Judges 2 Bible Study / Podcast

So, this is a Bible study. I realize being on the radio and internet, some people will be listening while they're driving or listening while they're doing other things, but let me encourage you, if you're just sitting there listening, if you can, it is helpful to have an open Bible and maybe a notebook or a piece of paper with a pen to take notes, read along, compare what is being said to what the Bible says, and this is important for several reasons.

Number one, it just helps your mind to stay engaged. It helps you to pay attention, number one. Number two, it helps us to be reminded that God's word is the authority. God's word is the authority. You know, there's a lot of modern teachers that can speak for 30 minutes to an hour and never open the Bible once.

Maybe they make a passing reference to it here and there, but I've noticed oftentimes, you know, people, and this is the temptation for any preacher, I suppose, to talk about what you want to talk about, and then you find a verse or two to support what you want to say, but as a pastor, I want this program to be one where people receive teaching from God's word.

I figure if I'm teaching chapter by chapter through the Bible, then at least I'm accomplishing.

Something.

So, with that said, let's begin by going through all 23 verses of the book of Judges, chapter 2.

Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bokhim and said,.

I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers. And I said, I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.

You shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? Therefore I also said, I will not drive them out before you. They shall be thorns in your side, and their guts shall be a snare to you.

So it was when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel that the people lifted up their voices and wept. Then they called the name of that place Bokhim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord.

And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel went each to his own inheritance to possess the land. So the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord which he had done for Israel.

Now Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died when he was 110 years old. And they buried him within the border of his inheritance at Timnath Heres, in the mountains of Ephraim, on the north side of Mount Gaash.

When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them, who did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done for Israel. Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals.

And they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them. And they bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger.

They forsook the Lord, and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So he delivered them into the hands of plunderers, who despoiled them. And he sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.

Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for calamity, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed. Nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges, who delivered them out of the hand of those who plundered them.

Yet they would not listen to their judges. But they played the harlot with other gods, and bowed down to them. They turned quickly from the way in which their fathers walked, in obeying the commandments of the Lord.

They did not do so. And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning, because of those who oppressed them, and harassed them.

And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they reverted, and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, by following other gods, to serve them, and bow down to them. They did not cease from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.

Then the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel.

Because this nation has transgressed my covenant, which I commanded their fathers, and has not heeded my voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, so that through them I may test Israel, whether they will keep the ways of the Lord, to walk in them as their fathers kept them, or not.

Therefore the Lord left those nations, without driving them out immediately, nor did he deliver them into the hand of Joshua.

Joshua's Death and the Transition to the Book of Judges

Okay, so one significant event we see in this chapter is the death of Joshua. So if you've been following along, you can see that sometimes the Bible does not flow in chronological order. Joshua's death was recorded in the 24th chapter of the book of Joshua.

And last week, if you remember when we started Judges chapter 1, in verse 1, it began with talking about now after the death of Joshua, it came to pass. So whoever wrote the book of Judges, they're jumping around a little bit.

Because in chapter 1, Joshua is dead, and now in chapter 2, he's alive and it records his death. So this is normal. You know, when we tell a story, we might, in order to make a point, we might flash back to a former time, or jump ahead and give details and then come back.

And of course, the Bible is in that way, like many other books, many other stories. It's chronological to a large degree. I mean, it starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. But things, here's the point, things are not always in chronological order.

And we see that here in Judges chapter 1, and then in chapter 2. So whether it's the Old Testament books and how they're listed, or when we read through the books like we're doing here, it's helpful to keep this in mind.

So the Bible is generally chronological, but not always. So Joshua's death is recorded here in Judges chapter 2, and this kind of marks the end.

Of an era.

And then it will be in the next chapter, chapter 3, that we get into the ministry of the first judge, who is a man named Othniel. So Joshua leads the people into the promised land. They are commanded to drive out the Canaanites, but like we talked about last week, they fail in doing this.

So the Lord asked the Israelites in verse 2, why have you done this? And what's he saying? Why haven't you done this? Why haven't you done what I told you to do? Why have you disobeyed? And then verse 11, it says that the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals, which Baal is the false god of the Canaanites.

