Well, good morning again. Today we'll be reading out of
the book of Judges, specifically chapter 2, so feel free to turn
there already. We recently started a new sermon
series through the book of Judges.
Pastor Jake started the series with an overview of the book and
he talked about this idea of connection and how because of
Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis, that connection between
God and man became broken and through rebellion against God.
And ever since then there has been a disconnection.
A disconnection that people in every span of life up to and
including us, are trying to reconnect.
That we as humans, we feel this disconnection and we know that
we're not whole. And so we try to find
connection, but often we try to find it in the wrong things.
Pastor Jake mentioned this idea that nature hates a vacuum and
how we try to fill the emptiness with anything that brings us
comfort. And last week in Judges chapter
one, we saw a glimpse of that. Judges wasn't or isn't written
chronologically, which means that some of the events in
chapter 1 don't necessarily happen before the events that we
will read today in chapter 2. But the main patterns of this
book become seen. There's this consistent cycle
through the book of Judges. Israel sins and rebels against
God. They become enslaved and
oppressed. They cry out to God, and God
raises up someone to deliver them.
And then there is peace until they sin again.
And although the sin is quite drastic in nature, it's a pretty
common cycle for us too. And that's important to remember
when reading a book like Judges. Even though it's a history book,
and even though it happened a long time ago, human nature has
not changed that much. Judges recounts the events of
the Israelites in the time way before Christ, but their
attitudes, intentions and actions can be very similar to
ours today. And so the book shows the real
flaws and imperfections of human leaders and the ever increasing
need for a true savior. So we'll begin reading in Judges
chapter 2, verses 6 through 15. When Judges when Joshua
dismissed the people, the people of Israel went each to his
inheritance to take possession of the land.
And 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 work that the Lord had done for Israel.
And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the
age of 110 years, and they buried him within the boundaries
of of his inheritance. And Timothy Harris in the Hill
Country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gayash.
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers,
and there arose another generation after them who did
not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel.
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of
the Lord, and they served the Baal's, and they abandoned the
Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the
land of Egypt. They went after other gods from
among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed
down to them. And they provoked the Lord to
anger. They abandoned the Lord and
served the Baal's in the Ashtaroth.
So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he
gave them over to plunderers who plundered them and he sold them
into the land of their surrounding enemies so that they
could no longer withstand their enemies.
Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against
them, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them,
and they were in terrible distress.
Before we continue, let's go to let's go in prayer.
Lord, we, we thank you for this word to us.
As we look into the book of Judges, I pray that you give us
eyes to see how the events that unfold due to the attitudes of
these people are relevant to us today.
Lord, we know that nothing written in the Bible is there by
accident, but it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training and righteousness.
And Lord, I pray that we will be open to hearing from you and to
obey you fully. It's in Jesus name that we ask,
Amen. If I were to ask you what chore
do you hate doing the most, what would your answer be?
As adults, we don't really do chores.
It's more just life at this point.
But maybe a better question to ask is what chores do your kids
hate to do? Well, I'm a step ahead of you
because I asked them. Well, at least I asked the ones
that were at Junior Youth on Wednesday.
So I asked them what chore do you hate to do the most?
And here's a list of chores that some of them listed as the worst
chores to do. Stacking firewood and bringing
it inside, making the bed, cleaning up toys, cleaning up my
sister's mess, taking out the trash, mopping, vacuuming.
And the number one answer from all the youth, over half of them
answered this was some form of doing the dishes.
I won't say who said what, but if you have kids in junior
youth, I'm sure you can probably guess which ones were your came
from your kids. And if not, I'm pretty sure
those answers would be similar as well.
But having to do chores or really any kind of tedious labor
is rarely fun in the moment. It's normally a have to and not
AI get to. For me personally, I love being
clean and organized, but I don't necessarily like doing the work
or the time that it takes to do the work to get there.
I like the end product, but I don't necessarily like the work
required to accomplish it. And speaking on this subject,
I've heard someone say don't forget to remember.
And what he meant by that was don't.
