Antoine Brown at MLEFC

We're all God's children, and we are saved by grace through faith.

We are called together on this Lord's Day to worship. So let's not hesitate, and let's continue in our worship, amen.

Before we get started, I'd just like to share a quick story. In the 1980s, the

National Park Service noticed that the Lincoln Memorial was slowly crumbling and deteriorating.

Why? Part of the problem was water, both rainwater and cleaning water.

Park Service crews were given the great marble statue of Abraham Lincoln and adjacent walls and floors a daily scrubbing, according to the

Associated Press. But why were they cleaning the Lincoln Memorial so often? Because of the huge mess left each day by sparrows and starlings.

But why were there so many sparrows and starlings attracted to the Lincoln Memorial? Because of spiders.

Spiders drew them. But why were there so many spiders making their home in the Lincoln Memorial?

Because of midges, small -winged insects that breed in the muddy flats of the nearby

Potomac River. Midges swarm into the air at dusk for mating, and when they did, they were drawn to the huge lights illuminating the memorial.

The midges would smash into the limestone walls, and their protein remains drew spiders, which drew the sparrows and the starlings, which caused the mess, which caused the

Park Service crews to clean every day, which brought about extra water, which caused erosion.

Why was the Lincoln Memorial eroding? Because of the tiny midge. But you wouldn't find out until you asked the question why four times.

The title for my sermon today, I would like it to be, A Heart Bent on Defiance Leads to Spiritual Decay.

A Heart Bent on Defiance Leads to Spiritual Decay.

And for a text, you can turn to Judges 2125.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you right now, and we thank you,

Lord, that we can come into your house, house that's called by your name, this house that is established for you and for worship.

Father, just to give your name praise, just to be gathered with the saints, not forsaking ourselves together, but being encouraged,

Lord, by the coming out ones, ones who are being called by your name, who have been saved,

Lord, who have been translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of your dear son.

Father, we are here. We are the called out ones. We are the ones who have received grace.

We are the ones who have received faith. We are the ones who are part of your body.

Lord, we are the trophies of your mercy and your compassion for all ages,

Lord. So, Father, thank you for salvation. Thank you for deliverance.

Thank you for calling us by name when we were yet sinners, when we were impotent and weak and could not change our condition.

We thank you for your lavish grace and your precious love,

Father, that you have poured out upon us. So, Lord, as we are assembled here today, Lord, just to celebrate this

Lord's Day, just to worship, lift your name high, sing praises to your name. We ask that the ministry of your word would go forth.

Also, the ministry of your spirit and both, Father, would be at work in our hearts as we look into the mirror of your word.

Father, encourage us, strengthen us, help us to see you more fully, help us to get a full knowledge, a full understanding, so that grace can be multiplied in our lives through this knowledge.

Let this knowledge not just stay in our head, but let it be translated into our lives, how we live for you,

Father. Let our lips and our lives be in accord to who you are.

So, Father, glorify yourself in our midst. We thank you for your word. We thank you that you have called us here today for worship.

Magnify yourself. In Jesus Christ's name we pray, amen. So again, the title for our sermon is going to be

A Heart Bent on Defiance, leads to a life of spiritual decay.

The text says, in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

Some say the book of Judges can be called a book of failure. It's a book about great potential and also even greater devastation.

It's about potential. The potential is related to the relationship that Israel has with God.

And we know that God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly all that we can think and imagine.

And he already demonstrated for them his power.

He's taken them from Egypt and now they're in the long -awaited promised land.

That's power. They had no ability or might to deliver themselves, but God did that by his strong right hand, by his hand of deliverance.

Amen? He did that. So it's a book about great potential because they're in the land and they've waited and prayed for a very long time to be in the land.

But it's also a book about great devastation because even though potential was before them, they wandered and floundered and lost in devastation.

See they were in the land, but they didn't fully occupy the land.

As God's people, we live in a dual reality of standing and state. We have a standing with God and we have a state.

