The Cycle of Rebellion and Rescue

Katy could probably tell you… I have a lot of frustrations when driving: Parking lots, slow drivers, people who don’t seem to know where they are going...

But the one that beats them all (for me) is traffic circles.

We are starting to see more and more of them in PA… there are two on my way to my grandparents in Allentown now…

And every time I enter one, I turn to Katy and say, “Have I ever told you how much I hate traffic circles?”

Now I know, people from other countries… places like New Jersey… will disagree with me...

They will say, “Traffic circles are great… you just don’t know how to use them!”

To which I would reply, “EXACTLY! I don’t think ANYONE from Pennsylvania knows how to use them… which is why they are terrible!”

Now what I DO know about traffic circles is that it’s important to know how you enter them… how to exit them…

And, in my opinion... possibly even more importantly… how to avoid them!

I wish Google maps had a setting, “Bypass Traffic Circles.”

Now as much as I hate traffic circles, there’s another type of circle that I hate even more: the cycle of sin.

We are in week two of our sermon series through the book of Judges that we are calling “Rebellion and Rescue,” which is really a description of the cycle that we see again and again in the book… The Cycle of Rebellion and Rescue.

The people of Israel rebel in their sin… and God rescues them from the mess that they deserve.

The book of Judges is all about the cycles of sin…

There is a pattern of ever-worsening cycles of sin from one generation to the next… and we see the destructive nature of those cycles within each generation.

And in the book of Judges, we can learn principles for breaking the cycles of sin in our own lives....

We can learn what repentance looks like (often by seeing what it DOES NOT look like in the Israelites).

We can learn how much we need each other to point us toward Jesus… and how much we are prone to do what is right in our own eyes when we isolate ourselves from accountability.

And we can learn how to celebrate the great value of the gospel in place of our sin.

Judges is the perfect backdrop against which to view Jesus.

But in order to break the cycles of sin, we need to understand how they work.

Just like a traffic circle, we need to see the entrance coming, see the exits God gives us… and even see how we can bypass SOME of the sin cycles that would naturally come on our original route.

We will never bypass ALL sin… the temptations to sin are constantly in our lives… the sinful desires constantly need rooted out...

But we CAN take some steps to bypass SOME sinful patterns and to help others do the same.

And we CAN see REAL victory as we fight sin to the death through repentance and faith.

Today, as the author of Judges finishes the introduction to the book, he gives us an overview of the sin cycles we will see play out again and again...

And he gives us an understanding of how the people of Israel entered into those cycles… which I believe is INCREDIBLY instructive for us in our generation.

So here’s the big idea for the day:

Big Idea: Break the cycles of sin by taking the bypasses and exits God gives you.

Your Bibles are open to Judges chapter 2…

Last week we studied all of chapter 1 and the first five verses of chapter 2… we saw that God was with Israel to drive out he inhabitants of the land of Canaan… the land the Lord had promised to Israel.

The people who dwelled in that land (the Canaanites) were a wicked people who made gods after their own liking… whom they could serve with their own sensual passions.

Those idols were called the Baals…

You can’t have a greater MISREPRESENTATION of God than Baal… he was perverse… he was selfish… he was needy...

This was concept of god that the Canaanites had.

So the Lord wanted to drive out this wicked idolatrous people for two reasons:

1) As judgement for their own idolatry… and...

2) So that they didn’t draw the people of Israel INTO idolatry… which the Lord knew would happen.

And which is what DID happen.

We saw last week that the tribes were unwilling to drive out the Canaanites...

God was WITH them… they were ABLE with his help… but they were UNWILLING…

and they made excuses… and made it LOOK like they were fighting sin, but just shifted things around… and they gave into compromise...

And so God REBUKED THEM… through the Angel of the Lord… a visible manifestation of the Son of God before he took on flesh as Jesus Christ.

And he said, “Because you did not drive them out, these people are going to be a thorn in your side… they are going to be a snare… an ongoing temptation for you… fighting sin is going to now be harder because you didn’t fight sin to the death.”

And the people of Israel WEPT and SACRIFICED to the Lord.

Which was the RIGHT response… as long as it was genuine.

As long as it stirred them to exit the cycle of sin.

The author leaves us open-ended as to whether that happened or not in that particular generation...

And instead he sort of pans out to a big picture of what happened over the course of several generations.

Today we are going to finish the introduction that ends at verse 3:6… but we are going to just take the first 4 verses for now.