Don't forget to remember the feeling when you climb into a
nice made bed after a long day. Don't forget the feeling of
coming home after a long day out and your home is nice and tidy
because you cleaned it before you left.
Don't forget to remember how good it feels to have saved
money because you followed a budget.
Essentially, don't forget to remember the past experiences
and feelings when you do something in the present.
In the book of Judges, we'll see the Israelites had this problem.
They continually forgot the God who saved them and had brought
them this far. And they turned and they bowed
down to other gods. And this morning we sang about
the goodness of God. And it's so fitting for this
passage today. The Israelites had been witness
to the goodness of God, and yet they forgot about him.
We too are witnesses to the goodness of God, whether we
recognize that or not. Granted, it's sometimes
difficult and it's hard for us to see, but we must remember
that our circumstances don't change God's character, and so
because God is good, we should remember His works and obey Him.
The Bible tells us that God is faithful, but there are times in
our lives where it seems hard to reconcile that.
But looking through this portion of Judges, we will be reminded
that we should remember God though we don't see him.
We should remember God though we are stubborn, and we should
remember God though we go through testing.
Like I mentioned, the whole book of Judges is a steady and
incremental decrease in morality and obedience to God.
In a sense, it makes for a good sermon series because each week
we could say you think that was bad, come back next week.
But there's a noticeable decline in the quality of Judges or the
OR the leaders of Israel. So when we read things like they
there came another generation after them that did not know the
Lord or the works that he had done for them.
It makes a lot more sense how something like that could have
happened. You might think, how could the
next generation not know the Lord or the work he had done for
them? But just looking at the process
of events and the book of Judges shows one example of how that's
possible. It's small steps away from God,
to the point where when you try to look back, you don't even
know where you are or how you got there.
You're so far off from the actual aim, and in this case, so
far away from God's commands that you don't know them
anymore. You need something or someone to
point you back to what it is you're supposed to be following.
And in this case, that was the role that the judges were
supposed to play. They were the deliverers that
God used to save the Israelites. And I say that intentionally
because it wasn't the judges that did it.
They were deeply flawed and sinful people, but it shows the
strength and sovereignty of God that He can use the free will
and free choices of men to still accomplish His plans.
God was not condoning or endorsing the lifestyle and
actions of the judges, but He used them because there was an
absence of good leaders, because of deep rooted sin.
There was a leadership void and it was filled with less than
ideal leaders. And along with the Israelites,
they forgot about God being the one in control and took matters
into their own hands. They forgot God because they
could not see Him. And so the lesson that we should
take from that is remember God. Though we don't see him, we can
see from the example of the Israelites that forgetting God
leaves you blind, Not in a literal, literal sense of having
no vision, but in that you no longer see the goodness of God.
In verse 6, we read that the people went to take possession
of their inherited land already. That's a promise kept by God,
that He would give them that land.
It says that the people serve the Lord all the days of Joshua,
who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for
Israel. These people had witnessed the
walk through the Jordan River. They watch Jericho fall and as
we just mentioned, they inherited this land that was
promised to them. So these people knew God.
But as we go on to read after Joshua dies, there comes a
people that didn't know God. And this is really a set up for
the greater book of Judges. The second-half of verse 10 as
we read it says there arose another generation after them
who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for
Israel. What happened to the nation of
Israel that they would forget the God that led them to this
point? They were blind to their own
situation. We aren't told exactly why or
what the reason was for forgetting, but we can.
We can safely assume that people stop telling stories.
They stop sharing the goodness of God with those around them,
and more importantly, they stop sharing it to the generation
that had not seen the events leading up to this point.
In other words, they stop discipling one another and
properly raising the next generation.
Maybe they assume the next generation would just catch on
or figure it out by themselves. But what we can see from that is
that faith is not by osmosis. Osmosis is this term described
used to describe when water moves from an area where there's
more water to an area where there's less water.
If you think of a plant in the ground, the water in the soil
moves through the thin walls of the plant cells into the plant
to strengthen the plant, and that process is called osmosis.
