Serve The Lord All Your Heart

I've learned that I actually learn more by reading people I don't always agree with. I enjoy finding folks who I would have significant differences with and studying them, and it helps challenge what I believe and what I don't believe. One of the men like this is a German philosopher from the 19th century. Ludwig Feuerbach. Now not only does he have a great name, he was very influential. His primary contribution to philosophy, to the philosophy of religion specifically, was that he observed that most people, their God is merely the projection of their own thoughts, desires, and wants. He stated that God hasn't made us in his image, but no, we've made God in ours. What we desire, what we prioritize, what we value, we make a God of our own image by saying God must like those same things. For instance, someone might think, well, God has to be Republican. I'm a Republican. God has to be a Democrat. I'm a Democrat. God has to be pro-America because I'm an American. God has to like the Patriots. Eh, probably not. And an example of this, and this is a true story. Show my roots here a little bit, but Dale Earnhardt, one of the greatest NASCAR drivers in the history of sports. After he died, I was listening to the radio, and the radio announcer, the DJ, he was giving a eulogy of Dale Earnhardt, and he made the statement, well, now we know there have to be racetracks in heaven, because Dale wouldn't be happy without a racetrack. That's odd, right? There's a lot of presumption there. If he can't be happy on the racetrack, God has to appease. God has to desire and like the things that we desire and like. The way this functions more for us is, I'm angry. I'm angry at this particular thing. God has to be endorsing my anger. I'm fearful, and I'm going to be controlled by my fear, and God has to endorse my fear. I find satisfaction and enjoyment in this sin. God surely endorses what I'm doing. We like to project our own ideals upon God. Friends, this is why the Bible is so important. It protects us from this, Firebug's right. Apart from God speaking, apart from God telling us what he's like and what he desires, this is what we do. This is why it's important that we come and we sit under God's word and we trust what he says. Because otherwise we form God in our own image or we pursue something that looks like a God that we like based upon our own sin, our own preference. Christianity is a revealed religion. We believe and we trust in a God who is there and who speaks. And he speaks clearly and authoritatively. And what he has said is sufficient for us. He gives us information, he gives us instruction. The Bible calls us to worship by knowing Him, trusting Him, and obeying Him. If you're new with us or you weren't here last week, we've just began a study through the book of Judges. In the Pew Bible, again, that's on page 201. If you don't have a Bible, please take that with you. That is God speaking so that you can know Him, so that you can know who you are, so that you can know how to know Him. We're in Judges, and last week we just looked at the first few, chapter one and part of chapter two. To give us a refresher here, God has taken Israel out of Egypt, they've crossed the Red Sea, they've wandered the wilderness because they were unfaithful, they've come into the Promised Land, and then God says drive out the inhabitants because if you leave them there with their gods, you're going to be unfaithful. And Israel chose to not obey. They did not drive out the inhabitants, they did not take down their idols, and therefore God gave a judgment. And it's very important, go to chapter two, verse one at the end, God comes, I am the God who brought you out of Egypt, and I swore to your fathers, I will not break my covenant with you. God will not break his covenant, but because Israel has been unfaithful, he's not going to drive out the rest of the inhabitants. He's going to give them what they want. And that is terrifying when it happens. As we start today, we're gonna begin in verse 11. And the main thing we're gonna see is what we've already sung. God is faithful to deliver an unfaithful people. That's the one big idea that we've already sung about, we've already heard about, and what we're called to think about today. God is faithful to deliver an unfaithful people. Our first point is pursuing idols is forsaking God. That's verses 11 to 13. Next, God's anger is kindled against our idolatry. That's verses 14 to 15. Verses 16 to 18, God saves us despite our sin. And then finally, God tests our faithfulness. That's chapter two, verse 20, through chapter three, verse six. Let's begin chapter, 2, 11 to 13, pursuing idols is forsaking God. I want you to hear that the way this passage is structured, it starts with serve. When we serve other gods, we abandon Yahweh, we go after them, we bow down to them, we abandon Yahweh, we serve. There's repetition. And I want you to hear those key words. When you serve Baal, you abandon Yahweh, you go after them, you bow down before them. That is abandoning Yahweh. You serve Baal. Listen for that repetition. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, 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 were around them, and bowed down to them. They provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Asheroth." It is evil to serve other gods. Israel, by going after other gods, is abandoning Yahweh. As we heard from James, you cannot Be friends with God and be friends with the world. Or as Jesus taught, you cannot have two masters. You cannot serve the Lord and serve mammon. You either love the one, hate the other. Serving other gods is abandoning the God who has loved them, cared for them, delivered them, made promises to them. We see the heading here. The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. That's not new to judges. Deuteronomy repeats that phrase a number of times. You can go to Deuteronomy 4.25. It is evil to abandon God to serve idols. The God who said he's with you, he's for you, he'll never abandon you, they abandoned him. Now, they're going in and they're going to be constantly allured to, they're going to constantly be drawn to worshiping these other gods. Well, what was this worship like? It was paganism. And the best picture I can give you of paganism is, it's kind of like dealing with the mafia. They offer you something, but they expect something in return. There's always an exchange of goods. If you give them gifts, they'll offer you their protection. Or if you want fertility, you must give them what they want. They function very much like human beings. Because human beings invented them. And we can't really think of anything better than what we think of ourselves. There's a constant debt. There's a constant enslavement. You see, the whole point of paganism isn't to worship the God. The point of paganism is to get what you want. You love the thing, so you serve the God. Christianity's very different. We worship because the one true God is worthy of all worship, and he gives us the greatest thing, and that is himself. He says to Israel, I'm with you, I'm for you, I will care for you, I am giving you knowledge of who I am so that you can behold me with your own eyes. That was not enough. for Israel. They wanted a God they could see with their physical eyes. So they carved images. That they wanted a God that they could bring a physical gift to and hope that they would give to receive another physical gift. They tried to figure out ways to work around God rather than trust Him. They went and served these other gods. Abandoning. Look at verse 12. Abandoning the God who had delivered them and made it so clear, I am the God above all gods. I destroyed every god of Egypt. I destroyed Egypt itself so that you would know I'm the one true glorious God. So what does it mean to serve these gods? Well, we serve gods when we place our time, energy, commitment, and affection somewhere. So if you want to think about where you worship and what you worship, think about where most of your time, your thoughts, your energy go. That is, by definition, what we typically are worshiping. Now Israel's sin is obvious. They decided not to worship the one God that they could see with their hearts, but not their eyes, and to go after a God who was physical and made promises that God could not keep. Now, we don't have these kinds of idols, most of us, in our homes, in our culture, but we're still very much like Israel. Our gods aren't quite like this paganism. Our gods, I think, are probably a lot like us. They want us to relax. They want us to take it easy. They want us to find comfort and value in ourselves and what we're doing. Our God's like us to have recreation. You see, the people of Israel, they were hungry, needed fertility, wanted food and water. They were desperate. So they took desperate measures and gave sacrifices to idols thinking that would happen. We're not desperate for those things. We're just looking for the happier, easier life. So our gods are like us. They may not feel as demanding, but they're also binding. Because they constantly offer some form of happiness or satisfaction and never deliver. Let me explain it another way. You come here, I assume, knowing you're coming to a worship service. Here, what we're doing is we're worshiping as a body. This is corporate worship. What you do when you leave, you're going to continue to worship. You don't come to worship and then leave and go on with life. No. God designed every human being to always worship. You're always worshiping someone or something. So we've come here because we're singing God's Word and we're hearing God's Word. I hope you're worshiping the God and having your mind changed, your desires changed. When you leave here, what are you going to worship? What I'm tempted to do is worship my me time when I get home. That's one of my idols. I love my me time. That comfort, that relaxation. Or when we go to work, we're not worshiping God and how we labor as we study in Ephesians. Maybe we're worshiping our success. How much money we can make. How popular we can be. See, we're always Worshiping. We're either serving God or some other ideal or some other life. Let's look at verse 12. Worship here is described as going after and bowing down. There's a posture to worship. There's a practice in worship. We have to realize that our posture and how we worship, it matters. Oftentimes we think those who lift their hands are the ones that are worshiping, and Paul does command that he wants men in every place to lift their hands, their holy hands. And the idea there is that we're not quarreling, we're not punching each other, but we're lifting up holy hands. I've dedicated my life to you, God. But if you look throughout the Bible, there's a lot more prostrating. There's a lot more bowing down before Almighty God. That kind of humble posture is what mostly happens in Scripture when we think about worship. Or the going after. What are we pursuing? What are we practicing? If you want to know what you worship, ask, what am I getting better at? Through practice. Here are the basic diagnosis. The people of Israel, they've abandoned God, they've served Baals. They might think they've figured out a way of doing both, but you can't. If you are serving other gods, you cannot be worshiping the one true God. Now how does God respond? The first point, verse 11 to 13, that's what the people of Israel are doing. It's a very clear principle. You cannot serve two masters. Our idolatry is denying God. How does God respond? Let's look at verses 14 to 15. Second heading is God's anger is kindled against our idolatry. