January 3, 2025

Judges 2:16-23 (HCSB)
16 The Lord raised up judges, who saved them from the power of their marauders, 17 but they did not listen to their judges. Instead, they prostituted themselves with other gods, bowing down to them. They quickly turned from the way of their fathers, who had walked in obedience to the Lord’s commands. They did not do as their fathers did. 18 Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for the Israelites, the Lord was with him and saved the people from the power of their enemies while the judge was still alive. The Lord was moved to pity whenever they groaned because of those who were oppressing and afflicting them. 19 Whenever the judge died, the Israelites would act even more corruptly than their fathers, going after other gods to worship and bow down to them. They did not turn from their evil practices or their obstinate ways. 20 The Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and He declared, “Because this nation has violated My covenant that I made with their fathers and disobeyed Me, 21 I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations Joshua left when he died. 22 I did this to test Israel and to see whether they would keep the Lord’s way by walking in it, as their fathers had.” 23 The Lord left these nations and did not drive them out immediately. He did not hand them over to Joshua.

Dwayne Koelling
God provides deliverers (see I got back to that) for the Hebrews in the judges. He hears the cries of the people, cares, and responds, but there are still repercussions for their sin (Galatians 6:7). The next generation doesn't learn and repeats the sin cycle. They keep failing to resist the lure of the false gods/idols that God is using to test them. God can use our mistakes and failures to test us as well. The purpose of testing is not to watch us fail over and over but to teach us to rely on God, grow us spiritually, and give us the opportunity to "see what we're made of." I know this sounds crazy, but we need to be thankful and embrace our testing/trials and there is no greater example of this than Jesus. Jesus had every right, by our standards, to say the treatment He received leading up to and including the cross wasn't right and could have ordered it to stop. He didn't. He submitted to the trial and went to the cross.
That unimaginable act reflected what Jesus is "made of". He is made of love, sacrifice, justice, grace, wisdom, understanding, compassion, strength, and I'm sure you can list more. The powers of Hell couldn't stop a Man (Jesus) that didn't fight against but embraced His trial. Can a church, a family, a marriage, or an individual that embraces their trial and trusting God to work through it be stopped by those forces that work against them?