Then verse 14 tells us the result of the children of Israel serving the Baals. When the Israelites worshiped false gods, verse 14 says, and the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel. So he delivered them into the hands of the plunderers or into the hands of their enemies.

And then verse 16, nevertheless, the Lord raised up judges who delivered them. So we're basically getting something like an outline of what to expect going forward. There is this transition that is happening from the book of Joshua to the book of Judges.

This is how it's going to go. Israel went through a very wonderful time where they walked by faith in the book of Joshua. But once Joshua dies, things change. Now Israel disobeys the Lord. The Lord will punish them.

They cry out for mercy. God sends a judge to deliver them. And then once peace is restored, after a generation passes or that generation is gone, the next generation comes and they forget all about God.

They slide back into their old ways and the cycle just repeats over and over and over again. So chapter one of Judges advances the narrative from the book of Joshua. I'm using the New King James Version of the Bible and chapter one of Joshua chapter one is titled The Continuing Conquest of Canaan.

So that's what we looked at last time. It was kind of a continuation, advancing the narrative and the story. The Continuing Conquest of Canaan, which is what Joshua was about. So that's the way the book of Judges begins.

But once Joshua dies, now you're transitioning into a new period. And we mentioned last time how Israel was successful in taking the land. Under Joshua's leadership, they did what was right in the sight of the Lord.

They possessed the land, they walked by faith. But remember, it was up to each individual tribe to complete the task. So they drove out the Canaanites to a large degree, but each individual tribe, once they received their land, they had to drive out the remaining stragglers, which they ultimately failed in doing that.

And the people they left that stayed in the land, they influenced the Israelites and the Israelites fell back into this pattern of disobedience. So now in chapter two, we see Joshua's death is acknowledged.

The Lord recognizes their failure and how this is a violation of the covenant. You know, it's like we made an agreement. This is what God is saying to the children of Israel. We made a covenant. We made an agreement and you broke it.

God basically says to them, I am faithful. He says, I always keep my covenant. I always keep my promises. I always keep my word. And isn't that true? God always keeps his word, but you don't. That's what the Lord is saying to the nation.

So let's go through these verses. Joshua chapter two, verse one, then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bokom and said, I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land, which I swore to your fathers.

Remember back in start, well, starting in Genesis 12, God made the promise to Abraham and then I gave more details and as time went on, so God swore he made a promise. He made a covenant with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob to give them and their descendants the land, which he did.

So I, the land that I swore to your fathers. And then God says in Joshua chapter two, verse when he says, I will never break my covenant with you. So what do we learn? God is faithful. The Lord always keeps his promises.

You know, when we say that God is faithful, it's not just something we repeat. This is one of the major themes of the Bible. God is faithful, but mankind isn't. And then mankind, when he cries out to God, then God is merciful.

Another theme in the scripture. So God always keeps his promises. Now in verse one, it says that the angel of the Lord came up. So who is this angel of the Lord? Because it's the angel of the Lord who's speaking.

So it's important to understand that the angel or the messenger of the Lord, that's what the term angel means. Malik in Hebrew and then Angelos in Greek, it just means messenger. So sometimes an angel is like a, an angel we would think of a heavenly being with, you know, may or may not have wings.

When they appeared to men on earth, they didn't have wings, but in heaven, some of the angels, the cherubim, the seraphim have wings. So there's that type of angel. Sometimes though, an angel is just a man.

Sometimes he's a heavenly being appearing as a man, but sometimes in the Bible, an angel is just a messenger. So that's what the term angel means. It means messenger. So who's the angel of the Lord? Well, we could call him the messenger of the Lord.

And it doesn't mention him by name. It doesn't say it was Gabriel. It doesn't say it was the Archangel Michael. Instead, we see it's the angel, or we might say the angel of the Lord. And here's something important, very important to understand.

The angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is the pre-incarnate Christ. Commentator Matthew Henry writes this, It was the great angel of the covenant. Remember, in other words, the great messenger of the covenant.

The Word, the Son of God, who spake with divine authority as Jehovah himself, and now called them to account for their disobedience. So the angel of the Lord here that comes up from Gilgal, I believe he's appearing as a man.

