From His Heart

Speaker 1

Don't you really regret it when you get tricked into paying too high a price for something? Here's Pastor Jeff Shreve.

Speaker 2

See, you're always gonna pay a high price for forsaking God. You know, you don't go from walking with God to forsaking God and you just go to neutral ground.

There is no neutral ground. You're either pursuing the Lord or you're in the devil's territory.

There is tremendous truth.

Speaker 1

Welcome to From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve as today he continues his timely message called the Danger Zone from his 10 lesson series, Before There Were Kings, the Cost of Compromise, a study of the Book of Judges.

Are you heeding the warnings from the Lord that are given to us through the Old Testament and particularly the Book of Judges? In today's message, Pastor Jeff has four warnings from Judges, Chapter Two that serve to keep Christians accountable and on guard against apathy, complacency, and wandering away from the faith.

You'll want to listen intently today so you don't get deceived and have to pay the heavy price. If you missed part one from last time, you can listen again online anytime at fromhisheart.org. Click the listen link if you're able.

Now open your Bible to the Book of Judges, Chapter Two as Pastor Jeff continues the timely lesson, the Danger Zone.

Speaker 2

Now I want to share with you four warnings that we see in the verses that we read. Four warnings and then a word of encouragement.

Warning number one: beware of religion without relationship. Religion without relationship. Verse 10 says again, "all that generation also were gathered to their fathers and there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor yet the work which he had done for Israel." Now that's pretty amazing when you read that and you say, well, how in the world did they not know the Lord? They didn't know what he had done, the work that he had done for Israel. Joshua, he was faithful to teach the people, and all his generation, they followed the Lord. So it's hard to imagine that his generation wouldn't have told the generation to come about the Lord. I think they did tell them. I think Joshua's generation did tell the next generation, but the next generation didn't receive it. It's not that they didn't know about the Lord; they didn't acknowledge the Lord. They didn't know the Lord in a heart-to-heart way. They knew the Lord in their mind, as it says in Romans 1: "For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give him thanks, and their foolish hearts were darkened." So beware of religion without relationship.

Now, when you get complacent, you're not seeing the real score. We dare not get complacent in our Christian life. Listen, you mark it down: the Christian life is a continual battle. Just because you're saved and you've grown to a certain place in your Christian life, you can't begin to coast. If you begin to coast, you're going to start going backward. So beware of not only spiritual hypocrisy but spiritual complacency.

Third warning: beware of spiritual apathy. Spiritual apathy, a lack of interest and desire. You're just "eh." I don't really care. I just am not really all that interested. You know what you find in the Book of Judges? You don't find anybody devouring the word of God. You don't find anybody disciplining himself or herself in the word of God. But you did find that in Joshua. You know what's interesting? Moses had told them before they went into the land, "Listen, when you go into the land and God blesses you, and you have your flocks and your herds and everything's going great, be careful that you don't forget the Lord your God." And Joshua, in Joshua chapters 23 and 24, when he is dismissing the people to their inheritance, he tells them, "You need to make sure you don't forget the Lord."

So beware of religion without relationship. We call that spiritual hypocrisy. Beware of spiritual complacency. I'm good just the way I am, and you just rest on your laurels. Listen, the world, the flesh, and the devil are coming at you. If you stand still in a stream where the current is going against you, you are going to drift back. Nobody stays the same in the Christian life. You're either moving forward or you're going back. And beware of spiritual apathy. Disinterest in the word of God. The Bible tells us, Paul told Timothy, "Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness." Discipline yourself. It takes discipline to grow as a Christian. It takes discipline to stand, just like it takes discipline to do anything. We need to discipline ourselves for the purpose of godliness, and we need to dive into God's word and we need to meditate on it and memorize it and do it, to be careful to do it. Then you make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

Warning number four: beware of spiritual apostasy. So we have hypocrisy, we have complacency, we have apathy, and we have apostasy. Verse 13 says, "So they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtaroth." The anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them. He sold them into the hands of their enemies around them, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them, for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed.

The word apostasy means a falling away. You abandon your position with the Lord and you fall away from him. They left the Lord and started following after the Baals. BAAL means Lord, master. The Canaanites worshiped the Baals, and they had different names attached to Baal. You would have BAAL Bereth, which meant the Lord of the covenant. You had BAAL Peor, where God's people sinned at BAAL Peor, which meant Lord of the opening. You had BAAL Zebub, which meant Lord of the flies. So BAAL Zebub became Beelzebul in the New Testament. That's what they said to Jesus: "You cast out demons by Beelzebub," Beelzebul, the prince, the ruler of the demons.

Beelzebub or Beelzebul in the New Testament, it's the same thing. It's the Lord of the Flies. They would have all these names, but BAAL worship, the whole idea of BAAL worship, involved this male deity and his female counterpart called the Ashtaroth, who is the moon God, or the Asherah. They would have Asherah poles. You have Baal, who is the God of fertility and the God of storms, because you had to have rain in an agricultural society in which they lived. There is his consort, the Ashtaroth, and they would worship those false gods together.

