The Things You Do For Love

But God keeps trying to get them to look on the inside of us. On the inside of them, on the inside of us. Because sin is not really about doing bad things. Sin is really about diseased hearts. It's about something wrong on the inside of us. It's a worship disorder.

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We're gonna turn our attention to God's word. We're reading in the book of Judges, and this is a long passage. So I'm gonna read this for us from Judges chapter two and chapter three. If you want to turn your attention to the screen behind me and follow along. Judges two, eight through nineteen, three, seven through 11.

Joshua, son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110. They buried him in the territory of his inheritance at Timnah Harez in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. That whole generation was also gathered to their ancestors. After them, another generation rose up who did not know the Lord or the works he had done for Israel. The Israelites did what was evil in the Lord's sight. They worshiped the Baals and abandoned the Lord their God of their ancestors who brought them up out of Egypt. They followed other gods from the surrounding people and bowed down to them. They angered the Lord for they had abandoned him and worshiped Baal and Ashtoreth. The Lord's anger burned against Israel and he handed them over to marauders who raided them. He sold them to the enemies around them and they could no longer resist their enemies. Whenever Israel went out, the Lord was against them and brought disaster on them just as he had promised and sworn to them. So they suffered greatly. The Lord raised up judges who saved them from the power of their marauders, but they did not listen to their judges. Instead, they prostituted themselves with other gods, bowing down to them. They quickly turned from the way of their ancestors who had walked in obedience to the Lord's commands. They did not do as their ancestors did. Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for the Israelites, the Lord was with him and saved the people from the power of their enemies while the judge was still alive. The Lord was moved to pity whenever they groaned because of those who were oppressing and afflicting them. Whenever the judge died, the Israelites would act even more corruptly than their ancestors, following other gods to serve them and bow in worship to them. They did not turn from their evil practices or their obstinate ways. — Judges 2:8-19

The Israelites did what was evil in the Lord's sight. They forgot the Lord their God and worshiped the Baals and the Asherahs. The Lord's anger burned against Israel and he sold them to King Cushan Rishathaim of Aram Niharaim, and the Israelites served him eight years. The Israelites cried out to the Lord. So the Lord raised up Othniel son of Kenaz, Caleb's youngest brother, as a deliverer to save the Israelites. The spirit of the Lord came on him and he judged Israel. Othniel went out to battle and the Lord handed over King Cushan Rishathaim of Aram to him, so that Othniel overpowered him. Then the land had peace for forty years and Othniel son of Kenaz died. — Judges 3:7-11

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

The Office: Conflict Resolution

So there's an episode of the TV show The Office called Conflict Resolution, where the boss, Michael Scott, finds that Toby, who's head of HR, has been holding on to a whole stack of interoffice grievances. So these are grievances where one employee has written about the behavior of another employee, and of course if you've watched this show, you know who these grievances are from and about. So all of these are written by Dwight Schrute about his coworker, Jim Halpert.

So Michael takes up these and he's like, I need to deal with these right away. We need to get through them. So he starts reading and here's the first one. He says, someone replaced all my pens and pencils with crayons. I suspect Jim Halpert. And the camera pans over to Jim who laughs.

And then next one: everyone has called me Duane all day. I think Jim Halpert paid them to. Camera back to Jim. Jim says, yes. $5 each. It was totally worth it.

The next one, Michael reads: this morning, I found a bloody glove in my desk drawer, and Jim Halbert tried to convince me I had committed murder, but I think he's the real murderer.

Next one: this morning, I knocked myself in the head with a phone. And again, the camera pans back to Jim. And Jim said, this one actually took a while. I had to put more and more nickels in the handset every day till he got used to the weight. And then I just took them all out at one time.

The next one, Michael reads: every time I type my name, it said diapers. Getting back to Jim.

Jim says, just a simple macro, and he's looking more somber as he says this. But you know, these actually don't sound that funny one after another. He does deserve it, though. Michael reads the next one. By the end of the day, my desk was about two feet closer to the copier. Again, camera cuts back to Jim. Yeah. I moved it about an inch every time he went to the bathroom. That's what I spent my entire day doing that day.

Now, what's funny as you watch this episode, it becomes clear that something is happening inside of Jim when he hears about all these things he's done to his coworker. He goes from enjoying this to feeling like this isn't so funny. It's kind of ridiculous. And he realizes something—this is ridiculous. Something here has to change. Something's wrong with this and the way that I spend my time at work.