Read with me in v. 6-10

Today we are learning to break the cycles of sin by taking the bypasses and exits God gives us.

Now when I say “bypasses,” I’m not suggesting for a second that we can bypass sin altogether.

Sin is bound up in the heart of every person… it’s a part of our nature, not just something we do.

So when I’m talking about bypassing cycles of sin, I’m talking about not getting trapped in patterns of addictive, idolatrous sin that spirals on in our lives and possibly even continues for generations.

I’m talking about those times on the Pathway of a Disciple when we are “Stuck” in our walk with Christ… when we are going around and around and seeing little growth.

It’s one thing to have a sin nature and fight temptation while still falling short…

It’s another thing to be caught in the pattern of ||: sin/confess/repeat :||

It’s one thing to ACTIVELY STRUGGLE against sin… It’s another thing to let sin patterns go unchecked in our lives so that they show up in the next generation that is watching us.

And so those are the types of cycles that we want to bypass wherever possible…

We want to take the highway around BEFORE entering the traffic circle.

Here’s what we see in verses 6-10:

Bypassing the Cycle: The Reality of Generational Patterns (2:6-10)

Explain: We really have THREE generations described here in Judges 2.

But before we look at them, I want to get our head around what I mean by “generation.”

In this room right now we have five, maybe 6 generations represented. [show picture]

You have the builders, who grew up in the wake of WWII… before them you had what’s called the greatest generation. Bruce is part of the Greatest Generation.

After them came the boomers...

Followed by Generation X, Generation Y (sometimes known as Millenials), Generation Z, and now apparently generation A as well (we have a few of those running around in our house and didn’t even know it!)

So generations have some overlap in life-span… but can have a lot of DIFFERENCE in life experiences and the way they grow up and the things that they see and the events and culture that shapes their existence.

For example, many of you here can’t remember a time without smart phones… that is shaping Gen Z and Generation A...

On the other hand, some of you can remember a time when computers weren’t a typical thing to own. And your growing up years and even early working years looked a lot different than they would if you grew up 10 or 15 years later.

Generations overlap in life-span, but differ in life experience… and that’s what we see in verses 6-10...

Here’s the cycle:

1) Generation 1 (“all the days of Joshua”): Fought The Battle, Lived Conviction

That’s the book of Joshua.

generation 1 is Joshua’s generation… the ones who first entered the promised land.

If we go back to the book of Joshua, his generation was pretty concerned about following God’s commands… they were pretty committed to the conquest...

But as soon as we got into Judges, after the death of Joshua (who died at 110)… the next generation fell short of fighting sin...

2) Generation 2 (“who had seen the great work that the Lord had done”: Observed the Battle, but Lived Compromise

Verse 7 says they SAW all the great work that the Lord had done… they didn’t give in to worshiping idols YET… they were still serving YHWH… but they also didn’t complete the conquest.

And so by the time Joshua is buried and forgotten, the third generation DID KNOW KNOW the Lord, or the work that he had done for Israel.

3) Generation 3 (“who did not know the Lord or the work he had done”): Abandoned the Battle, and Lived Corruption

That’s what Joshua warned about and what we read about last week.

That’s the rest of the book of Judges.

[RECAP THE CYCLE]

And we can think, “Well what’s the problem with generation 3!!! Why did they drop the ball??? Like, KIDS THESE DAYS, SERIOUSLY!!! Don’t you remember the good old times when we didn’t really have to THINK about these sin problems that kids face today!”

But this was powerful for me when I first learned it… it stuck with me for probably 15 years… and I hope it sticks with you...

The corruption of generation 3 is rooted in the compromise of generation 2.

I’m not letting Generation 3 off the hook… I’m just saying there are some patterns we begin to see.

Think about it: You are part of generation 3… and you watch your parents receive God’s word, and God says, “Drive out the nations until they are gone. I am with you.”

But what your parents do instead is give into compromise.

They don’t follow through on conviction.

They don’t act like God’s word really matters.

They do SOME religious things and say they are serving God and they say they fear the Lord… but they fear the inhabitants of the land more…

And if you are part of generation 3, you can start to see what’s really going on.

Tolerating some sin seems to be OK… in fact… if some sin is OK, maybe all sin is OK.

Maybe the LORD isn’t really who he says he is… maybe we don’t really need to do what he says we should.