A standing relates to the believer's position. We're in Christ.

We're in Christ. Based on his work and his glorious grace.

So we have a position. We're in Christ. Christ's righteousness has been imputed to us.

It's been given to our account and we are made right with God by our faith.

So my standing, your standing today as brothers and sisters, as the believing ones, as the called out ones, your standing today is okay.

You've been justified by your faith based upon the finished work of Jesus Christ, mainly his death, burial, and resurrection.

You're okay with God today. That's our standing. Nothing can change that.

Great potential. But we also have a state and the state relates to the believer's earthly existence in this physical body.

It is what the Bible refers to as our walk. So sometimes our standing and our state can look a little inconsistent.

Oh, amen. Sometimes what comes out of your mouth may not come out of your life.

Amen again. And as we look into this book, this sermon is a cursory look at the book of Judges.

I'm not going to go through all 21 chapters before you today. I only have 30 minutes.

It's impossible to do that. If you want me to, because I'm ready.

But it's a cursory look at the book. And so we're going to see

Israel's state and standing and how they're fluctuating between these two realities.

So when you look into the book of Judges, it's these three movements.

It's these three blocks that could really separate the story, the main story.

So the book of Judges, you can see it in the first part. You can see the first part talks about from Joshua to Judges.

The second part is conquest to carnality. And the last part is deliverance to depravity.

I'll say those three again. Joshua to Judges, conquest to carnality, and deliverance to depravity.

As we move from Israel being under the leadership of Joshua, crossing over the

Jordan, entering into the long awaited promised land, the land flown with milk and honey, which symbolizes abundance, prosperity, and spiritual warfare.

I don't want to minimize that. Crossing the Jordan wasn't a time for rest.

There were some people in that land that weren't ready to give up their land. But God was going before them.

He already made it possible for them to be in the land. And he was going to, if you will, eliminate the opposition.

Again, there were people in the land that weren't ready to give it up. They didn't get the memo.

God gave Israel the memo. This is your land. I'm going before you.

It goes from there, here, and here, and here. Go get it, tiger. I'm with you.

It's yours. Legally, it's yours. Literally, we're going to see a difference.

So this land, again, it symbolizes abundance. It's a land flown with milk and honey.

It's rich. It's full of God's fatness, but also symbolizes warfare.

The political structure of Judges is not highly centralized, meaning, again, we have

Moses. We have Joshua. Joshua is now off the scene.

And now we have these tribes that are trying to make sense of what they heard, what was told them.

And it was actually 12 judges in the Book of Judges that led these military campaigns in this time period.

While Joshua dealt with Israel as a nation acting in unity, Judges tends to deal with Israel's tribes independently, with each tribe seeking to maintain its sovereignty, thus describing a decentralized period in Israel's history.

See, in Joshua, there is freedom. In Judges, there's captivity.

In Joshua, there's progress onward. In Judges, there's decay backwards.

In Joshua, the people's heart was, far be it from us that we should forsake the

Lord and serve other gods. But in Judges, the hearts of the people were, they did evil in the sight of the

Lord. And they forsook the Lord their God and served the Baals and Ashtoreths.

You see, there's a contrast happening here. They're in the land. They're in the land.

They wanted it. They cried out for it. Deliver us from our oppressors. Right?

They crossed the Red Sea mightily. They got to the Jordan.

They had to take a step of faith. OK, send the priests out there. And right soon, that big toe hits that water.

I'm going to send you across the Jordan. Excuse the language.

Ain't no big toe strong enough to divide some water. OK? That was

God's power on display. I'm going before you.

I'm going before you. You see, I often say that God didn't give

Israel or give the church necessarily rules to live by to get saved.

But on the contrary, he delivers you powerfully. And then he says, now that you're mine, now that you see my might, now that you know who

I am, the God of all heaven, the God of all power, here's some rules to live by.

So he captures you. He captures your heart. He saves you spiritually.

Then he says, love me. Walk with me by obeying these rules.

