Judges 2 - Part 3

QUESTION: Danger of Compromise - 3

ANSWER:

Judges 2 - Part 3

by Pastor Nathan Shepherd (Dive Chapel, Candle Key, Florida)

“Verses 11 through 23 are a macroeconomics version of this cycle happening over and over and over. Again, we’ll see it played out big time as we go through this book of Judges. We, just like these ancient Israelites, need to identify the Canaanites of sin in the land of our salvation.

“We need to find the pressure points in all of our lives and break this cycle. One big pressure point is something I talked about a few minutes ago, compromise. Living comfortably with the Canaanites of sin in our lives. Last week we called gossip the Amorites. Compromise is a huge one. Let’s hit on the ‘Philistines of Compromise.’

“Joshua dies in Judges 2, verse 8 and that section goes on to say that a generation came up who did not know the Lord and did not follow His ways. Remember that Joshua, that great leader, was most famous for saying, in Joshua 24:15, ‘And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.’

“Compromise. Serving two masters. The LORD says we can only serve one master. If we try to serve two, we hate one and love the other. Man oh man. What if the American church is totally missing it? Are we serving money or lust or politics? And, if so, are we by definition hating God? What if the Rapture happens and only three guys from Ethiopia are taken up? Two thousand years out, have we totally missed it?

“What if, and don’t slap me around here, we’ve turned Christianity into exactly what Jesus so hated when He was here? Are we just a bunch of Pharisiacal money-changers? Are we making fortunes off of Christianity while people are homeless, starving, in abject pain?

“The ‘Philistines of Compromise’ is a very appropriate concept for us in the Keys. The Philistines were watermen. They worshipped gods of the ocean. Dagon, one of their main gods, who, by the way, was trashed by the presence of the Ark of the LORD, was half-man, half-fish. Their worship ceremonies were attractive because they infused a bunch of sexual practices in them. They were hugely anti-Yahweh.

“I’ll put forth that the modern gods that are worshipped on TV and in movies and in magazines are all about compromise. The question for us is, ‘What are we going to do to push back against them? How are we going to stand firm and say, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD’? Thank You Jesus.”

Judges 3 – Go!