Judges 2:16-23
Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, “Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers and has not listened to My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not.” So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.
This passage is longer than what is normally included in these brief blog thoughts. But, you can't get the flavor of what is happening in the time of the Judges, without understanding this passage. Judges, the book, is summed up in the above set of verses. The nation of Israel was supposed to take possession of the land. God gave them the complete tools (Himself) and power (His) to accomplish the task. However, the allowed much of the residents of the land to remain. The residents and their gods and idols to those gods. As a result the nation of Israel, tribe by tribe, would follow those gods and worship those idols. God would then be angry with them for that sin. Yet, they would cry out to God and He would send them a deliverer (a Judge) and in that repentance and deliverance they would praise God. Yet, because they didn't fully drive out the influences in the land, they would soon fall back into sin and God would once again send an enemy to punish them. They would repent and cry out to God and the cycle would repeat. That is the entire book of Judges: Sin-Discipline through an enemy-Repent-Deliverance through a Judge-Praise-Sin-Discipline-Repent-Deliverance-etc.-etc.-etc! Have you ever been in such a cycle? Because they never fully drove out the sin, the sin would entice them and bring them back into that cycle. We have a similar cycle today. Think about a diet. You commit to losing weight but you never fully drive out all the snacks in the house. You find them in the cupboard and you eat them. Guilt comes storming into our conscious mind and we fell bad. We repent in the morning and go throughout our day. But, we never really toss the snacks out of the house. So, in the evening, we find them and repeat the cycle. We do the same thing with the evilness we watch. We say we won't watch it, but there is the television, the internet, the "fill in the blank" and we indulge. We are disciplined through our conscious, or some other manner, and then we repent. But, we never really disconnect from the source of the problem. So, too with the nation of Israel. So, too, with most of the church today. We simply don't ever rid ourselves of that sin. In the King James Version of the Bible Paul's admonishment to the Roman Christians was to "mortify" the deeds of the body ...or, kill them.
Romans 8:13 - For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
We are to destroy the fleshly desires. But, like the nation of Israel we let sin live next to us and we soon practice it. The truth here is that God empowers us to kill sin in our lives, but if we fall in love with it, we will never kill it. God gives us the power to kill it, but we have to yield in faith to that power ... if not, we will live with sin and soon worship it.
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