Judges 1-3

God’s message to me: Finish the jobs God gives you. Don’t waste time with half an effort

Promises: If God gives you a job He gives you the ability to complete it.

Commands: There are tests before you. Follow God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. He will not look well on those who turn from Him. He will send salvation to those who ask for it.

Timeless principles: Peer pressure is the fastest way to trouble. Stay away from those who will not give themselves to God. Christ would often have dinner with sinners and spend a little time teaching them and encouraging them to turn to God. He never made a habit of hanging out with those who would not accept God. Neither should you.

By allowing some of the people in the promised land to remain the Israelites left themselves open to temptations and danger. The peer pressure from these enemy kingdoms led many in Israel to sin and turn to worshiping false Gods like their neighbors. They had married these foreigners and given their daughters in marriage to them. It wasn’t just a neighbor doing wrong, the Israelites had made these people a part of their lives and adopted their ways instead of following God’s ways.

How can I apply what I’ve learned: Ignore the modern thinking of modernizing the church. Many have said that the church needs to change with the times and update it’s thinking on things like sex, homosexuality, reproduction, abortion, etc. Remember that these are not new things. These issues were a problem all the way back to the first five books of the bible. God didn’t change His thinking then and He won’t now. The people who insist on us changing to fit their views are NO DIFFERENT from the Canaanites that led Israel into worshiping false Gods. They must be ignored and we must follow GOD’S WAY.

more to learn for in-depth study: This passage begins with the list of those kingdoms the Israelites didn’t destroy. It wasn’t that they couldn’t it was that they didn’t. They made excuses(their chariots are iron, they refused to leave, they persist) and didn’t finish the job. In other words, they were lazy. They took the easy fights and ignored the difficult ones. God would have been with them in every fight but, because they refused to finish the job God left the others in the land to test them. They were there to offer false worship(which the Israelites did), to take the Israelites captive as punishment for their acts against God(which happened on a regular basis), and they were defeated only slowly and in small groups so that the Israelites would have them there as a test but God still got to eventually run the Canaanites out of the land for their transgression.

The third chapter begins the time of Judges. The Israelites would turn to false worship, God would punish them by letting a neighbor take them captive, they would cry for God’s help, God would send a Judge to lead them to victory. While the Judge was in charge Israel would normally continue following God, remembering their recent victory through Him. After the Judge died and memory faded they would turn back to false gods and the process would repeat itself.

tomorrow: Judges 4-6