APOSTASY - PART 2 (Judges 2:6-15)
INTRODUCTION:
As we get back into the passage that we were in two weeks ago in Judges 2 we are going to learn about the apostasy of the nation of Israel. Apostasy is defined by Dr. Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum as “the departure from the truth that one professed to have.”[1] This morning we will see this departure from the truth by the actions of the people of Israel, they depart from the truth about God and the covenant that they made with Him that they promised to keep. We will learn that for the nation of Israel apostasy came in the form of abandoning the God of their fathers and doing evil in the sight of the LORD. Not only will we look at Israel’s departure from the truth, but we will also look at the LORD’s response to their apostasy. Let’s pray and then get into our passage for this morning.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in your Bibles this morning to Judges 2:6-15, the passage that we began two weeks ago. This morning we will be focusing mainly on verses 11-15. Please stand, if you are able, in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
Judges 2:6-15,
“When Joshua had dismissed the people, the sons of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land. The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who survived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord which He had done for Israel. Then Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten. And they buried him in the territory of his inheritance in Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. All that generation also were gathered to their fathers; and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel. Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.” (Judges 2:6–15, NASB95)[2]
APOSTASY (Judges 2:10-13)
Two weeks ago, we looked at verse 10 which set the stage for the rest of this passage. Up until that verse we were told that the people of Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua and the elders who survived him. Then verse 10 tells us that all that generation, the generation of Joshua and the elders that served with him, all that generation died, and the new generation arose to the position of leadership, a generation who did not know the LORD or the great work that He had done in Israel. In other words, this new generation had not experienced the great work that the LORD had done, they had not lived through it and seen how God had overthrown the people before them and had given the land into their hand. It was not that they were unaware of what God had done, but that they had not experienced it firsthand. As we will see because they did not experience it firsthand, they did what was evil and abandoned the LORD. The fact that they did not know the LORD nor the work He had done was willful and not from ignorance or lack of instruction from the former generation. They fully knew their calling as a nation, they knew the covenant that they had with the LORD, they chose to rebel against the LORD and go their own way, they deliberately refused to acknowledge the obligations that they had in their covenant relationship with God. They turned from the truth that they once professed to believe, they became apostates.
As we come into verses 11-13, the language used of the next generation’s behavior is very strong. Verses 11-13 say, “Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, and they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed themselves down to them; thus they provoked the Lord to anger. So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth.” (Judges 2:11–13, NASB95)[3] This evil that they did, and this abandoning of the LORD did not all happen at once, things like this seldom do. The author is just giving us a summary of what happened over a period of time. They began to compromise with the people as we saw beginning to happen in chapter one, they did not drive the Canaanites completely out of the land. They allowed them to live among them, then we saw the progression, the Israelites began to live among the Canaanites. In chapter 2 verses 1-5 where we have the angel of the LORD’s rebuke, we see that even then they had not fully obeyed the LORD who had told them to tear down the idols and altars of the Canaanites, to destroy them completely and they had not, instead they allowed the people and the objects of their religion to remain. Our present passage only speaks of the end result. However long it took to happen or how it came about is not important, what is important is that the new generation turned away from the LORD, and this turning away in the end was conscious and deliberate. You must understand that apostasy is a choice, it is to choose evil over good, to abandon the LORD for something or someone else. Apostasy is the renunciation or the denial of something you once professed to believe, or as I said in my introduction, the departure from the truth that one professed to have. Apostates are self-made, they are not the victims of someone else’s choices. Apostates are what they have chosen to be.
