You Have Not Listened to My Voice. Why Have You Done This?

God’s law does not change, and God’s promises are always fulfilled. When the people broke that law, they met with suffering, and when they did not believe God’s promises, they had to come back by a long way around.

Judges shows us why believers fail to fully enjoy the happiness that should be theirs. When people did not walk the way God had set, but did what was right in their own eyes, they lost their way and wandered. Through God, who raised up judges and poured out his love without end, and through the wickedness of human beings who tried 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, but when they forgot that love and complained, they had to spend forty years in the wilderness, meeting again the God who protected them with the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud. God worked to fulfill the promise he himself had made, but the people grieved God’s heart through countless betrayals. To turn the people’s hearts back, he raised up judges, rebuked them and gave them the joy of victory, yet even the judges did not fully understand God’s will and sat down in the place of sin together with the people. When the judges failed to fulfill the calling they had received and showed unbelief, the nation suffered terribly under foreign invasion and oppression.

God chose fitting people from each tribe and raised them up as judges, but Israel ended in failure. The people, not believing that God would act, worshiped idols, and the judges who had been specially raised up did not have the faith that says, ‘If I perish, I perish.’ In the end, Israel failed in the land of blessing, the land of promise.

Because of human weakness that could not give up idolatry, the people’s prayer, crying out whenever they suffered, was repeated again and again. Though he should have judged them decisively, God too forgave them and judged them, over and over. The repeated sins of human beings who exploited the heart of God, so full of love, weighed on my heart the whole time I was preaching on Judges. The people who had come all the way to Canaan with nothing but the staff in Moses’ hand saw the iron chariots of the Canaanites, doubted God’s power and love, and began to fall apart from within. They had received the command to drive out the Canaanites without fail, and it was not that they could not drive them out; they did not drive them out. For they felt they needed the strength they could see more than the God they could not see.

As we look at Judges, where betrayal and repentance, forgiveness and judgment come around again and again, I want us to ask whether we today are believing God’s promises and living out a life of faith. We must consider whether we, like the judges who displayed their own righteousness rather than God’s glory, are unable to let go of ourselves. Nevertheless, the Spirit of God always came mightily upon the people. Even now, when people live however they think is right, the Spirit of God is coming mightily.

Dear friends, like the judges whom God specially chose, you too are servants whom God has chosen to proclaim the gospel in this age. You must fulfill that calling. The darker the world grows, the more we must proclaim that Christ is our hope; the stronger sin grows, the more we must proclaim that we should live by the words of the good Jesus Christ. Do not be like the people of Israel who received the command and yet did not drive out the Canaanites; I earnestly hope that you will live out a faith that proclaims the gospel boldly and strongly.

As we published these sermons on Judges, the church members offered many prayers. I pray that the faith of the members of Watercourse Church, who delight in giving themselves, will fulfill the 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 by the love of Christ and that only God’s name will be lifted high, we give you this book.

Pastor Cho Chun-sook, Watercourse Church