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Judges 2:1-5
The title of my sermon is False Weeping in Bacchum, and we're gonna talk about a part of, we're gonna talk about a text from Judges and talk about how does it apply to our lives today. So when you think about the New Testament, the New Testament was primarily written in Koine Greek.
Have you, has any of you maybe ever wondered why that language was the global standard at the time of Christ? I know certainly I have. Like, why was the New Testament written in Greek? There are many other languages that could have been written in, Latin for one.
If you wanna know the reason for that, the reason is Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great is the architect of this Greek takeover. This precocious general, and we say precocious, advanced at a very young age, he conquered the entire known world before the tender age of 33.
So before 33, he conquered the whole world. Since he was Macedonian by birth, his father was Philip of Macedon, they also spoke Greek, he made Greek the official language of his new empire. So because it was the official language, now we have a New Testament written in Greek.
Popular legend says, you may have heard this one before, it says that after he finished his conquest, he sat down and he cried, that because there were no more worlds to conquer. Have any of you heard that one before?
Now, I cross-checked that quote, because a lot of times you say something, and then you look it up and it's not what you realize it. That's actually not right. That misquote was popularized, if you've seen the movie Die Hard, the villain, Hans Gruber, in there, he said Alexander sat down and cried for there were no more worlds to conquer.
That's not exactly right. Plutarch, in Plutarch's history, recorded this. In his book, The Tranquility of the Mind, and he was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, he said Alexander wept after hearing about the theory of infinite worlds because he had not yet been able to conquer one yet.
So he said there's infinite worlds out there now, I don't agree with that. But he wept, he said I haven't conquered a single one. Regardless of which account you prefer, Alexander's tears, they weren't noble, but they were selfish.
Alexander wept because he desired glory and power. It wasn't a selfless tear. Do you remember in the Old Testament, what did God say to Samuel when Samuel went to anoint the new king of Israel? And I love that verse, 1 Samuel 16, seven, it encapsulates very nicely what I'm trying to say here.
It says, but the Lord said to Samuel, do not look at his appearance, do not look at his physical stature, because I have refused him, talking about the older sons of Jesse, for the Lord does not see as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
Even though this verse is technically talking about physical attractiveness, and it's not talking about emotions, we can still derive an application here. Men and women, we're impressed with physical tears or griefs, but God weighs our hearts.
Tears without true repentance, I was thinking about this, are like cars without tires, they can do nothing for an owner. Is a Rolls Royce without tires, is that really superior to a Ford Fiesta with them, when you have an urgent need to go somewhere?
No, it's sitting in there in blocks. You know, it may impress your friends to show them the Rolls Royce sitting on blocks, and it looks pretty, but it goes nowhere. And if it cannot help you run errands, then it has failed its most basic task.
In today's exposition, I'd like to discuss a section of scripture where we see tears that are not coupled with true repentance. So please turn in your copy of God's Holy Word to Judges 2, and in Judges 2, we're gonna read verses one through five together.
Then the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bacchum, and said, I led you up from Egypt, and I 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, but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods 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. They called that name of the place Bacchum, and they sacrificed there to the Lord.
And when Joshua had dismissed the people, the children of Israel each went to his own inheritance to possess the land. Let's pray together. Dear Lord, I pray that you would be with me today, Lord, as I exposit your word, Lord, please bring your truth forth.
Lord, we all need to hear this truth. Pray that you would apply it to our lives, Lord, and help us to live like, live like, live for you. And Lord, seek to have true repentance that comes from the heart.
So when you look at these verses, covenant unfaithfulness, this was the chief sin that Jesus rebuked the Israelites for in this passage. Throughout the book of Judges, this is really a recurring theme, covenant unfaithfulness.
Men are unfaithful, men receive judgment for their sins, they cry out to God, and the Lord saves them because of his covenant love. Bacchum comes from the Hebrew word baka, which means to weep, to cry aloud, or to lament.
Now, we shouldn't confuse this with the term baka in Psalm 84. They're both derived from the same Hebrew word, which means weep or to weep. However, these verses allude to two separate places, so don't mix them up.
The first place that we're talking about today, it shows the unfruitful sorrow of man after sinning. Psalm 82 is different because in that text, we see God refreshes our souls with heavenly rain on our way to our eternal home.
So the first bacchum is what I want to focus on today. The Israelites named this place, they called it Weepers, or Place of Weeping, to commemorate this event. At first glance, it seems like a singular act of piety to rename the place in this manner.
They called the place Weepers. You know, surely God would be happy with this sign of devotion, right? We're calling it Weepers or Weeping. But, you know, if God was the false god that we see the Roman Catholics, the Buddhists, the Muslims, Hindus, or Orthodox churches, then this would be a worthy offering.
You know, false gods, because they're not real gods, they're impressed by showing offerings and they're impressed by false obedience. They cannot speak or hear. So a false god, proper worship for a false god is determined by the person worshiping them.
They want to protect their religious reputation. And so when they worship that false god, they're saying what I would want is this, therefore I will offer this worship to the false god. Our god, he's not like these idols of wood or stone.
As a spirit, our god desires spiritual gifts, such as a submissive will and an obedient heart. Well, let's consider the packaging on a gift. When you have a gift inside with packaging, the wrapping paper and bow, they protect the gift and they beautify the gift.
But without the gift, those external materials are useless without the gift. If you give someone a beautifully packaged gift and there's no present inside, what's gonna happen? That's a great way to enrage the person and potentially destroy the relationship.