In fact, the Baals of the Canaanites look a lot more appealing.

I get to go down and have some fun with the temple priestesses when I worship that god… Baal seems to understand my basic desires...

This YHWH god seems kind of stuffy to me.

And they give themselves over total corruption.

The corruption of generation 3 is rooted in the compromise of generation 2.

Moses warned that this would happen… he wrote in Deuteronomy 6…

“And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers… then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” (Deuteronomy 6:10, 12, ESV)

Moses continues in Deut. 6:20...

““When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rules that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your son, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt. And the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. And the LORD showed signs and wonders, great and grievous, against Egypt and against Pharaoh and all his household, before our eyes. And he brought us out from there, that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the LORD commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the LORD our God, for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us.’” (Deuteronomy 6:20–25, ESV)

There would be no excuse for generation 3 to say, “We do not know the Lord or the work that he has done for Israel,” if Generation 2 had been doing what the Lord told them to do in Deuteronomy.

Parents, adults… this is a call to indoctrinate the next generation in the knowledge of God.

I’m not going to apologize for saying that.

To indoctrinate is simply to feed the mind with a certain body of truth.

The world would say, “How terrible that you would talk about indoctrination. You should let kids choose what they want to believe about God!”

Meanwhile, the world swoops in and indoctrinates us all with that kind of thinking.

They do it through television and schools and books and movies.

Students, the world is indoctrinating you whether you know it or not.

Adults, if we aren’t indoctrinating the next generation, the world will do it for us.

And it will sound appealing… but it will lead to destructive rebellion.

Now I’m not saying, “Shelter your kids. Don’t tell them the other viewpoints that are out there. Don’t let them know about the perversions to God’s way that are rampant in our society.”

Believe me… they know. In fact, you need to be the one to talk to them about these things. You need to be the one they feel comfortable talking and processing with.

You have God’s truth… you have God’s Spirit with you… and he is powerful enough to handle the toughest questions the world could throw at us.

So as you deal with real life in a messy world, we need to indoctrinate the next generation in the Christian world view. We need to put doctrine… truth about God… into their mind.

Listen: that’s the job of the parents, and the job of the church.

Which is why we’ve created resources like the ABCs of Knowing God for you to use with your family… so that no kid who is brought up in this church could say they don’t know what God is like.

That’s why we have reading plans and kids classes and youth group… and why more and more of us need to be pouring ourselves out into the next generation.

That’s why some adults are mentoring teenagers in our church… and leading youth group and teaching kids classes… we could use more adults to do that.

Can I just suggest… if you are a follower of Jesus… and your kids are grown and out of the house (that’s generally the builder and boomer generations), we NEED YOU to be pouring into the next generation...

Whether that’s the next generation of parents…

...or the singles of our church... or the youth of our church… or the kids of our church...

We need you to invest in them… have them over and talk to them… teach a class… hang out with them at youth group...

Let me talk to the Singles as well (no matter WHAT generation you are in… builder, boomer, millenial...)… we need you to be pouring into the next generation.

You don’t have to be cool. You don’t need to have ALL the answers… you just need to be present.

You need to make yourself a part of the family of families.

Just as an example: I LOVE that my kids have all had Brendon Martin as a pre-school teacher… that type of presence of a young single guy is formational in the next generation.

Because it wasn’t just the words that generation 2 forgot to say… it was the covenant faithfulness they forgot to maintain.

It was the compromise to not drive out the inhabitants of the land that led to the corruption of the next generation.

A study by Lifeway Research found that 66 percent of 18-22 year olds stop attending church for at least a year after high school (which are HUGELY FORMATIONAL YEARS)

29% of those went on to not return to church, 39% returned to only attending once a month or less (together that’s 68%… which represents 45% of all 18-22 year olds), and 31% returned to church at least twice per month after they hit age 22. [show current attendance slide]

But the most concerning thing to me isn’t the numbers… it’s the reasons: [show reasons slide]

34% said it was simply the act of moving away to college… I think that speaks to priority.

32% say that church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical.

And 29% didn’t feel connected.

In other words… the next generation feels isolated from the life of the church and the walk of faith.

Parents… adults… understand: the next generation is watching our faith and asking where... or even IF… they fit.

They are watching how we pray... how we worship… how we witness.

They are watching to see if our words match our actions.

They are listening to how we talk about and love on other believers… how we hold up unity.

They are watching how we prioritize our time.

