookie cut out, aisle down the middle, pews, and these are still on the wall.

Man, I'm so thankful for a Christian heritage with churches, man.

My mom wore dresses with big giant shoulder pads.

Y'all remember these things?

Like mom looked like a linebacker, right?

Pantyholes, all of it.

You know, I don't even know.

She had a pair of flats for every color, right?

And dad had polyester suits for every occasion.

He had a brown that matched everything.

My dad had like 14 shades of brown.

I didn't even know it.

Okay, he had ties.

Man, I'm so thankful for that.

And man, we sang hymns and we were at church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.

I went to a Christian school.

I was thinking, Heather and I both worked in bus ministry.

And I'm so thankful for that heritage.

She's got a grandfather that wrote a book, My 40 Years in Bus Ministry.

Can you imagine dealing with kids on a bus for 40 years?

This man was committed.

And this is a heritage that we have behind.

I'm so thankful for a Christian heritage.

Thank God for people who have stuck through for decades.

Man, I'm thankful for you.

If you've got gray hair in here and you've been doing it for a long time, can we give them a hand clap this morning?

Man, thank God for you.

Thank God for Jesus loving people that keep sticking to it.

Man, I love that.

I thank God for that.

You're faithful.

Someone in here has been doing it a long time.

You remember all that stuff, and you have made a commitment.

I'm gonna keep on doing it until my day is done.

And so I'm thankful for that hair.

Can you high-five somebody next to you and say I'm thankful?

If they got silver hair, give it to them twice.

Thankful.

I'm thankful for that discipleship.

Listen to what Joshua, what Moses was told to do with Joshua, Exodus 17, 14.

Moses was told, rehearse what you have seen, make a memorial, rehearse it in the ears of Joshua.

Joshua was discipled by Moses.

And then Deuteronomy chapter 6, the great teaching chapter, it says for us, church, now listen.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

It says, Teach the kids, bind it when you rise up, when you sit down, when you walk in the way, when you're at the table, continually teach.

That's what discipleship is, teaching that next generation.

So it ain't like judges when one generation comes and they lost it.

Why?

They stopped discipling.

Let me ask a hard question, a penetrating question for you.

How many adults in here are discipling teenagers or children in the church?

And I hope your own.

But how many of you are meeting twice a month with somebody to mentor, to disciple?

Man, that's a hard question to be faced with.

But the result of this generation was this.

Verse 11 through 13.

They became devoted to dummies, idols.

Look at what it says.

In one generation, they forgot God.

I don't want to pin this on Joshua.

Joshua commanded, he conquested, and it seems like Joshua was a godly man.

But something fell between Joshua and a generation.

And it says, he said, as for me and my house, 2415, Joshua, we will serve the Lord.

He says, Fear God and don't serve idols like your father.

So I don't know where it fell after Joshua, but this we know.

A generation was lost.

And I've said this before, but I truly believe either we're gonna have the greatest generation of students there's ever been, or we might have the last.

And it's all right here, folks.

What are we gonna do?

What are we spending our time with?

Man, it's so important to the disciple.

But they became devoted.

Look at verse 11 through 13.

Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baals.

They forsook the Lord God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who dwell all around them.

And they bowed down to them and they provoked the Lord to anger.

They forsook the Lord and served Baal and Asterus.

And so we see they became devoted to dummies, to idols.

We're gonna talk more in two weeks on idolatry.

But their hearts went from the real, living, and true God and started focusing on all kinds of things outwardly.

John Calvin said that the human heart is a veritable idol-making factory.

If we can see it, we can make it an idol.

And it's a big problem.

Again, I don't want to take fire away from two weeks, but there's an idolatry problem in America.

There's an idolatry problem in most churches in America.

And if you look real deep, and this sounds like hard preaching, there's an idolatry problem that looks a lot like this self.

And so we see what happens after this.

Look at verse 15.

A developing distress happens.

Letter C.

A developing distress because of their decisions.

Verse 15, wherever they went out, wherever they went out, can you imagine?