So it is with God. God is not satisfied with your Christian bumper stickers, our wall art, and our t-shirts, right? That's not what God is looking for. Making social media posts about God and yet refusing to submit to his will is balkum to God.
He doesn't care about that. Naming your kids Christian names, that won't earn you points on the day of judgment. See, all these visible signs, they cry aloud to men, but they cry out for judgment to God if they're not coupled with a penitent or repentant heart.
You know, the owner of the Segway company, he died when his scooter ran off a trail in England. He actually was testing a new model and it ran off and killed him. You know, isn't that cruelly ironic, the owner of the company died from his own invention?
Instead of benefiting him, this invention actually cost him his life. And I don't know if he actually invented it, but he owned the company. How much worse is it though, when we use our life and daily blessings that God gives us to feign repentance and to mock his name?
How much worse is that than a Segway going off a cliff? You know, truly, we are the devil's children if emotions are used to cloak our sin and keep us from true repentance. When you see in the garden, when Satan came in the garden, Satan used an appeal to emotion in the garden, we call that pathos, that's the, I believe that's the Greek word for it, to successfully tempt Eve.
He said, what did he tell Eve? He said, follow your emotions, not God's word. When we look at Bacchum, we see a slightly different temptation. You know, it's tweaked a little, but it's not totally different.
What was the temptation in Bacchum? Satan said, show God elaborate public remorse instead of following his commands. Just show, make a show of it. You know, emotions went from being an idol, like in the Garden of Eden, to a false offering.
But either way, the end result was still the same.
What happened?
God's word was ignored and God's honor was trampled. True spiritual leadership is we instruct others, you must put God's interest before your own interest. That's true spiritual leadership. God before man is the order of creation.
God before man is the path of salvation. And God before man is heaven's final exclamation. You know, created order is also, and I looked at this, I said that this is the pattern for my outline. So in verses one through three, we're gonna see God's visitation, and verses four through five, we're gonna see Israel's lamentation.
So those are my two points. God's visitation, one through three, and four through five, we see Israel's lamentation. Let's read the first section again. The angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bacchum and said, I led you from Egypt, and I 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 drive them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods shall be a snare to you. So let's look first at God's visitation. Our passage says the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bacchum.
So who is the main protagonist or the main person in this chapter? It's the angel of the Lord. That's who we see first. Who is this person? Have you ever heard of the angel of the Lord? If you read the Old Testament, you'll see it a few times.
The angel of the Lord is no other than our triune God. Theologians have coined the terms theophany. That's to describe a physical manifestation of God in the Old Testament. You know, if you think of the Old Testament, can anyone forget God appearing to Moses as a bush of fire, right?
There's a theophany. What about, what a wondrous sight it would be to see God guiding Israel through the wilderness as a pillar of cloud and fire. There's different interpretations of that. Some say it's the Holy Spirit.
Some say God the Father. We don't know. But either way, that was an appearance of God. Joshua was visited by a man dressed for war shortly before the Battle of Jericho. So there's another appearance. In all these instances, God hid his majesty, so he shielded it so that men would not, we could look on him and not be consumed.
If God didn't shield his majesty from us, the crown of his creation, which is us, would be consumed quicker than a bush in the Arabian desert. That bush had to be preserved by God, and he preserves our life too, and he uses theophanies and christophanies to do that.
Now, while spotting a theophany is easy, determining which ones are a christophany is a little more difficult. As that name implies, a christophany is an appearance of the pre-incarnate Christ. So this is Christ before he was incarnate.
Most commentators, and I agree with them on this, I think the term angel of the Lord refers to the pre-incarnate Christ. You know, only one member of the Godhead took on flesh, just Jesus. So therefore, it seems reasonable that Jesus is the only member that would appear in the form of an angel.
You know, God the Father appears as a storm on Sinai. I tend to think in the burning bush, that was God the Father, although you could have different views there too. The Holy Spirit, God of the Israelites as pillars of cloud and fire.
You know, I think that might be the Holy Spirit there. But in this case, what the Old Testament saints saw was no angel, because Christ is not a created being. He's not created. Instead, what they saw was, they saw Christ in his heavenly glory.
You know, Peter and John saw something very similar during the Transfiguration. If you remember the Transfiguration, he became bright and glorious. They saw the glory that Jesus had from all time. And the disciples also saw this at the Ascension, as Jesus went away and ascended to heaven.
The Holy Spirit inspired them to use his designation because simultaneously it reveals and conceals Christ's majesty and purpose in the Old Testament. So, since the fullness of time had not come, we are given limited information in the Old Testament on the person and work of Christ.
They look at a shadow in the Old Testament. We see the full thing in the New. We see this principle articulated in chapter one of Peter's first epistle. He said, of this salvation, the prophets have inquired and searched carefully who prophesied the grace that would come to you.
And then here's the key part. Searching what, or what manner of time, the spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when he testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.
To them it was revealed, not to themselves, but to us, they were ministering the things which now have been reported to you. Through those who we have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which angels desire to look into.
So you see here, it's like the Old Testament writers, they were revealing it for us.
It wasn't for them.
They didn't fully understand everything. You know, do you get excited when you see an appearance of God in the Old Testament? I know I do. It's very exciting. But we must not forget that God visits us every day in the normal means of grace.
Consider verse 11 of the verse we just chapter in 1 Peter. It says, the spirit of in Christ inspired the men who wrote the pages of Holy Scripture. So when you read the Bible, it's hearing God's word.
And then the written page of the Bible has just as much authority than if God came down and told you through a theophany, or if Christ appeared in Christophany. The Holy Word is just as authoritative.