But again, we see in the beginning chapters of Judges, we see a lot happening.

The people are not happy. Just because you're married, how can

I say this? So I'll be careful here. You could be unhappy in your marriage.

It doesn't make you unmarried. It just makes you miserably married, right?

The children of Israel are in the land, but they were miserable. They were miserable, man.

They were suffering. They were chasing after everything, right? They were in the world and living like the world.

And nothing was satisfying them. They kept seeking after other gods, right?

You know how that is in your life. The Lord's good. You've seen him at work.

You've seen him provide. You've seen him save you. Sometimes, as parents in our life, we were just as dry as the world.

We're just as ashy as the world. And I've been there. I'll be the first to tell you I've been there.

I've been in some droughts, some dry places in my faith where God has rebuked me, chastised me, and brought me back with his love.

I'm talking after conversion. So you're going to see in this book, there's this seven, it's like seven stages that they go through, right?

So we go from Joshua to Judges. Then we go from Conquest to Carnality.

The Book of Judges connects the promise of conquest of Joshua to the pervasive carnality of 1

Samuel. The Book of Judges also sets the stage for the Book of Ruth, right?

Again, just look on the time frame. They're marching in.

They're in the land. And they're here for 300 years, just like a fish out of water, not knowing what to do, who to serve, right?

And they're just flopping around, flopping around, flopping around, right? 300 years.

But then out from there, you get Ruth, you get 1

Samuel, and it sets the stages for what comes next. Because they were not faithful to their king, who wanted to be their god and king, and they got caught up in their own reasoning.

Started doing things in their own eyes that they thought was right. So Judges sets the stage for Ruth.

And in the Book of Ruth, it begins like this. During the time of the Judges, there was a famine in the land.

Now, any good Bible student, right, anybody who's just partially familiar with the

Old Testament knows that famine is not a good thing. Famine and Israel should not go together.

Because famine means judgment. It means judgment. If you got set in Deuteronomy and Exodus before they got there, hey, you keep my word, you're going to be having it made in the shade, right?

It's a bright future before you. But if you get over here, and don't keep my word, and don't obey my word, and don't honor me from your heart, it's not going to be easy for you.

Matter of fact, I'm going to be your worst enemy. I'm going to chastise you.

I'm going to use other nations to chastise you. And they're going to be my hand of discipline.

And they're going to beat you up so bad that you're going to call out for me. And when you call out for me,

I'm going to come and save you. That's what we see here in this second period between conquest and carnality.

Judges deals with the failures of Israel during the time of the theocracy. Before Moses died,

God selected Joshua to be Israel's leader. But when Joshua died, there was no provision

Somebody say no provision. There was no provision made for a leader. Once Israel were made gods on people, received the law, and was given the land,

God wanted to be Israel's king. He wanted to have full rule over them.

Theocracy, God's rule, right? God wanted to just be their king, be their supreme leader.

He earned that. He delivered them, brought him to himself.

They are his people. He had the right to be their king. They didn't want it, right?

They fought hard.

They did not have soft, tender hearts. God himself wanted to be their supreme ruler.

God's desire was to be both Israel's god and king.

As Israel's king, they would be under God's rule, God's theocracy. Judges portrays the tribes of Israel in full rebellion to God's authority and God's total reign.

In short, we see Israel's heart of partial obedience scream loud of complete disobedience.

See, we see the same thing with Saul, right? You guys are familiar with that.

He said, kill all the Millikites. Don't spare nothing. Got you, Samuel.

Go take care of this light work. Saul goes out there, defeats the

Millikites. But what did he do? I got a bright idea. I'm going to save some of this stuff.

I'm going to make a sacrifice to the Lord. It's great. I'm going to add something to the instructions of God.

He did. He added something to the instructions of God. Samuel's walking up.

God sent Samuel. He hears some sheep bleeping in the back. He's like, what is going on?

I told this dude to kill everything, right? And he walks up to Saul.

