The ABC's of God's Foolish Grace (A sermon based on Judges 10:6-16)

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The ABC's of God's Foolish Grace

A sermon based on Judges 10:6-16

Sunday, March 17, 2010 - Lent 4C

        You've heard the expression, "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!" The lesson, of course, is don't be naive. Don't keep falling for the same trick over and over again. Learn from past mistakes so that history doesn't have to repeat itself.
        If that's true, "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!" then some might think God a fool in the book of Judges, because over and over again his people rebel against him and worship false gods that were no gods at all. So, just as a loving parent would do for a child who ran from them toward the highway, God would give them a spanking. God would let an enemy nation beat up on his people to call them back to him. And as soon as they hurt enough they cried out to him, "God, we're sorry! We're sorry! We'll never leave you again if you'll just rescue us!" And right on the heels of that prayer God would instantly send a hero to rescue them from their misery.... only to watch them rebel against him again and start the cycle all over again.
        Were the people sincere in their repentance? Or were they just saying what God wanted to hear to get the help they so desperately needed? But every time they cried out to him God saved them! And this happened not just once or twice, but the book of Judges records a dozen or more times that this cycle repeats.
        Someone once described the pattern that takes place follows the alphabet: A is for Apostasy. That is, turning your back on your religion. B is for Baddies, whom God lovingly sent to discipline his people. C is Crying. When discipline came, it brought the people to repent and cry out to God for forgiveness and help. D is for the Deliverance that God was so quick to give. Then E was for Ease, as the people grew comfortable in their time of peace, then complacent, then apostate again, to start the cycle all over.
        Listen for the pattern, A, B, C, D, and E in Judges 10:6-16, which summarizes the entire book of Judges...

⁶ Again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD. They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, and the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites and the gods of the Philistines. And because the Israelites forsook the LORD and no longer served him, ⁷ he became angry with them. He sold them into the hands of the Philistines and the Ammonites,⁸ who that year shattered and crushed them. For eighteen years they oppressed all the Israelites on the east side of the Jordan in Gilead, the land of the Amorites. ⁹ The Ammonites also crossed the Jordan to fight against Judah, Benjamin and the house of Ephraim; and Israel was in great distress. ¹⁰ Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, "We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals."

 ¹¹ The LORD replied, "When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, ¹² the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands? ¹³ But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. ¹⁴Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!" ¹⁵ But the Israelites said to the LORD, "We have sinned. Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now." ¹⁶ Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the LORD. And he could bear Israel's misery no longer.

A. Apostasy

        A is for Apostasy. Man, that's a lot of gods! It almost seems like the major industry of Israel is the importation of gods from other countries. And when you picture them worshiping these false gods, don't picture them just bowing down to a wooden statue in their bedroom. No, the service of these gods involved the most revolting immorality and the most unnatural rites (to put it nicely). In order to appease these gods they would offer their bodies into perverse services, an even what was most valuable to them -- their own children -- beating drums and chanting loudly to drown out the noise of their own children's screams as they died an excruciating death at the hand of their own parents. And this from the nation that the true God had rescued by divine intervention from those very same nations who worshiped these so-called gods, no less than seven times! What apostasy!
        Now you may rightly be thinking, "Whoa! That's horrible! How could they do that?!" But be careful not to think, "I could never display such apostasy in my life!" Really? You've never replaced the true God in your heart and in your life with the false gods that surround us in our culture? You've always chosen to serve the God who's rescued you? 
        Maybe we haven't visited any shrine prostitutes in order to worship the goddess Ashtoreah and maybe we haven't sacrificed our sons or daughters to make Molech happy. But we're no less guilty of apostasy -- of turning our backs on our God. We just worship different gods. We worship Mammon, the false god of money and the stuff it can buy putting it above our God. We worship at the altar of entertainment, calling upon it to numb the senses and rescue us from the boring and mundane. And every one of us has worshiped the god of self,  choosing to serve "glorious" me over the true God every time I serve my will over his or just ignore his will in apathy because I'm so caught up in serving mine!
        Whether we want to admit it or not, we are guilty of apostasy. We forsake the Lord and serve other gods from the world around us. And so we, like the Israelites, deserve punishment from God. But God doesn't give us punishment, he gives us discipline. That brings us to B...