But faith is not like that. Would you be better off to be
surrounded by people that are all in the faith?
100%. But will you absorb their faith
by simply being around them? No.
An obvious example of this is raising children.
You can be raised in a quote UN quote Christian home, but just
because your parents are Christian doesn't mean that
it'll be automatically transferred to you.
Someone has to tell you about the faith to lead and guide you
in the way to go. And that's where it seems like
the Israelites failed. They did not properly lead and
guide the next generation and it resulted in a nation that was
blind to the goodness of God. We also see that forgetting God
leaves you alone, and verses 11 to 14 it tells of how the people
did evil in the sight of the Lord.
They forgot the Lord. It says they abandoned the Lord,
the very same God that their fathers had served and the same
God that led them out of slavery in Egypt.
So they forgot or they abandoned the Lord and they were left to
their own devices. In verse 12, it says that they
went after other gods. They bowed down to the gods of
those around them instead of remembering the Lord they were.
They weren't simply not worshiping God, but they started
worshiping other gods, which points out that when we are left
alone without the Spirit's guidance, we will not worship
God and instead we will worship something else.
It has been said that there is no such thing as worshiping as
not worshiping, rather everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what the Israelites chose to not
worship the one true God and instead they worship the gods of
the people around them. In our lives we might not
worship the Bales and the Ashtaroth, but if we forget God,
we will turn to the worship the gods of those around us as well.
Money, success, power, those are idols that are very much alive
right now. But as the Israelites also found
out, forgetting God leaves you in distress.
Verse 15 says that the hand of the Lord was against them for
harm, as the Lord had warned, as the Lord had sworn to them, and
they were in terrible distress. The Israelites have been given
over to the surrounding enemies, and now they're feeling the
hurt. The Lord had warned them, but
they still disobeyed. And God has a righteous anger
because of their actions, and He lets them feel the consequences
of their actions. He lets them experience life
without Him, just as they had been living.
It all began with the Israelites forgetting God.
The previous generation did a poor job of passing down their
knowledge and faith, and the current generation did a poor
job of seeking after Him. They became content with living
with the people. They became content with serving
their gods. Slowly or little by little, they
took steps away from the one true God, and they forgot
entirely who He was or what He had done for them.
They needed someone to guide them back.
Some years ago I went ice fishing out of Kingsville and by
the time we were ready to head back it had gotten dark and very
foggy out. So much so that you couldn't see
the shore. And it's pretty common for that
to happen. You go so far out and you don't
notice the disappearing shoreline because you're not
worried about it. You're worried about having fun
and catching fish. But when it's time to pack up
and go home and it's nice and cold and your hands are frozen
beyond use, then the knowing where the shoreline is becomes
pretty important. On the way back I was carrying
buckets and was walking with all my gear and exhausted from the
long walk, but because of the heavy fog, I had no idea how
much farther we had to walk. But after a bit more walking, I
finally saw that green light of the lighthouse shining through
the fog and I was very glad to see it.
I now knew the direction, what direction to go, and I knew that
we were getting close. The light was a guide for us and
it LED us to where we needed to go, which in my case was to the
car with the heaters on full blast.
But connecting that back to the book of Judges, the leaders were
supposed to be the guides to lead the people where they were
supposed to go. They should have told the next
generation about God and help them remember God's goodness.
But instead of going in the direction of the light, they
disregarded it and they went their own way and because and
because of that, they got so far away that they could no longer
see it. The next generation did not know
God because they had not been led to know Him.
And that should be a reminder for us as well.
For one thing, it should remind us to lead our children and
those in our circles of influence to follow the true
God, to help remind them of the goodness of God.
And we won't do a good job of that unless we know the true
God. And so it's important that we're
consistently in God's Word, learning and being taught by the
Spirit, to then go and teach others to not let our faith die
with us, but to share it for all to hear.
As Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount, let your light shine
before others so that they may see your good works and give
glory to your Father who is in heaven.
And two, we need to know God to be able to recognize when
someone teaches something contrary to him.