And that's really, I think, as we pick up this passage today from Judges 2, where the writer of Judges describes these cycles that happen over and over in all the chapters we're about to read in the book of Judges. We should be wrestling with the same thing. Hearing these words, it's almost like Israel is saying, this is ridiculous and something has to change. And that's really for us as well—that we look at these and we see a pattern, and we begin to ask ourselves about the same pattern inside of us.

The Cycle Pattern

So here's my outline. Washing machine. Around and around, inside out, upside down. This is where I'm going today if you take notes.

So what's laid out for us is this pattern. A cycle. Things going over and over, wash, rinse, repeat. And here's the pattern that we see laid out in chapter 2. We're gonna see in all the cases of all the judges.

First, Israel forgets God, does evil in the sight of the Lord, and worships foreign gods.

Second, they cry out. They cry out because God has given them into the hands of an oppressor nation. One of the Canaanite nations—just a different one in every episode—comes and subjugates the Israelite people, and they cry out in their distress to God.

Third, God hears them. God hears them and raises up a leader. We've been saying these judges are much more like tribal warlords than they are like any kind of cloak and gavel judge in our day. But these tribal warlords, these judges, and the spear of the Lord comes upon that judge.

And fourth, the judge leads the people, and usually through some kind of unusual way, to deliver the people with the hand of God from their oppressors. Then the peace is regained, and then eventually the judge dies and the cycle starts over and over.

I included in our reading today the first judge, Othniel. There's very little information about him, but I'm just sort of holding this up like exhibit A. This is what this looks like played out in the life of one of the judges. We're gonna see this again starting next week in Ehud, then Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, Abimelech, Samson. It's just the same cycle. Different characters, different nations. Same problem. And it's why some people have called this the most depressing book in the Old Testament. Some of you are like, why are we reading this book? It is the same cycle over and over again.

On the reading of this, it's sort of supposed to be like Jim Halpert. This is funny, not funny. It's funny, not funny. Funny until you realize that this is you as well.

A Common Christian Experience

I think this is the common experience of many Christians. If you've been around or part of a church for any period of time, maybe this describes some of your experience, either as a young person or later in life.

You have some experience where you encounter God, and the words in the Bible seem to leap off the page to you. Maybe you're in camp. Maybe you're at a retreat with your youth group. Maybe it's a church service like this, and you hear someone like me speak, and it's like the words were written for you, and you surrender your life to God. And for a while, for a season, there's this sense of excitement. You can't stop talking about God. But over time, that excitement begins to wear off. And over time, what was once the thing you were most interested in talking about becomes old news. And you find yourself over time drifting. You find yourself over time in situations or relationships, or dealing with problems that you never would have imagined before. Like, how did I get here?

And things begin to happen in your life that feel like everything's falling apart. And you cry out to the Lord, and the Lord answers you. And again, there's some moment where it's like everything becomes clear. You turn your life back over to the Lord. You feel like, man, I need to be rebaptized or something. Maybe this time it's for real. And the cycle begins again.

Anybody's experience like that?

Man, that's amazing. I think this is a very common experience for Christians. A sense that what was dear to me and powerful and heart-changing becomes old, and I find myself back in places I never would have imagined, and I cry out to the Lord.

It's like the zipper at the state fair. Anybody been to the state fair and ridden the rides? Several years ago, son number five, Ezra, talked me into this. So we went to the state fair, we got those big sausages on the buns with the mustard, the peppers, and the onions. Great lunch. And then we go to the rides. And we go do the zipper, which is the worst ride, I think, at the state fair. It's an ancient medieval torture device. They put you in a box, and they close the cage. And then the whole box tilts, and you just go up and down, and you flip over. And that repetitive flipping motion does that to your stomach too. And you know where the story ends, right? It was not a good day for me at the state fair. I did not recover for the rest of the day from that at the state fair.

And many of us, that's what it feels like in some ways with our Christian life. It feels like things just get flipped upside down, and I find myself in a place I don't recognize. I don't know what happened. I feel nauseated by my own journey of what's happened around and around. Wash, rinse, repeat. Where is this going?

Inside Out

And, of course, this leads me to my second point: inside out. Because the problem in each of the cycles we'll see in the judges is that what finally causes the Israelite people to turn back and to cry out to God is not their longing for God, but the oppression coming from some outside nation, the circumstances around them, that things have become hard for them, and they cry out to the Lord. If God would just remove these nations that are oppressing us, if God would just show up again, that's the real problem, right? Wrong.

