The Next Generation

I don't know if you were watching sports uh yesterday as I was.

Um one of the there was a number of good things on.

I thought the Michigan game was gonna be good, it was bad.

Um But there was uh uh an incredible thing that I had never seen before.

Um I don't know that it I mean things have happened, players have retired, but not like that.

Yesterday, uh, if you are a Tigers fan, you were watching uh the Tigers play at 110 for Justin Verlander's last ever start um of his career, the last game that he that he was ever gonna play.

He played 21 years, he won three Cy Young's two World Series, unfortunately, not with the Tigers.

And he did, as a pitcher, a starting pitcher, win an MVP, which is very, very, very rare in that sport.

And I confess he is uh probably my favorite player that's ever played.

I in some ways I feel like I grew up with him when he were about the same age.

So when he started pitching, I was in my early 20s.

Um, and to see him retire, I uh I will also confess I looked at Melissa uh as tears were in my eyes.

I'll explain why if you didn't watch.

And I just looked at her and I was like, I feel so old as he retires.

But one of the cool things is uh it was always the when when a storied player like that in baseball, especially a pitcher, when they retire, they typically like to pull them in the middle of an inning so that the crowd can have time to cheer and so that you know cool things happen.

Uh I remember when Mariana Rivera, which is the best closer of all time, when he retired, a couple of his old teammates came out to pull him from the mound.

And this specific day, uh yesterday, his little daughter, who is about seven, came out to take the ball from him, and so he could um and and it was it was an amazing scene to watch it happen.

Apparently, he didn't know that was gonna happen.

And so his seven-year-old daughter came running out to the mound, and he absolutely loses it.

And as a dad of girls, and I have one about his oldest's age, I just absolutely lost it.

Just absolutely lost it.

I look at Melissa and she's crying too, but somehow I'm crying way harder, which is a little bit tough to swallow.

But it is, and I I kept making myself cry throughout the day as I pull up social media and I see different angles.

And apparently, my middle girl uh Amalia, she caught it and she goes, Dad's crying again.

I'm just sitting there watching.

I mean, it was it was pretty it was a very moving thing.

But one of the things as I thought, oh man, I feel very old.

One of the other things I I thought in that moment was how amazing is it, number one, for him to be able to have his daughter experience this with him.

But what an amazing thing for her that she's able to be part of his last game.

She was able, she'll never forget.

I mean, he will never forget that.

I'm never gonna forget it, but she won't either.

She will never forget that.

To see that little girl will never forget that day.

She didn't just hear about dad's career.

She was there to share as it ended.

Now, our passage this morning starts with a farewell as well.

Joshua, the greatest leader, and we've gone through this a couple times.

Joshua ends with his funeral and judges in chapter one again his funeral.

We're here in chapter two, again, his funeral.

Important guy.

Joshua, the great leader of Israel's greatest maybe generation, dies, and the question asks the text text asks in many ways is when one generation passes away, what does the next generation carry with them?

Now, unfortunately, we're gonna see for Israel, the answer is heartbreaking.

Within one generation, they didn't know the Lord or anything that he had done.

And it will face, we're gonna face that reality this morning of what that looks like from one generation to the other, as we are distinctly in a generation.

And we've been handed down the holy scriptures, we've been handed down who Jesus is, and part of our responsibility is then to hand it to the next, to set them up as best as possible.

And the Lord does what the Lord does.

But when one generation passes away, what does the next generation carry with them?

Now, in many ways, our text this morning is actually a second introduction, but even more deep than that, it's actually a summary, essentially, of the entire book.

We're gonna be in Judges chapter 2, starting in verse 6, and we're gonna go through chapter 3, verse 6.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

And if uh you are following along uh with the Bible, the Bible's right in front of you.

Uh he's on page 128, but they will also be on the screen if you would like that.

So let's dive in this morning as we, in some ways, look at a second introduction of this book, but also a summary of the entire thing, starting in verse 6.

When Joshua dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his inheritance to take possession of the land, and the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua and who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.

And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years.

And they buried him within the boundaries and the in his inheritance in Timnath Hares, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gash.