If you hear me say something up here, you shouldn't necessarily
take my word for it. Not that I want to lie or
mislead anyone, but Joel's word is not the final authority on
theology. God's word is the final
authority, and so that must be our guiding light as Christians.
When we know God's word, we will recognize things that are
contrary to it. We will remember the true
character of God, and by doing so, we will be able to stay
clear of misguided leaders. So not only should we remember
God when we don't see him, but we should also remember God,
though we are stubborn. Let's continue reading Judges
chapter 2, verses 16 to 23. Then the Lord raised up judges
who saved them out of the hands of those who plundered them.
Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they hoard after
other gods and bowed down to them.
They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had
walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and
did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up
judges for them, the Lord was with the Judge, and He saved
them from 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 afflicted and oppressed
them. But whenever the judge died,
they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers,
going after other gods serving them and bowing down to them.
They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn
ways. And so the anger of the Lord was
kindled against Israel. And he said, because this people
have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers
and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before
them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died in
order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to
walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did or not.
So the Lord left those nations, not driving them out quickly,
and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.
This passage in chapter 2, again, it's not in chronological
order, but instead it's an explanation and summary of the
book of Judges. From this portion portion of the
passage, we can see that God is good in His compassion and in
His anger. When the Israelites forgot,
forgot God and served other gods of the people around them, they
rejected God. They forgot His goodness, and
they abandoned him. But God did not abandon them.
He did. He let them feel what it was
like to live without His protection.
But we see God's character displayed and that He didn't
want to leave them there. He shows His compassion for the
rebellious people. And in the last part of verse
18, it says that the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning.
So he raises up judges for the people.
These judges, they're not courtroom judges as we might be
accustomed to, but instead these judges were warriors and tribal
leaders and commanders of armies.
They were deliverers for the people.
They were also supposed to serve as a religious role, as
preachers of God's Word and a legal role of settling disputes
in the time of peace. Yet, as we will come to see in
the next few weeks, all these judges were still flawed human
beings. None of them did it perfectly,
or in some cases, even good. But it points to a couple of
things. One is that God can use anyone
he chooses to accomplish His will.
In verse 18, it says the Lord was with the judge that he
raised up. That doesn't mean that God
condoned everything the judges did, but rather that it was God
who saved the Israelites from their oppressors and not by the
strength of the judge alone. And two, it foreshadows or
points to the need for a true savior, a role that only Jesus
could fill. The Israelites certainly didn't
deserve the goodness of God after their actions, but still,
God is compassionate and He raises up deliverers for them.
Just like the Israelites. We don't deserve the grace of
God either, but God sent a deliverer through His Son Jesus.
We are a stubborn people too, and we want to pursue our own
ways, and we rebel against God as well.
But God was good to the Israelites when they didn't
deserve it. God and God is good to us too.
He's patient with us, He convicts us through His Spirit,
and He desires for all to have a relationship with Him.
First Timothy 24 says that God desires all people to be saved
and come to a knowledge of the truth.
But we also see in this passage the anger of God.
It's not a sinful anger, but rather it's a righteous anger.
God is good in His compassion, but He is also good in His
anger. In verse 19, it says that after
the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than they
were before. They didn't drop any of their
stubborn ways. They acted right when there was
a judge watching over them, but as soon as the leader was no
longer there, they rebelled. They didn't keep their focus on
what was true. They chose to forget the peace
that they had with the judge and purposely neglected and
abandoned God. It wasn't an accident.
It was a deliberate turning away from God.
Because of their actions, God let's the warring nations that
live among them stay and it says that it was to test Israel by
them. The nation of Israel had
rejected God and as had been warned to them, they would now
face the consequences. Joshua before his death he warns
the people and Joshua 2420 it says if you forsake the Lord and
serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do harm and do you harm
and consume you after having done you good.
This wasn't a random act by God or an impulsive act of anger.
This was a fulfillment of a promise.
The Israelites had the chance to serve him, but they rejected it.
Even the Canaanites, who the Israelites were supposed to
fight against, they were not all doomed to destruction.