And Saul gets the worst news of his life. He says, you have outwardly obeyed me, but inwardly, your heart is far from me.

You have partially obeyed me, which you have fully disobeyed me. I'm rejecting you today.

I'm rejecting you. Israel, they went from conquest to carnality.

And they were being defeated time after time after time. I'm going to read this verse.

It's in Psalms. Turn with me. Psalm 106, 34 through 46.

Psalm 106, 34 to 46. Psalm 106, 34 reads as following.

Israel failed to destroy the nations in the land as the Lord had commanded them.

Instead, they mingled among the pagans and adopted their evil customs.

They worshipped their idols, which led to their downfall. They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to demons.

They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, by sacrificing them to the idols of Canaan.

They polluted the land with murder. They defiled themselves by their evil deeds.

And their love of idols was idolatry in the Lord's sight. This is why the

Lord's anger burned against his people. And he had whored his own special possession.

He handed them over to the pagan nations. And they were ruled by those who hated them.

Their enemies crushed them and brought them under cruel power. Again and again, he,

God, rescued them. And they chose to rebel against him. And they were finally destroyed by their sins.

Even so, he pitied them in their distress. And he listened to their cries. And he remembered his covenant with them and relented because of his unfailing love.

Last verse. He even caused their captors to treat them with wow.

That's, that could sum up the Book of Judges. That is exactly what we see from Chapter 1 to Chapter 21 in the

Book of Judges. So, we move from Joshua to Judges to Conquest to Canaan.

Oh, and this is a little tab of information. When you read the Book of Judges chapters, it's in your notes.

The middle part of the book is actually the end because it gives you the particulars of their rebellion.

But 17 through 21 should actually come in the middle of the book.

When you look at the book and you study the book, it's actually the, in our

English translation and in our American Bible we have before us, 17 to 21 tells the story of what really happens in the middle.

And the middle is actually the end. Okay? Just put that on your shelf for later. The last movement.

Deliverance to depravity. Israel went from hero status to zero standing.

They went from having a bright promising future to the dark days of failure.

They allowed the midges of defiance to erode their faithfulness to God.

Israel went from living with the Canaanites to living like the Canaanites. In other words, they were sleeping with the enemy.

People think that the Book of Judges should not be preached from the pulpit. There's actually scholars, two of them

I ran across, that actually say that the Book of Judges should not be preached from the pulpit because of its many references to sex and violence.

And I say, when the pulpit stops judging sin, sin will be tolerated.

And when objective morality isn't the standard, the pew will have subjective morality.

If the pulpit starts acting funny, the pews will follow. We need a standard.

God has given us a standard. No matter how hard it is or how hard it sounds, remember, it's not us who are trying to achieve it.

We are loving him in faithful obedience and he gives us the power and the enablement to do so.

We're not doing it in our own strength. Amen? I'm gonna give you a comforter.

The paraclete, the helper, who enables us, he's the extension cord of power that connects us to that access, to that, he's the power that we have to live rightly before our

God. Israel compromised on what they thought were small concerns of faith and practice.

Matters they probably considered well into the gray areas to do with things, to do things their way rather than God's way.

You see, the larger we make the gray areas of the Bible, the greater the compromise we will make in our lives.

If you start pushing a lot of stuff, that's a gray area, that's a gray area, that's a gray area,

God's silent in that area, we can do what we want. When you start pushing large teachings and truths and doctrines and topics into the gray area, it's gonna show up in your life.

And that's what Israel, they were doing. They were pushing large commands and instructions into the gray.

Once we compromise, the process of sin has commenced and godly character, which is so precious to God, begins to erode, opening the way for sin on a larger scale.

The danger of such reasoning is that small compromises weakens character.

And over time, they lead to major sins. Personal story,

Antoine, 13. Antoine starts smoking cigarettes. Fast forward,

Antoine, 16, 17. Starts dabbling in drugs. Fast forward, that hook is so far in my mouth that I can't get off, right?