So they picked up, nearly word for word, the final words of Joshua in chapter 24, which we covered a couple weeks ago.

The author is doing this because the generation of Joshua is going to be compared and in some ways contrasted with the next generation of Israel, the judges generation that we are entering into.

And in many ways, you can feel the setup.

We're starting the same way, but it's not going to go the same way.

Can't you?

You can sense something even in those verses a little bit unnerving, like, why are you starting this way again?

You just did that in the previous chapter.

It describes the life well lived of Joshua, the servant of the Lord.

Again, we just walked through the entire book that is named after him.

People serve the Lord even through the death of Joshua, and as the elders that were of his generation continued to live, they continued to serve the Lord.

But you're a you're sensing a giant, however.

Verse 10.

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

The contrast begins.

There is a generation that dies, another one is born, and ages uh ages up and takes leadership, ownership, ownership of the state, so to speak.

But this generation has some details that need to be unearthed and understood.

Firstly, they did not know the Lord or the works of the Lord that he had done for their nation.

Let's unpack that for a minute.

This generation had heard of the Exodus, surely.

The Red Sea, crossing of the Jordan, tumbling walls of Jericho, and of course the entire conquest of Canaan.

The previous, just their generation previously lived through all that.

Most of that.

They know about these things.

It would have been possible not to know about these things, but they did forget about them in one sense.

Tim Keller put it this way, which I found very helpful.

The saving acts of God were no longer precious or central to them.

They had not learned to revere and rejoice in what God had done.

In other words, they had forgotten the gospel, that they were saved from slavery in Egypt and brought into the promised land by the gracious, mighty acts of God.

Simply put, they forgot.

But this isn't a passive forgetting, like some of us are prone to do with our keys or our wallet.

Oh, it's something else, starting again in verse 10 through 13.

And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel, and the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served Baals.

They abandoned the Lord and the God of their fathers who had brought them out of the land of Egypt.

They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who are around them and bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger.

They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

So they forgot about it or neglected to keep central who God is and what he has done, and as a result, they remained neutral.

No.

They did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

They served Baals, they abandoned the Lord, they went after other gods from among the nations, bowed down to them.

These are the hit lists of things that they did.

In verse 13, it says it succinctly, they abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Asheroth.

Now, Baal is a specific Canaanite God, but it also can just mean owner or Lord.

So in essence, this generation forgot about the one true God and replaced him with these little many gods.

But it goes deeper even still because we need to ask and answer the question: what does it mean to serve those gods?

And what does it mean to bow to them and go after them as is described here?

Baal was the god of storms and fertility.

And Asheroth was the goddess of love and fertility.

So obviously, these things were things that the Canaanites cared deeply about.

They wanted their land and their crops and the animals and, of course, the fertility between families to be obviously healthy and continue to grow and grow and grow like any society would want.

But they felt like they believed that they needed to coax Baal into giving them these things.

These were important gods, but they needed to be coaxed, moved, worshipped for fertility to happen.

Now, at the risk of being a bit graphic, the fertility of the land and of the people depended on the intimate relationship between Baal and his lady god Asherah.

They needed to do what things do.

Again, without being too graphic, what does the worship of these gods look like?

To get them to do get these gods to do what they wanted them to do, they needed to do the same thing that the gods did.

And not with their wives.

But with working women, so to speak, in the temple.

Again, if you catch my dread.

When you worship a pagan god, they need to be coerced into acting.

You can imagine that it wasn't that difficult to convince Israelite men that maybe this is a good idea.

Right?

It wasn't difficult to convince this men of this generation that maybe the way forward is actually to convert to Baal worship.

This generation has done what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as we have seen.

They abandoned him for another.

We'll dive a little bit more deeply into what that looks like, but what was God's response?

Verse 14.

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to the plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into their hands surrounded of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.

Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them, and they were in terrible distress.

Unsurprisingly, God is angry.

It makes him angry when people in the world that he has created puts other things in place where only he belongs.

The place of honor, the place of worship.

And what does God say regarding his anger?

He will give Israel into the hands of their enemies.