We have all heard of this type of thing happening. Possibly it is a pastor or a Christian that is involved in a ministry that puts them in the spotlight, he is well-known and suddenly maybe brought about by trying to justify some sin but not necessarily, suddenly he attacks and renounces or denies everything he had ever believed or preached. Or maybe it is a son or a daughter who seemed to be a strong, growing believer during their teen years who completely scorns Christianity as something he or she feels they have outgrown as adults. Now I understand that there are always contributing circumstances, too strict an upbringing or some sin that will cling to them the rest of their life, some of these contributing circumstances may be the result of what others have done or failed to do. But in the end, those who have turned away, those who have departed from the truth they once professed to have must accept the responsibility for their own actions. As our world goes on, we are going to see this more and more in the church as our Scripture reading said this morning that in the later times some will fall away from the faith, believing instead seducing spirits and doctrines of demons. This is the days we live in; we are in the later days and many in the church are compromising with the doctrines of demons that the world is trying to push upon us. This is what happened in Israel as well, they began to compromise with the world around them instead of driving them out and destroying them as the LORD had commanded them. Instead, they chose to do what is evil and they abandoned the LORD.
ABANDONMENT AND DOING EVIL (Judges 2:11-13)
The word “evil” is the only term strong enough to capture the seriousness and severity of apostasy. Apostasy is evil. The truth of this judgment, equating apostasy with evil, is justified for several reasons as can be seen in verses 11-13. To do evil “in the sight of the LORD” (Judges 2:11a, NASB95)[4] is to sin absolutely, because the LORD is the absolute moral authority. What is evil in the eyes of people is a matter of personal judgment, what might be evil to you might not be to another person. But what is evil in the sight of the LORD is unmistakably and explicitly evil—there is no argument about this. In Genesis 2 the LORD is described as the Creator of human life and being the Creator of human beings, He has the absolute right to distinguish right from wrong and to determine the bounds within which life is to be lived. This same LORD God is the One who by His Word created the physical universe, separated heaven from earth, light from darkness and land from sea as described for us in Genesis 1. To do evil in His sight is to repeat what Adam and Eve did in Genesis 3. It is to commit the original sin, that first sin that is the source of all other sin, to choose to be the master of your own destiny in defiance to your Creator, to choose to be your own moral compass. Understand that when we do this, we are not just choosing another good, an alternative and equally valid morality, instead, we are doing evil. Everything one does from this point on is tainted by the underlying evil of rebellion against God and we even use this as a justification for what we have done, we say, “We do not need God because we are ‘good’ people.” To do evil in the sight of the LORD and depart from the truth you once professed is to commit the ultimate sin, there is only one way to atone for this sin, repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, truly believing and embracing that which you once only professed.
For the Israelites, this evil behavior was even more terrible because for them it was not simply a sin against their Creator, but they had forsaken or abandoned “the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt” (Judges 2:12a, NASB95).[5] In other words, it was the lowest form of ingratitude. There was nothing that the Lord had done or nothing in how He had treated them as a people that justified this kind of behavior. The LORD had chosen them in Abraham as an act of pure grace. He had preserved their forefathers through their frequent failures and sinfulness with astonishing patience. And when their descendants found themselves enslaved in Egypt and cried out to the LORD for help, He heard them and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He raised up Moses and sent him to lead the people and the LORD brought them out with signs and wonders to live as His free people. What I am saying is that it was not just their Creator they abandoned, but their gracious and powerful Redeemer, the One who above all others had the right to their grateful obedience. This is the One they forsook, the One they abandoned. What other word is there for that but “evil?”
I find it amazing that evil can nearly always be justified in some way, at least by those who commit it. Consider what the world just a few years ago would have called evil is no longer so in their eyes today. We will learn that what was evil in the sight of the LORD was right in their own eyes. People abandon the Lord because some other course of action seems better, or more attractive in some way, or maybe it is because of a change in the circumstances. People rarely just turn away from the Lord, they turn from Him to something or someone else. For the Israelites we are told they abandoned the Lord for the “Baals”, “other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them.” (Judges 2:11-12, NASB95)[6] The very reason they were in this situation at all was because of previous disobedience. Instead of completely driving out the Canaanites and completely destroying their places of worship as they had been commanded, they compromised and allowed the Canaanites to live among them, then they compromised further, and they lived among the Canaanites, and they did not destroy their places of worship. The angel of the LORD had told them clearly what the result of their disobedience would be, He said in Judges 2:3, “Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they will become as thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.’” (Judges 2:3, NASB95)[7] And now we see that beginning to happen. The Israelites abandoned the LORD and began to go after these other gods, bowing down to them and serving them.