If that wasn't enough, verse 12 says that gospel preaching is another avenue that God uses to visit his people. Right, how many people say they long to be visited by an angel, they wanna see an angel, they wanna have an angel visit them, but they neglect to listen carefully to the preached word.
The gospel is so powerful, as Peter just said, that angels desire to be in our shoes so they can hear it. Have you ever seen movies or pictures where professors have covered an entire blackboard with complex looking equations?
And you're looking like, what does all this mean? It's just wall to wall of equations. You know, when you look at this, you're amazed and you're confused. You're like, what does that Greek symbol mean?
What does this sign mean? There's a lot of interesting stuff going on. This is how angels view the gospel of Christ. You see, the spirit enlightens men to understand the gospel, but it does not do the same thing for angels.
They cannot understand the gospel the way we can because they are merely God's servants and we are his adopted sons. God gave us the ability to understand it. Our text says, we see in the text that Jesus went up from Gilgal to Balcombe.
You know, scholars are not clear on the exact location for Balcombe, but there's several proposed locations and they're usually 18 to 22 miles northeast of Gilgal. So Gilgal is here, Balcombe is about 18 miles north.
This verse is analogically applied to our pre-incarnate savior. You know, Jesus does not need to go anywhere, right? He is everywhere, but in his spiritual presence. And Jesus' knowledge, unlike us, his knowledge is not limited by space and time.
Like I can only be one place at one time. Jesus' knowledge is not limited like that. Can you find a place in this world where like a single oxygen molecule is not touching your body? No, that's pretty much impossible in this world.
Now, if you go to outer space, perhaps, but there's always oxygen, even at the bottom of the sea in limited quantities. You know, it kind of sounds to me like Mission Impossible, but it's easier to do that in our world than it does to escape from the presence of Christ.
You cannot escape from Christ's presence. Even the word up is a condescension to our finite minds. You know, when we say we go up, we go up by increasing elevation, like climbing a mountain, or we go up a cardinal directions, up on a map, we head north.
But these things mean nothing to Jesus. Jesus doesn't need human references or scales to accurately locate his position in creation, right? There's no near or far with Christ. Imminency, the term imminency means God is equidistant from all parts of creation.
You know, David says this in the Psalms, where can I go to flee from your presence, and where can I go to hide? The answer is nowhere. If I descend to the bottom of the sea, you are there. If I go to Sheol, you are there.
God is equally present. While this may scare unbelievers, it's a great comfort to the Christian. And I actually have the clip here from Psalm 139, I'll read it again real quick. He says, where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say surely darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you.
See, Christ, he's not a respecter of places. Whether you're in the humblest cottage, or whether you're in the loftiest mansion, whether you're in the driest desert, or the fanciest tropical beach, they're all alike to him.
So why does the Spirit explicitly say that Jesus traveled, or this angel or traveled from Gilgal to Bochum, right? Why is that mentioned? So Gilgal does have spiritual significance. The book of Joshua lists several important events that took place at this location.
In Joshua's chapter four and five, we see that Gilgal was the location of, that was Israel's very first camp in the Promised Land, was at Gilgal, that was the first place. It also, so it marked the end of, think about it, 40 years of wilderness wanderings ended in Gilgal.
And that's the partial fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant as well, right? God promised Abraham, your descendants will receive Canaan. You see them starting to receive Canaan at Gilgal. While these are important events, and it was also a military base, sorry, let me go back to this, they used as a military base to launch their invasion to the cities of Ai and Jericho, which are both in southern Canaan, right across the Jordan.
Now, these are important events, but I believe the events of Joshua chapter five present the best explanation of why the Spirit put this here, and recorded our Lord's itinerary, if you will, like his traveling plan.
Let's read verses one through 12 together. So, Joshua five, one through 12. So it was when all the kings of the Amorites, who were on the west side of the Jordan, all the kings of the Canaanites were by the sea, heard the Lord dried up the waters of the Jordan from before the children of Israel, until they had crossed over, their heart melted, and there was no spirit in them any longer because of the children of Israel.
At that time, the Lord said to Joshua, make flint knives for yourselves, and circumcise the sons of Israel again a second time. So Joshua made flint knives for himself, and circumcised the sons of Israel up the hill of foreskins.
And this is the reason why Joshua circumcised them. All the people who came out of Egypt were males, who were males, rather, all of the men of war who had died in the wilderness journey after they had come out of Egypt, for all the people who had been circumcised had died, but all the people born in the wilderness on the way as they came to Egypt had not been circumcised.
For the children of Israel walked 40 years in the wilderness till all the people who were men of war who had come out of Egypt were consumed, because they did not obey the voice of the Lord, to whom the Lord swore that he would not show them the land which the Lord had sworn to their fathers that he would give them, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Then Joshua circumcised their sons whom he raised in their place, for they were uncircumcised because they had not been circumcised on the way. So it was when they had finished circumcising the people that they stayed in their places in the camp till they were healed.
And the Lord said to Joshua, this day I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. Therefore, the name of the place is called Gilgal to this day. Now the children of Israel camped in Gilgal, and they kept Passover on the 14th day of the month at twilight on the plains of Jericho.
And they ate of the produce of the land on the day after Passover on leavened bread, parched grain on the very same day. Then the manna ceased on the day after they had eaten the produce of the land, and the children of Israel no longer had manna, but they ate the food of the land of Canaan that year.
So as you see from these verses, Gilgal had immense spiritual significance to the Israelites. All the young men who were born in the wilderness were circumcised at Gilgal. Grumbling and refusing to invade Canaan, where they're not only the sins their parents committed, they had also, the parents didn't just decide to do that, they also refused to give their children the ceremonial sign of God's chosen people.