We can read the stories of Rahab, who helped the Israelites
spies in Jericho, and the Gibeonites, who, although they
misled the Israelites, would come to recognize the Lord's
authority over the gods of Canaan.
But As for the Israelites, whenever the next judge would
die, they would choose to look away from God and forget Him.
It's similar to the event of Peter walking on water.
In the New Testament and Matthew 14, we read of Peter and the
disciples. They were in a boat when Jesus
appears to them in the water, Peter being the more impulsive
one in the group. He says, Lord, if it is you,
command me to come to you on the water.
But it says, when he saw the wind, he was afraid and
beginning to sink. He cried out, Lord save me.
Peter did well to look to Jesus, but when he turned aside and he
looked to the things around him, he became compromised.
He took his focus off Jesus and he forgot that it was Jesus who
was allowing him to walk on water.
And it was only through faith in him that he wasn't sinking.
Like Peter, and like the Israelites, we do well to keep
our focus on Christ. We may act right in front of our
families, in front of those that we know from church, but what do
we do when they're not around? Do we go back to our stubborn
ways into the gods of this age? The Israelites did not learn
this lesson the first time, and because of their continual
rejecting of God, they find themselves in trouble many
times. It is a reminder to us to not
let our stubborn nature lead us to where we don't want to be, to
keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and to remember God though we
are stubborn. Lastly, we should also remember
God. Though we go through testing.
God uses tests to teach His people, to turn His people to
Him and to deliver His people. Let's pick up in Judges 3 verses
one through 2 it says Now these are the nations that the Lord
left to test Israel by them. That is all in Israel who had
not experienced all the wars in Canaan.
It was only an order that the generations of the people of
Israel might know war, to teach war to those who had not known
it before. As we read in chapter 2, God was
going to test Israel through these other nations.
And we read in chapter 3, verse 2 that it was so that the
generations of Israel might know war and to teach war to those
who had not known it before. And this lays out the
explanation for these remaining nations.
God uses tests to teach His people.
This was another kindness shown by God to the people.
They had forgotten about Him. Remember, we read about the
generation that did not know Him.
God was therefore going to help prepare this generation as they
needed. By teaching them war.
They would come to a better understanding of who God was and
in turn come to know Him as a true deliverer.
They would need to rely on God if they were to win these wars,
and this testing would also become fruitful in years to
come. If they were to stay in this
land, it would not come without its battles.
Centuries later in the time of Jeremiah, Jeremiah is lamenting
to God about why the wicked prosper and why the faithful
suffer. And God responds to Jeremiah
with a couple questions. Says if you have raced with men
on foot and they have wearied you, how will you compete with
horses? And if in a safe land you are so
trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan?
Another way of saying this is how will you learn to run if you
don't learn to walk? God uses tests to teach His
people because He is a good father.
He prepares His children for what they need to know.
God also uses tests to turn His people toward Him.
Verse 4 reads that they were for testing.
They were for the testing of Israel to know whether Israel
would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded
their fathers by the hand of Moses.
God had laid out a plan and He made a covenant with His people
through Moses and was reiterated by Joshua, but the people have
forgotten the covenant and they chose to rebel against God and
go after the idols. This testing that would come
through the nations that's mentioned that are mentioned in
verse 3 was to determine if Israel would turn back to God.
God wasn't forcing them to turn back, but He was drawing them to
Himself. God could have easily removed
all the nations that surrounded Israel by Himself.
He didn't need the partnership of the people, but simply
removing the other enemy nations wasn't the point.
God wanted the Israelites to do the work, not because he
couldn't, but because doing the work was what would turn Israel
as a nation back to God. You could say that it's the same
reason the trainer at the gym doesn't lift the weights for
you. Yes, the goal is to get the
weight off the ground, but if they did it for you, you
wouldn't learn anything. You wouldn't grow.
And God ultimately uses tests to deliver his people in steps.
