COMPROMISE HAS CONSEQUENCES
By Steve Zeisler
About twenty years ago there was a popular television show, Mission Impossible.
Peter Graves played a distinguished-looking character named Mr. Phelps,
who would come on early in the show. He would receive a mysterious tape
and be given an assignment to go off with his associates and do some extraordinary
thing or other (perhaps to find a spy nest in an obscure place and clean
it out). It was always something in which success was against all odds.
It was Mission Impossible: the call to do something that was beyond the
ability of ordinary people to even conceive of. Once the assignment was
given, viewers would discover how Mr. Phelps and his friends would do the
impossible as the drama unfolded.
I'd like to ask you to assume the role of Mr. Phelps this morning. We'll
all receive an assignment that, for ordinary people using only human strength,
is impossible. You will discover the tape giving you the assignment in the
book of Philippians. Chapter 2, verses 14 and 15 call upon us as followers
of Christ to accept a role that we are unable to fulfill on our own, yet
which we are required to accept by the power of God. Here is the assignment,
Mr. Phelps:
Do all things without grumbling or disputing; that you may prove
yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear
as lights in the world....
Three-Part Assignment
There are three parts to this mission that I would like you to focus on.
First, by your heart attitudes as they reveal themselves in your actions,
you are called to live out your family name, to be children of God. You
are sons and daughters of the King, and you are to be distinguishable from
other people. Thus your character, attitudes, and actions are to be above
reproach.
The second part of this assignment requires that this life is to be lived
out in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. The word perverse,
or depraved as the NIV translates it, is a very strong word in Greek. It
describes moral decay that has gone about as far as it can go. In the midst
of a crooked and depraved generation we are to be children of God. We can't
be children of God off by ourselves or find an enclave where we join only
with other children of God to live lives that are above reproach. We are
not allowed to disconnect ourselves from the pain-filled world of our contemporaries.
And the third point follows from that, and that is that we are to be lights
in the world. Our lives are to be of such quality that against the darkness
of the generation we live in we are sources of light that glorify God on
the one hand, and on the other offer an invitation to the unsaved. We offer
a chance for people who are in the darkness of a Mexican prison (as Ernesto
Leon shared this morning), or who are in the darkness of our own neighborhoods,
to leave the condition they were born into, that they might themselves become
children of God.
If we are to take up the mission impossible to be children of
God amidst a perverse generation, displaying light to the world around us,
this book will help us learn how
Now this is an impossible mission-being children of God, in the midst of
a crooked and perverse generation, offering light-and yet it is the clear
calling of everyone who belongs to the Lord. In order to accept this responsibility
and learn how to live like that, I'd like you to turn with me now to the
book of Judges in the Old Testament, where we will begin a series of studies
in this much-neglected book of the Bible. The book of Judges is exactly
a story of crooked and perverse times. The period of the judges is probably
more like our day and age than any other in the history of Israel. It was
a time of moral decline among the people of God, who were surrounded by
a culture that flaunted depraved behavior. So the lessons we can learn in
this book from studying how God called out a people to be his children,
to represent him in the midst of those times, will help us succeed in the
mission we are given in Philippians 2.
A Survey of O.T. History
Let me just place Judges for you in the history of the Old Testament. As
you know, the perspective of the Bible is that human beings were made great
once and then fell into sin, that all of us are born in a state of rebellion
against God, and that what we require is some act of God to save us from
the condition of our birth. We need help. Every one of us in every generation
and every culture is separated from God and in rebellion against him until
something happens that will save us. And so the story of the Bible is that
of God's intervention to do something about our dilemma.
Abraham was named as the father of a nation that would tell the truth about
God to every other nation. And Abraham was given a land by promise, but
he and his son didn't get to possess the land; they were only wanderers
in it. Abraham's great-grandsons eventually went into Egypt. Four hundred
years passed as this family, the representatives of God who could tell the
truth about his love and redemptive plan, became a mighty people who were
subsequently reduced to slavery. Then, led by Moses, they left slavery in
Egypt and wandered for 40 years in the wilderness, anticipating a home.