B. Baddies

        B is for Baddies. God let an enemy nation beat up on his people. He even sent enemy nations to beat up on his people. The NIV translation is a bit timid when it says, "he became angry with them." Better would be, "the Lord's anger burned!" The picture is that of a raging fire. Picture each of the gods listed as one more log for the fire.  Israel stoked the Lord's anger by serving all of these so-called gods. They doused it with gasoline by their detestable acts and they threw the match on the pile when they "forsook the Lord and no longer served him." Now the Lord's anger was a roaring inferno, burning brightly against his chosen people.
        This time Israel has fallen so far that for the first time God sent a double-barreled oppression. In his anger he unleashed not one but two oppressors simultaneously. The Philistines hit hard from the northwest and the Ammonites crossed the Jordan and hit equally as hard from the southeast. And for eighteen years God's people were caught like a nut in a nutcracker.
        Why would God do this to his people? The answer, as hard it at might be to believe, is: Out of love. What? How could this be a loving thing, to let an entire nation suffer for eighteen years at the hand of a vicious enemy who would crush and oppress them? Because if he didn't spank them, they were sure to keep worshiping these false gods, keep forsaking the true God, and forsake the promise that this true God had made -- the promise of a Savior from sin. Had God not sent physical pain and torment to his people, they would have suffered eternal pain and torment in hell. God loved them too much to not disciple them. It sounded like a line when your parents said it, but as you grew older you learned that it was true, that "This [insert disciplinary action] is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."
        What's the difference between punishment and discipline? Punishment is meant to make you pay for your crime. But discipline is meant to help you learn from the consequences to keep you from an ever greater punishment and pain down the road. And thank God that he does let problems and pain come into our lives. Thank him that he may even send baddies into our lives. For these drive us back to him and back to his promises. They lead us to look to God, and not to ourselves for the solution. And they lead us to evaluate where we stand with him.
        And though the lesson wasn't quickly learned, the Israelites eventually caught on. That brings us to C...

C. Crying

        C is for Crying. Finally, after eighteen long years of misery, they figured it out and learned their lesson and finally called out to God and confessed their sins to him. But it seems like their tears were only crocodile tears. More sorry that they got caught than they were sorry over their sin, God met their sham confession with a strong sarcastic reproach, "Oh, boo-hoo! You're sorry for your sins, huh? Well, I'm not buying it! I've heard this story seven times before! And seven times before I've rescued you from your enemy! And how do you repay me? You find seven other gods -- gods of the enemies I defeated for you -- and you go and worship them. Fool me seven times, shame on you! Fool me eight, shame on me! I'm done playing the fool." "You have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. ¹⁴Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!"
        It might seem harsh, but God wanted a sincere confession of sin, that they might recognize their very real need for a Savior.
        Mom came downstairs after working on a project that kept her occupied and unaware of what the kids were up to. But as she entered the kitchen, there was Billy, with his hand in the cookie jar -- the very same cookie jar that mom had made it very clear that he should definitely not touch before dinner. But even though he was caught red-handed, little Billy was quick on his feet and said, "I knew you were so busy, mommy, and thought you could use a break. So I was just getting a cookie to bring to you. Oh, and mommy, while I'm at it, can I have one too?"
        But isn't that how we often act with God? God, I know what it looks like, but I wasn't really sinning. After all, I was just trying to build a relationship with those unbelievers so I could share the gospel with them. That's why I joined in their sin. I didn't want to burn a bridge. God, I didn't want to drive people away from the gospel, so I compromised, just a bit of your truth, so they wouldn't be turned off from the greater truth. 
        But God sees right through our excuses. He sees right through our false tears of repentance. He sees right through the times we call upon him with a mock repentance only because we want him to bail us out of our suffering. And he calls us on it. He calls us on it to bring us to true repentance.