They disobeyed by not circumcising them while they were wandering for 40 years. Whether this lack of obedience, whether they were procrastinating it and putting it off, or whether it was outright rebellion, it's irrelevant.
Delayed obedience is rebellion against God. When God tells you to do something, you delay it, it's rebellion. Even as great a leader as Moses was not exempt from this sin. If you look back at Exodus 4, God was ready to kill Moses until his wife Zipporah intervened and circumcised their son.
Perhaps maybe the people had learned of Moses' history and were using this example as justification for their own sin. Now, just to be clear, circumcision saves no one. Just being circumcised saves you no more than being baptized.
But the parents' harmful example of disobedience, it set a pattern of rebellion that was harmful to their children. Well, the parents didn't circumcise me, so why would I follow God any closer? Like, your example will carry down to your kids.
Let this be a reminder to us that we need to be prompt in our obedience to God, prompt in apologizing for our sin. We must keep short accounts of God because your kids are watching, and the examples you set, they will follow.
You know, not doing this can wreak havoc on our lives and on future generations. Additionally, if you look at these verses, this probably jumped out at you because it did to me, we see Israel celebrated their first Passover in the Promised Land at Gilgal.
So their very first Passover is here. Their parents left Egypt during the Passover. So if you remember, they took off of Egypt during the Passover 40 years ago, and they entered Canaan celebrating that exact same feast.
So that was what they celebrated there. They left Egypt as slaves. They arrived in Canaan as conquerors. You know, imagine the excitement everyone must have felt. This is the first Passover in our new land the Lord is giving us.
Here it is. You know, God's promises and deliverances that are typified in the Lord's Supper, that were typified in the Passover and the Lord's Supper that we have today are now coming to pass. It's hard not to imagine these people being on a spiritual high as they celebrated the Passover in the new land.
Like they loudly proclaiming, I love God, look at us, he's given us these great blessings. When you consider that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of Passover, because Jesus is, he's the sacrificial lamb, it makes perfect sense that Jesus himself would personally rebuke the Israelites for their sin at Bacchum.
You know, Jesus' final meal before his passion, what was the last thing he did? He ate the Lord's Supper with his disciples. And currently, the Bible tells us that he's preparing an eternal feast for all of his saints in heaven.
His suffering on the cross is just merely the, you know, there's a word called interregnum. It means the period between two different reigns or two different eras. It's really that interregnum, that interpart between two feasts.
We have the Lord's Supper with his disciples and we have the great marriage feast of the lamb and everything else is in between there. Likewise, our very first physical communion on earth, when you take the Lord's Supper here, it's a foretaste of what?
The eternal supper of the lamb in mansions above. We must endure suffering and trial and hardships in between, but the crown bestowed by our Lord, that crown is worth every pang we receive from the cross.
Doubtless, so the Israelites, they were doubtless very eager to taste their food from Canaan. It's their first Passover, they're very eager to taste it. As a footnote, it is a footnote, but it's still important.
The author mentions that manna stopped falling on that final day of the Passover, so it was a transition period too. The manna stopped and they started eating the food of Canaan. See, since the promise had arrived, the wilderness sustenance the Lord had given them ceased.
See, God will not cease providing daily bread to us until we arrive on heaven's golden shore. Every day he pours stuff out on us and it will finally stop, we're in heaven,.
Because we won't need it anymore.
We'll have perfect communion with him, we won't need to be hungry, we won't need to be thirsty, we'll have the limitations of our physical body removed, we'll still have a physical body, we'll be glorified.
In that kingdom or in heaven, scarcity and hunger are no more. There's no scarcity or hunger in heaven. Eating is no longer necessary to sustain life, but it's an optional pleasure. In heaven, as saints in heaven, we are sustained with God's presence.
God's presence sustains us and we live for worship. Our meat will be to do the will at work of him who has loved us from before earthly time began. And if that sounds familiar, that's what Jesus said to his disciples.
My meat is to do the will of him who sent me. So at Gilgal, we see the Israelites, what are they doing? They're swearing individual and corporate fidelity to God. They're saying I as a person and me as a member of the nation of Israel are gonna obey God.
And how did they do that? They did it through two rites. They did it through circumcision and they did it through the Feast of the Passover. So for example, in our modern context, you might compare this to maybe being baptized and join the Lord's Supper on the same day, right?
The two sacraments we have. Now, compare the excitement of Gilgal to the sorrow of Bacchum. Like how steep was that drop off for the children of God? They went from the high of Gilgal to the low of Bacchum.
Let this be a warning that, you know, temporary spiritual highs, they can never replace daily progress in mortifying our sin. We must put our sin to death. We must seek to be sanctified. The sacraments are given to us, they're given to us to strengthen our faith.
But if you put your trust in the symbol itself, that's idolatry. Baptism does nothing without faith. The Lord's Supper does nothing without Christ. Not all, you know, Jesus's death is the true Passover and his resurrection saves us.
Our baptism does not save us. Not all who partake of the physical sign are spiritual sons and daughters of God. There are many people that have been baptized and have taken the Lord's Supper and where do they go?
To hell.
Those things will not save you. You know, Zwingli was one of the Swiss reformer. He was the very first Protestant to articulate there's a difference between the member of the visible church and the invisible church.
The visible church on earth is a mixed bunch. There's tares, there's wheat. And Zwingli was one of the first person to say, no, there is a difference between that. The Roman Catholic Church, in interest of church unity, they mixed it together.