They are watching to see if this YHWH Lord is worth following.

And I have to be honest, that’s terrifying to me. It’s weighty to me. And I need to feel that weight so that I can RUSH to the conviction that I I absolutely need the Lord to do this.

I can’t do this on my own!!! Apart from Jesus I can do nothing!

I can’t be a model parent or a model Christian or a model pastor to anyone in my own ability… all that I can do is SHOW that I am CONVINCED that Jesus is WORTHY of my dependence and devotion.

That’s what we want for our kids anyway, isn’t it? Dependence on and devotion to Jesus???

Then let’s model it. Let’s model a life of grace-driven repentance. Let’s model a life of conviction that we see in generation 1…

And then let’s invite the next generation to join us in following Jesus.

To enter the fight on their own.

This generational pattern is one that we see play out again and again… it’s real...

But I want to be very careful to avoid a common pitfall here - that pitfall is called determinism: The idea that our actions NECESSARILY DETERMINE God’s outcomes.

In this case, the idea goes like this, “I love God truly… I teach him faithfully… my kids will NECESSARILY follow Jesus.”

OR… “my parents failed… they modeled compromise… I have every right to NOT follow Jesus.”

That’s determinism. And it’s not what the Bible teaches.

I know that what I just taught about compromise leading to corruption is super hard for some here because you have wayward children.

And maybe you feel some guilt because there are some legitimate things that you regret and wish you could go back and do differently…

OR maybe you also lived faithfully to the Lord… you tried to teach your kids his ways… and they rejected it.

But I want to assure you… God is GRACIOUS to each generation to give them an opportunity to repent.

YES, live with conviction… but do not think that automatically leads to conviction in the next generation.

In this formula, there is no guarantee that if one generation gets it right, the next generation will automatically be faithful.

I love what Ralph Davis said about this in his commentary on this passage. He said,

One generation can rejoice in a living faith, enjoy intimate communion with God, revel in the kingship of Jesus over daily life, even delight to teach their faith to those closest them; yet the next generation may come along and care nothing for all that. Not that they will formally repudiate everything. It’s just that they will know about the Lord rather than know the Lord. They may remain within the church in their cold, dead, formal way. But there is no ﬁre in their ‘faith,’ no warmth in love, no joy from hope. What Paul calls ‘the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord’ (Phil. 3:8 RSV) sounds utterly foreign to them. They cannot fathom it. Our children must not merely ape our faith—they need to be converted.

Davis, D. R. (2000). Judges: Such a Great Salvation (p. 36). Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus Publications.

In other words, we can be like the people in generation 1… fighting the battle with sin, living with conviction, expressing faith in the Lord… but until the next generation makes that faith their own, it will have no lasting effect.

“Our children must not merely ape our faith - they need to be converted.”

Parents, anyone in the older 3 or 4 generations… this realization ought to drive us to FERVENT PRAYER first and foremost… followed by COURAGEOUS EVANGELISM and PURPOSEFUL DISCIPLESHIP of the next generation in the power of the Spirit.

But I’ve been talking a lot to people in older generations for a while… young people, let me talk to you:

You cannot stand before God and say, “My parents messed up, that’s why I’m not following faithfully.”

And if your parents ARE faithful, you cannot ride the coattails of your parents faith. You must make it your own.

You must come to the place in your life where you say, “I cannot live this life for myself… JESUS ALONE is worthy… because I am a sinner in need of a Savior… and he lived and died and rose again in my place for my sin.”

And if you’ve never come to that place of faith for yourself… I would urge you… admit that today.

And if you have… live with conviction.

Teens… kids… get in the battle yourself.

Start fighting sin in your life. Start being a witness for Jesus wherever you go.

Deny yourself… pick up your cross… follow Jesus.

Ultimately, a church can bypass some serious sin cycles if everyone joins in the battle against sin…

The goal is for each generation to live like they are generation 1… with full conviction in the gospel, fighting sin to the death.

Here’s how we bypass the generational cycles...

Bypassing the Cycle: Get in the battle, and invite the next generation to join you.

Serve him. Become a part of his body, the church.

Membership here is available to kids as early as age 12 because if you are old enough to make a commitment to Jesus, you are old enough to make the church your own.

Of course, we do that with your parent’s approval… and they are the primary disciple makers in your life… but you need to begin seeing yourself as part of the local body of believers if you claim that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

You can come to the class at 11:15 if you want. We’d be happy to have you!