The first judge of Israel off. Neil reading chapter 3 verses 7
to 9. And the people of Israel did
what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
They forgot the Lord their God and serve the Baal's and
Ashroth. Therefore the anger of the Lord
was kindled against Israel, and he sold them into the land of
Cushion Rasha Theam, king of Mesopotamia.
And the people of Israel served cushion Rasha Theam 8 years.
But when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord
raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them
off. Neil, the son of Ken as Caleb's
younger brother. The people are of Israel are
back to serving idols and of those living around them.
And it says they forgot God. They get enslaved by the hands
of a foreign king, and for eight years they must serve him.
But then God, being rich in his goodness, raises up a deliverer,
Othneil, who would become the first judge of Israel.
And we can find in Joshua 15 and Judges one that Othneil was the
nephew of Caleb, and in fact he had already proven himself as a
warrior prior to fighting the king of Mesopotamia.
Othneil had been tested and proved himself as a worthy
warrior. Then in verse 10 it says the
Spirit of the Lord was upon him and he judged Israel.
He went out to war and the Lord gave cushion Rashteum, king of
Mesopotamia into his hand, and his hand prevailed over cushion
Rashteum. The Spirit of God was with
Othneil. Othneil had been tested and he
was a warrior, but it was ultimately God who secured the
victory for Israel. God was faithful in his testing
and in His deliverance of Israel.
Finally, verse 11 reads, So the land had rest for 40 years and
they lived happily ever after? Not really.
Then Othneil son of Canaz died. Those last few words they
foreshadow that things will not stay at rest for the nation of
Israel. And although we can see that
Othneil was an almost ideal deliverer, the people will again
go back to doing evil. It wasn't a lack of deliverers.
It wasn't. It was a lack of faithfulness to
God, a lack of remembering who God was and what he had done for
them. This is one of the many cycles
of sin, desperation, deliverance, and peace that will
come, that we will come to see. But during all those times, we
will see that God is good. Even through the testing that
comes to Israel, God remains good.
His loving character does not change, and it doesn't change in
our day either. Hebrews 13/8 says that Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
When we go through testing, we can remember that God is still
in control. God is not a cruel lawgiver.
When a teacher gives their students a test in school, are
they being cruel to their students?
No, contrary to what the student might think, the test isn't to
harm them, but to make sure the student knows what they ought to
know. And I don't want to.
I don't want to drive on the bridge that's been designed by
an engineer that's never been tested.
I don't want to have surgery performed on me by a Doctor
Who's never been tested. We want those around us to be
tested and to know what they're doing.
God uses a similar. God uses tests in a similar way
and manner. He wants us to know Him.
I want to clarify that not every bad thing that happens in our
life is a test from God. The world is a sinful place and
we don't always know why certain things happen.
It would be irresponsible and dangerous to tell people that
you're being tested by God every time something happens in their
life. But when we go through life and
we face hardships, it is good to ponder, is God preparing me for
something? It's important to remember God
though. We go through testing because it
helps us align ourselves to Him. God is all powerful.
He could fix our life, our finances, our church, but He
doesn't, at least not on this side of eternity, and not in the
way that we might want. But remembering the character of
God while we go through those difficult experiences helps us
to understand and know Him more. And when we know Him more, we
will love Him more and we will want to obey Him more.
And that is the point. The work of defeating sin has
already been accomplished by Jesus on the cross.
God claimed victory over sin and death, and if we are followers
of Him, we are heirs to that Kingdom.
When we go through testing, then we can remember that God has
already won. In September of 2001, as you
probably all know, there was an attack on the Twin Towers in New
York. For those of you old enough to
remember it, I'm sure you'll recall where you were on that
day. And for many of you too,
including myself, you may have been either very young or not
born yet when this attack happened, but it was an event
that changed the world forever. I was just a young boy, so I
don't have any first hand experiences of the event, but
from what I have read and heard, it was a very stressful, intense
time in America and the whole world.
I found a research study conducted by Barna Research that
was done shortly after these attacks.
According to their research, there was a nationwide increase
of church attendance by as much as 25%.