Over and over again, they're looking on the outside when what God wants is for them to look on the inside. They keep looking out there, and once God removes their difficult circumstances, they go right back again where they forget the Lord. But God keeps trying to get them to look on the inside of them, on the inside of us. Because sin is not really about doing bad things. Sin is really about diseased hearts. It's about something wrong on the inside of us. It's a worship disorder.

In Judges, the people don't just abandon God, they go after other gods. And they're named here for us: Ashtoreth and Baal.

So, a little history lesson. We got some pictures too. Ashtoreth is a Phoenician fertility deity, the goddess of love and fertility. She was worshipped in a lot of regions, including Canaan, Egypt, Ugarit. She's known as Ashera, Ashereth, Asarte, Ishtar, lots of different names. She's always portrayed as a nude female. And she's the goddess of fertility, pregnancy, having babies. And she was worshipped on high places. They would put up poles. There was a group ritual of sexuality around that.

And I want you to think about why this was so appealing. This is a time in human history where children were not just desired for filling out your life, somebody to take care of. They're not just desired for the continuing of the family name. Your children are, in many ways, your workforce and your retirement policy. I got six sons, I would have been a very wealthy man at the time. Would have done really, really well at this time in history, right? So it's easy to see why a goddess of fertility, who promises children, who promises fertility for your family, that guarantees a workforce and a retirement plan who will take care of you in your old age, that this was hugely tempting for the Israelites to say, let's have some of that too. Let's worship that God too.

The other god mentioned here is Baal. Now, the earliest deity recognized by people of the ancient Near East was the god El, who his mistress was Asherah, the woman that we just saw. And she gave birth to many gods, but this one in particular, Baal. And Baal is pictured as the god of the seasons. He's the god of storms. He's the god who calms the sea. And a lot of times he's pictured with horns and a raised hand with a lightning bolt in it. And it was said that every year, he would walk through his victory over the God of death. And that would include going to the underworld and then coming back up and bringing new life. And this is where the ancients believed the seasons came from, in Canaan, in Egypt, a lot of the surrounding nations.

They also were very taken with him because he brought rain for their crops. So again, it's not that hard to see why the people of Israel, the people who had been given divine revelation from God, this is the one and only God worship and serve him only would also be like, but crops, but rain. But we need things to grow here. And so it's easy to see why they would be tempted to say both and.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that. A little bit to add to my life. And going back to last week's sermon, when we talked about this command from God to go clear out this land, the Promised Land, the land of Canaan that was inhabited by all these nations. Modern people are like, that is horrible for us to think about. And yet one of the things God said over and over is if you don't drive them out, their gods and goddesses are going to become a snare to you. You're gonna be tempted by them. You will fall into the trap of worshiping them. They will lead you astray, and they did. That's what happened over and over again.

What We Learn About Idolatry in Judges

Here's what we learn about idolatry in the book of Judges: everybody worships. Everybody. All people worship something. That's what we're made for.

The comedians Rhett and Link are local celebrities to the triangle who've kind of made it really big nationwide. Over the last few years, their deconversion stories have been a big part of the things that they talk about regularly on their show. Rhett, in particular, loves to use the language of a house. He describes it this way: "I used to be in the house of religion. I'm not in that house anymore. As in, I've deconstructed, I don't worship God anymore."

But that's not how the human heart works. The truth is you're always in some house. Everybody's in some house. We can't survive without making some good thing our ultimate thing. Something our everything. So our goal, the center of our thoughts, our desires, our motivations, our dreams, our striving.

Humans worship all kinds of things. You can worship popularity or wealth, accomplishment, downtime, great vacations, successful kids, fun vacations, experiences, a great body, friendship, security, being attractive, the likes or retweets you get. You're always in a house. You're always in some house, always worshiping.

We are hardwired to want our lives to have purpose and meaning and to work. And so we're always looking for something. To be human is to be animated by a vision of like, this is what the good life is gonna be for me. And this is how I'm gonna go get it. That's why our idols offer us what they do. That's why Baal and Asherah were worshipped. It wasn't foolishness. It's exactly what modern people do.

Second thing we see is that all of the gods and goddesses are transactional. It's always an attempt in worshiping that god to get control of your life. You have a transaction where you make the sacrifice, you do the rites, the god is supposed to deliver to you and come through for you because you live—everybody lives—toward what we want in life.

That's what's so different about worshiping Yahweh, worshiping the God of the Bible, as opposed to any other god or goddess. We can't control him. God is not even gonna play the transaction game. He's like, I don't do that. That's not how I roll. The real God is a sovereign ruler over all things who loves, who sets his affection on people regardless, unconditional. I love you because I love you. You don't worship me in order for me to do things for you. You worship me because I fill the human heart.