Oh, there's one church. And well, yeah, there is one church. But in the church, there's the true church and there's the tares. So the visible church pledged their loyalty at Gilgal, but only members of the invisible church were truly sorry at Bochum.
There were doubtless true believers there. They were actually sorry, but most of them weren't. You remember the words in Revelation that Jesus gave to the church at Ephesus? He reproves them. He says, you've left your first love.
A Christian's first love is his purpose. Our purpose in life is to serve Christ. An unbeliever's first love is an order, right? That was my first love yesterday. I got a different first love today. Their love changes time and time again.
Christ is yesterday's news to false converts. You know, people get converted and they leave the Bible behind, and that's yesterday's news. But if you're a Christian, he's your only hope. How can he be yesterday's news if that's what we're staking our life on?
You know, how much quicker, in the parable of the soils, the seeds cast among the rocks and the weeds, they sprang up quick, really quick, but they withered equally quicker. And their rapid rise, the only thing that was quicker than their rapid rise was their equally swift fall, right?
The true seed, if you truly have Christ, you're gonna grow slower than a false convert, but you're the only one that's gonna produce fruit. The ones thrown among the rocks and the weeds will not produce fruit.
Only true Christians do. I think this quote, this quote I found online sums it up best, and it's an unknown quote, so I don't know who articulated it, but it said, saints grow more like oak trees than weeds.
They're slower than you would like, but if it's true growth, then it's stronger than you would expect. So as a Christian, we're growing up to be an oak tree. We're not gonna be a flash in the pan of weed that's here today, gone tomorrow.
So going back to the text, Jesus' visitation here, it's not without purpose, right? Jesus didn't just come up just to be there. He actually files charges against Israel at Bochum. So let's talk about what he said there.
Jesus said, I led you up from Egypt, and I brought you to the land of your fathers. Angels deliver messages from God, right? But leading and guiding the church, that's a prerogative of deity. So when Jesus says, I led you and I guided you, that's not an angel speaking.
He's saying, I did as God, as a member of the Godhead. This could be interpreted two ways. You could say Jesus is speaking for the unified Godhead or a second member of the Trinity. Theologians will usually classify these two options.
We talked about this in Sunday school today. Ontological is who the Trinity is. Economic is how they work. So they're one God, but they work in our salvation in different ways. I think in this passage, I think it's better to view Jesus as speaking for the Trinity, since the Holy Spirit is usually associated with the work of leading and guiding.
So Jesus is coming up and saying, I personally guided you from Egypt to where you are today. You know, imagine Jesus rebuking us for our transgressions in this manner, right? If he came to us today, what would he say?
He might say, I was incarnated in this world. I suffered and died to bring you to heaven. And yet you treat with kindness, the sins for which I died. Isn't this a sad tale if you were to come and speak this to us?
But how often in my own life, in our lives, do we do exactly that? Like we don't have Jesus coming to us in Christophany, but the word tells us we haven't, we've neglected Jesus. We've treated his blood as a common thing.
It's too common in our lives, unfortunately. And also, as if disobedience wasn't bad enough, they also showed disdain for God's covenant promises. They didn't really regard God's covenant promises as too important.
Rebellion and presumption. Rebellion and presumption, if it's handled like a nut and a bolt, they click together, right? Those that don't follow God's laws, what do those that always don't follow God's laws do?
They presume that God's warnings are idle threats. God's not gonna carry through. He won't do what he said. So rebellion and presumption, they go together like that. In the next, so when we go on to the next verse, the next words we see are very sobering.
Jesus says, he says, I promised never to break my covenant with you. So Christ is not just the angel of the Lord, he is also the angel of the covenants, right? Because here we see that Jesus, he has the same authority as the Father because they share one will.
So he's saying, I'm not just the angel of the Lord, I made a covenant with you, and yet you broke that covenant. So how does this relate to our previous sentence? I think you can make an argument that Jesus is building on the first clause where he said, I led you with a guiding hand, and now I promise never to break a covenant.
That's one way you could go. But he already mentioned his faithfulness in the previous verse, so it does seem a little repetitive to restate it again. I think this charge, honestly, is a direct reference to Israel's presumptuous behavior.
Delivered from the wilderness, the Israelites were like, we're delivered from the wilderness. You know, God either can't or won't. We're at the promised land. Do we really need God anymore? There was probably some presumptuous sin going on.
We've been delivered to the promised land. We don't need God, right? After all, you know, God promised Moses and the patriarchs that he would keep these promises. Like, he can't punish us. If you remember like how Agag the king, he walked happily to his death.
When Samuel called for him, he said, oh, surely the fear of death has passed. And then, of course, Samuel killed him on the spot. This, he said the death has passed. You know, how quickly the children of Israel did the exact same thing.
They put the warnings of God in the rear view mirror and said, that's passed. I don't have to worry about God's covenant, faithfulness, guiding hand. We're here in Canaan. Let's forget God. And they might have, you know, happily associated with the wicked because that was their sin.
They associated with the Canaanites. They fancifully thought, you know, God's rod probably can't reach us in Canaan or he doesn't care enough to discipline us. But how wrong they were. God is both bountiful in his mercies, but he's very creative in his judgments as well.
As well. When men test the patience of God, they do so at their own peril. I like what Richard Gernal said. He was a 16th century Puritan author. He said, talking about Sodom and Gomorrah, he said the inhabitants of this town invented a new kind of sin.
So God invented a new judgment on them. He rained down hell from above. So the disease of AIDS, for example, it's a direct judgment against men and women who had leaved the God-ordained order of marriage and burned in their lust for members of the same gender.