And listen… I get it, we aren’t perfect… but neither are you.

And what we see as an imperfect mess called the church, Jesus sees as his own body… his own bride… his own children.

He loves them… and he wants you to love them too.

Now… because we are NOT buying the lie of determinism… and because no matter how much we try to bypass sin cycles, they can still come in some form, we need to understand the cycle that exists in every generation.

That’s what we read in Judges 2:11-3:6

Break the cycles of sin by taking the bypasses and exits God gives you.

Escaping the Cycle: The Responsibility of Every Generation (2:11-3:6)

In verse 11, we see where the cycle begins… it starts with:

1) Rebellion -> Consequence (2:11-15)

“And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals.

I want you to understand that the heart of rebellion… the heart of sin is a worship problem.

I worship someone or something other than God.

I turn worship into an activity to fulfill my own desires rather than loving and serving the Lord and his purposes.

Baal worship was appealing… it was sensual in nature… it was about getting what I want from a god.

Which makes sense why in verse 12, the author expounds on this some more.

That they forsook the God of their Fathers… they went after all these new gods.

The God of their Fathers sounded a little bit like a stick in the mud compared to Baal...

Baal encouraged full sexual expression to encourage his own carousing with Ashtaroth… in order to make it rain on your crops.

YHWH… the LORD… said that sexual expression is for the one-flesh union of marriage.

Baal didn’t really care about how you lived as long as you got him what he needed...

YHWH needed no one. He wanted your love and obedience simply because he was and is worthy.

And so the question in rebellion is… will we worship the ONE TRUE GOD… or the god of our imagination who exists to fulfill our desires and make us little gods?

The heart of rebellion is a worship problem… which is why God is righteously angry and gives consequence.

He gave them over to plunderers.

That word, “Gave them over” is so interesting…

It’s like God is saying, “OK, you want to serve the gods of Canaan… I’ll give you into their hands. But the results aren’t pretty.”

Not only was he not WITH them to continue the conquest… his hand was AGAINST them to be plundered.

Like we saw last week, this was sort of the opposite of conquest.

Now this idea of “giving them over” is exactly what Romans 1 says God does with all those who are not willing to repent...

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”

Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (Romans 1:18, 22-24 ESV)

When we give ourselves over to our own ideas about who God is… and serve a god of our own making by embracing our own lusts… God delivers the consequence of our rebellion to us.

Ultimately, that consequence is meant to point us to repentance.

We see our need and cry out to God.

Which is the second step of the cycle:

2) Regret/Repentance -> Mercy (2:16-18)

Explain: Verses 16-17 give a general overview: the Lord raised up judges who SAVED.

This is the first time we see this word, “Judge” in the book… it’s a word for some sort of tribal leader...

Don’t think of a judge in a courtroom… think more like a chief of a Native American tribe or something like that.

And these judges SAVED God’s people… they were deliverers… or better yet, they were God’s TOOLS for deliverance.

Generally speaking, Israel did not listen to the judges (not that the judges in this book were great moral reformers)… eventually, once they were delivered, they went right back to idolatry.

Which would start a new round of rebellion…

So I’m not suggesting that Israel truly repented very often… WE must repent… but they didn’t often repent.

Too often they were filled only with worldly regret… they didn’t like the consequences and were groaning.

Which is why the cycles kept repeating.

Verse 18 gives us insight into what happened: the people groaned and the Lord was moved to pity.

That is an incredible verse if you think about it… it shows just how merciful God is… how gentle and lowly he is.

Here are these people whom he has called as his children…

They are experiencing the just consequences of their sin… he is righteously angry and has every right to deliver on those consequences...

and they aren’t even really repentant… but still he has pity… still he shows mercy in raising up a deliverer.

Now the Israelites needed more than regret for sure… we’ll talk about that more in a minutes… but God in his mercy sent a deliverer even when they didn’t know how to do that.

This reminds me of what Paul writes in Romans 5:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:6–10 ESV)

We are not rescued by the quality of our repentance… but by the quality of God’s mercy.

That’s not to say that we don’t need to repent… it is to say that God is merciful because he is merciful, not because we have our act together.

His disposition toward mercy is because of HIM… not us.

And that should comfort us and DRAW us toward repentance… it’s his KINDNESS that leads us to repentance.

The Lord was moved to pity by their groaning… he raised up a deliver… which led to a time of peace, which was also a time of testing.