Immediately after, 911 people were flocking into the churches
in droves. One large church in New York
City, pastored by Tim Keller, saw their average attendance go
from 2800 to 5400, and apparently it stayed full and
continued to grow. But unlike that particular
church, in the vast majority of cases there was a brief surge in
attendance followed by a sharp and sudden decline shortly
after. According to the study, the
average attendance of most churches went back down to pre
attack levels in just a few weeks.
There was no lasting impact for many people that decided to
visit church after those attacks.
They did not stay at church or continue in any faith walk.
In fact, the only pattern that continued was the slow and slip
steady decline of those who deemed themselves religious.
It shows a trait of human nature that when we that people want to
seek comfort in times of crisis, people want to have community
and people to go through those hard times with.
But then after the crisis or after the trauma, people will
quickly go back to their old habits and their old way of
life. And I say people, but I could be
saying we because isn't that true for ourselves too?
From the time of the Israelites to the time of the attacks and
to the present day, there's been so much change in the world, but
human nature really hasn't changed that much.
The Israelites did not cry out to God until they were harshly
oppressed because of their sin, and God raised up for delivers
delivers for them. But after a brief time of rest,
they soon forgot about God and the things that he had done.
I think, like the Israelites, we too are are guilty of forgetting
the goodness of God. When we look at the example of
the brief rise in church attendance after a national
tragedy, we must ask why, or maybe more importantly, what
should be done differently? The people that briefly went to
church after the tragedy, they wanted to have some comfort, and
you can't blame them for that. And it's great to think that
people think of the church when they're in times of need, but
going to the church is not. Going to church is not simply a
means to an end. Many of these new churchgoers
assume that they would go into a building and find comfort just
from being there. And perhaps they did find some,
but it quickly wore off. When things didn't continue to
feel or to go as they imagined it would, they left and they
went on to the next thing. Going to church can feel good
for a little while, but eventually that feeling will
wear off. And now you're left with the
choice. Will I continue going?
Is this worth it? At that point, it's a good idea
to remember the goodness of God, to remember His promises,
Promises like He will be with His people, that there is rest
for the weary, that He will supply our needs.
That He will give wisdom to those that ask.
That he will give peace and strength.
That he works all things together for the good of those
who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
And most importantly, that if we confess our sins, He is faithful
just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. And that whoever believes in
Jesus will have eternal life. Don't forget those promises.
There's an old hymn called Standing on the Promises.
Part of that song reads like this.
Standing on the promises that cannot fail.
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail by the living
word of God, I shall prevail. Standing on the promises of God.
Standing on the promises I cannot fall, Listening every
moment to the spirits call, resting in my Savior as my All
in all. Standing on the promises of God.
That hymn is a great reminder to us to not forget the promises of
God, but to stand on them, to hold fast to them, to remember
them. Maybe you're not a Christian and
you don't know those promises. All those promises that I just
listed, those are for you as well.
God wants you to draw near to Him and experience those.
They're not limited to a select few, but available for all who
put their trust in Him. And if you've never experienced
what that's like to trust in God, go to someone who is a
Christian who you trust and ask why are you a Christian and ask
them to tell you about the God that they serve.
And to everyone here that does follow Christ, Are you ready to
answer that question? Do you remember the goodness of
God that you can share what He has done to those that need to
know? And the Bible says for the Son
of man came to seek and save the lost.
God sent his only Son to die for our sins and to forever set us
free from the bondage of death, to give us life abundantly.
That is the goodness of God. That is something worth
remembering. Let's pray, Heavenly Father, you
are a good Father. You have granted to us all
things that pertain to life and godliness.
You've given us your Son that through him we have life
everlasting and forgiveness of sin.
You've given us your Spirit to convict us of our sin and draw
us closer to You. And you desire for all people to
be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
Lord, I pray that we will remember those promises, that
you help us and remind us that You are always with us, that we
won't forget about you and we don't see you or when we are
stubborn or when we go through times of testing, but that we
hold fast to your promises. Lord, help us remember.
It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.