        You see, true repentance is more than just a mechanical mouthing of the words, "I am by nature sinful and unclean and have sinned against you by thought, word, and deed. Amen." True repentance is not treating God's forgiveness like a dumpster that we fill up with our trash so it can be taken away so we can fill it up again. The author to the Hebrews warns us in Hebrews 10:26-27: "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God."
        God will answer such a mock repentance with the sarcasm it deserves, "Go ahead, put your trust in some cheap grace as if you need not feel any real sorrow for your sin. See if I'll forgive you. Go ahead, put your trust in your recitation of all the right words of knowing all the right things to say. See if that will save you from hell."
        But a true repentance is the heart's shuddering sigh to God of Psalm 51:4: "Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight!" It's that pain within knowing that what I've done has caused my Savior's suffering and crying out, "God, what have I done? How could I have done this to him who has always show me nothing but love. I'm sorry! I'm so sorry for what I've done. God, do with me as you see fit, just save me from my sin." And true repetance has fruits of repentance. It gets rid of the fasle gods and throws them away. It doesn't just put it in the closet for another day.
        The people of Israel got the point of God's sarcastic response and they became sincere in their confession, taking ownership of their sins and producing the godly fruits of repentance, "They got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the LORD." For a moment at least, a reformation had taken place. And God was quick to respond, which brings us to D.

D. Deliverance

        D is for Deliverance. When they were sincere in their confession and sorrowed over their sin, the ever-faithful Lord again felt mercy for his people. Literally, "his soul became impatient with their suffering." And no matter how foolish it may seem to us to forgive these rebels -- yet again! -- God did it. Go home and read chapter 11 of Judges to see how God delivered his people from thir enemies by the foolish hero, Jephthah. God was quick to give his foolish grace and deliver his people yet again.
        And when we're sincere in our sorrow over our sin and cry out to God for help, he's quick to do the same for us. Now, don't get me wrong. God doesn't promise to send us a hero to save us from an enemy nation, or from unemployment, an unloving spouse, or unruly kids. But we have a much better hero. We have a Savior who delivered us from our own apostasy, from our sin, and from the hell we've most certainly earned for them.
        For when the Lord could no longer bear the misery of our sin, when he could no longer bear the thought of us being condemned for eternity, he sent Jesus to live a life of wholehearted devoted to his Father's will, to love the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, and mind, choosing no other god, but serving the true God only. And when Jesus gave his perfect worship to us, God the Father gave him the eternal crushing that we deserved. And he forsook Jesus to pay for our forsaking of him. What foolish grace! What awesome grace! That delivers us again and again, and like the Father in Jesus' parable, spends his days searching the horizon for the first sign of repentance that he might throw his arms around us, interrupt our well-rehearsed speech begging for forgiveness, and say, "Welcome home, dear child! It's so good to have you back!" What foolishness God shows to us! And thank God he does!

E. Endless Thanks

        And finally, the last letter of the cycle of the book of Judges is E. And E is for ease. After God rescued his people, things quickly became comfortable again. "Aaaahhh!" they would say, "We're forgiven by God. Our enemies are defeated. Life is good." But then they would soon become complacent, forget about God, rebel against him and repeat the cycle all over again. Ease led to apostasy, which led to more baddies, which eventually led the Israelites to cry out to God again, and he would again deliver them in his foolish grace.
        But I propose that we break the cycle, dear friends! Let's not grow complacent as we enjoy God's forgiveness or treat God like a spare tire only to be pulled out only when we think we really  need him. Instead, let's let the deliverance that he brought in his foolish grace -- a deliverance not just from a political or physical enemy, but from sin and  death and hell -- move us to gratitude so that the E doesn't stand for Ease, but for Endless Thanks. Not just "thanks, Jesus. Until next time!" But "Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, now and always! Let me live my life for you and throw away the idols that infect my life and let me me serve you only." Let's end the cycle, dear friends, and not start over at A, but end in E, in endless thanks for the deliverance our Savior won for us on the cross and in grateful service to him. In Jesus' name, dear friends, amen.