Third, our worship of idols is always an attempt to control life, but what we worship ends up controlling us, oppressing us. That's why God used this image of oppression over and over in these cycles with the judges. They were oppressed by these things. It was an attempt to show the people over and over again this living parable for them that this is actually what's happening on the inside of you. The things that you go after are oppressing you.

As much as we believe we're rational beings, we think we are what we think. That's from Descartes. We are what we believe. We are people who are shaped by our loves, what we love, what we desire, and it shapes you into its image.

The thinker and writer David Foster Wallace, very famously, in a commencement speech in 2005—it's one of the few commencement speeches that I've heard that had any meaning to it. Most of them are like, follow your dreams, you'll be great. David Foster Wallace, not even a Christian, does this bizarre and incredibly famous commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005, and he talks about worship. He talks about how we worship, and all people worship, and what we worship oppresses us. Listen to these words:

Pretty much anything else besides God that you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure, and you'll always feel ugly. Worship power and you'll end up feeling weak and afraid, and you'll need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, your thoughts.

Being seen as smart, you'll end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And those are brilliant words by a guy who never claimed to know Jesus.

Finally, if your life is not filled up with the god of the universe, with Yahweh, it'll be filled up with lots and lots of other gods. When we describe the god of the universe, when this book describes the God of the universe, we're describing an infinite being. Your life is made to be filled with the infinity of God in its center. That means if God is not central to your life, it's gonna take a lot of things to fill that up. And that's why in our culture, we look around and people are chasing after not one thing, but lots of things. They're not just worshiping one thing besides God, or instead of God. They're worshiping lots of things. We're always trying to fill up that hole.

The Two Ways to Read Judges

Last point, upside down. You ever seen this picture before? This is an old trick image. I know some of you probably cannot see this super well, but it's an old trick image. I remember seeing this as a little kid in a book in my grandparents' house. And it's a picture of two women. From the one perspective, it's a picture of a very old woman with a crooked nose, the little feather going up this way, and she's looking down toward the drum set right here, down toward the piano. The other image is a young woman whose head is turned. You can see her ear and the side of her chin, and she's looking off into the distance away from you. Can you see both images? Most people can't. You can only just see one. It's hard when you're used to looking at it one way to see it the other way.

And that's the point of this book. That's the point I want to make about judges and about your life. It is hard when you read this book to see it both ways. Because it's common when people read this book to look at it as a series of stories about failure, and about idolatry, and about people messing up, cycles of apostasy, cycles of rebellion, cycles of sin. That's the normal way Judges is taught. Each of the Judges has a different character flaw, and you can go through the book, and we can talk about Gideon's fear. We can talk about Barak's abdication and Jephthah's rash anger, Samson's pride. And we'll cover those stories. You can read the book as just a catalog of the failures of Israel.

But like this image, there's another way to look at this. There's another way to look at the book if you understand the main character. The main character of this book is not the judges, and it's not Israel. The main character is God. And if you look at this book with God as the main character, if that's the way that you read it, it's a different story altogether. It's a story of cycles of God's patience, cycles of God's kindness, cycles of God's goodness and grace to his people. The way God continually shows up, he never says no more. He never says enough. He has always turned toward his people.

But wait, some of you asked, what about God being angry? We read in this passage about God is angry with his people. How can you say God is faithful and kind and good in this passage? Great question. Glad you asked that. God's anger in this passage is always the anger not of some kind of petty deity. This isn't the Greek and Roman gods, but the anger of a spurned spouse, of someone who loves and whose love has been deeply betrayed, and yet whose love is still there. Over and over again, what we see god here is not god stomping his foot like, I just wish they like me the best. It's god being like, how? Can you walk away again? This is how much I love you and continue to love you and don't stop loving you.

This is the story, not only of this book, but the whole bible over and over. This is why in the bible, so much so much of the time, idolatry is called adultery because it's two timing god. God's mercy, God's faithfulness. You know, in the Bible, if you read scripture, Exodus is a great story of God's rescue, of his justification. But this book of Judges is the story of sanctification. It's the story of what God is doing in his people to, over time, make us more and more like Jesus.

A seminary professor of mine used to describe this as the experience of the yo yo, not the experience of playing with a yo yo or the person using the yo yo, but the experience of the yo yo itself. So imagine, if you will, yourself as a yo yo this morning, and you're going up and down, and your whole world is up and down and up and down and highs and lows. And what matters, though, my professor, Claire Davis, used to say this, is not the experience of the yo yo, but who holds the string, number one, and where that person is going. He says, this is the experience of what it is to be a Christian. This is what sanctification feels like. The God of the universe holds the string of your life.

