God, Who Wants Us to Overcome Sin

This passage deals with the situation after Joshua's death, when the people of Israel, without a leader, came to live each doing what was right in his own eyes. At first the people showed obedience, for example by asking God who should go up first to fight, but in the end they served the idols of the Canaanite peoples and left God. This happened because, without strong leaders like Moses and Joshua, the people came to put their own judgment and experience ahead of God.

The sermon warns that trying to overcome sin by human righteousness is like climbing a wall of ice with bare hands. We cannot conquer the mountain of sin with our own ability or good deeds; only the rope of the grace of Jesus Christ is the way of salvation. The prayerful attitude the people of Israel showed at first shows that God answered them directly and gave them victory, and this came not from a leader's help but from a direct relationship with God.

We live in an age in which, even without a leader, we must rely on God directly through the Word and prayer. We must seriously reflect on whether stubbornly living by what is right in our own eyes is really the faith God wants, and whether, to climb the mountain of sin, we are relying not on a rope we have fixed ourselves but on the grace of Christ.