God’s endless tests (Judges 3:1-11)

From chapter 3, Judges enters into its main points. Israel has finally entered into Canaan after 40 years in the wilderness. But even after they enter into the promised land of Canaan, they are still exposed as disobedient, rebellious beings. What is interesting though is that God is the director behind this situation, which is clearly laid out in verse 1 of today’s passage:
<Judges 3:1>
It’s saying that God left the nations of Canaan in the land to test Israel, right? What kind of a test would that be? In order to find out what kind of a test that is, we can have a look at the test God gave to their forefather Abraham. In Genesis 22, you see the same word “test =מבחן; בדיקה, ניסיון  싸나 ” appearing in today’s passage:
<Genesis 22:1>
God is testing Abraham, the father of Israel. But it was a truly puzzling test, wasn’t it? It was a test, demanding Abraham to let go of his most beloved, most precious treasure Isaac. Let’s look at verse 2:
<Genesis 22:2>
 Here God says for Abraham to offer his son Isaac, but not just any son but his “only son, whom you love”. God’s saying to offer the most precious thing you have, your most beloved thing to God. So the content of God’s test is:
 “Is it God or is it the thing you love the most? Choose one”
This is a test for God to expose our sin. Why? Because the true nature of sin itself is the state of the heart being somewhere other than with God.
But actually Abraham wasn’t the first one to receive this test. This test started with the test given to the very first person Adam. God sends down his law upon the first person Adam, “Do not eat from the tree of good and evil”. Within God’s law, the demand of complete obedience is contained. So to obey the law means the confession “I put God’s word above everything else”. But Adam broke the law. That means there was something more important to Adam than God’s word.
What was that? It was his desire to be like God. To shorten that to one word would be ‘me’ or ‘self’. Between ‘God’ and ‘Me’, when our hearts move closer towards ‘me’, we call that sin and we call that evil.

When God was taking Israel out of Egypt, God gave them the same test:
<Deuteronomy 8:1-3>
In verse 1 God gives His law to Israel. “Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today”, and then in verse 2 that is called a test. And that test is to be able to distinguish whether the Israelites are people who listen to God’s word, or whether they disobey God’s word in order to seek the things they desire, right? And what does it say that the test is designed to teach Israel? To teach us that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD”.
If we go to Deuteronomy 13, we can see how this test appears into the believers’ lives in many different ways.
<Deuteronomy 13:1-3>
God is once again testing Israel here to find out whether they love the Lord or other things, but the way He does that is by sending prophets and dreamers who perform miracles and wonders. So if the Israelites follow the prophets and the dreamers, that will be deemed as having deserted God, and will be punished. Let’s read on from verse 4:
<Deuteronomy 13:4-9>
Miracles, signs and wonders are all things that are needed in fulfilling ‘my interests’ and ‘my desires’. The fact that we would follow the prophets and dreamers in pursuit of ‘my interests’ and ‘my desires’ means I love myself more than God.
God says quite clearly “Do not be deceived by the temptations of prophets and dreamers”. But who sends those prophets and dreamers? God himself. For what? To test Israel. God is the one who sends them, but then He says that these are ones who will drive Israel to idols and false gods, so we should not follow them no matter how enticing they are. He even repeatedly says that we must kill those prophets and dreamers.
But what does Israel do? Constantly in their travels through the wilderness they worshipped the golden calf that they made with their own hands, and ridiculed God. In that way, God’s test and our failures are repeated in history.

We should view today’s passage within that context. A test appears again in today’s passage. God had left the Canaan nations in and around Israel in order to test them. Then what happened?
<Judges 3:5-7>
Israel are marrying the daughters of the Canaanites, and worshipping the gods of the Canaanites, who they were commanded to completely drive out and destroy.
In verse 7 you can see that the Israelites had forgotten the Lord. In other words, after God had sprinkled desirable things around Israel in order to test them, every single one of Israel, without exception, took the bait straight away.
That is man. And that is the truth that God’s tests want to expose.
And something very similar to today’s passage had already been foretold in Genesis 6, in the story of Noah’s ark.
<Genesis 6:1-8>
The same thing had happened here where the sons of God married the daughters of men, right? Then what was the result of the sons of God marrying the daughters of men? Heroes, men of renown and the Nephilim were born.
But aren’t these the destinations that every man is seeking to reach? Every man wants to be heroes, men of renown, and great ones (Nephilim) that have no match? And also aren’t these the types of people that God can use to great effect?
But rather, God’s heart is deeply troubled and filled with lament at this sight. He even declares a curse upon them to destroy them. You can see clearly here that God does not want people to be heroes, men of renown and great, to be of ‘use’ to God. In fact, that is sin in front of God.
God curses the effort of man seeking to be great, popular and heroic. Because that is man’s independence movement from God.
Man must become smaller, emptier and lower in front of God, not bigger, higher and better. But every man is running towards these ‘ideals’ of themselves. They will all face death.
But among those God will bestow His grace upon a few and save them. That story of salvation is being repeated in today’s passage.