The exact opposite of what just happened for the entire book of Joshua, where he was giving Israel, their enemies, into their hands.

God was delivering them.

The exact opposite now is going to happen because they have abandoned him.

Because they have worshipped other gods, many gods, lesser gods.

He will give them into the hands of their enemies.

They will no longer be able to withstand their enemies.

And it says, just as the Lord had warned, God made a covenant with Israel, and it had been renewed multiple times.

And what was said every time?

Let's just back up just for the sake.

Joshua 23, verses 14 through 16.

Joshua 23:14–16

And now I am about to go the way of the earth.

This is Joshua speaking, and you know in your hearts and souls, all of you, that not one word has failed all uh failed of all the good things that the Lord God promised concerning you.

All that has come to pass for you, not one of them has failed.

But just as the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning you have fulfilled for you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things until he has destroyed you from off this good land that the Lord God had uh given to you.

If you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which he commanded to you, and go to serve other gods and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given to you.

He has said this.

This is Joshua chapter 23.

Joshua 23 · chapter mention

It's not that long ago.

Moving down to Joshua 24, verse 20.

Joshua 24:20

If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do harm and consume you after having done you good.

And in verse 25 of chapter 24, the people agreed in the covenant is renewed.

We covered that a couple weeks ago.

What God said is now being enacted.

He is faithful in all of his ways, including the consequences of breaking his covenant.

So, just in case some uh would want to say that God is overreacting or throwing some sort of temper tantrum, he is not.

The truth is, all of us as parents in this room can fully relate to this as we parent our children, can't we?

Now here's the interesting part as if all that wasn't interesting already.

God would be justified to stop right here.

It would be perfectly within his rights, as he is God, to stop there and say, We made a covenant.

I kept my end of the bargain, so to speak.

Lay it out perfectly, we all agreed to this, and you willfully broke it.

But he doesn't do that.

Verse 16.

Then the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them.

Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they hoard after other gods and bowed down to them.

They turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, and they had uh and had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, they did not do uh that they did not do so.

Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge.

For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because those who afflicted and oppressed them.

But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them, excuse me, and bowing down to them, they did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.

Here in verse 16 through 19, we see God's grace again.

God did not need to do this, he did not need to intervene, but he does anyways.

He raises up judges or leaders, deliverers, saviors who did exactly that, saved them from the surrounding nations.

Now the word choice is very careful here.

God raised them up.

The Lord raised them up.

It was not someone that the people elected.

No, no, these were servants of the Lord, called by the Lord, equipped by the Lord.

And again, it has been throughout all of Exodus, this all of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, that it is God who works, and it is God who fights, and it is God who delivers.

And sometimes he uses us.

The judge would save them and they would still not listen to them.

The verbiage used here in verse 17 is that the people hoored after other gods, even still.

That is extremely strong language.

And he means it.

And we're given a brief insight into why God even raised these judges up.

God was moved with compassion, he pitied the people.

Even as they abandoned him, they groaned about their suffering.

But it doesn't say that they groaned to him, it doesn't say that they uh uh came to him in prayer, it just says that they were suffering and they groaned about it, and God saw it and took pity and was moved in compassion to intervene, even though they were still running from him, even though still abandon him.

God took pity on them, anyways.

And in verse 19, we are told that as soon as the judge dies, whenever the rescuer dies, the rescue ends.

It starts back over.

It was never a carryover, nothing ever was planted and grown in the hearts of the people.

They did not drop any of their practices, it says in verse 19, or their stubborn ways.

Verse 20.

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he said, Because the people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died.

In order to test Israel by them, whether they take uh care to walk in the Lord as their fathers did or not.

So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly, and he did not give them into the hand of Joshua or the hand of Israel.

Verse 20 through 23, bring us back to right where we started.

It is a cycle that will be repeated again and again.

God directly speaks, they've broken the covenant, so he won't drive out the remaining nations.

Those nations will stay to test Israel, to see whether they'll walk in his ways.

God will use these nations to test Israel.

And with any test, it can be failed or it can be passed.

It could teach discipline, it forces us to learn, to learn even potentially from our mistakes.