And even though your life is filled with faithfulness and unfaithfulness, cycles over and over of abandoning God and coming back to Him, up and down and up and down, God holds the string. And the good news is that He is not cutting the string and He's not standing still. It's like God is walking up a staircase, and he is taking your life somewhere. And you may not feel it. You may look around and go like, all I feel is up and down and up and down. But the reality of the fact is that God, who holds the string of your life, is so committed to making you like Jesus, that no matter how you feel today, no matter how you feel coming into this place this morning filled with great hope or filled with great shame, the God of the universe has his heart toward you, and he is at work. He is doing something in your life. You can't feel it. You can't see it. Sometimes it feels like it's just standing still, same old, same old. That's not what we see here.

You can read Judges like a series of failures. You can read your own life that way too. But God's mercy, God's kindness, God's goodness, the way God keeps showing up for you—remember. Notice the end of the cycle. Time and time again, God gives them over to the worship of false gods and to these other nations, and they find themselves oppressed. And every time, it's only for a short time. Each time, though, is provisional. Like today, we read this story about Othniel. And we read here that Othniel was able to deliver them for forty years. You know, it's always temporary, but all of these judges point us forward in time to the great and final deliverer, Jesus. The name Othniel means "lion of God," and it points us forward in time to the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Jesus Christ, who would willingly sacrifice himself on a cross in order not only to bring our deliverance from sin, but to pour out his spirit in your life. And for you to permanently be his, called by his name, filled with his grace, considered in his sight as holy. The lion of God did this for you.

The Story of Robert Roberts

Let me close with this. In the seventeen fifties, a young man named Robert Roberts—his real name and not the guy who used to go to our church—Robert Roberts came to faith in London. He had been a wild young man, grown up poor, running the streets with friends. But he came to faith after sitting under the preaching of a man named George Whitfield, who was a famous evangelist. He did these open air opportunities for people to hear the Gospel. He was preaching one day in 1757. Robert comes to faith, and he writes out the words to what is now a very beloved hymn that we sing regularly in our church: "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." This is a hymn that's been sung through the ages. It was sung at my ordination service. We sing it all the time here. It's filled with pictures of God's graciousness even when we are, as it says in the song, prone to wander. Prone to wander away. "Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love."

Well, years later, Roberts himself had fallen away. He had had a lot of hardship in his life and he had abandoned his faith. He'd abandoned the ministry. He'd been a pastor for a number of years. And he's penniless and he's riding in his coach back to London. Now this is at the time when taxis were drawn by horses, not motorized. And he's in a coach, and he pays the fare and gets in. And right after he gets in, a young woman gets in. And she's holding a little book in her hands. And it was common in the seventeen fifties for people to carry around these little hymn books that were filled with their favorite hymns, and they would read them. She's humming a tune as she's there, and she begins to tell him about this song and how much it means to her. You can see where this story's going. She begins to pour out her heart about this one hymn, "Come Thou Fount," and how much it captures her experience of God. And Robert stops her. He's kind of tired of hearing from her. He says, "Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds if I had them to enjoy the feelings I had then." And she responded this way: "Sir, the streams of mercy, they're still flowing."

That story so sums up the book of Judges. The streams of mercy, they're still flowing. And I love that story because she's reminding this man of what he already knew, what he wrote himself. And this is one of the reasons we need one another in the church, isn't it? To remind one another, to come alongside each other and say, the streams of mercy, they are still flowing.

Brothers and sisters, won't you come get in the water this morning? Maybe for the first time, maybe for the thousandth time, but the streams of mercy are still flowing. The offer, God's graciousness, is always toward you. No matter where you are this morning in your yo-yo journey, his heart is towards you. Let's pray together.

Father, we thank you for your word. There's nothing like your word. And it describes so well our experience of falling away and finding ourselves needing, finding ourselves in a place of weakness, crying out to you, always doing the same cycle. But Lord, we thank you for the constancy of your mercy for sinners. There is none too far. We thank you that the mercies are ever flowing. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Won't you stand with me and sing in response to God's word together before we go to the table.

Thank you for listening to our CTK Raleigh sermons podcast. CTK is a community rooted in the depth of the gospel, refined by hard conversations, fueled by meaningful relationships, and committed to redemptive work in Raleigh. If you have questions about our sermon content or about our church in general, please visit our website at ctkraleigh.org.