John Newton wrote a hymn a long,
long time ago that I often have reason to repeat as a personal
matter of experience. You've heard Judy sing it several
times. I ask the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every
grace. Might more of his salvation know
and seek more earnestly his face. It was he who taught me thus
to pray, and he, I trust, has answered prayer. But it has been
in such a way as almost drives me to despair. I hoped that in
some favored hour at once he would answer my request and by
his love's astonishing power subdue my sins. and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel
the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell
assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand
he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair
plans, designs I schemed, blasted my gourds, and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembled
and cried. Wilt thou pursue thy worm to
death? Tis in this way, the Lord replied,
I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I
employ from self and pride to set thee free, to break thy schemes
of earthly joy. that thou mayest seek thy all
in me." Do you ever wonder why our God,
who has forgiven us of all sins through the blood and righteousness
of his Son, why our God who accepts us, has accepted us from eternity
and accepts us now, and will forever accept us in the Beloved
as he accepts Christ himself. Why God, who has saved us by
his grace, has left us in this world to struggle so with enemies
within the lust of our flesh. This much I know. were it his
purpose and pleasure to do so there, he could stop all the
rage of sin within you and me right now forever. He could, he could, were that
his purpose. I do not in any way, do not in
any way And this is about as close as
you're going to hear me get to taking an oath before anybody, as God
is my witness. I do not in any way take from
you and me personal responsibility for every evil that's in us.
It is excuseless, no matter what it is. There's no justification
for sin ever of any kind. And yet I know that if God were
pleased to do so, he could fix it so that Don Fortner lives
in this world in the midst of hell itself without sin in him,
he could. But he hasn't done so, and he
has reason for it. He has reason for it. You see,
God's people, and you who are God's, I know, experience this. You can enter into what I've
said thus far real easy, painfully, but easy. God's people are constantly
at war with themselves. The flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. These two are contrary
one to another, so that you cannot do the things you would. What does that mean? You can't
do what you would. unless I am totally deceived
and totally void of the knowledge of God and his grace, and I'm
just standing here rattling on before you so as to try to convince
myself that it's otherwise, unless I'm totally deceived, I want
in the core of my heart's being to honor God in everything, constantly. In thought, in word, in deed,
in imagination, I want to honor him. I want his will to be done. More than anything. More than
anything. And I can't do it. I can't do
it. I can't do it. Not inwardly,
not outwardly. I can't do it. Now, this warfare
between the flesh and the spirit in the experience of God's elect
is what the book of Judges is all about. In the book of Joshua, and this
is very, very important, the land of Canaan is set before
us typically as being a picture of our heavenly inheritance with
Christ. Joshua, raised up by God as a
type and picture of our Lord Jesus, takes Moses' place, and
Moses, who could not bring the people into the land, has died,
and now Joshua brings them into the land and says, This day God
has fulfilled everything he promised you he would do. He's done it
all. He's fulfilled his covenant. In the book of Joshua, then,
portrays our Lord Jesus finally, at last, he who shall save his
people from their sins, bringing us at last into heaven's glory. That's what Canaan portrays in
the book of Joshua. In the book of Judges, the picture
is very, very much different. In the book of Judges, the children
of Israel have taken possession of the land, but they haven't
driven out their enemies. and they're constantly at war,
and they're constantly frustrated, and they're constantly cast down,
and they're constantly overrun by their enemies, and they're
constantly looking to God for mercy, and rebelling against
him again as soon as he gives mercy, constantly struggling
with corruption and evil. And yet they possessed the land.
It was theirs. They had it. God gave it to them. It was theirs. That's a pretty
good picture of our experience of grace in this world. When
the Lord God, by his almighty grace, grants a sinner life and
faith in Christ, believing on Jesus Christ, the sinner has
right and title to and takes possession of all God's salvation. It's mine. It's yours right now
as fully, as really, as truly as it shall be when you have
dropped this robe of flesh and sat down with Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob around the throne of God. It's already yours. But it doesn't much look like
it. And it doesn't usually feel like
it. And if we looked at things based
upon our experience, And based upon our actions, and based upon
our failures, and based upon our weaknesses, and based upon
our being so often overcome by enemies within, we'd say, just
ain't so, just ain't so. But our possession, our right,
our title to heavenly glory is not in our experience, our feelings,
but rather in the person and work of God's dear Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ. But now we've got some struggles
to face. As you read through this book
of Judges, the children of Israel had come to a place called Gilgal,
just below Gilgal Valley, where the angel of the Lord met them
and told them how things were going to be. And they called the name of that
place Bochim, Valley of Weeping. Well, this world is for you and
I, who are God's people, a valley of weeping. Don't ever expect
it to be otherwise. Don't ever expect it to be otherwise.
