Now the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”
– Judges 2:1-3 ESV
I am in awe of the human heart’s ability to justify itself and the actions its desires lead to. The moment that God’s Spirit commands or commends something our flesh immediately begins its resistance. Like Paul says in his epistle to the Romans, “sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.” (Romans 7:8)
We must beware lest we do exactly as the Israelites did in their conquest of the nations that the Lord had commanded them to destroy. They made peace with the enemies of God and because they did so their ability to conquer them was removed. The surrounding nations became a thorn and a snare to God’s people at God’s command, trapping them in their sin. It will surely be the same with you if you linger in your sin. There shall come a day when you decide you desire to leave that sin behind and you will find in yourself no strength to defeat it. You may yet be a child of God, but your spirit will be crippled and the nation of your soul pricked by that thorn which you so long abided with. We are commanded to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13) by the Spirit.
To sit back and declare that your conquest against the flesh is complete when there is still sin alive and active in you is to break covenant with your king, a thing which certainly has consequences. We are at war from the first breath of our new birth till the last moment of our life on this earth. War, lest we fail to obey God’s voice and the sin within us becomes a snare to us that we cannot remove. So fight, my brothers and sisters, until the day your Lord declares “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have fought the good fight and have won the race.” Only then, sanctified and glorified, will we enter fully into the rest of a peaceful promised land, free from enemies and battle.
Oh, what a glorious day that will be! May our Lord bring it soon!
1 Comment
I read this and picture the final battle of King arthur and Lancelot against the black knight Malagant in First Knight. In our spirits is resurrection power – all we need for life and godliness – when we rise up in faith ( as Lancelot does) with the sword of the Word, and the Spirit, we are victorious in Christ!