Timeless Insights from the Book of Judges
How to Function in God’s Eternal Plan in a Compromising Culture
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God has a deeply rooted allegiance to His children. God is not wishy washy and all in today, and questioning His connection to us tomorrow. God has a loyal love toward His children that looks beyond our faults, sees our needs, and responds to us. When God renewed His covenant with Moses, and re-wrote the commandments on the stone tablets in front of Moses, He clearly expressed His loyal love for His children. “Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.” 8 Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and worship (Exodus 34:6–8). God’s lovingkindness is His loyal love for His children. He loves us deeply with an eternal allegiance we will never fully comprehend. God’s love is so deep, He does not write us off when we willfully shake our fist in His face and blatantly disobey Him. However, He does not give us a green light to continue in sin as if we have no obligation to respond to Him in obedience. What makes us think we can ignore God’s loyal love and live as we please without consequences? As God prepares to use us in His redemptive plan, He may place us in a setting where loyal love for Him is a requisite to be effective. If we are going to be effective in a culture filled with compromise, loyalty to God is a necessary characteristic. Before God used Gideon to deliver Israel, God tested Gideon for loyalty. Loyalty is faithfulness, allegiance and being devoted to God. Why was God testing Gideon for loyalty necessary? Was the test for God or was it really for Gideon to understand the gravity of his work among a people who lived in the spiritual darkness of normalized compromise. Before God used Gideon to deliver Israel, He tested Gideon for loyalty. Loyalty is faithfulness or devotion to someone. Israel had a loyalty problem. Look at the spiritual condition of Israel, as described in the book of Judges. • Israel forgot the Lord their God and served idol gods (3:7b). • Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord (3:12b). • Israel disobeyed God regarding the idols of the land (6:7–10). • Israel did not remember the Lord who delivered them (8:34–35). • Israel forgot about God and served idols (10:6b). Look in the book of Judges at what God did to Israel for disrespecting Him and worshiping idol gods. • God sold Israel into the hands of the Mesopotamians for eight years (3:8b). • God used the Moabites to oppress Israel for eighteen years (3:12–13). • God used the Canaanites to oppress Israel for twenty years (4:2–3). • God used the Midianites to bring Israel low for seven years (6:1b, 3–6). • God used the Philistines and Ammonites to afflict and crush Israel eighteen years (10:8). • God used the Philistines to oppress Israel for forty years (13:1). God gave Israel 111 years of six different punishments because of their disrespectful behavior of chasing after idol gods. Israel had a loyalty problem before God. Are you loyal to God? Does God need to test your loyalty to help you understand the magnitude of modeling loyalty as you serve Him? What would such a test look like anyway? God will test you to see if you will obey Him over your nearest and dearest (vs. 25-26). “Now on the same night the LORD said to him, ‘Take your father’s bull and a second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal which belongs to your father, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it; and build an altar to the LORD your God on the top of this stronghold in an orderly manner, and take a second bull and offer a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah which you shall cut down’” (Judges 6:25–26). God’s command here tested Gideon’s obedience to God over family. Before God put Gideon out there, God wanted Gideon to have made up his mind, such that he would obey Him, despite what his family said or did. You have heard the phrase blood is thicker than water. Well, our relationship with God and our obedience to Him is supposed to be thicker than blood. Where are you on this issue? This question is very personal and it might feel too personal and invasive. Will you obey God, despite compromising family members? Whatever your family has planned, if the family plan compromises your Christian values, are you willing to obey God over your family? How will you show love for your family and still model loyal love to God? How far are you willing to go with this Christian thing? God delivered you from drug addiction and alcohol abuse. God delivered you from fighting and cussing, and mistreating people, and unfair business practices, and other ungodly practices. Now your family wants you to participate in some things God says are clearly wrong. What will you do? Will you obey God or obey your family? Are you willing to share your Christian testimony and lovingly be with your family without participating in their sin? Are you willing to eat with them and be a light among them as they promote darkness? You might be the only witness for Christ your family trusts. Will you be God’s representative, as God desires to use you in His eternal plan to save your family? Will you pass God’s loyalty test?
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About the Book
As we do life in a post quarantine world, we seem okay on the surface, but we are boiling inside. Our social gages are sending warnings regarding our imminent spiritual and social malfunctioning. People are subject to pull the trigger in a mass shooting, cancel someone because they do not fully embrace their political, religious or social ideologies. When we misspeak or misstep, we expect understanding and coddling, but we have zero mercy for errors in others (do not mess up the “zero mercy” person's Starbucks order or else!). We seem to be increasingly desperate, discouraged by the higher cost of living, and searching for meaningful personal connections but we are unsure of who to connect with and trust. We are clearly wiser technologically, economically, and structurally, but seemingly more barbaric socially. We are not being very loving toward each other. Have we compromised so slowly and surely, we do not realize have far off center we really are? Has compromise blinded us and made us callous? Do we care about our social gages warning us about our spiritual and social malfunctioning? Do we care about compromise in the culture when God wants to use us to facilitate Him establishing a love relationship with the people in the culture? In all the drama presented in the book of Judges, we see God doing His eternal work in a compromising culture. Despite their behavior, God does not give up on His children but prepared ordinary people like you and me to participate in His eternal work in a compromising culture.
About the Author
Pastor Kennedy has spent his life helping God's children become loyal followers of Jesus. He brings practical experience from serving as a Youth Pastor in Los Angeles for 14 years. He was the Los Angeles Prison Fellowship Area Director for 11 years, and has served as the Senior Pastor at Mt. Zion Church of Ontario, in California since 1998. Pastor Kennedy, received his Bachlor of Science in Business Administration from San Diego State University, his Master of Divinity from Talbot School of Theology, and his Doctor of Ministry, from Gateway Seminar, and serves as an Associate Professor of Preaching at Gateway Seminary, in Ontario California, and a Fire Chaplain for Ontario Fire Department. Pastor Kennedy serves in the community in a variety of ways to help Mt. Zion maintain a pulse on the community and lead God's children to be a pleasant delight in the community.