Talk about that more in a moment. But this is Jesus Christ before he became incarnate at Bethlehem. So that's the first thing we need to get straight. This is the pre-incarnate Christ who appears in the Old Testament as the messenger of the Lord.

So this is one of three appearances of Christ in the book of Judges. These are often referred to as either a Theophany or a Christophany. That is a manifestation of God in the Old Testament. The Lord also appeared to Gideon in chapter 6, verses 11 through 18.

And then to the parents of Samson in chapter 13, verses 3 through 23. Remember the angel of the Lord went up in the fire, ascended into heaven. And Manoah, Samson's parents were afraid. We've seen God.

They thought they were going to die. So the pre-incarnate Christ appears at least three times in the book of Judges. And remember, he's already appeared in the book of Joshua as the commander of the Lord's army in Joshua chapter 5.

So let's spend a moment on this subject. Jesus or the pre-incarnate Christ as the angel of the Lord. I think it's easy to get confused because we typically think of an angel as a created being. And of course, the angels are created beings like the angel Gabriel, right?

There's three angels mentioned by name in the Bible. There's two holy angels, Gabriel and Michael. And then there's, of course, Lucifer who fell and became Satan and the devil. But the angel of the Lord is not, he's never identified by name as Jesus, but he appears as a physical manifestation of Jehovah.

And of course, Jesus is God manifested in the flesh, according to the apostle Paul, when he wrote to Timothy. So people get confused. Well, wait, Jesus isn't an angel. Well, no, he's not an angel in the sense of the angels created beings, but he is the messenger of the Lord here.

So Jesus is the son of God. He is God in human flesh. So then how is he an angel? He is God's messenger. For example, in Hebrews chapter three, verse one, Jesus is also called the apostle and high priest of our confession.

An apostle is an emissary, an ambassador, a messenger. An apostle is one who is sent, right? So Jesus sent his apostles, Peter, James, John. They were apostles of Jesus Christ. They were messengers of the new covenant.

But Jesus, don't miss this. Jesus is God's apostle.

Say, no, no, no.

Jesus had apostles. He's not an apostle. Yeah, no, Jesus is an apostle. He is the apostle of God, the father, or another way you can put it. Jesus is the messenger of God, the father. He is the angel of the Lord.

So hopefully that clears up any confusion. Remember how it was the Lord who spoke to Moses in the burning bush? And at that time, he gave his personal name or his memorial name, I am that I am. Jehovah, or as people say today, Yahweh.

Well, who did Moses experience at the burning bush? He experienced God at the burning bush. And yet Exodus chapter three, verse two, says that it was the angel of the Lord who appeared to Moses in the flame of fire from the midst of the bush.

And then in Exodus three, verse six, just four verses later, the angel says to Moses, I am God. I am the God of your father. So the angel of the Lord is the Lord. He is a physical or a visible manifestation of God.

And then Moses hit his face because he was afraid what to look upon God. So the angel of the Lord is called both God and the messenger of God. He is Jehovah, but he's also Jehovah's messenger. I want you to think about it this way.

God is too holy to interact with men directly. You cannot look directly at God. So what men saw in the Bible is they saw the messenger of the Lord. The point is you can't see, you can't see God, but you can see his manifestation, the angel of the Lord or the Lord Jesus Christ.

So God is too holy to interact with men directly. He must do it through a mediator. How do we know this? Well, first Timothy chapter two, verse five tells us that there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.

So the angel of Jehovah came up, it says from Gilgal to Bochem. And he said, so he's speaking, he says, I led you from Egypt. Now remember when the children of Israel were led in the wilderness, they were led by God's presence as manifested in the cloudy pillar by day and the pillar of fire by night.

So that was, people call it the Shekinah glory of God. It's a manifestation of God in some way. Well, that's what we're seeing here, but it seems to be a man. From what I can tell, he walks from Gilgal to this place where the Israelites are.

And remember back in Joshua chapter five, a man appeared to Joshua. Wasn't a cloud of smoke or just an appearance of fire. God, again, did manifest himself with smoke and with fire. When God came down on Mount Sinai, what was it?