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. Now, it's very important that God is never described in his character as an angry God. God is righteous. God is just. God responds to our sin with his perfect righteousness. He responds with anger. And we have to be careful not to, again, impose the way we think about anger or the way we experience anger upon God because, well, when we're angry, we typically overreact. We typically get overly upset because somebody has imposed something that takes us away from our convenience. God is not out of control in His anger. He is perfectly righteous. He is responding to real sin with real righteousness. He is upset. He is angry. And what does it mean that He's angry? Well, it means different things at different times, but here it simply says, look, verse 14, He gave them over. to plunderers, who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of his surrounding enemies. When they marched out, verse 15, the hand of the Lord was against them, not for them. Now what defines Israel as Israel? The most important marker of God's people is this. I am your God, Yahweh says, and you are my people. I am for you, I am with you. But because they've broken the covenant, God is against them. They've rejected the one true God and He is responding with righteous anger. He is removing His arm of blessing and care so that they will experience the consequences of their sin. Now notice this last declaration. And they were in terrible distress. This is what forsaking God leads to if you are a child of God. Terrible distress. Why? Because God loves you. Forsaking God leads to terrible distress if you're a child of God because God loves you. Praise God that His children cannot live satisfied in sin. That is a blessing. That is a privilege of being a child of God is that when we are His and we pursue sin and we reject Him, we experience terrible distress. When I see a brother or sister in terrible distress, it actually gives me hope. That they are God's child because they cannot continue to be satisfied by pursuing this sin. I know in my own life that when I've been in moments of terrible distress, it's because I've been terribly disobedient. It's a lack of faith. It's a lack of obedience. Now this doesn't mean every problem is caused by sin, but it does mean that when we reach a point of terrible distress, it is a time to start reflecting. What have I done? What do I love? God, is there sin in my life? Have I run amuck in sin so that I'm now restless? We're designed to find rest and peace in God alone, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Him. This terrible distress is a grace to His people. Yes, it is a consequence of the anger, but it is a grace. Let's look at verse 16. The people sin, God has anger, he hands them over, and then what happens next, our third section? God saves us despite our sin. Let's look at verses 16. In their distress, the Lord raised up judges who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Drop down to verse 18. And whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge. Again, that great declaration, with them, for them. The Lord raised up a judge, he 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 the groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. God has not forsaken his people. He's handed them over to their own sin. He's let them suffer the consequences of their sin so that they don't go to that terrible distress so that they can call out upon Him so that He can again show, I am the God who loves you and who saves you. You need me. Stop forsaking me. This is very Exodus-like. Remember, Israel goes into Egypt. The Pharaoh who was in charge forgets who Israel is, forgets who Joseph was, and he enslaves Israel, and so they start crying out to God, and God, in response, hears them, calls Moses, hey, go to Israel, or go to Pharaoh, rather, and tell him, let my people go. And then God plunders the Egyptians and gives all their goods to Egypt. God hears his people, and he sent them to deliver. God hears his people with pity and sends a deliverer. Now I want to be very clear, each one of these judges is a pale comparison to Moses. And even more so, Moses and these judges are a pale comparison to the one true Savior and Deliverer, Jesus Christ. But this is the beauty of it. We're in distress. We cry out to God. He delivers us. He has pity. He has compassion. He hears our groanings. And what should happen is every time he hears our groanings and saves us, we should realize, I should stop doing the thing that gets me into the trouble. But look at verses 17 and 19. So right after he says, God save them, in verse 16, and right after he says, God save them, in verse 18, let's read verses 17 and 19. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Verse 19. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. God saves them. The proper response to the saving is to be obedient, to now want to worship the one God who not only is faithful from the beginning, but has now saved you again. And they remain stubborn. They don't listen. They go back. They even increase in their corruption. Now, one of the more graphic words here, for they hoard after other gods. This is intentionally gross because what Israel's doing is gross. And this is an apt description of what's taking place. We have to remember that a lot of these other gods, they're fertility gods. Their worship involved temple prostitutes, even bestiality. It was a gross religion. The sin of Israel is described as whoring because it was a gross sin. even more fundamental of what the sin is, God presents himself over and over again as a faithful bridegroom. As a faithful pursuer of his people, and his people constantly play the whore. That's the whole book of Hosea. We see it in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, we see it all over Scripture. God is the faithful lover of his people, and those people are unfaithful. Christ himself in John 3 calls himself the true bridegroom. He lays down his life for his bride. Ephesians 5, Christ is the head of the church. He loves her to the point of death to purify her. Christians, we must remember God loves us while we're sinners. He pursues us while we are running against him and rebelling against him. It's amazing that we receive this perfect true love. Love perfectly demonstrated that Christ laid down his life for us to take our sin, our judgment, our guilt, our condemnation, so that we could have life and life in Christ. We believe that and then we run right back to those sins that Christ saved us from. That's what Israel's doing here. They recognize, okay, this is a good God, we're gonna corrupt Him when we need Him, but otherwise, I'm gonna just try to live my life and I'm gonna do what else I think is right. They abandon the one who truly loves them, the one who's made promises. This is the sad thing. Israel's failure is that they do not return God's love with love. They return God's love with stubborn corruption, with an insistence that they're going to continue to worship other gods even though they're gonna call out upon this one God and he's gonna deliver them. When we call out to God, how do we respond to his great love? This is the challenge. If Israel responds in this way, this is the sin that God's word is challenging us today. When we receive God's love, what do we return it with? Jesus says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. If we've truly received the greatest love, brothers and sisters, if we receive this great love, the greatest love from God himself, the greatest lover, how are we responding? Because Jesus says it means we obey his commandments. Responding in love doesn't mean we feel a certain way about Jesus or we believe a certain way about Jesus. It means we obey Jesus. Israel is a warning for us. Do not respond to God's great love with whoredom, but with wholehearted, loving obedience. Notice verse 19. They're more corrupt. They didn't stop any practices. Now, what's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again, trying to expect that you're gonna have a different outcome, right? Over and over again, they're gonna keep the same practices. They're gonna be stubborn, and they're gonna keep thinking, well, this time it'll be different. This time, this God will really help us, and we won't get ensnared. We won't be plundered. We will be able to drive out the people we need to drive out. This is how sin affects our thinking. Sin affects everything about us, but the way we think, right? We go back to the same thing thinking, well, this time it'll be better, right? We have coping mechanisms. It's like you pursue a drug and you think, all right, this time this drug is gonna help me, but eventually that drug's effectiveness runs out or it runs you into the rut And we cry out for God, but then what happens? We go right back. God leads us to the terrible distress of our sin, our stubbornness, our going back to our own little gods, so that we'll see that he's a God who loves us and saves us. I also want us to remember this passage that the judges had a very limited ability to save. The judges were only able to defeat the nations, the powers, and the armies that were bothering Israel. The judges had no ability whatsoever to actually solve the real problem. These judges could not change or fix the heart of the Israelites. These judges were very limited into what they could actually save, what they could deliver. The people didn't just need freedom from oppressors, the people needed freedom from the power of their own sin that continues to corrupt them. This is why we look to Jesus, the true and perfect Savior, who sees how corrupt our hearts are, who understands what you're thinking, in your most embarrassing moments. Who knows the kind of desires you fight against? Who knows what kind of corruption and confusion exists within you? And yet he still says, I will love you, I will help you, I can heal you. But you have to trust me. The Israelites, they needed a real savior. These judges point us to the one who truly is a savior that we know. But as we heard earlier in James, we have to put off our stubbornness. We have to draw near to God. We have to humbly come to him and ask him, how can we find your peace and rest? Tell us who you are. Instruct us. This passage challenges our constant draw to other gods. Our last section, God tests faithfulness. God tests our faithfulness. And this is the longer section. You can see, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel again. And again, we're kind of giving a backdrop here. He's given an overview of how the book of Judges is going to work, and a key word is test. Look at verse 22. Well, we begin in verse 21. 