But, Pastor, the whole religious world tells us that things are
otherwise, that God wants us to be happy and prosperous and
God wants us to have and God wants us to possess and God wants
us to get and God wants us to claim. God Almighty is determined
to keep us in this condition, and he's given us thorns and
thistles and briars with which he is determined to subdue us,
so that we are constantly forced, because we wouldn't do it otherwise,
we are constantly forced by his almighty grace to acknowledge
our utter corruption, and to acknowledge that our only hope
before him is Jesus Christ the Lord. That's what this book is
all about. As you read the book of Joshua,
and I read it again this morning, and I thought to myself, you
know, this book doesn't read like any other book in the book
of God. There's not another one like
it. It's, to say the least, colorful. If you were reading it and you
didn't know you were reading the Bible, somebody in Hollywood
may put a good movie out of it. I mean, they keep you interested.
The book, you find the man, the very first judge in Israel, by
the name of Ehud. I'm sorry, his name is the second
judge. This fellow, Ehud, has got a message from God for a
fat king named Aegon. And you know what the message
was? This is a message from God. It was an 18-inch dagger in his
belly. He said, I've got a message from
God, and he gave it to him. And thus he judged Israel and
delivered them. There is a woman named Jael,
who drives a tent stake through a man's name, this fellow Sesera.
And after she drove a tent stake through his name, drove it through
his temples, and pinned his head to the ground, and then she cut
his head off and said, Come, look what God did. Gideon was
raised up by God to deliver Israel out of the mighty hand of the
Midianites. And when Gideon told Israel what God was about to
do, he believed God was going to do it. He had an army of 32,000
men ready to take on the Midianites. Man, we can do it. Look at that. Oh, I never expected so many
volunteers. And then God said, no. And he whittled them down
to 300. And those 300 weren't valiant
warriors. Those fellows were scared to
death of their own shadow. Do you remember the final test?
The Lord said, you take them out here and every man that goes
out there and kneels down at the water and sticks his face
down in the water and drinks it like a dog, that fellow who's
scared to nothing, he said, send them home. But any of them who
run through there with their knees shaking and they just get
a little water this way, scared to death something's going to
happen before they get there, that's the men I'll use. Folks
that nobody can use for anything but me. and Gideon conquered
the Midianites and delivered Israel. And then you come to
a fellow named Jephthah, and you're astonished at what God does with this man.
And he makes a vow, and he promises God, you deliver these people
to me, and when I get home, whatever comes out of my door, I'll sacrifice
it to you. And he came home in the sacrifice
was his only daughter. Make of it whatever you want
to, it's astonishing. He lifted his hand to God and
said, I can't go back. I can't go back. And then you
come to Samson. Perhaps the greatest of all the
judges. Perhaps the greatest. Samuel himself excluded. And
Samson. That man who did so much. That
man who taught so much. so weak, so fickle, so wavering. And then you see this Levite
whose wife had been taken by a bunch of men in the night and raped brutally
by many of them all night long, and then cast off at the door
He goes out the next morning and there she lays, her raped
body dead and lifeless at the door. And he didn't bury her. He took a knife, must have been
a good size knife, cut her body in twelve pieces and sent it
through the twelve tribes of Israel. We read in this book of Judges
about God's covenant people, the people he brought up out
of the land of Egypt with the price of blood. by the power
of his outstretched arm through his servant Moses. People to
whom he gave the land of Canaan as an inheritance according to
covenant promise by the hand of Joshua his servant. Here are
these people to whom God has given the land. He said it's
yours. It's yours. Take it. It's yours. I've given it to you. It's yours.
The promise is fulfilled. The covenant is fulfilled. Everything's
done. It's yours. And no sooner had
Joshua died than a generation rose up who knew not Joshua and
knew not the works of our God. And Israel rebels against God
again and again and again and again, sinking into idolatry,
first one, then another form of idolatry, overcome by enemy
after enemy, becoming more and more degraded and Let me show
you what I'm talking about. In the first verse, look back
here, Judges 1, verse 1. This is where the book begins.