God rains down AIDS in them. Gay marriage is a wicked and corrupt covenant. It can't be a covenant because God has designed marriage as man and woman for life. Israel also made a covenant of corruption with the Canaanites, right?
They made a corrupt covenant as well. Christ continues this in verse two. He says, 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? So if you read these verses, we see two things. We see a negative prohibition and we see a positive command. So what are the Israelites ordered to do? First of all, they are not to make covenants with the Canaanites, that's the first thing.
The second of all, they are to destroy the false idols. Baal and Asherah were the chief gods of the Canaanites. And if you read the Old Testament, you'll see that very quickly. And their worship involved child sacrifice and it involved temple prostitution by both sexes.
So there were male and female prostitutes at these temples. Sexual morality was offered to these gods as worship in hopes that the gods would grant fertility through offspring and through higher crop yields.
People literally practiced sexual morality as a service to their gods. You know, even though they saw these things, the Israelites looked at the Canaanites and said, you know what, those people will make excellent neighbors.
That was their thought. And you know, God rescued them from their enemies in the wilderness. How many times did he do that? And what did they do when they entered Canaan? As soon as they entered Canaan, they promptly made peace with God's enemies.
So that's how they repay God. You took care of our enemies in the wilderness, we'll make peace with your enemies. This really is ingratitude at its finest. But sadly, in our lives, we're no better than the Israelites.
How many times does God deliver us from something and we go promptly and make peace with our sins? God's greatest judgment really is, is giving carnal man what he desires, right? When he gives us what we desire in our carnal self, that's our greatest judgment.
You know, obeying God, on the flip side, is the surest way to deliver your soul from harm. So the Israelites said, we would like, we want the company of idolaters and we'll tolerate demon worship. So what did Christ give them?
Christ gave them what they desired. Listen to the curse he pronounces. That's the next part of this verse. He says, therefore, I also said, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall be thorns in your side and their God shall be a snare to you.
So that was the first there. You know, thorns, they stab and they slash. I have a rose bush in my front yard. Every time I do my bed, I get stabbed by it. And snares suffocate. They suffocate or bind, or pull fast on your leg.
Idolatry, idolatry has very real physical consequences and very real spiritual consequences. I kind of wonder if maybe Solomon had this account in mind when he penned Proverbs 22 five. It says, thorns and snares are the way of perverse, but he who guards his soul will be far from them.
If you make God's enemies your friends, if you do this, be warned that God will allow those friends to destroy your soul. How often, like I think of this in my own life, how often do I make peace with the lust that remain inside my heart?
Like in the recesses and nooks of my own heart, I'm gonna make peace with that lust. I'm gonna keep on doing that sin. Let me hide that one from the light of God's presence. You know, as a Christian, your duty is not to make peace with your sins.
You are to ruthlessly hunt them down. You are to kill out, kill your fleshly inclinations, your wicked thoughts, and your treasured vices. Those sins that are nearest and dearest to you are the ones you should go after first.
You know, most people leave the things, like, well, that's a good thing, let's save this for last. No, the sins you like the most are the ones you should go after first because those are the ones that are the most dangerous to you.
If you haven't bled in the fight against sin, you haven't really begun to fight.
That's just a fact.
The angel of the Lord himself, or Jesus, has given us the ultimate example. Hebrews says, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross, he despised the shame, and he has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discourage in your souls. And then here's the clincher, the most important verse. You have not yet resisted to bloodshed striving against sin, right?
That is the goal, strive to bloodshed. This means spill your physical blood, but you get the idea, it's a matter of speaking, it's allegorical. If we presume on God's covenant of grace and we continue living in God's, in continued disobedience, God will discipline us.
That's what happens, and that's a kind thing, a loving thing as a Christian, that the Lord would discipline us. Like a loving father, God will take that rod and he'll use the rod to guide us back onto the path.
So you straight off enter a path, get back onto it. So let's return to Hebrews 12 and let's start, let's pick up where we left off in verse five. It says, and have you forgotten the exhortation which he speaks to you as sons?
He says, my sons do not despise the chasing of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens, and he scourges, what? Every son whom he receives. This is what the Lord does to one he loves.
If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But, by contrast, if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
So God loves us and so he chastens us. He's gonna bring us back on the path. He gives us short-term pain and suffering for long-term gain of our souls. Under the covenant of grace, if you think about it, we're New Testament believers.
We live under the covenant of grace. We have greater promises than the Old Testament nation of Israel did under the old covenant of works. The corporate promises of physical blessings, back in those days, they were promised, you're gonna have Canaan.
And that was a promise given to ethnic Israelites under the old covenant. In the New Testament, what's the equivalent to that? Well, if you look at the New Testament, you see that our new covenant blessings are inheritance in Mount Zion.
And these new covenant blessings are not just given to one ethnic group, like it was the Jews, it's given to every person of every nation among the world. I'm not Jewish. So if the Lord hadn't expanded the covenant, I would not be in it.
So how thankful I am the covenant's been expanded. Adoption of the new covenant is individual, not corporate. Like God in the old covenant, he adopted the nation of Israel. But in the new covenant, if you believe in Christ, you are the new Israel.
Thus we see circumcision in the Old Testament was replaced with baptism in the New Testament. And not just baptism of anyone, but believers baptism, because we baptize believers because that's who repents and puts their faith in Christ.
You know, Israel is typified in the Old Testament. God calls Israel his adopted son. But in the New Testament, if you are a true believer, every true believer is a son. You're not just son, you don't have sonhood because you're part of a nation.