What was it that made these gods so attractive to the people of Israel after all that the LORD had done for them? Remember these were the gods of the Canaanites, these gods for them were powerful symbols of the forces that shaped their whole lives for good or bad, the spiritual forces behind what we would call natural phenomena, these gods were fertility gods which brought about the changing of the seasons, brought the autumn and spring rains, the things that determined the fertility of the soil and the animals they depended on for food and welfare. The worship of these nature gods seemed to work for the Canaanites, they had lived this way a long time, they knew the way of the land, they knew what kinds of crops to raise that fed their families and made them prosperous, and they attributed their success to the worship of their gods. For the Israelites who were newly arrived in the land they had no experience with such things. Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt and depended on Pharaoh to feed them. In the wilderness God had fed them with manna, but now that they were in Canaan the manna had stopped. They now needed to farm the land and feed their families in the same way the Canaanites did, but they didn’t know how. What could make more sense, in these circumstances, than to learn from the native inhabitants in the land? And under the circumstances would there be any harm in adding to their worship some of the elements of the local culture and their religious practices? The LORD their God saw it differently, they had stopped trusting Him, they could not have Him and Baal too. They had to choose, and these verses let us know that they chose wrongly. They chose the way of unfaithfulness to their covenant relationship with the LORD, they became spiritual adulterers. What they did was “evil in the sight of the LORD” and He would not tolerate it any more than a husband would tolerate his wife taking other lovers. Israel would learn, for them the instruction would be costly, but they would learn that the LORD took His relationship with them very seriously.
ANGER OF THE LORD (Judges 2:14-15)
As we come to the last two verses of our passage, the last paragraph of this passage we come to the LORD’s response to Israel’s apostasy. Everything in this paragraph flows from the “anger” of verse 14a, the giving over, the selling, the powerlessness of verse 14, the “harm” or “evil” of verse 15a, and the severe “distress” of verse 15b. From the opening words to the closing line, it shows us the terrible consequences of Israel’s apostasy, and the anger that makes it all happen is God’s. “The anger of the LORD burned against Israel…” (Judges 2:14a, NASB95)[8] This is not an easy aspect of Bible teaching for us, but it is here, and we dare not overlook it. To do so would be the same mistake that Israel made during the period of the judges. When we fail to take the anger of the Lord seriously, we are risking disaster.
From this one paragraph we can learn several things about the anger of God. First, we learn that the anger of God is real. The first part of verse 14 literally says in Hebrew, “Yahweh’s nose became hot against Israel!” Now this might seem to you a humorous word picture, but it is not a laughing matter. This phrase portrays for us in a very vivid and firm way the fact that Yahweh, the LORD is a passionate God. He has powerful emotions. Things move Him and He reacts. Now for many Christians this has been a problem. How can God be all-powerful, totally sovereign, if He is moved by things outside himself? Doesn’t saying or attributing to God emotions somehow in some way weaken His Godness? Those same Christians say, “When we read things like this, we must see them and interpret them as metaphorical, it must refer to something other than emotions.” There are two problems with this line of thought. First, whatever aspect of God’s nature the language refers to, the verb “burned” implies change. God reacted to Israel’s apostasy. He was moved by it in some way. So, the underlying problem of God being moved by something outside Himself remains, whether we make it metaphorical or literal. Second, too much is lost if we deny that God has emotions. Along with anger, we would have to get rid of His love, His grief, His compassion, and any other emotion that might be seen in the pages of Scripture. We would be left with a God that is totally unlike the One we find in the Bible, and especially in Jesus Christ who perfectly revealed God to us and we see His emotions on full display throughout the Gospels. The truth is not that God does not have emotions; the truth is God has perfect emotions. His emotions unlike ours our not faulty and are under perfect control at all times.