He came down with smoke and fire. But in Joshua chapter five, it's a man who appears to Joshua and he identifies himself as the commander of the Lord's army. So when it says that the messenger of the Lord came up from Gilgal in Judges chapter two, I certainly get the impression that a man walked from Gilgal to this site and he is talking to them man to man.

And I believe it's the same man, the pre-incarnate Christ, the commander of the Lord's army.

And what's he doing?

He's checking in. He talked with Joshua all those years ago and now he's checking in. He gave Joshua the marching orders and now he's asking the Israelites, why have you not carried out my orders? So after reminding Israel of his faithfulness, he reprimands them for their lack of faithfulness.

So again, this is one of the major themes of the Bible. God is faithful, men are not. So he reminds them of his covenant. He is faithful and keeping his promises. Verse two, then he tells the Israelites, you shall not make any covenant with the inhabitants of the land, which of course they've already done that.

He says, you shall tear down their altars, but you have not obeyed my voice. Why have you done this? And then because of this in verse three, he says, I will not drive them out, which suggests one of the reasons why the children of Israel were not able to defeat the Canaanites is because God was no longer fighting for them.

You know, if God isn't on your side, you cannot accomplish anything. If God determines that you're not going to be successful, it doesn't matter what you do. You're not going to be successful. So they have an agreement with God.

God is faithful. They break the covenant and God says, well, I'm not going to, I'm not going to fight for you then. Remember in the book of Joshua, when Joshua asked the commander of the Lord's army, he said, are you for us or are you for our enemies?

And he's like, uh, neither. Rather as the commander of the Lord's army, I have now come. In other words, you know, it's not that I'm on your side. You need to be on my side. And that's what we need to understand.

It's not that I know there's in Romans, God is for us. If God is for us, who can be against us? There is a sense you can say that God is on the side of the righteous. The Bible does say that, but it's not so much God being on our side.

We need to make sure that we are on his side.

Amen.

In other words, you need to be on my side. And when Israel disobeyed and that was their posture going forward, they clearly lost God's favor. You know, it's always easier to do nothing. God, in his word, he gives us positive commandments and he gives us negative commandments.

There's things that we are told to do things we are told to avoid. As far as the positive commandments go, things that God expects from us, it's always easier to leave those things undone or to do it, you know, halfway.

Well, I'll do it to an extent, but not fully. It's like when a little kid used to tell, okay, clean your room. And then they just take all their dirty clothes and trash and shovel it under their bed or something.

Well, I mean, yeah, they did it to an extent, but that's not really what you wanted them to do. And that's the way people are. We either disobey God or we obey God to a certain degree. Obeying God fully is hard.

Doing the right thing at times can be difficult. It's always easier to not do it. What's one of the things that the Lord told Israel to do? Tear down the pagan altars. Well, that's an unpopular thing to read today.

Can you imagine if that was the commandment? It is. It's not, by the way, and we're not living in a theocratic society.

So we're not.

Christians are not commanded to go around and tear down pagan worship sites. But imagine if that was our job. Wow, that would bring some adversity, wouldn't it? By the way, that is what God told the Israelites to do.

Tear down the pagan altars. And it was a lot easier not to do it. And even Israel would have faced resistance. So what did they do? Well, I mean, I'm sure they tore down some pagan altars. But they didn't tear all of them down.

These shrines and temples erected to false deities, the the Asherah poles. You know, it's like a pole or a tree or a log planted in the ground where they carved out this feminine figure with all the curves.

But she had no arms. It was just a pole in the ground. Asherah pole to the false goddess. And then they worshiped the Baals, which was another type of idol. God told the Israelites, go and tear these things apart.

Cut them up. Smash them.

Get rid of them all.

That was a lot of hard work.

And they'd have to fight some battles to make sure that was done. So it's easier just don't do it. So again, we don't live in a theocratic society where we're called to go down and tear down the Buddhist temple or anything like that.

But what are we called to do? You know, we're living. Israel was a physical nation. So they were called to fight physical battles. We are a spiritual nation, the church. We are called to fight spiritual battles.