You have direct sonhood. And you're a member of the true Israel of God. You know, so using these things, how should we learn from the Old Testament Israelites? Well, we can learn from, let's see their response.
Let's return to verse four. So verse four says this. 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. They called the name of that place Bacchum and they sacrificed there to the Lord.
And when Joshua dismissed the people, the children of Israel, when each to his own inheritance possessed the land. So this is the second point we come to is Israel's lamentation. I've spent most of my time on God's words.
So I want to spend the remaining time on Israel's response. So what was the attitude of God's people here? What attitude do we see? It says in verse four, they lifted up their voices and wept.
They didn't weep individually,.
They wept corporately as a group all together. Now this seems very pious, but it's important to remember that hypocrites eagerly perform public religious duties. What does Matthew's gospel say in chapter six?
It says, take heed you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your father in heaven. That's Matthew six, one and two. So the phrases lift up their voice is another clue here that the weeping was not done quietly.
It was wailing loudly to the Lord. They begged his forgiveness, Lord, please forgive us. Now tears often accompany true repentance, but it's important to remember that tears alone are not guarantees of true repentance.
Just because you cry doesn't mean you're sorry. True tears bring renewal to the soul as rain refreshes and sustains the earth. But false tears, false tears are like salt water. You know what happens if you pour salt water on a plant?
It'll kill it. If you try to give your dog salt water, eventually kill your dog too, because salt water, that's what false tears are like, right? But the other people may be impressed by outbursts of sadness.
You may impress me, you may impress your friends or your parents, but God, it means nothing to him without action. Let's hear what God says to the prophet Joel. God says this in Joel 2. Now therefore says the Lord, turn to me with all your heart, with fasting, your weeping, and with mourning.
So rend your hearts and not your garments. You see the stress on the outward and the inward. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful. Slow to anger and of great kindness, and he relents from doing harm.
Who knows if he will turn and relent and leave a blessing behind him. So note that turning to God with all our heart must perceive the outward signs of contrition, right? Like we must turn to God first inwardly and then outwardly.
Because when we really sin against God, when you sin against God, you're departing from God. So repentance means first turning back to God. You know, fasting, weeping, mourning, they're worthless. If they're done to serve our flesh, the devil, there's no benefit.
You know, crocodile tears, you may have heard this expression before. He cried crocodile tears. That's a very common expression, and it's used to denote hypocritical sorrow. That guy had crocodile tears, he wasn't sorry.
You know, animals like crocodiles, when they eat a lot of other animals, they have a lot of excess salt in their body. And so to excrete or to put out the excess salt, they cry. So it's not like it's crying for its victims, it's crying to get rid of the salt from its victims.
So unbelievers mourn and weep as well. But see, in unbelievers, it brings no spiritual benefits.
Why?
Because it's not united with true repentance. You know, weeping without repentance is worthless. They may avenge or show tears because they regret the consequences of sin, everyone regrets sin's consequences, or they're trying to impress others.
For an example of the first, let's consider the story of Esau. You know, if Esau sold his birthright, we see in Hebrews 12, 16, let's turn to Hebrews 12, 16 and read this. It said, lest there be any fornicator or profane person like Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright, for you know that afterwards, when he would inherit his blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
So let's take a step back. How is Esau's character described in these verses? What does it describe? It says he's a fornicator and a profane person, which means two things. He's got no regard for the first table of God's laws, that's a profane person, and he's got no regard for the second table either.
The Baptist catechism gives an excellent question and answer here on what are the different ways that people break the third commandment. The third commandment forbids all profaning, abusing of anything whereby God makes himself known.
So it's not just taking the God's name in vain. It's anything that God gives to you, if you take it in vain, you're profaning it. So how did Esau profane God's promise? Well, Esau used God's promise like a common thing.
He used it as a bargaining chip to get some stew. Here's my bargaining chip, give me the stew back, right? God returns this favor, I forget which prophet it is, but in one of the minor prophets, God says Edom's territory is a place where I'm gonna drop my shoes.
In Jewish culture, shoes were very dirty. They would take your shoes off. He said, I'm gonna drop my shoes there. So you see, God returns the favor. So after Jacob deceived Esau out of the birthright, Esau saw it with tears, right?
Now, these weren't heavenly tears. The Bible, it's clear here that these weren't because he was chiefly concerned for his own prosperity.
If you look at the thing,.
It says he would have inherited the blessing. That was the thing. He loved God for his gifts, but not for his person. The usage of the Greek word here, topon, which is place and place of repentance is interesting.
Generally, the noun here, it says where he sought a place of repentance. Generally, that noun is used in the New Testament to describe actual places, like Golgotha, right, where Jesus is crucified, the Garden of Gethsemane,.
The tomb.
So did Esau substitute a place of weeping, like Bacchum, in the Old Testament for a truly broken heart? We don't know, but it's interesting if he sought a place of repentance for the blessing, not for the God, not for the God of the blessing.
This kind of reminds me of the woman at the well, too. Remember when she came up to Jesus? What was she telling Jesus when she came up to him? She thought God would only accept worship if the person was in the right location.
She said, we worship here in Mount Gerizim, that's the Samaritans' worship. You worship there in Jerusalem, which is also a mountain, Mount Moriah. What did Jesus, how did he reply back to her? Is God concerned where you worship?
No, he said, God accepts those who worship him in spirit and truth, right? And this same principle holds true for repentance. See, true repentance must be offered to God through the Holy Spirit, or it will not be acceptable.
You must offer repentance through the Holy Spirit. God accepts our repentance as we offer it that way. I like how John Bunyan summarized this. He's one of my favorite writers. He says, the difference between true and false repentance is this.