Wherever you go, the hand of the Lord was against them.

One thing I have to believe about our country still today is that we still have a remnant of the hand of God upon it.

We still have a blessing of God.

Now, are we living under some curse?

You know, people say if we don't do this, America's going.

Like, I think a little bit there's already some curse.

But we'll see why.

I believe God can walk us through that in just a minute.

But it says there's calamity, constant calamity for these people.

That word is Odith, which means bending down of the knee, a picture of oppression.

I am now serving a different master.

And I'm being oppressed.

That word in Judges chapter 6 for the Midianites, the word means strife.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

I have strife.

They're being oppressed by strife.

And so they're down on their knee to their now other gods because they broke God's covenant.

And if you break God's covenant, church, expect a storm.

Expect a storm.

Even worse than the calamity, though, it says that the Lord was not with them.

They had God's hand, his power, his protection, his providence, and now God is absent from their life.

God is nowhere to be seen in their prayers, in their worship.

Can you imagine?

I think for some churches, you maybe could.

A place where nobody ever gets changed.

A place where God's spirit is never felt.

It's just mundane, it's just apathetic, and we just show up for the religious tradition of it all.

But we never feel anything.

Why?

Because you will not feel anything without the presence of God.

Deep distress.

God's absent.

God is quiet.

Men, have you ever gotten the cold shoulder from your wife?

I don't know what's worse, the cold shoulder, or the yelling.

But you know how that feels.

Imagine that with the presence of God.

Jason Neely said this week to our students, and I have, I wish I'd have got a picture for you, but in the worship services, as the week progressed, students, that fire gets kindled and they begin to praise God, hands lifted high, close their eyes and worship God in spirit and truth, and it becomes real, and it feels like that the presence of God is so thick in a place.

It seems like a strange use of wording, but it feels like you can just touch the presence of God.

And Jason made a comment in our share group that this is like heaven on earth.

What we feel when we feel the presence of, because what is heaven?

We'll be worshiping God for all eternity.

So by the way, newsbreak, if you don't like that part, maybe you're not gonna like heaven so much.

But we're worshiping God, and students are getting it.

And he said, Can you imagine it being ten times better than this?

And it's like, ah, it's kind of hard to, but maybe yeah, yeah, yeah, we can kind of imagine ten times like the presence of God.

It feels so good in that moment before our king.

And he says, Imagine a hundred times.

He says, That gets hard to just that moment between you and God where you felt like he was speaking to you.

Are you and he said, What about a thousand?

And it's like, I don't know.

Pure joy.

It's just pure joy.

He said, But heaven, I believe, is gonna be like a million times greater than that moment for all eternity.

And Israel's decisions blockaded them from the presence of God.

Let me remind you, church.

Hell will be totally void of the presence of God.

And so we continue.

I want you to go back to Judges chapter six, now that we've unpacked some foundation and we've seen that they did evil in the sight of the Lord.

But what happened between chapter 2 and chapter 6 is a roller coaster cycle of the same thing.

I've got a picture I want you to see up here, this cycle of the judges and their sin.

But what happens is they're living for God, and then they fall away from God, and they literally continue this cycle.

They serve the Lord, they fall into sin.

Israel is enslaved, they cry out to the Lord.

God raises a judge, Israel is delivered, and they rinse, recycle, and repeat over and over from chapter 2 to chapter 6, where we're at now.

Literally, now in strife.

So I was thinking about America.

And why would it be any different for us today?

In the 245th birthday of our independence.

Israel had been free to enter the promised land.

They had been free to conquest and go into the promised land.

And this great land that we live in was based on freedom and protection of our rights.

But scripture in Isaiah says this if you're willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the lamb.

But if you refuse, you shall be devoured by the sword.

That takes us to the third point this morning.

A nation's fate is on consequences or confession.

Nation's fate on consequences or confession.

And we see this up and down.

They call out to God, they cry out to him after that he gave him a time of enslavement, and God hears them.

And they live for a while and then they begin to forget about God, and they start the cycle all over again and over again and over again.