So we need to keep the false religions and the dangerous ideologies out of our churches, out of our homes. We need to protect the minds of our children. And in order to do that, we need to teach them.

We need to teach them what's right. And we need to teach them what's wrong. But sometimes when we teach what is wrong, we get some blowback from that. So people, in order to avoid difficulty or in order to avoid resistance, it's always easier to just not do it.

Because if you do do it, and take my word for it because I know, if you do the right thing, if you do the hard thing, and you speak some of the hard truths, the things that need to be said, you will face resistance and adversity.

And not just from the people that are wrapped up in that stuff. I mean, you expect that from the atheists and the communists, but you don't necessarily expect it from people within God's covenant community.

And yet, that's sometimes what you'll face. You know, there's always a hundred reasons to not do the right thing. But none of them are valid. So Israel, here in Judges chapter 2, what do they do? God's talking to them about it.

They break their agreement with God. This is, there is the unconditional covenant made to Abraham, but there is the conditional covenant of the law, that God made an agreement with the nation through Moses.

If you obey me, I will bless you. I will fight for you. I will prosper you. But if you disobey me, you will be cursed. And now because of their failure to do what was right, the Lord tells them that the Canaanite tribes, which they failed to drive out, now I'm not going to fight for you anymore.

Now they're going to remain, and they are constantly going to be a thorn in your side. Is that God's fault?

No, it's their fault.

That's what they chose. And God is basically telling them, well, you made your bed. Now you're going to lie in it.

Weeping, Sacrifice, and the Difference Between Ritual and Obedience

Verse 4.

So when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochem, which means weeping. So the place was not called Bochem until after this.

And that's often what the Israelites would name a place depending on what happened there. So it's called weeping. And it says after they wept that they sacrificed there to the Lord. That's capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D.

So when you see the Lord in all capital letters, that's the name of God, Jehovah, the covenant name of God. When it's capital L, lowercase O-R-D, that's the term Adonai, meaning master. So he uses the covenant name of God.

They sacrificed to Jehovah. And their sacrifices, no doubt, contained an offering for their sin. But that's a good thing, right? They recognize their sin. They cry out to God. They offer a sacrifice. And while God did prescribe these sacrifices, you know what the Lord really wanted?

See, we have the idea that, well, God, yeah, God wants sacrifices and offerings. Actually, what God really wants is them to obey. David wrote in Psalm 40, verses six through eight, sacrifice and offering you did not desire.

So David is writing this Psalm speaking or addressing God. He's saying, you don't actually desire sacrifices. And people stumble over that. Well, wait a minute, I read it, that God is telling them to offer these sacrifices.

And then David says, a sin offering you did not require. And again, people say, yeah, no, God did require that. Yeah, but what's David's point? He says in verse eight, I delight to do your will, oh my God, and your law is within my heart.

You see, that is what God really wants. He wants his people to love. You say, well, he wants us to love him, right? And Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. So what God wants above all, above all the sacrifices and offerings and rituals and things that we go through, what God wants most is for his people to obey him.

Just to put this in a way everyone can understand. Apologies are nice. You know, when somebody acknowledges they're wrong and, you know, we all know those people that are never wrong. They never apologize.

They're always right. It's always somebody else's fault. But when somebody does acknowledge they are wrong or they've wronged you, it is nice when they apologize. But it's far better when they don't offend you in the first place.

Let's say you have a mother and her five-year-old son and the child says something very mean and cruel to his mother. An apology is certainly an order and that needs to happen. And maybe the apology even helps a little bit, but the mother would much rather have had the child not say that hurtful thing in the first place.

And that's the way it is with us in our sin. If we sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's what the Bible says in 1 John 1 9. There are offerings that the children of Israel were to give to the Lord, but God wants above all, he wants us to love him and to demonstrate that through our obedience.

And then take somebody going back to the mother and the child. You know, if that child throughout the day and the next day just keeps doing it over and over again, you know what this like. People say, well, I'm sorry.

And then they do it again. Well, I'm sorry. And then they do it again and again and again and again. And after a while, that apology doesn't mean much. It doesn't mean anything. A matter of fact, the apology can become an offense itself if the person doesn't stop with their behavior.