The second thing we learn from this paragraph is God’s anger is not without cause. In this passage it was aroused because of Israel’s apostasy. Israel’s apostasy was a deliberate breach of trust, they were unfaithful to their God, it was deeply personal and wounding. God’s anger is justified because of this betrayal and how strange it would be if He was not angry about this apostasy.
The third thing we learn is that God’s anger is not impulsive or unpredictable, it is measured and in complete accord with what He said He would do. Moses and Joshua had warned the people that if they abandoned God and went after other gods, they would suffer the consequences of God’s anger. One of the last warnings they received was in Joshua 24:20 where Joshua said, “If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you.” (Joshua 24:20, NASB95)[9] God had already shown Himself to be faithful to His word by fulfilling the promises He had made to His people, and He would be true to His word fulfilling the warnings He had given them for being unfaithful to Him. There is nothing impulsive or unpredictable about that. The God of the Bible gets angry, but He does not throw tantrums!
Fourth, we learn from this paragraph that God’s anger has terrible consequences for those who are the objects of His anger. For Israel we are told that God gave them into the hands of plunders, He sold them into the hands of their enemies, and Israel could no longer stand before them. We are told that the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, which in this case means harm or calamity, and because of this the people were severely distressed. It is an awful thing to have God angry with you. The New Testament warns us of God’s anger in no less graphic terms than the Old Testament. We learned in Romans that God in His wrath against ungodly people gave them over to impurity, dishonorable passions and to a deranged mind (Romans 1:18-28) and this is exactly what we see in our nation today, we as a nation have been given over by God in His anger. Paul called such people “children of wrath and without hope” in Ephesians 2:1-12. And the final consequence of being in that state according to 2 Thessalonians 1:9 is “the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” No wonder Jesus told us in Matthew 10:28 to “fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Hell is the ultimate severe distress, the final consequence of having God against you. If that is a warning for the world, it is also a warning to those who profess to be followers of Christ. Jesus spoke the most terrible warnings about hell to His twelve disciples and one of them, Judas Iscariot, turned out to be a son of destruction. The author of Hebrews gives a frightful warning to the Christians to whom he is writing in Hebrews 10:26-31, he writes, “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the Law of Moses dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much severer punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled under foot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:26–31, NASB95)[10]
The Israelites who did evil in the sight of the LORD and abandoned Him and went after other gods during the time of the judges were playing with fire. The severe distress that they experienced was not Hell, but it certainly was a foretaste of it. Apostasy is no small matter, it arouses God’s righteous anger, and the consequences that you will experience under His anger are severe.
CONCLUSION:
What hope is there for these rebels, for apostates? What hope do we have as the older generation as we see the younger generation teetering on the edge? Our nation has abandoned the Lord, our nation has aroused the Lord’s wrath against it, and He has turned us over to our own destruction. What hope is there for a church or a nation that abandons the Lord? What hope or comfort is there for godly parents who see a dearly loved child walk away? We see no hope or comfort in this passage of Scripture, this passage only speaks of apostasy and God’s anger. But there is hope, slim perhaps, but real—not here but in this book, we will see another side of God, we will see His compassion and mercy. This is not the end, there is more to Israel’s history than is told in these verses and more to God’s character than His anger. So those who bear the pain of seeing others abandon the Lord are not alone. You stand with others who suffer with you, you stand with the Lord who knows your pain because it is He who has been abandoned. You must hope in Him, the Lord alone holds the solution for those who have abandoned Him.
[1]Fruchtenbaum, Arnold G., The Footsteps of the Messiah. San Antonio, TX : Ariel Press, 1982.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995. (Emphasis mine)
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[10]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.