Today, you see Israel receive the daughters of Canaan as their wives and marry them. It is for the benefit of ‘myself’. In front of the benefit for my own being, God’s word becomes disposable rubbish. God had commanded Israel to drive all of them out and destroy them, but that word was rubbish in front of ‘myself’. And this disobedience leads straight to the worshipping of idols of Baal and Asherah.
In other words, Baal and Asherah are just forms of ‘self-worship’, forms of the idol called ‘self’. Israel discarded the word of God for the benefit of their ‘self’ and after discarding the word of God, they needed another idol who would listen to their wishes.
Think about this, God is one who speaks to His creation. But idols do not and cannot speak. Idols are only listening beings, not speaking beings. Idols listen to the words of the requestors, and accept the offerings and sacrifices that the requestors bring as a fee for carrying out their wishes. Then they do the work of fulfilling the wishes of their requestors. That is the structure of their temples and shrines. That is the principle of the Devil’s kingdom. The principle of getting the results of what you have done; there is no trace of grace or consideration in that principle.
This effort to use one’s environment, conditions and possessions for the benefit of my ‘self’, and as a means for self-advancement, is idol worshipping. In this structure it is man who speaks. But God is one who speaks. He speaks and fulfils what He says. Therefore the ones who worship and serve the Lord are ones who listen to His word, not ones who pushes their demands upon God. God is not one who accepts devotions and offerings as fees for requests in return for satisfying those requests. That is shamanism. That is shamanistic faith.
If man keeps on pushing his own demands upon God and keeps speaking his own words in order to fulfil his wishes, then they cannot hear the words that God speaks. Because the one speaking is his ‘self’. Then the only one remaining is his speaking ‘self’, and the object/target of his words is forgotten. We call that idol worshipping.
In that way when we forget our true states that used to be slaves in Egypt, and begins seeking the ‘ideal self of the future’ based on our desires, the God we are worshipping becomes an idol.
<Deuteronomy 8:11-20>
When our environment becomes even slightly comfortable, we quickly forget God and fall into the illusion that has stemmed from me. If you disagree, that is the reason why God gives us these tests that inevitably brings about the same result of our discarding of His word and His existence.
We took the fruit from the tree of good and evil, and didn’t want anything to do with God. The Lord commanded us to battle the Canaanites but we marry them instead. This is showing that there is not a single man in history that is able to discard what is “pleasing to the eye and good for food” by himself.

If you look at verse 1 of today’s passage, the bible calls these people who are still bound up in their self-worship as those who “had not experienced the wars in Canaan”.
What is the Canaan war? Is it a war over land?
The Canaan war is a war between those who know the blood of the lamb, blood of Jesus Christ, and those who do not know that. Israel is a people who have been saved for free by the blood of the lamb, and Canaanites are people who have no idea of such a thing.
So the Canaan war is a war between grace and works. In other words, it is a war between those who base the premise and value of their existence on their own strengths and resources, and those who base the premise and value of their existence on the blood of the lamb alone.
The reason why the people of God, the church, exists in this world is to come down from the place of a warrior who is only interested in gaining for self and glorifying self, to a place of kneeling down in front of the blood of Jesus Christ, as someone who is continuously emptied out.
This is a war that happens first and foremost within myself. Because I myself am ‘God’ in our minds. In that place a war takes place between grace and works. That is the Canaan war.
But we constantly forget that purpose and nature of the war we’re fighting. And at every turn we go back to holding on the strength of this world and my energy and efforts as the basis and value of my existence. This is how the Israelites who are supposed to be battling the Canaanites, becomes one with the Canaanites – that is the situation of the Israelites, who are supposed to be battling the Canaanites, rather marrying the Canaanites in today’s passage. This continuous failure of Israel is a representation of all the believer’s lives in this world.
The second half of this message will follow next week.