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 will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not. Or we can go to chapter 3 verse 4. They were for the testing of Israel, these other nations, to know whether Israel would obey the commandment of the Lord which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. God again is responding to evil with anger. And he decides because they've been unfaithful, he's going to leave these nations because that's what they wanted. They're gonna suffer the consequences of leaving these nations, and God is going to test them. You will have to now be faithful and obedient in light of the constant temptation to worship these other gods. The test is, will they be faithful? Now as we look to judges, If you're going to continue with us in the book of Judges, let me tell you what happens as we go ahead. Israel doesn't pass the test. It keeps getting worse. It gets vulgarly gross and worse. See, a test is a good thing. It helps us see who we are. It helps us see what's wrong with us. And when you take a test for a class, it's a good opportunity. It shows you where you need to study more, and it helps you demonstrate what you've learned. The test of constantly failing, the test of constantly being in terrible distress, that is a declaration. There's something wrong. God needs to refine me. I see weaknesses. I see blind spots. I see sin. So that I can be more faithful. They'll continue to cry out to God. He'll continue to save them because He is a faithful God. Now I want you to see here in verses 7 to 11, we have our first judge. So chapters 1 through 3, 6, that's really giving us the backdrop. It's giving us kind of a big theological picture of what's happening in all the book of Judges. He is faithful, but he's handing it over to their enemies so that he can save them when they get into distress. And over and over again, this happens. And most of the judges are introduced with this simple statement, chapter three, verse seven. We've already seen it before. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Now your bulletin has a circle. There's a graph in there. And this is a pretty well known, but this is a basic understanding of how judges works. Israel, they're serving the Lord. Then they fall into idolatry. They abandon the Lord and they start serving idols. We've already seen this. Then Israel is enslaved and they cry out to the Lord, then he raises up a judge, he delivers them, they serve the Lord, and then they fall back. We assume Israel's been serving the Lord already because Judah goes and they do remove some inhabitants, but then remember, those chariots of iron, too much for them, too much for God. Then we see verse 7, they fall into sin. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. Then they are enslaved. Verse 8, therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the hand of Cushon Rishethiim, king of Mesopotamia. And the people of Israel served Cushon Rishethiim eight years. Then the people cry out, verse 9. But the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, and the Lord raised up a deliverer. Again, verse 9, the next step. Who saved them? Athel, the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother. The spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he judged Israel. He went to Elor. The Lord gave Cushon Rishathim, king of Mesopotamia, into his hand. and his hand prevailed over Cushon or Shathim. Then the land had rest. That's the cycle we're going to see over and over again. Now the cycle says a lot of things about us and about God. We're prone to temptation. We're constantly prone to worship other gods. We're constantly falling back. And the God is always faithful to hear his people and is a faithful deliverer. Here's what is so troubling about this cycle. It repeats, it repeats, it repeats, it repeats. I know too many Christians whose lives are like this. They're serving the Lord and then they fall into sin and then they cry to the Lord and he delivers them and they go right back to sin. God doesn't, hasn't saved you to constantly go through this cycle. being tossed to and fro by every doctor, every temptation. He saved us to know God, to trust him, to worship him, to be faithful and obedient. If you're a believer today, and you constantly feel this wavering, this constant cycle repeating, don't leave here without talking to somebody. Christ saved you so that you would know his peace and his rest and would be called to his obedience. If you're not a Christian today, you have to be convinced there's actually something wrong with him. There's something in your heart you can't fix. Those desires, those thoughts, you can't beat. There's a constant pattern of what we call as Christian sin. Going back to things that you know are corrupting you, but you can't control it. Constantly realizing there's something wrong, but not being able to put your finger on it. The main problem you have is that you've forsaken God and His judgment is against you. And when you die, the sin that you experience that is destructive to you personally will come down as a condemnation of judgment forever. And you'll experience the full wrath of God of your sin being judged forever. Unless you believe in the one who can save you and the only one who can save you, Jesus Christ. He died to take away that judgment. He took it upon himself. He took your sin upon himself so that you could be forgiven and free and live at peace with God. But you must believe in him. Which means you recognize you've made a mess of your life. He can forgive you, He can restore you, and He's risen, and He now wants to lead you. Do not leave without talking to someone about that. Believers, let us trust God. We don't have to be creative, inventive, clever. He has said who He is and what He expects of us. Let us strive together to be obedient.