The old frog analogy, put a frog in hot water, what's gonna happen? It's gonna jump out.

You heard this before, right? But you want that frog to be cooked, put him on a nice pot of hot and cold water, put on some mild heat, he's fine.

It's cold in here, it's comfortable, right? It gets a little warm for him, right?

It gets a little warmer, it's a little warmer. He's like, whoa, arthritis is sitting in a something, man,

I can't move as much, right? And all of a sudden, you got yourself a nice cooked frog.

He's been compromised, right? He's been compromised. You know, rat poison is 99 % edible.

Did you guys know that? It's the 1 % in rat food that will kill you.

99 versus one. In the financial world, or you wanna say my eagles are 99 % favorites over the giants,

I'm taking the eagles all day. But with truth, you start playing with truth and God's word and compromising it and pushing it into the gray areas of your life, there will be problems.

Whatever you sow to the flesh, of the flesh you will reap. Whatever you sow to the spirit, of the spirit you will reap.

God is never mocked, right? So, key observations.

Five times the phrase Israel did evil in the

Lord's sight appears. Five times throughout this whole book, right? With the coupling verse,

Israel was in great distress. So you have this phrase. You have

A, Israel did evil, the coupling saying they were in great distress. Did evil in distress, did evil in distress.

You see this five times. Sin is a sticky and a monster that is never satisfied.

Israel went from wrong choices to terrible consequences to eventually crying out for help.

Israel failed in the conquest of the land due to their sins, plural.

I want you to get this. Israel failed in their conquest due to their sins, plural, to trust

God, singular. The fruit of their sins resulted in strongholds in the land and their lives resulted in death.

Israel went from victors to victims, from champs to chumps. They wasted their lives on cheap imitations and empty counterfeits and spent all they had on what could not satisfy the longing of the soul.

Israel failed to fully occupy the land of promise, not because of God's ability to provide, but because of Israel's inability in their faithfulness.

Sometimes we say, I want more of God. And that could be so real and so alive in our hearts, but I think we should look at it this way.

It's not so much that we want more of God, but God wants more of us, right?

God wants more of us, right? And so God tells us to work out our soul's salvation with fear and trembling, for it is him to work in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

So it's God in you, it's God. And as we recognize that still small voice, as we recognize that truth, it's

God, as we surrender and submit to that thing, it's God working in and through us.

We're just an empty glove. God's the hand and the power in that thing to do the work.

When you start thinking you're the power, you're gonna trip, stumble, and fail, because it's too hard, you need the power of God.

So Israel went from wrong choices to terrible consequences to eventually crying out for help.

Israel failed to fully occupy the land of promise, I said that, not because of their ability, but because of their unfaithfulness, right?

God delivers his people, he delivers his people to develop his people, to bring them into destiny.

God saved us, he delivered us, and now he's developing us, right?

Sanctification, right? To bring us into our destiny.

We are his workmanship, right? He's done that before the creation of the world, right?

So that we can bring him glory to the praise of his glorious grace. The book of Ephesians tells us that, right?

So we go from being delivered, being developed, being operational, fully functioning, in our glorious destiny that God has provided for us, right?

Most of us, I've been there, fell in our development stage, and that's, it's not fine, because God's not the

God of sin, but he will allow, like he did in this book, whatever you don't annihilate becomes a stronghold, and God will use that to chasing you, to see the truth, humble you, and bring you to that full awareness.

Understand where you're at, understand what God's calling you to. Take the example of Israel, you could fail in the conquest and become carnal.

You could fail in the development level, and never reach your full destiny.

They lost something, guys, they lost something.

So for us today, some of us may be living defeated and compromised lives, living in the valley of the shadow of the promise, but never taking the hill, the hill and claiming it as our inheritance.

The promised land is not a picture of heaven, but of spiritual warfare. The conflict between God, the conflict is between what

God has given you, and what the world wants to take away from you. Three points of application, and then we are finished.