In Isaiah chapter 1 verses 13 and 14, the Lord tells the Israelites how their sacrifices and offerings, their feasts and their sacred assemblies were like, the Lord calls it an abomination to him. Even when a New Testament church and you, of course, and again, we talked about this last time in New England, you see this all the time.

You actually have churches, people who would call themselves Christians. They gather together, they assemble, they sing hymns that are glorifying to God. And then they may celebrate the Lord's supper.

But then somewhere during the sermon time or somewhere during the church service, they bring out a flag and they celebrate sin. What a stunning act of hypocrisy. God is not pleased with that assembly.

God is not pleased with their songs of praise. God is not pleased with the fact that they put money in a plate and give lip service to him. God wants his people to obey him, not to persist in rebellion and then somehow try to sanctify it.

Well, that's what's happening in Israel. They were rebelling against God, disobeyed God. At times they were even worshiping false gods and they were, remember with the golden calf, what did they do? They were blending pagan idolatry with the worship of Jehovah God.

God calls that type of thing an abomination. So the Lord says, back to Isaiah 1, 13 and 14, how sacrifices and offerings, the feasts, sacred assemblies, he was not pleased with them. He said that because they were committed in their rebellion.

And then they kept up this religious act. And it was a stench in the Lord's nostrils. You know, I try not to speculate too much, but instead of weeping, going back to Israel here in Judges chapter two, when they, you know, they hear this word from the messenger of the Lord, they cry out and then they sacrifice to God.

What if instead of weeping and crying and offering a sacrifice, what if they simply resolved that day to do the right thing? What if that day they wholeheartedly sought God and started to obey him fully?

Wouldn't things have been different? I think so. But instead they said, sorry, they offered their sacrifice, but they kept on doing the wrong thing. And then they expected a different result. You know, isn't this what they say?

This, that's the definition of insanity. I don't know that it's actually the definition of insanity, but doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This is what you see throughout the book of Judges.

The Israelites keep doing the wrong thing and the cycle happens again and again and again, and they never learn from it. You know, people keep making the same mistakes.

Over and over and over.

They're committed to doing the same sins over the same bad decisions over and over. And they just can't understand why things never get better. Well, the Israelites knew the right thing to do. They had God's law and they ignored it.

And they ignored it in favor of doing whatever they thought was best. Well, hey, if we enslave the Canaanites, we get some free labor. Nope, that's gonna come back to bite you. Well, you know, it's hard to do this.

Maybe if we just leave them alone, they'll leave us alone.

Wrong.

There is never a substitute for obeying God. And we have God's law too. You know, we shouldn't look at this as, well, this is a story long time ago, and the same type of thing is happening today. We have God's law too.

It's called the Old Testament. And it's true, we're not under the law, but God's word is still true. And I've noticed many Christians do the same thing. They ignore the law of God. Instead of getting the proper definition of what love is, or what any term in scripture mean, we kind of take a practical approach.

And we try to figure out what's right, what's wrong, what we should do, shouldn't do, based on whatever we think. No, we always need to go to God's word. Old Testament, again, not everything applies, but God's moral law doesn't change.

The principles you see in the Old Testament are still true for us today. The ethics of the Old Testament are in line with the ethics of the New Testament, despite what some people would say. And just to prove that, you remember the verse where Jesus talks about loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself?

You know where Jesus got that from? He got it from the book of Leviticus. So my point to you this morning is as a New Testament Christian, you can learn something. We can all learn something from the book of Judges.

So just as Israel had a word from God, so do we. A blessing will either come or be prevented based on how we respond to God's word. I talked with a guy a while back who was dealing with some things at his church.

I don't know if he sat on the board of the church or whatever it was. And they were going through a struggle. He said half of his church wanted to accept the whole gay pride agenda and the other church didn't.

And he knew I was a pastor, so he said, well, what do you think? And I knew that church was sort of on the liberal side of things. I didn't want to quote the apostle Paul because I knew that maybe he or that church would likely not accept the words of Paul although they should accept the words of Paul.