Israel is at rest in the land of Canaan. Now, after the death
of Joshua, it came to pass that the children of Israel asked
the Lord, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites
first, to fight for them? Lord, which tribe do you want
to go first against those Canaanites? We're going to get them. We're
going to conquer this land just like we said we would. We're
going to take possession of this land. Everything's good! Which
one goes up first? And then when you get to the
end of the book, you don't have to turn there in chapter 20,
verse 18. This is where they are. The same people praying
to the same God. Lord, which one do you want to
send up first to fight against our brother Benjamin? The same people. What happened? How can we understand
this book? Why has God caused this book
to be written? What's going on here? Turn to
the very last verse of the book, chapter 21, verse 25, and you'll
see it. This will explain the whole book. This statement is repeated four
times in the book of Joshua, and this is the way God closes
the book. In those days there was no king in Israel, and every
man did that which was right in his own eyes. The text does
not say every man did that which was wrong in his own eyes. It
says he did that which he judged to be right in his own eyes. they endeavored to live in the
land of Canaan and serve God in the land of Canaan, being
governed by their own wisdom, their own thinking, their own
policy, their own judgment, rather than being governed in the totality
of their lives by the word of God and the revelation he gives
in his word. If that would sink in, that's
less than enough. But there's more to be said. O children of
God, wiser counsel you will never
hear. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not
unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him. and he shall direct thy paths."
As long as Joshua lived, the nation of Israel served the Lord,
and they continued to do so until another generation rose up who
knew not the Lord, nor yet the works he had done for Israel.
And if you will carefully read the first two chapters of Joshua,
that's where we're going to focus our attention tonight. If you
carefully read the first two chapters, the rest of the book,
you won't have any difficulty understanding. You can easily
read the history of the various judges. There were twelve of
them, these men raised up to deliver Israel in times of great
need by God's providence and according to his purpose. But
the explanation of the whole book is right here in chapters
1 and 2. In chapter 1, the Lord specifically commanded Israel
to drive out all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan. And they
did, most of them. Most of them. But on several occasions, they
thought, no, let's go spy out the city. Let's see what the city looks
like. Wow. Those folks over there, they're
not going to be any trouble. We'll leave them alone. And besides,
we might need them. We might could use them for something,
somewhere down the road. Let's leave them there. And so
they go in and they make a policy with them. They say, you stay
there, we'll leave you alone, we're not going to drive you out like we
did your neighbors. We know you're peaceable men and we'll get along
with you. And so they just made a league
with them. And we're told over and over
and over again, the children of Israel did not drive out,
verse 21, the Jebusites. Then down in verse 27, they didn't
drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean, nor of Canaan in her
town, nor the inhabitants of Dor and so on. It goes all the
way through the chapter like that. They didn't drive out this
group, they didn't drive out that group. But instead, they
made a league with them. Now look at chapter 2. And the
Lord Jesus came up from Gilgal. an angel of the Lord, that's
who he is, to Bokin, and said, I made you
to go out of Egypt and have brought you into the land which I swear
to your fathers, and said, I will never break my covenant with
you, and you shall make no league with the inhabitants of this
land. You shall throw down their But you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? Wherefore,
I also said, I will not drive them out from before you, but they shall be as thorns in
your sides." Paul cried to the Lord three times. He said, Take
this thorn away from me. God said, Live with it. There
will be thorns in your sides, and their God shall be a snare
to you. And it came to pass. Children of Israel, the first
year they planted their crops, they were accustomed to rich,
moist, fertile ground. But they were down in Canaan,
a place of dryness and barrenness. And they planted their crops,
and the crops were kind of scraggly. They didn't get much produce.
And their neighbors, those folks who had been living in that land
all their life, they had corn, had two ears to a stalk. They
had corn six feet tall, everything just luscious and green. And
they say their neighbors that they had befriended. What's your
secret? Oh, we worship fertility gods. And we call on Baal and Ashtaroth
and they send us the rain and they make our crops green. They
provide for us and take care of us and they see to it everything's
good. And by the way, we irrigate fields
and we So plant manure there with things, and we make sure
things have plenty of water. It's kind of dry country. But
if you would worship our gods, your fields would be green, too.
And so they did. They did. They never once failed
to say, We're worshiping Jehovah! They never once failed to acknowledge
God alone as God! But they mingled the worship
of God with the gods of the pagans around them. Read on. their God
shall be a snare to you," verse 4. And it came to pass, when
the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of
Israel, that the people lifted up their voice and wept, and
they called the name of that place Valley of Weeping, Bokeem. And they sacrificed there unto
the Lord. Well, that looks pretty good.
But look at verse 11. and the children of Israel did
evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Balaam. And they forsook
the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them out of the
land of Egypt, and followed other gods, the gods of the people
that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and
provoked the Lord to anger." The book of Joshua, as I said,
is primarily a picture of the ultimate triumph of grace. Thank
God that picture precedes this one. This is a picture of our
constant struggle in the grace of God while we live in this
world. It is a picture to remind us
every time we read it of our failure, our weakness, our inability. These 21 chapters cover a period
of 230 years, 229 to 30 years. But when you read this book,
and I've been guilty of this, you tend to read the book of
Joshua, then you get to Judges and you read that and you say,
Well, let's move on to Ruth. Don't do that. Don't do that.