Now, the thing that made BAAL worship so terrible and the reason God told them to drive those people out is because BAAL worship was very sexual, due to its fertility culture. In BAAL worship, you have prostitutes. The way you worship BAAL is through sexual immorality. As you're worshiping in sexual immorality, that meant, "Hey, we're going to get a bumper crop this year because I've been worshiping Baal. He is the God of fertility. He's the God of the storms. He's the God who makes everything produce." The Lord knew, "Hey, my people aren't going to be able to handle that. That's too much temptation for them." The sexual immorality was such a pull for the people of Israel.

When you have those surrounding nations and those pockets of people still around them, there's peer pressure. You know, do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. They would feel that pull. "Well, you know, these people have lived in the land. We've never lived in this land. They say that you worship this God. This is the God of the land. Maybe Jehovah, Yahweh, God is just the God who is over the Red Sea, who's over the wilderness. But now we're in another place. Maybe we ought to worship their God, you know, just to cover all our bases." They forsook the Lord and began to worship the Baals. It was a terrible, horrible evil, and they paid a high price for that.

See, you're always going to pay a high price for forsaking God. You don't go from walking with God to forsaking God, and just go to neutral ground. There is no neutral ground. You're either pursuing the Lord or you're in the devil's territory. You have to walk in the light, as he himself is in the light. There was a high price that they paid for that. It says in verse 15, "Wherever they went, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them, so that they were severely distressed." This isn't a minor thing; this is a major thing.

You say, "Well, why would God have his hand against them for evil? That seems so over the top." Well, it's just like in the New Testament, it says, "God is opposed to the proud. He gives grace to the humble." If you're going to walk in pride, as these people were walking in pride, because they weren't walking in submission to the Lord, you're either walking in submission to the Lord or you're walking in pride. They were walking in pride. God's opposed to the proud. The moment you want to become proud, God lines up against you.

I interviewed football player Charles Mann on Wednesday on the radio program. Charles played for the Washington Redskins. Charles was at our church in 2008, six foot six when he played, he was 275 pounds. When he was here in 2008, I think he had maybe 10% body fat. I mean, he's just a mountain of a guy. You wouldn't want him to line up against you. He's just a man. Can you imagine Almighty God saying, "I'm opposed to the proud. I will line up against you if you're proud"? The hand of the Lord is against them for evil continually. Why? Because they were walking in pride. God is opposed to the proud. He gives grace to the humble. Peter says, "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your cares upon him because he cares for you."

They paid a high price. The first nation or the first group of people who subjugated them are talked about in Judges, chapter 3, verses 7 and 8. "The sons of evil did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and forgot the Lord their God, and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, so that he sold them into the hands of Cushan Rishathaim, King of Mesopotamia. The sons of Israel served Cushan Rishathaim eight years." You say, "What kind of a name is Cushan Rishathaim?" Well, his name is Cushan. Rishathaim is a moniker that they gave him, and it literally means doubly wicked. Cushan. That's who they forsook the Lord for, and now they found themselves under the thumb of a man who is doubly wicked, named Cushan.

Hey, you pay a high price when you walk away from the God who is merciful and gracious and kind and loving and all-powerful, who is the only God. Beware of spiritual apostasy.

But then number five is really not a warning; it's more of an encouragement. Be aware of the mercy of God because God had mercy on his people. It says in chapter two, verse 18, "When the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered 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 oppressed and afflicted them."

Now, there is a cycle in the Book of Judges that you're going to read about as we go through the Book of Judges. It's just a broken record over and over and over and over. This is the cycle: Israel does evil in the sight of the Lord. God punishes Israel, and Israel is enslaved. Israel, at the very bottom, cries out to the Lord, and God raises up a judge in response to their cries. Israel's delivered. There's peace in the land. Israel serves the Lord, and everything is great until the judge dies. Then they go back to their sin. The Bible says they quickly go back, and they go back worse than their fathers did. They don't learn from the cycle.

So we need to remember this: God is merciful to us. When we find ourselves in that situation where everything is broken down and we've done what the prodigal son did, we left the Father's house and went trying to find our thrills and excitement and participate in the passing pleasures of sin. You know, sin is pleasurable, but the Bible says it's pleasurable for a season. You know, sin has seasons. When you're in the springtime of sin, man, it just feels so good. In the summertime, it's just like, "Man, this is wonderful. My drugs, my alcohol, all this sexual immorality. It's just wonderful." But then summer gives way to fall, which gives way to winter, and you find yourself at the pigsty. That's where sin leads every single time. God is faithful that it will lead you there. He's not going to bless you in sin. He's going to bring you to your senses. You're going to come to the place of the pigsty.

Then you cry out to him, "Oh, God." They were severely distressed. "Oh, God, have mercy on us. We have sinned, and, Lord, we want to turn back to you." That's a good thing. We need to remember when we're at the pigsty that God is merciful. The thing that comes back, and I've told you this, it's important to memorize Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, where God speaks of himself. When he passes by, you know, Moses said, "Lord, show me your glory." The Lord put him in the cleft of the rock and hid him there with his hand. He said, "Moses, you can't see the front of my face. No man can see my face and live. I'll show you the outside of the backside of my glory, the edges of my glory."