And so these consequences happen and then confession happens.

Consequences, then confession.

And letter A this morning is this about that.

Rocky roads lead to remorse.

Look at verse 6 and 7 in Judges chapter 6.

Judges 6 · chapter mention

After the Midianites keep coming and taking their livestock and coming and ransacking their villages and coming and bringing strife, it says, so Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites.

And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord.

And it came to pass when the children of Israel cried to the Lord because of the Midianites that the Lord sent a prophet.

Their stress created an issue.

Their stress, their strife created this calamity and consequences and an inconvenience in their life.

It's like two nights before camp, I was riding out on our parking lot out here.

It's a real rocky road back there.

It's all rock and gravel.

And so I made a quick decision to turn.

I was over by the concession stand, and when I turned, I wasn't driving fast.

I was in park.

I backed up and I went up a little like I don't know what you call this, like a gully.

And I the the tire, when I turned, a rock went right through the sidewall of the tire.

And I'm like, oh, immediately, because of this decision.

I have stress, I have consequences, I have inconvenience now.

My wife and seven children who are with me.

I messed up evening plans.

I had to cancel, okay, caused others hardship.

This is a painful, necessary lesson.

I learned that I won't quickly maneuver like I did again.

And for us, some of the hardest life lessons are learned that way.

This nation's fate kept hitting consequences, and those rocky roads would lead them to remorse.

You know, God allows natural consequences of sin to teach us.

You'll reap.

The parable of the reaping and sowing, we will reap.

I don't like that.

I don't know if you like that, but I don't like that sometimes.

I don't like to reap what I've sown sometimes.

And so, it but it's it's a natural process.

But this is where we have some hope, church.

Second Chronicles 7.14 says, If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.

In Acts, it says it this way, Acts 3, repent, then turn to God so that your sins will be wiped out, that a time of refreshing may come.

And so sometimes we sort of have to come to the end of ourselves so that we can look up.

And that's what I see in this cycle with the Israelites through Judges.

They have to come to the end of themselves.

And they will wait.

My wife is a lifeguard, and so they will wait until a person is about done with their fight and start to begin to sink.

Because they're taught if you go out trying to save somebody while they're fighting and throwing their arms and doing all that, it's possible they could take you under with them.

And so a lifeguard will wait and wait, and then in an easy method, they'll go grab somebody when they're at their last moment.

And for us, I think we need to understand sometimes we have to hit the bottom.

We have to literally hit bottom.

And is that not the gospel?

When we come to the end of ourselves, we can then look to the cross.

When we come to the end of ourselves, we can look at our sin and be honest.

And so we see letter B.

Restored relationships lead to redemption.

I want you to see verses 8 through 10 in Judges 6.

It says that the Lord sent a prophet to the children of Israel, who said to them, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt and brought you out of the house of bondage, and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians and out of the hand of all who oppressed you, and drove them out before you, and gave you their land.

Also I said to you, I am the Lord your God.

Do not fear the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell, but you have not obeyed.

And so we see a calling for a restoration and relationship.

I need you to understand something, church.

As a country, as a church, Mark 3.25 says, a house divided against itself cannot stand.

Man, are we in that position in America?

I mean, it's like almost split down the middle.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

God wants to redeem us, redeem a people.

David cried out this way in Psalms 51, he said, Restore unto me the joy of my salvation.

I need to be restored.

Anybody here ever watch a restoration show or watch with these cars that start out one way, or you remember the extreme home makeover, like they start one way?

And I love these shows.

And what I really love, I have no godly earthly way to do any of that.

But I love to see change and something fully restored.

And when you get to the end of that show, I get so excited when they're gonna unveil the house or the car that's been fixed.

David said, Restore unto me the joy of my salvation.

What Israel needed and what America needs is a restoration.

Psalms 103 says, We need a renewal.

We have to remember, church.

We have to remember where we came from.

America has to remember its heritage.

And the big issue for the Israelites is that they kept forgetting.

What about you in your home?

Are you remembering?

