Why Have You Not Obeyed My Voice?

God’s law does not change, and God’s promises will surely be fulfilled. When the people broke that law, suffering overtook them, and when they did not believe his promises, they had to come back the long way around.

The book of Judges shows us why God’s people fail to enjoy in full the happiness that should be theirs. When people did not walk in the way God had set, but did what was right in their own eyes, they lost their way and wandered. In God, who raises up judges and pours out his love without ceasing, and in the wickedness of human beings who try to exploit that love, we come to understand what sin is.

The people of Israel experienced the miracle of being set free from four hundred years of slavery. Yet when they forgot that love and complained, they spent forty years in the wilderness and had to meet once more the God who protected them with the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. God labored to fulfill the promise he himself had made, but the people betrayed him time after time and grieved his heart. To turn their hearts back, he raised up judges for them, rebuked the people, and gave them the joy of victory as well; yet even the judges never fully grasped God’s will, and they sat down with the people in the place of sin. When the judges failed in the task to which they had been called and showed their unbelief, the nation suffered bitterly under foreign invasion and oppression.

God chose suitable people from each tribe and raised them up as judges, yet Israel’s story closed in failure. The people, who did not believe that God would act, worshiped idols, and the judges whom he had specially appointed lacked the faith that says, “If I perish, I perish.” In the end, Israel failed in the land of blessing, the land of promise.

Because human weakness could not let go of idolatry, the people kept crying out to God whenever suffering came. Although he ought to have judged them firmly, God for his part forgave them and judged them, over and over. As I preached through Judges, my heart grew heavy at the sin that human beings committed again and again, taking advantage of a God whose heart overflows with love. The people had come all the way to Canaan with nothing but the staff in Moses’ hand, yet when they saw the chariots of iron the Canaanites had, they began to doubt God’s power and love and to fall apart from within. They had been commanded that they must drive out the Canaanites, and it was not that they could not drive them out; they would not. It was because they needed the strength they could see in those nations more than the God they could not see.

As we watch Judges cycle through betrayal and repentance, forgiveness and judgment, I want us to look at our own lives and ask whether we believe God’s promises and are truly living by faith. Like the judges who put their own righteousness on display rather than God’s glory, we must ask ourselves whether we, too, are still unable to let go of self. Even so, the Spirit of God always came mightily upon the people. And even now, when we live by what seems right to us, the Spirit of God is still moving with power.

Friends, just as the judges were specially chosen by God, you too are servants whom God has chosen to preach the gospel in this age. You must take up that charge. The darker the world grows, the more you must tell it that Christ is our hope; the stronger sin becomes, the more you must declare that we are to live by the word of Jesus Christ, who is good. Rather than becoming like the Israelites, who received the command and still did not drive out the Canaanites, my heart’s desire is that you will live by a faith that bears witness to the gospel with courage and strength.

The members of our church prayed a great deal as this book of sermons on Judges was being published. I want the faith of the people of Watercourse Church, who delight to give of themselves, to fulfill its calling to spread the gospel far and wide and bear the beautiful fruit of salvation. With the earnest hope that our devotion will be hidden beneath the love of Christ and that God’s name alone will be lifted high, I offer this book to you.

Cho Chun-sook, Pastor of Watercourse Church