He passed by and said, "The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate." That word means merciful, compassionate, and gracious. Slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth. Who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. Moses bowed low to worship. But that is repeated all throughout Scripture about God being compassionate, God being merciful, God being full of loving kindness, God being a forgiving God.

So we call upon God's mercy and compassion and forgiveness. That's what they did. The Lord had mercy, and the Lord did forgive them for terrible, horrible sin. I mean, you know, he says, "You went after other gods. You prostituted yourself to go after other gods." It's a picture of spiritual adultery. James 4:4 says, "Friendship with the world is hostility toward God." He says, "You adulteresses," that's what he calls them in James 4. That's what they were doing. They were committing acts of sexual immorality, acts of adultery in the worship of Baal.

So it was fitting that the Lord said, "You went after other gods." The King James says, "You went a whoring after other gods." That's a real slap in the face when the Lord says that. We don't really use that word. We like to say they played the prostitute. But "a whoring" is what the Lord says in KJV. And, wow, that's like, "Oh, I don't want to do that. That's just awful. That's terrible." Yeah, what they did was awful and terrible, but God still forgave them.

Isaiah 55, verse 7 says this: "Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return to the Lord, and he will have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." And God forgave them. God raised up a judge, and the judge delivered them, and there was peace in the land, and they began to serve the Lord yet again. But then that judge would die, and the cycle would repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat.

Hey, last warning: make sure you don't take his mercy and grace for granted. Take heed to what he has done for you. Verse 19 says, "But it came about when the judge died that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them. They did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways." So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel.

Hey, listen, here's the bottom line: truth. You and I, we struggle with sin. Friday, I interviewed Joe Dallas. Joe Dallas was a militant homosexual who was on staff at a gay-affirming church where the pastor was a lesbian. These are his words, not mine. I said, "Well, were you militant?" "Yes, I was militant." He said, "There is an adrenaline rush when these people, when you get involved in a cause like that. You know, when the Black Lives Matter would all get together, there's this adrenaline rush." He said, "I would be involved in these marches and things for Gay Pride and all." He said there was an adrenaline rush in that.

But then he said, "In the midst of that, God convicted me of my sin. He showed me that I was a sinner in need of a savior." Joe Dallas put his faith and trust in Jesus. As we were talking, I said, "Now, Joe, for the listeners, some people get the wrong idea about what the Christian life is, that it's once you trust Christ, that everything is just, you know, hunky-dory and there are no more battles to fight." He said, "Well, that's not true. There are battles to fight. Every day you have to fight the battle, and you have to fight to walk with God. You can't fight. Rest on your laurels. You got to keep moving forward, press on to know the Lord and to know him more deeply."

We have to remember that we don't take his mercy and grace for granted. We just don't say, "Well, you know, I mean, yeah, I went and served the Baals, and he forgave me, and he restored, and everything's fine. Now I can just go do that again. I can get in on that season of sin again." Why do you want to do that? Remember I told you, I don't know, a year or so ago about the fact that my wife is lactose intolerant? You know, Debbie knows that if she has lactose, it's going to make her sick, and it may taste good going down, but she knows where that's going to lead to sickness, and it's not worth it.

Listen, when you know this sin is going to take me to a place where I'm severely distressed, newsflash: it's not worth it. So when you start feeling yourself pulled in that direction, that's when you need to stop and say, "God, have mercy on me. I want to walk with you. You're the God who delivered me from bondage in Egypt. BAAL didn't deliver me. BAAL can't deliver." So we dare not take his mercy and grace for granted.

Speaker 1

Today's truth should shock us out of the deceit we may be under and remind us of the imperative to heed the warnings given to us in the Book of Judges. We hope these have been enriching and moving insights for you today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve. The lesson was called the Danger Zone. We heard part two today. If you missed part one, you can go to our website at fromhisheart.org and click the Listen link. If you would like a copy of this message you've just heard, you can get it online too, along with a free MP3 download of the broadcast.

The series we're in this month is called Before There Were Kings: The Cost of Compromise, with 10 lessons that share God's truth from the Book of Judges. The famous hymn line says, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love." Indeed, God's people are very prone to wander into sin, most often through compromise. Such is the case in the Book of Judges as God's people fall into a terrible cycle of sin, servitude, supplication, and salvation via a delivering judge. In this series, Pastor Jeff provides powerful insights into the cost of compromise in the time of the Judges and for us today too.

The series is our gift of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount to From His Heart. You can get yours when you call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhisheart.org. You can request it on a USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or MP3 digital download—your choice. Request the series Before There Were Kings: The Cost of Compromise when you reach out today.

Well, thank you for being with us today on From His Heart. I'm Larry Nobles, with a personal invitation to you to join us tomorrow as we begin the third message in this 10-lesson series. It's called Can God Use Someone Like Me? Here's the not-so-hidden hint: Yes, He can, and He will. Join Pastor Jeff Shreve then when we'll again open God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope From His Heart.

From His Heart is the listener-supported broadcast ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve, speaking the truth in love to a lost and hurting world. Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Find out more at fromhisheart.org.