Point number one, life application. We are not to use our own reasoning as a standard for living.

God has never called us, he has built us in his image and his likeness.

God is not man, God is not female, God is spirit. God is, poor

English, he's not material, right? So when we're made in his image and likeness, it's that we have the ability to reason, we have emotions, we have personality, and we see that God has those same characteristics in scripture, he has personality, he has reasoning, he has intellect, he has a will.

And so we are made in that image of God, and in that likeness of God.

But when we solely start operating on our own reasoning for a standard of living, we're gonna miss the mark.

We see it in the book of Judges, it's right before us. And as a people of God, as a people of faith, the called out ones, his church, we cannot start on our own reasoning, we can't.

We have to start on the revealed truth of God's word. Application two, when faithful obedience cease to be the priority, we will be absorbed by the culture around us.

James says, to be a friend of this world is to be an enemy of God. Christ says, if the world hates you, says, if the world hated you, they also hated me as well.

John says something like this, for everything in the world is a lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life comes not from the

Father, but from the world. Peter, second Peter says, I urge you as foreigners and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul.

When faithful obedience cease to be a priority, we will be absorbed by the culture around us.

The world has a problem, it's under the curse. The cure for the curse, it's

Christ. But when we are interjected now as the cure carriers, and we're not on mission, following the vision, and we start acting like the world, we're not offering and holding up before them the cure.

The cure is not in the DSM -IV. The cure is not in our reasoning. The cure is not in any political agenda, or any one person.

The cure is Christ for our sins. I just had a death in my family. Very unfortunate, very tragic.

And I keep being reminded of this, that we weren't created for death.

There's nothing real, there's no real words that can comfort a person who's experiencing death.

Death was a consequence due to our sin, right?

That's Bible 101, right? Sin brought in death. If there was no sin, there would be no death.

But we know, in the great scheme of things, the work of Christ reverses that.

It takes the sting out of those things. It disarms it, Colossians says, making it a spectacle, because Christ's death triumphs over those things.

The death of Christ frees us from the power, from the penalty, and one day, we're gonna be freed from its presence.

And right now, in this walk of development, right? We need to continue to press, to have our standing and our state match.

Last point. God sometimes, God sometimes commands us to follow a seemingly strange battle plan, right?

So that he can get the glory when we obey. And we see that in judges, right?

He gives them, he doesn't just say, you know, get some swords, man, and, you know, load up some chariots, you know, and go out there and slew them all.

Nope. Tells them, be a witness, and as you go into this land that Joshua's already put you in, just as you live your life, develop your family, push back the enemy, eliminate the enemy, right?

He doesn't tell them to do it all at once. He tells them to do it as a lifestyle, as a way of obedient, as a way of obeying him so that he can show you more about himself, more of his glory, so that you can learn more about him and give him more praise.

So the last point is very important. God sometimes commands us to follow a seemingly weird and awkward battle plan.

Pray for your enemies. It's a little weird. What does the world say?

Someone does something wrong to you, you do something wrong right back to them, right? Weird battle plan.

But he calls us to that. He calls us to that. So remember the life of Israel, how the midges, though tiny, started to erode and bring spiritual decay in their life.

Let those examples encourage us in our walk as we're trying to live for him and bring him glory.

Let's remember that it's for whom and by whom that we live for, and he wants the glory out of our life.

A heart that's bent on defiance will always lead to a life of spiritual decay.

Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for who you are.

We thank you, Lord, for the ministry of your word and spirit. We thank you, Lord, for your word. I pray even now that people will see and hear you and that you will get the glory.

Lord, we humble our hearts. We humble our minds.

And we ask you, Father, that you would continue to do a life, a work in our life.

We are desperate for you, Father. We need you totally for this life that you have called us and equipped us for.

Father, we need your power. We need your truth. Help us,

Lord, to be faithful. Help us, Lord, to be obedient. Help us to be surrendered

Christians so that we could not experience failure, but we can experience the full blessing of your word.