The book of Joshua stands where it does before this. Because
in the book of Joshua, the Lord God says, I'm going to bring
you to glory. I'm going by the merit of my
blood, by the merit of my righteousness, by my power, by my grace, I'm
going to bring you into the position of all the blessedness of the
covenant I gave you before the world was. The book of Judges,
here we are. Here we are. in this sad state, warring with
the world, the flesh, and the devil, warring in our souls,
warring with ourselves, constantly fighting unbelief, constantly
fighting sin, constantly fighting the degradation of our nature. And it gets worse. It just gets
worse. But thank God the story doesn't
end there. You see, the book of Ruth tells a story of Ruth
and Boaz, but it takes place during the days of the Judges.
The Judges don't end until you get over to 1 Samuel, when God
raised up King Saul. But the book of Judges stands
right there and tells us that though you're miserable, wretched,
sinful, weak, faltering, failing, sinners, you're mine. And our Boaz, our kinsman redeemer,
has sworn that he will do everything we require. And that's the position
we're in here in the book of Joshua. What's the message of
this book? Why was it written? What does
the Lord here tell us by giving us the sordid details of Israel's
constant failure, defeat, and sin? The message of the book
is just this. Salvation is God's work. Salvation is God's work. Flesh
is just flesh. It'll never be anything else.
All our righteousness is the righteousness of God's Son. Our
only acceptance with God is the blood and sacrifice of His darling
Son. We are just sinners saved by
grace. That's all. That's all. These things were written, we're
told, for our learning, for our admonition, that we through patience
and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. And when I began
preparing this message, to be honest with you, I thought,
man, there ain't much hope in this picture. There just ain't
much hope here, because the book ends. with Israel in utter degradation. But the story doesn't end until
Boaz gets done with Ruth. You got that? And the story of
God's grace does not end until our Redeemer gets done with us. Not going to end. Not until he
gets plumbed and has conformed us perfectly to his image. But
this book is a picture of the constantly repeated cycle of
our lives. When you go home, I know you
won't sit tonight and do it, but you who can tomorrow, sit
down and read all 21 chapters. Tomorrow night, you fellows who
are working and can't do it before you go to work, you sit down
and read this book in one sitting. As I read these 21 chapters,
I soon began to read them, all the trials and failures and circumstances,
the rebellion, the sin, the battles, the sorrow, the shame of Israel. I began to read them and think, that's a pretty good picture
of my soul's biography. That's what I've been experiencing
for the last 35 or 36 years. It's obvious as a nose on your face
that this same nation of Israel, though delivered from Egypt and
living in the possession of Canaan, could not have survived, not
one day in that land, except for one thing. God kept them. and Don Fortner and Bob Pontzer
and Lindsey Campbell, we wouldn't survive not one second in grace,
except for the fact that the God of all grace has sworn, I
give them eternal life and they shall never perish. We're kept
by the power of his grace through faith and kept by the power of
his grace in faith. The book begins with the children
of Israel, at least. The Lord Jesus comes in his almighty
saving power by his Spirit, and he says, come unto me, all ye
that labor the heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. And he graciously
causes us to come to him and rest. Oh, there's no rest like
it. No rest like it. I came to Jesus as I was, weary
and worn and sad, and I found in him a resting place, and he
has made me glad. Resting in his righteousness,
resting in his redemption, resting in his rule. My God, my Savior
is King! Everything is going to be all
right now. Everything's going to be okay.
I've got this thing linked now. I'm sure that's going to be able
to live for him now. And then rebellion. Oh, how soon it comes. And how
suddenly. How soon. How suddenly. Israel came, and we're told in
verses 18 and 19 of chapter 1, they just could not drive some
of the enemies out. Because they had chariots of
iron. They couldn't drive them out. Others, they chose not to
drive out. My brethren in Israel will forgive
me if I misjudge it, so I'll say this is what Don would do.
Man, there's a little gold over there we might could use later.
That fella, he's got some talents that they just might come in
handy, and he's not very strong. Look at me, I can handle him.
Well, I'm not 6'3 anymore, but I used to be 6'3, strapping fella. I can handle him. It won't give
me any trouble. And he's got some connections. I could use
him. You've never done that, have
you? God saves you by His grace in
you. You quit all those things bad people do, you know, you
quit drinking and smoking and dancing and going to bed with
your boots on and eating liver on Fridays and things like that,
you know, all those bad things. But envy, wrath, strife, sedition,
pride, covetousness, I can't last. Nobody knows about them
but me. Nobody's seen them for us. I
can handle them. After all, we can justify such
things. I've been told that I'm of German
stock, and all Germans are a little stubborn. All my family acts
that way. You have to take me like I am.