Finally under the leadership of Joshua, they entered the land originally
promised to Abraham and his posterity and began the conquest that was to
gain them a home from which they could bless the rest of the world. Eventually
Joshua died, and then they entered into a long period of decline in which
they became barely distinguishable from their Canaanite neighbors. This
is the period described by the book of Judges.
It is critical that we who know the truth be different from the unsaved
world in which we live, in what we say, what we do, and who we are. One
of the horrible and sinful opportunities presented to the people of God
is to compromise, to be indistinguishable from those around us. Light is
hid under a bushel. That is a temptation that confronted Israel over and
over again; it is the temptation to which they largely succumbed in the
book of Judges. If we are to take up the mission impossible to be children
of God amidst a perverse generation, displaying light to the world around
us, this book will help us learn how.
No King in Israel
The book of Judges does something helpful to those who would attempt to
teach it. It makes "bookends" of the first and last verses of
the book that gather up the themes that you'll find in the rest of the book.
The very first verse of the book of Judges reads this way:
Now it came about after the death of Joshua that the sons of
Israel inquired of the LORD, saying, "Who shall go up first for us
against the Canaanites, to fight against them?"
Now, the rest of the first chapter of Judges describes events that actually
took place while Joshua was living: Joshua was a remarkable man who had
been steadfast during the wilderness wanderings and the early years of the
conquest of Canaan. His death is highlighted early in this book because
those who follow him fall short by comparison.
The last verse of Judges relates the other theme that we'll discover as
we study through the book:
In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what
was right in his own eyes.
This summary makes clear that the period of the Judges was characterized
by a rejection of God as the sovereign of the nation. Each individual consulted
only himself in determining what was right.
When Joshua died there were none left who were willing to bow the knee to
the sovereignty of God and give all their heart to him. There were none
who responded to the claim of his lordship on their life without reservation.
That's why the words Joshua addressed to the Israelites at the end of his
life were so important: "Choose for yourselves today whom you will
serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the
River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as
for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15.) When
Joshua died, there was no one left with his commitment to obedience.
When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, there is no standard,
no word from the Lord anymore. Lies and truth, righteousness and evil are
indistinguishable from each other. Everything starts with me: What do I
want to do? What is to my advantage? What promotes me and my interest? That
alone is the measure by which I will live my life. In that time everyone
did what was right in his own eyes, and the book of Judges records the horrible
results. Rape, mutilation, murder, subversion, treachery, and graphic violence
are all there. The pages of the book have heroes whose lives are stirring,
but over and over again the flaws of the heroes and the greater flaws of
the people stand out.
Choosing Compromise
The descent into lawlessness and anarchy, as Judges will show, begins with
compromise. It's selling out at minor points along the way, which leads
to more selling out, which eventually leads to decay. Now, think for a moment
about the world we live in. Think about how that story is being lived out
everywhere in this culture. Time after time we learn of political, business
and religious leaders whose impressive public image is a mark for private
unrighteousness.
We have come to the point where the police practices in the city of Milwaukee
caused ordinary policemen meeting a naked teenage boy in the street, bleeding
by some accounts, in the middle of the night, to send him back into the
apartment where the man who would execute him lived. When questioned about
why they didn't do something else, they responded, "We assumed it was
a lovers' quarrel of some sort. It seemed normal to us." It seemed
like the right thing to send that child back into the setting where he was
eventually murdered! What's so tragic about that is that they don't even
have any standard that says, "Wait a minute. We ought to act differently
than that," that suggests that rather than a send naked, bleeding teenager
back into a setting like that, you start with the assumption that maybe
there is a problem. The decay that spreads from compromise leads eventually
to a kind of lawlessness in which people can't tell what's right to do anymore.
Stanford University and the Salomon Brothers investment house in New York
have both been discovered in this last year or so to have regularly, repeatedly,
and knowingly practiced fraud with a kind of arrogance that said, "Well,
we are who we are. We get to do whatever we want." Senior leaders in
each organization allowed the end to justify the means and believed so thoroughly
in their own greatness they winked at laws meant for "ordinary"
people. These compromises led to decay and eventual rebuke.