3) Rescue -> Peace/testing (2:19-3:6)

We will see in the rest of book that as long as the judge lived (after they defeated whatever enemy arose), there was a period peace.

But as verse 19 says that whenever the judge died, they became more corrupt than their fathers.

This takes us back to that generational pattern… if you look past generation 3… and true repentance and conviction does not come… the results in generations 4, 5 and 6 are utter depravity.

This is the story the book of Judges… with each new cycle of sin, corruption is worse than before.

And in response to this corruption… this rebellion… the Lord left the nations in the land to test Israel by them.

The Lord gives two reasons for these oppressors: to test, and to teach them war.

First to test.

Each period of peace was a test to see if Israel would continue to rely on the Lord, or if they would turn back to the way of the nations who would eventually oppress them.

The second reason, though, is interesting: it says that they might know warfare.

I was helped by how one commentator explained this:

"When Yahweh expresses his determination that the present generation of Israelites should learn war, his concern is not primarily that they learn how to conduct war but that they learn the nature and significance of this war. They have entered the land as Yahweh’s covenant people with the mandate to drive out the Canaanites and to claim it as his gift to them. The continued presence of the Canaanites represents a test whether or not they will accept Yahweh as their sovereign and their responsibilities in fulfilling his agenda." (Block, D. I. (1999). Judges, Ruth (Vol. 6, pp. 136–137). Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers.)

In other words, they were to learn how to fight against the sinful temptations of the Canaanites… to return to obedience to YHWH’s original purpose to drive the people out of the land...

That was the choice of every generation… to learn the warfare of genuine repentance over worldly regret.

It doesn’t happen in the book of Judges… they keep following the way of the nations…

The author lists nations that will continually show up in the rest of the book…

They continue wedding themselves to these nations and serving their gods...

But the choice for us is clearly laid out as we see the whole cycle: when we find ourselves in the cycle of rebellion and rescue, will we take the exit ramps God provides?

There are two:

Exit Ramp: Repent fully and rely completely!

The first comes at the bottom of this cycle: will we choose genuine repentance or wordly regret.

We’ll talk more about this throughout the series, but wordly regret is more upset about the consequence I’m experiencing than the character of God I have transgressed.

Worldly regret says, “OHH… I should have done something different… look at how terrible this is for me!!!”

Genuine repentance says, “I should have done something different… look at how much I’ve sinned against GOD!!!”

That will set a trajectory to see our deliverer for who he truly is… our merciful Savior.

Jesus Christ is the deliverer God raised up to free us from our enemy...

While we were yet sinners, he died for us.

He conquered Satan, sin and death by dying on a cross and rising from the dead.

And the question is, will we trust that deliverer… that “judge”???

Will we listen to him and obey him as Lord...

or will we turn aside and walk in the ways of the rest of the world?

Our repentance in the battle against sin sets a trajectory for our times of peace… will we rely completely on our Savior King, even when we don’t feel the battle raging strongly?

Will we learn warfare and continue to fight, taking new ground even when the cycles of addiction or long-term patterns of sin are NOT rearing their ugly head.

It’s in the times of peace that we need to remember what the Lord has done… when we need to celebrate his gospel.

Because it is in those times that we get complacent.

It’s in those times that we forget that sin still remains in our lives…

And we forget to live with conviction… and do all that the Lord has commanded us.

Which will lead us back into new cycles of rebellion… followed by new consequences… followed by a new need for repentance.

So where are you at today? In the consequence of your sin? In the middle of God’s merciful rescue? Experiencing the peace after the dust has settled?

If you are experiencing the consequence of your sin, it’s time to repent fully...

Don’t just groan in regret... cry out to God for his mercy!

You don’t deserve it… but he gives it willingly when his people turn to him.

And as you experience his mercy, trust the deliverer, Jesus Christ.

Trust his finished work to save. Listen to his voice..

And if, by the mercy of God, you find yourself in a season of peace, rely completely.

The season of peace is also the season of testing.

You still live in the world, surrounded by all the temptations and attacks that the enemy can throw at you.

So don’t stop taking new ground.

Put on the full armor of God and go into battle this week.

Continue to drive out the remaining sin that is in your heart.

Continue to obey the voice of the Lord to follow him in every part of your life… and to call others to do the same.

Rely on the Lord in the times of peace.

Let’s pray.

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