And then God came in retribution, and he always does. Always does. Look at verses 14 and 15 of chapter
2. Verses 14 and 15 of chapter 2. And the anger of the Lord was
hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers.
All right, let's see how you handle it now. Spoilers that
spoiled them. Oh my God. How those enemies
within this place called my heart has foiled me.' And he sold them
to the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could
not any longer stand before their enemies. Whithersoever they went
out, the hand of the Lord was against them, for evil, as the
Lord had said and as the Lord had sworn unto them. And they
were greatly distressed. Now don't misunderstand me. God never punishes his people
in the sense of divine justice, seeking satisfaction for his
wrath in us. He punished us in his Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. But the God of glory always makes
his own to know his displeasure with sin in them. We talk a great deal about God
making his displeasure with sin against them. God's going to show he's angry
with sin. When David sinned against God
in the matter of Uriah, Lindsay, the Lord was displeased with
David. Pleased with him and his son,
but he wasn't pleased with his behavior. and he killed his son for it.
And he destroyed his house for it. You see, the Lord God will, because
he loves us, correct us of the evil that's in us, and chastens
us. And when he chastens No chastening
for the pleasant seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. You take your little boy or your
little girl and bend them over your lap, and I'm going with
you. And if they lay over your lap
kind of laughing and smiling while they're pretending to cry,
you haven't done much. You haven't corrected a thing.
What you do is you inflict pain so that they're scared to death.
you're plum mad at them, and you're not mad at all. They're
scared to death that you've turned against them and you've never
been more for them. And they're distressed. Now, a father may not have the
wisdom to communicate those things, but our heavenly Father assures us constantly that when
it appears that everywhere we go he's fighting against us,
and when he makes bare our back and lays hard his rod on our
backs, it is because he loves us and will not lose us. And
he declares, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And he says
more than that. He says, Larry, I ain't going
to let you leave me either. Not going to happen. Listen to this. Turn over to
Psalm 89. It's too good not to read it. It's talking about God's covenant
with Christ, God's covenant for us. Judges that God raised up in
Israel were pictures of our Lord Jesus Christ, just as David was
later. The Lord says in Psalm 89.28, My mercy will I keep for
him forevermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His
seed also will I make to endure forever, and his throne is the
days of heaven. If his children forsake my law and walk not in
my judgment, Will you allow me for the purpose
of expanding the passage to read it just this way? When his children
forsake my law and walk not in my judgments, when they break
my statutes and keep not my commandments, if any man say, I have not sinned,
he deceives himself. Father, that's describing you
and me right now. Then will I visit their transgressions
with the rod and their iniquity with stripes, and I'll never
hear them again. Oh, no. Nevertheless, they're
not a sweeter word written anywhere. Nevertheless, my lovingkindness
will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness
to fail." When God visited them in judgment, then he visited them in mercy.
Look at chapter 2, verse 16. Nevertheless, the Lord raised
up judges. which delivered them out of the
hand of those that spoiled them. And yet they would not hearken
to their judges, but they went a-whoring after other gods, and
bowed themselves to them, and turned quickly out of the way
which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the
Lord. But they did not so. And when
the Lord raised them up judges, then the Lord was the judge that
delivered them. The Lord was with the judge that
delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days
of that judge. And it repented the Lord because
of their groanings, by reason of them that oppressed them and
vexed them. In Genesis 6, it repented the
Lord that he had made those folks. And here, it repented the Lord
that his people endured such things, and he would not leave
them. He would not leave them. Those judges, all of them acted
as kings. They were saviors, deliverers.
Some of them were prophets. Samuel was one. One of them was
a priest. Our Lord Jesus Christ is our
Savior, our Judge, who is our Prophet, our Priest, and our
King. But no sooner did he raise up
a deliverer, deliver him from this foe and
that foe, give him times of peace and prosperity and everything
good. But if you read the book, they
didn't have much time like that. It didn't last long. Because
they rebelled again and again and again and again. And each
time the rebellion was worse. Each time. Look at verse 19. And it came to pass when the
judge was dead, that they returned and corrupted themselves more
than their fathers, and following other gods to serve them and
to bow down unto them. and they cease not from their
own doings, nor from their stubborn way." When we get to the end of the
book, that's just where we find Israel. It just got worse and
worse and worse. I hear fellows say sometimes, The older we get, the more clearly
we see how evil we are.