God At Work
That's the story of the book of Judges. But in Judges is also the story,
wonderfully, of how God acts in times of decay. When a crooked and perverse
generation prevails, how do his children become blameless and above reproach
and offer hope to those around them? That's the story of the book of Judges,
too, because God doesn't abandon decayed cultures. He doesn't leave his
people behind when they fail.
Let me take you briefly through the first chapter of this book. We won't
read it all; I just want you to get a feel for this word of introduction.
Verse 1:
Now it came about after the death of Joshua that the sons of
Israel inquired of the LORD, saying, "Who shall go up first for us
against the Canaanites to fight against them?" And the LORD said, "Judah
shall go up; behold, I have given the land into his hand." Then Judah
said to Simeon his brother, "Come with me into the territory allotted
to me, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I in turn will go with
you into the territory allotted to you." So Simeon went with him. And
Judah went up, and the LORD gave the Canaanites and the Perizzites into
their hands; and they defeated ten thousand men at Bezek. And they found
Adoni-bezek in Bezek and fought against him and they defeated the Canaanites
and the Perizzites. But Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued him and caught
him and cut off his thumbs and big toes. And Adoni-bezek said, "Seventy
kings with their thumbs and their big toes cut off used to gather up scraps
under my table; as I have done, so God has repaid me." So they brought
him to Jerusalem and he died there.
Adoni-bezek was a Canaanite king. The lives and religion of the Canaanites,
these tribes that inhabited the land of promise before the Jews got there,
were sown through with wickedness, depravity, and disease. They were in
every sense the precise opposite of the truth, of righteousness, and of
God and what he stood for. And so Adoni-bezek had lived for some years and
had conquered seventy men himself and had mutilated them. Having your thumbs
and your big toes cut off means you'll never fight again. It means you can't
carry a sword, you can't draw a bow, you can't lead an army. It's a way
of humiliating your enemy.
The people of God were called to occupy the territory, to take over, to
expel and exterminate those who were in opposition to them. But they were
not called to humiliate their enemies as the Canaanites did. Adoni-bezek
said, "I've had kings picking up scraps with only the four fingers
they have left on each hand under my table, and now it's been done to me."
The tragic thing from the point of view of the people of God is that they
were beginning to act like the nations around them. Instead of responding
to the call of God to do what was right, to establish a beachhead where
his name could be witnessed to, they learned from their enemies. They learned
to enjoy humiliating others. They learned to practice the kind of warfare
that their enemies practiced. They learned to become just like the people
who were around them.
The account goes on and talks about the sacking of Jerusalem in verse 8.
They sacked and burned it, but they didn't occupy it, and it was retaken
by the Jebusites, as verse 21 mentions. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin
both had Jerusalem at their border, and neither one of them would end up
occupying it for a long time. Its Jebusite people diluted the worship of
God as a result.
The mission that we have been called to is to be children of
God
in a crooked and perverse generation
Caleb and Othniel
There is the story of Caleb. As we read in verse 10, Judah went up against
the Canaanites who were in Hebron (the name of Hebron was formerly Kiriath-arba)
and they struck Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai. These were giants, the Nephilim,
extraordinary figures who had lived in the land of Canaan for years. A generation
before, Caleb had gone in as a spy and had come back and said, "I want
to go fight the giants for God's sake. And I'm going to take that land of
Hebron, and it is going to be mine." He was a member of the tribe of
Judah, and in the campaign of Judah, Caleb did fight against the giants
and defeated them. It's the story of someone who wanted what God wanted.
Caleb is one of the great figures of the Bible. But then as the story in
chapter 1 unfolds, he promised to give his daughter in marriage to someone
who could act heroically as well. His nephew Othniel stepped up, fought
a battle, and was allowed to marry Achsah, Caleb's daughter, as a result.
And then there was an embarrassing interchange as Othniel proved to be quite
unlike his more heroic father-in-law. Verse 13:
Othniel the son of Kenaz, Caleb's younger brother, captured
it; so he gave him his daughter Achsah for a wife. Then it came about when
she came to him, that she persuaded him [the word in Hebrew is really nag;
she nagged him] to ask her father for a field. [But the field was not enough.]