A test can force us to take stock and to think the presence of these nations, the reality of the job being only half finished, will be a constant reminder of Yahweh and the relationship or lack thereof to Him.

They will be confronted with their disobedience, they'll be confronted with their lack of distinctiveness from among the nations the last section of this book that for uh sake of time, the last section of our passage for sake of time, we won't read.

But it's Judges 3, verses 1 through 6.

Judges 3:1–6

I encourage you to read those on your own at home.

But this last uh section is dedicated to the nations that were still in the land.

These will be the nations that will be tormenting and fighting with Israel for the duration of this book and even beyond.

The Canaanite.

The Hittites, the Amorites, the Peresites, the Havites, the Jebusites, all these.

We're going to see these names again all throughout this book.

Along with these nations to test Israel, he will use these nations to accomplish another purpose, to teach them about war.

But why?

To give them moments that will drive them towards dependence on him, like he had done in the past in the previous generation.

Again, Keller puts it well.

God's mercy was to use the nations around Israel to bring them moments when all seemed lost.

And so to drive them into greater dependence on him.

Surrounded by idol worshiping peoples, Israel would face the constant question: Will you obey the Lord's command or not?

What do we walk away with this morning as we read this, as we are faced with this reality of one generation serving the Lord and obeying him, and then one generation next completely abandoning him, forgetting what God had done, not making it central.

And we're going to see a cycle go over and over and over and over again in this book.

As we closed out our Joshua series a couple weeks ago, Joshua 23 and 24, we saw a real truth in the two final speeches of Joshua before he passed away.

Total faithfulness calls for an undivided heart.

God's total faithfulness to his people calls for an undivided heart from his people.

Again, though, notice the order.

God doesn't demand an undivided heart and then go prove himself worthy of it.

It's the other way around.

Joshua went through the laundry list of everything God had done for them, and he calls them to give Yahweh their whole hearts.

And we see this morning that this generation does exactly what Joshua warns him not to do.

They refuse to give God their whole heart.

And we will see in the summary of this book and in the week's uh and in this week's passage, of course, that God refused, though, to leave them there.

Because the truth is, though we are unfaithful, God's jealous love keeps pursuing us to rescue us.

Though we are unfaithful, God's jealous love keeps pursuing us to rescue us.

This passage is a roadmap in many ways for the whole book.

The same four pattern plays out again and again.

Rebellion, retribution, rescue, and relapse.

But the truth is it's not a circle, it's a downward spiral.

As it keeps going, it keeps going further down.

Further down.

And things just keep getting worse and worse and worse.

Each generation is more corrupt than their fathers, it says.

The first is rebellion.

We wander.

Again, Israel didn't become atheists.

They added Baal alongside the Lord.

Baal was the Canaanite god of rain and fertility, as we have talked through, and one of their neighbors trusted to make the crop grow.

This is how the crops grow.

So to an Israelite farmer, it probably felt practical, not wicked.

Maybe a little bit like insurance.

But verse 17 says, Israel, again, hoard after other gods.

That's shocking language and it's and it's intentional.

God describes their sin.

God doesn't describe their sin as breaking rules.

He describes it as cheating on him.

Israel was his bride.

And they were giving their hearts to others.

We need to be reminded of this.

Most of us often, including myself, we think of sin as crossing a line, and indeed it is.

I did something I wasn't supposed to do.

But scripture goes deeper, and it's highlighted in this passage.

Sin is fundamentally betraying our first love.

That's why this is so serious.

It's personal.

For us, idolatry rarely looks like worshiping a statue.

It's whatever we run to for what only God can give: security, comfort, identity, control.

So when we sin, when we do these things, we are looking at our first love and we are telling him he's not good enough.

When we're anxious, where does our heart go first?

When we're lonely, what do we reach for?

What do we trust to make life work?

Whatever it is, it's competing for the place that God belongs.

Sin isn't mainly a list of lines you've crossed, it is that.

But it's a love that you've wandered from, that we've wandered from.

The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, verse 14.

God hands them over to their plunderers, and whatever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them.

