When God Follows Through


Judges 2:1-5
1Now the Angel of the Lord [this is God Himself] went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? 3So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” 4As soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept. 5And they called the name of that place Bochim. And they sacrificed there to the Lord.

As a parent, I was rather an abysmal failure with follow through and my girls knew it. When I promised a punishment for some infraction, I rarely did a good job of actually fulfilling that promise. As I review the process, I probably shouldn’t have made those threats in the first place. We all knew I wasn’t going to do it. On the positive side, I was blessed to not have children who thwarted me very often. Maybe the fear of my punishment was enough. Ah well - hindsight is 20/20.

God is not like that. When He says He’ll mete out punishment, He does. Fortunately for us, Jesus bore the pain of the ultimate punishment of our death (made in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve) for us and thus secured our salvation. But – that doesn’t mean that God will withhold the consequences of our disobedience in the immediate. At this point in the story of the Children of Israel, God is going to allow them to suffer the consequences of not following His commands to rid the land of their enemies. The passage begins with The Angel of the Lord (God) traveling from Gligal to Bokim.

God’s Angel made a journey from Gilgal to Bokim. Gilgal was a significant spot because it was the first campsite of Israel upon entering the Land of Promise. Joshua and the people had immediately marked the spot with a memorial of 12 uncut stones that the people had pried from the bed of the Jordan. There, fathers were to instruct their children regarding the saving acts of a gracious and powerful God. At Gilgal the armies of Israel had not yet been battle tested in Canaan. They had tasted neither victory nor defeat. The land was before them. In Gilgal, Israel had every hope of possessing the land completely. After all, the Angel of the Lord had led them and fed them for 40 years. At Gilgal the rite of covenant circumcision had been renewed and the feast of Passover celebrated. In every respect Gilgal stood for God’s covenant grace and his covenant desire that his chosen people be his holy and obedient people. The Angel of the Lord’s journey from Gilgal to Bokim was literally and significantly a trip from high expectation to sad disappointment. Bokim means “weepers.” As the proper name for a city or village, it is unknown. Undoubtedly the author of Judges had in mind one of the many places in the Promised Land that still had a pagan altar standing after the death of Joshua. Such an altar was ample reason for weeping. The tribes had entered their inheritance, but they had not carried out the Lord’s will that the pagans and their altars be banished from the land.
Lawrenz, J. C. ©1997. Judges, Ruth (pp. 36–37). Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Pub. House.

Israel had adopted a “live and let live” policy against the pagans. The wicked would remain like weeds among the wheat. The Lord withdrew his promise to root them out because Israel had not placed full faith in this promise. To the Israelites’ credit, they offered sacrifices. We are sure that the Lord forgave each penitent sinner. The nation, however, would still face the bitter consequences of its sin. The enemy would never be driven out completely from the land.

Returning to sin is foolish, but we all do it. My mind immediately wandered to the passage in 2 Peter that warns against returning to sin. While the mental picture Peter draws is pretty disgusting, it is nonetheless accurate.

2 Peter 2:22
What the true proverb says has happened to them: “The dog returns to its own vomit, and the sow, after washing herself, returns to wallow in the mire.”

The Children of Israel once again serve as an example to us of what a dangerous road we walk when not believing that God will always follow through with His promises – both negative and positive. Mixing Christianity with any other religion, which is ultimately what Israel did, will end in disaster for us. The Book of Judges stands as a perfect reminder of what can happen to us if we refuse to believe God will do what He promised.

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