Then she alighted from her donkey, and Caleb said to her, "What do
you want?" And she said to him, "Give me a blessing, since you
have given me the land of the Negev, give me also springs of water...."
You get the impression that this younger hero who could fight wars had no
ability at all to interact with his wife, and she led him around by the
nose and told her father what they required for themselves. In Canaan Caleb
fought giants who defied the living God in exactly the same way that David
would one day fight Goliath, the giant who defied the armies of the living
God. Caleb fought for righteous reasons. Othniel fought and then was nagged
by his wife and begged from his father-in-law. He was different from the
older man. His motives were less pure; the greatness was diminished.
The first chapter of Judges contains other peculiar stories, with little
effort made to relate them to each other. As the battle moved to the northern
territories, the house of Joseph went against Bethel (verse 22). They found
a man who was willing to spy on his people, and they won the battle as a
result. The story is reminiscent of the capture of Jericho. You will recall
that after Rahab helped the army of Israel, she actually became a member
of the tribe of Judah as a result. But in this story, the man sold out his
city for selfish reasons. He went off and built towns among the Hittites
later. Rahab responded to God, joined the people of God, and became in fact
a foremother of Messiah. This man was just a mercenary; he realized which
army was bigger and who was going to win, took advantage of the opportunity,
and then went off and lived for himself.
The stories here in Judges are similar to events that took place under Joshua's
leadership, but they are reduced, sadder, less heroic, and there is less
godliness in them. Repeatedly we see evidence of compromise in the book
of Judges.
Difficult and Dangerous
Let me just summarize the rest of chapter 1 by calling your attention to
a couple of points. Verse 19 says this:
Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the
hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley
because they had iron chariots.
And verse 28 says:
And it came about when Israel became strong, that they put the
Canaanites to forced labor, but they did not drive them out completely.
Beyond verse 28 we read more accounts of partial victory and incomplete
responsibility. There are ultimately two things that kept the people of
Israel from succeeding in the battle to which they had been called. First,
it was dangerous, and second, it was difficult. It was dangerous because
the inhabitants of the valley had chariots, and so they decided not to do
anything that would hurt too much or cost too much. They reasoned, "Let's
just leave the Canaanite tribes in place in the lowlands. We'll accept the
hill country. We don't want to have to fight against a powerful military.
We don't want to accept the danger or take on the hard assignment."
And the other thing they decided was that it was much easier to leave the
Canaanite people in place as slaves. Life without slaves is more difficult.
Incomplete victory and ultimately the decay that is so much sewn throughout
the fabric of this book came from these compromises.
The opening five verses of chapter 2 tell how the angel of the Lord spoke
to the people. He reminded them of the faithfulness of God and of the unfaithfulness
of their choices, and they left weeping. Verse 4 says:
And it came about when the angel of the Lord spoke these words
to all the sons of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept.
This weeping is where we'll end the story this morning. And there are many
of us in this room who live Christian lives that are acquainted with compromise
and weeping, aren't there? When it seems either too dangerous or too difficult
to do otherwise, we make choices to compromise. We choose to do less than
God is calling us to do. We pad an expense account. We live with prayer
lives that are mediocre, intermittent, and shallow rather than learning
to pray in any depth. We experience thought lives that have all sorts of
inappropriate fantasies in them, and we never attempt to judge them or turn
to God for help. We let our temper explode and overwhelm us and assume there
is no help for this temper problem that we never seem to be able to get
over. We don't do the hard work of going back and confronting what needs
to be confronted and being freed from it.
Admitting these things means we are ready for an impossible mission-beyond
human strength, accomplished by God's power for His glory. The mission that
we have been called to is to be children of God in a crooked and perverse
generation, lights in the world. Instead of being sorrowful at our lot in
life we are to be those who offer hope to other people. Only we who know
the Lord have a voice that can offer help to a decaying world. There are
people around us on every side who are tragically sad and lost because they
don't know the Lord, and our responsibility is to be true to him from the
heart so that we can offer them hope.
Catalog No. 4301
Judges 1
First Message
Steve Zeisler
September 8, 1991
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