Israel Cries Out To The Lord

This is the fourth post in a five part series. It is inspired by the Book of Judges and my studies of that book. Posts will appear here and on A Deeper Church.

Read the first post.

Read the second post.

Read the third post.

“But the Israelites said to the Lord, ‘We have sinned. Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now.’”

Can you hear them, the cries of Israel, can you hear them?

Crying out in the clefts and caves of the mountains in which they have taken refuge from their oppressors.

Sobbing prayers of longing for the days their ancestors wandered in the desert, homeless, but with God.

Muttering words of the Lord’s slow anger and abounding love in hopes that He might show Himself to be those things as they find themselves enslaved in a land that was supposed to be theirs.

How long before these cries and prayers and muttered words passed through Hebrew lips did these same Hebrews realize their distance from the One who called them to be set apart?

Days? Weeks? Months? Years?

Decades?

Were the compromises big from the beginning? Was their turning from Him one giant step at a time? Or did they start small?

Does it matter how big or small the compromises were?

Does it matter how far away from Him they turned?

Does it matter how big or small our compromises are?

Does it matter how far away from Him we turn?

To do anything but directly face God is to face something else entirely.

And the more we turn away, the longer it takes for us to realize we are no longer looking directly at Him.

A glimpse of Him in our periphery is not a life focused on the Lord.

And then suddenly, like Israel, we cry out. We realize He has passed outside of our field of vision. Unsure of which way to turn, for Him who is to guide us is no longer visible, and so we cry out.

We cry out in hopes that He will be faithful to answer even though we have been unfaithful in our turning away.

We cry out in hopes that we will be rescued, as Israel was, again from our sin, again from our turning, again from our idolatry.

We cry out.

Does it matter how big or small our steps away from God are?

God Disciplined Israel for their Disobedience

“…and for seven years he gave them into the hands of the Midianites. Because the power of Midian was so oppressive the Israelites prepared shelters for themselves in mountain clefts, caves and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites and other eastern peoples invaded the country. They camped on the land and ruined the crops all the way to Gaza and did not spare a living thing for Israel, neither sheep nor cattle nor donkeys. They came up with their livestock and their tents like swarms of locusts. It was impossible to count the men and their camels; they invaded the land to ravage it.”

Consequences.

Discipline.

Israel did not like the discipline of the Lord. They ran from it, hid from it in mountain clefts, caves, and strongholds.

The rest of the post appears on A Deeper Church. Head over there to read the post in its entirety.

Israel Did Evil in the Eyes of the Lord

This is the second post in a five part series. It is inspired by the Book of Judges and my studies of that book. Posts will appear here and on A Deeper Church. You can read the first post here.

“The Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheras.”

The Book of Judges reads like a downward spiral, with each revolution marked by some variation of the phrase, “again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”

Each time it gets worse.

Each time the person leading the people of Israel gets worse.

Each time it is worse because they have turned more fully away from the Lord.

What was their evil?

It was a violation of covenant. A violation of an agreement with the Most Holy God. The One who brought them out of Egypt, out of slavery. The One who removed them from under the hand of their oppressors. The One who drove out those who would oppress Israel so that they might receive the land of their inheritance.

It was a violation to love the Lord their God and serve Him only. It was bowing down to other gods, to idols made, sometimes from their own hands, instead of the One True God.

It was prostitution of self for the purpose of self-indulgence at the cost of true identity, at the cost of the relationship that mattered most.

I do not have idols of metal, wood, or stone.

But that does not mean I do not have idols.

I do not prostitute myself to Baal.

But that does not mean I do not attempt to sell myself off to the lowest bidder, to the cheapest thrill or hope of love, forsaking the greatest love readily available and freely given in the hope of something that feels a little easier.

Our idols are not the idols of Israel during the time of the Judges. But that does not mean we do not serve idols of our own making, idols of this time, today.

The evil we do in the eyes of the Lord may look different on the surface than the evil of Israel, but the cost is the same. Each choice we make to choose ourselves over Him is a step away from Him and toward the worship of self; the worship of what each one of us sees fit to do.

What calls you from your worship of the Lord?

What tries to promise an easier love than the love available to you in Christ?

Everyone did as he saw fit

I close my Bible and push it across the coffee shop’s small table as far away from me as I can. The ugliness hangs around me, the depravity. I close my eyes and shake my head, trying to clear the images from the last chapters of Judges from my mind.

Gang rape. Murder. Brother turning against brother. More murder. More rape.

This is the Word of Lord?

[Thanks be to God.]

I'm starting a new series based on my study of the book of Judges. You can find the rest of this post over at A Deeper Church.