Verse 15.

There's an irony here.

The nations whose gods Israel chose to serve became the nations that enslaved them.

Idols never deliver what they promise.

They take and they take and they take.

Many of us don't like the idea of an angry, jealous God.

Jealous sounds petty or insecure, but God calls himself by that name.

The Lord, whose name is jealous, is a jealous God, Exodus 34.

Think about it.

If a husband found his wife being unfaithful and simply shrugged, would we call that love?

Real love is exclusive.

And it burns when something threatens it.

God's jealousy isn't insecurity.

It's love refusing to share you with something that will destroy you.

Will destroy me, will destroy us.

God is not being insecure when he calls himself jealous.

He's calling himself your true love.

If God shrugged at your idols, that wouldn't be grace.

That would be indifference.

And he is not indifferent to your sin or to you.

The third thing, again, that keeps repeating itself and cycling is rescue.

God pursues.

After the anger in verses 14 through 15, you'd expect the story to end.

Instead, verse 16, then the Lord raised up judges who saved them.

The same God whose hand was against them is now the one who delivers them.

Look at verse 18.

The Lord was with the judge.

The power was never in the judges themselves, it was God's presence.

The Lord was moved to pity by their groaning.

The word for groaning is the same word used of Israel in Egyptian slavery in Exodus 2 and 6.

Then God, who heard his people in Egypt, is still listening.

God tells Hosea later on in the Bible to buy back his unfaithful wife Gomer, who has ended, who ended up being enslaved.

He says, Love her as the Lord loves the children of Israel.

That's the heart of God in Judges chapter 2, the betrayed husband who keeps coming after his wife because he loves her so much.

Judges 2 · chapter mention

Some people think that we need to clean up before God will help them.

Some of us feel that way.

Others are hurting so badly that they don't know how to pray.

Both of us need to hear that.

Hear this.

That God's rescue doesn't wait for you to get your act together.

He is a God who pursues you even when you run from it.

And our fourth and final down the rabbit hole is relapse.

We need a better judge.

But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, verse 19.

The rescue lasted exactly as long as the rescuer last.

And notice verse 17, they didn't listen even when the judge was still alive half the time.

The truth is, the judges could change Israel's circumstances, but never their hearts.

They could drive out enemies, but they couldn't drive out the idols.

And every judge eventually died.

Each generation had to start over, and each started lower.

Israel needed a judge who wouldn't die, and a rescue that would reach the heart.

There is one.

And his name is Jesus.

The judge's death ended the rescue.

Jesus' death is the rescue.

And he didn't stay dead.

The judges changed the situation.

Jesus changes the heart.

Ezekiel 36, 26, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.

To be clear, this grace isn't permission to keep spiraling.

Israel was rescued again and got worse because rescue didn't alone change them.

The good news isn't that God keeps saving us.

That is good news, but it's that Christ has made us new.

Judges 2 leaves us with two problems that it cannot solve.

Our hearts keep wandering, and every rescuer eventually dies.

And Jesus solves both of those problems.

In his life, he did what Israel never did.

He faced every temptation to bow to other gods and stayed perfectly faithful, loving the Father with his whole heart and never once running to other lovers.

In his death, the jealous anger of God that fell on Israel through their enemies fell instead on him.

The betrayed husband paid the price of his unfaithful bride, buying us back not with silver, but with his own blood, so that the hand of the Lord that was once against us is now forever for us.

And in his resurrection he became the judge who doesn't die.

Israel's rescues lasted only as long as the judge lived.

And when he was buried, the people slid back into their idols.

But Jesus' tomb is empty, and his rescue never expires.

He lives forever to save completely those to come to God through him.

And by his spirit, he does what no judge can ever do.

He changes the heart itself, breaking sin's grip and making wanderers new.

But in Christ, God doesn't just rescue us one more time, he brings us home for good.

So what does this ask of us?

Not that we try harder to break the cycle.

It asks us to stop keeping Baal around as a backup and rest our whole weight on Christ.

We don't surrender to earn his rescue.

We surrender because he has already pursued us, paid for us, and risen for us.