The man who truly repents, he cries out against his heart, while the one that doesn't is like Eve. She cries out against the serpent or something else, right? So that's the true repentance. You cry out, you say, woe is my heart, where in your false repentance, the serpent, the woman, everything else is to blame.
The final verse in this section, verse five, we see that Israel left Bochum and returned to their own tents. So what's absent in this text? A lot of times you learn a lot from scripture by like not just what's there, but what's missing.
You notice it's conspicuously absent is this. It never says God accepted their sorrow. It didn't say God accepted it, just as they went to their own tents. You know, why didn't they resume killing the remaining Canaanites and kicking them out of the promised land?
God told them what to do. They went to their tents and cried about it, but it didn't translate to action. They were satisfied with their show of remorse and they didn't follow through. If you go down further in the same chapter, we see that their children were influenced to idol worship and intermarriage by the remaining Canaanites.
So when God judges you, if you meekly accept God's judgments but you don't couple it with renewed effort to do God's will, it's gonna give you no spiritual benefit. There's no benefit to that. When Eli was told by the Lord, you remember he said, I'm gonna destroy your sons for their immorality?
What did Eli do? He accepted that decision. Oh, let it be as the Lord says. Why didn't he depose his sons? He was a high priest. He could have said, you know what? The Lord has said you're wanting, kick you out of the priesthood.
You're no longer a priest, God will deal with you. But see, Eli, he accepted God's rebuke but he didn't really follow through with it. He didn't follow through and say, you're gone. I remove you as priest.
As a high priest, he had the authority to do this but his heart was not willing. He probably didn't want to offend his sons or who knows what he was thinking. Submission without obedience is balkum to God.
You must not submit to God without following through on obedience. God hates that. Let's talk about another example here. Hezekiah, when the Babylonian envoys came to Hezekiah, he showed them all his wealth.
He was being prideful there. And that brought a censure from God through Isaiah the prophet. Isaiah said, your descendants will be taken into captivity and all those great treasures you boasted about will go to Babylon.
Well, Hezekiah accepted the news gladly. He was happy. Why was he happy? Well, it's gonna occur after I'm long gone. I'm fine with that. But being glad that God will defer judgment, it shows two things in a person's life.
It shows A, selfishness, and it also shows a disregard for God's glory. This kind of gladness is balkum to God. If you are glad about his judgment, well, it comes in the future, I'm gonna miss it. God hates that too.
We can have a range of seemingly righteous emotions but without the sanctifying obedience that comes with it, your life is stuck in neutral, like a car stuck in neutral. God's visitation, it should produce alignment and say, Lord, here's my heart, here's my mind.
Lord, align them in line with your word. That's what we wanna see. If we have split affections, the fault's with us. It's not God's fault our affections are split.
It's our fault.
We must cry with David, the man after God's own heart. What did David say? He said, unite my heart to fear thy name. Weeping must be united with turning away from sin if we desire to grow more like Christ.
Let's consider a quick example. If Jesus had merely wept in the garden and that was a precursor and then he turned away from the cross, would his weeping have benefited us at all? It would have done us no good.
Wouldn't this be the equivalent of telling a desperate soul to be warmed and be filled, to weep before the cross and then leave the cross? But thanks be to God, that was not the case. When you look at Jesus, the perfect example, Jesus paired perfect obedience with tearful emotions and faithfully carried out the great work of our redemption.
He was the best example of this. Bringing this sermon full circle, I wanna close it with a poem that contains the lives of Alexander the Great or contrast the lives of Alexander the Great with Jesus, the suffering servant.
Did you know that both of them died at 33? Alexander the Great died at 33, Jesus died at 33. That's very interesting. Very, very famous men in their own way. But let's listen to this. So that historical fact is a good staging ground for this.
I've heard this poem before. I looked it up. It's by a man called Charles Ross Weed. But here's how it goes. It says, Jesus and Alexander both died at 33. One lived and died for self, one died for you and me.
The Greek died on a throne, the Jew died on a cross. One life's triumph scene, the other was a loss. One led vast armies' force, the other walked alone. One shed a whole world's blood, the other gave his own.
One won the world in life and lost it all in death. The other lost his life to win the whole world's faith. Jesus and Alexander died at 33. One died in Babylon and one on Calvary. One gained all for self and one himself he gave.
One conquered every throne, the other every grave. The one made himself God, the God made himself less. The one lived but to blast, the other but to bless. When died the Greek, forever fell his throne of swords.
But Jesus died to live forever, Lord of lords. Jesus and Alexander both died at 33. The Greek made all men slaves, the Jew made all men free. One built a throne of blood, the other built on love. The one was born from earth, the other from above.
One won all this earth to lose all earth and heaven. The other gave up all, that all to him be given. The Greek forever died, the Jew forever lives. He loses all who gets and he gains all things he gives.
And there you see the difference between Alexander the Great's sorrow and Jesus' sorrow. There's a worldly sorrow that leads to death and there's a sorrow of Jesus that leads to life and of course he didn't have sin but you know, seek this day to have sorrow like Jesus would and then that's my final prayer for you.
Please bow your heads and pray with me. Dear Lord, I pray that you would be with us to this day or help us not to have false weaving like the Valley of Bochum, like Bochum Lord but that we'd have true repentance paired with emotions Lord that would love you.
Lord we know we have imperfect, we're imperfect here Lord on this earth and our love for you flickers like a candle so often that you just steady us Lord, give us fuel, be the fire for us and help us go forth this week with these truths in mind.
That you would bless us today, Christ's name, amen.