-- Saturday, 7/3/10 -- DOING YOUR PART -- Judges 2:1-3

[J.R. & Bonnie Ricks]

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DOING YOUR PART -- Judges 2:1-3 NIV

 

The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land that I swore to give to your forefathers. I said, 'I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.' Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this?  Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you."

 

Back at Mount Sinai, God had made a covenant with Israel.  He had given them the Law and told them to follow it.  He told them that as long as they held up their end of the bargain, He would bless them with victory after victory.  God stood by His part of the bargain…  Israel didn't.

 

Right here, at this point, the relationship between God and Israel changed.  He had told them to drive the Canaanites out of the land, but they had not done it.  Each of the tribes found excuse after excuse to disobey God’s command.  So God finally ran out of patience with them.  No longer would He go before them in battle.  No longer would He win the victories for them.  They were on their own.  Of course, God didn't abandon them altogether.  In fact, He would keep His hand on that nation and would bless the whole world through them in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

But He would also allow them to be defeated.  He would allow them to be oppressed.  He would allow a large number of problems to befall them… because they had not held up their end of the deal.  They had refused to do their part.

 

God's love is unconditional… but His promises are not.  Each and every promise He makes to us carries a condition with that promise.  Too often, we expect God to live up to His promises, but we are stubbornly unwilling to meet the condition and hold up our end of the deal.  We are too lazy or too willful or too focused on the world or too.... well, you get the picture.  The truth is, none of us is capable of holding up our end of the deal to perfection, and God takes that into account when He looks at our hearts.  But most of us don’t even begin to try.

 

Let’s look at just one promise… the one found in Psalm 37:4 (NIV), “Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  It’s easy to see what the promise is and what the condition is in this verse…

         

The condition:  Delight yourself in the Lord

          The promise:  He will give you the desires of your heart

 

Pretty simple, right?  But what, exactly, does “delight yourself in the Lord” mean?  It’s more than just going to church every Sunday, throwing a check into the collection plate and saying your prayers every night.  It’s even more than following a long list of “Christian to-do’s” – like visiting the nursing home, volunteering at a homeless shelter, teaching a class, etc.  It’s being totally, completely, 100% sold-out to Jesus… so deeply in love with Him that if everything and everyone in your life suddenly disappeared today, Jesus would be more than enough for you.  That’s just one of God’s many, many promises to those who love Him.

 

The next time you get on your knees and ask God to live up to one of His promises in your life... take a look at yourself.  How hard are you working at doing your part?

 

 

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