Are you doing a good job remembering what God has done in your life?

Is it as exciting as it ever was right now?

Are you living for Him in a big way?

You see, the theme of Judges, what I love.

The theme is not found in the Israelites' astonishing ability to continually fall into the same cycles.

But the greater theme, the real story, is that in spite of that, the Bible says, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.

In spite of that cycle, when they cried out, God could not take their yearnings.

It says that in a passage, God could not take it.

His people cried out, and like a father watching his child hurt, he couldn't take even.

No, he's dead.

Don't do it that way, boy.

Or you're gonna fall out, you're gonna get hurt if you break it that way.

And they fell.

And he need to suffer the consequences, but but I can't take it because that's my child.

You ever watched your child hurt?

Did you stand there and say, I've heard this?

I've heard parents, why did you do that?

I told you not to do that.

They're like, oh, well, that really helps in the situation.

Reprimand me now that my knee is busted up, right?

I told you that was gonna happen.

Well, great dad, you are brilliant.

Can somebody ice me up?

And Psalm says, as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord looks in our frame.

Like a father.

He looks at Israel, and like a father, he looks at America.

And he has pity on us.

I don't know why, I don't know how, because the cycle continued over and over and over.

But like some of you that have dealt with a prodigal type child, do you stop loving your child?

Because they do wrong.

Do you just stop loving them?

No, you don't stop.

They're a part of who you are.

And so the bigger story through Judges is that grace does much more abound.

God is slow to wrath.

I'm going to close sharing an illustration with Thomas Jefferson, gave a quote.

It said, it's an insightful question for us to consider, and then I got a picture I want to show you.

Our Christian officials would do well to answer this question.

He said, Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis?

A conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are gifts of God.

Thomas Jefferson said, Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever.

There's an old hymnal, maybe you can see this picture pulled up here.

I thought this was a neat title.

I've never sung this, but I did some research into it.

And it says, As goes America, so goes the world.

Palmer Hartzow wrote many hymns.

Hear these words.

Here where the fight for truth is raging.

As goes America, so goes the world.

Here where the hosts are now engaging.

Stand for righteousness, people so blessed.

The second verse, it says this, as goes America, so goes the world.

Here freedom makes her last endeavor.

As goes America, so goes the world.

Fails she, and all is lost forever.

The third verse, as goes America, so goes the world.

Here lift we Christ, the light, bestowing, as goes America, so goes the world.

Here serve we God in rightful doing.

And the last verse, it says, As goes America, so goes the world.

Foremost and highest is her station.

As goes America, so goes the world, leader and guide to every nation.

And so as we look at this land that we love and we say, God bless her, God bless America, and we look at the introcrecies between Israel and America, it's vital for you to understand that we need to be stirred in America.

As goes America, it's vital that we be stirred.

And I believe, first church, there has to be a stirring in your home.

There has to be a stirring of discipleship and things that matter and a swaying from idolatry.

There has to be a start right in your home.

Because the quote goes like this as goes the home, so goes the church.

And in Hebrews, the great Bible chapter on church, Hebrews 10, 25, says, Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together.

But the verse before it says that we need to consider one another at church to stir each other up in love.

A stirring has to happen.

So as goes the home, so goes the church.

We then need the people that are stirred up at home to stir up our church.

So many people read that verse and they think, well, if church gives me this or that, then I'll come to that church.

Look, the preaching is limited.

The music is limited.

What makes a church is the stirring of her people.

You're here to love and stir someone else up, to offer your gift.

We're a part of a body.

And when it becomes a consumer place like Walmart, well then you just check out the first time you don't like something.

Because there's a Dollar General or whatever.

There's another one on every corner.

But the point is to get stirred up here.

Bible says, bear ye one another's burdens in love.

How can you bear somebody's burdens if you just hear preaching and head out?

Man, we're here to stir each other up.

Because as goes the home, so goes the church, and so goes the church, so goes this country.

And we need a stirring church.

It's vital.

Want you to bow your heads and hearts before the Lord this morning.