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Capture the land

Judges 1: 22 – 2:3

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 06 Nov, 2005

AS WE stand on the brink of new moves, we are like the Israelites entering their new land. There are rules to follow, if we want true success. The time has come for movement, and old ways have to end.

When Israel entered the land, there were great victories, but the seeds of weakness were also sown. We have to learn from their experience. and not fall into the same traps.

THE BOOK OF JUDGES

We don’t know just when Israel entered the land of Canaan. We don’t have a clear picture of the events surrounding that entry. We know that they met a mixed reception. Some of the people in the land were so pleased that the Israelites had come that they joined them. Others submitted, but changed as little as possible, and many resisted with all their might.

Today we are talking about military conquest. But you can see parallels with what happens when the gospel comes to people. Some receive the word with joy, some will go along with it if they have to, and some resist. People are always like that.

Israel was in a very strange position as it crossed over Jordan. Moses had died. He never entered the land. He died just before the people crossed the Jordan because, many years before, he disobeyed a very precise and important instruction from God. And God banned Moses from the land.

Joshua helped them win their first victories. Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. He defeated the kings at Ai. But he died, too. Israel was left alone and leaderless.

It was a hard time for the people. Everything they had depended on for over 40 years was gone.

But God still led them. They didn’t wander friendless and forlorn, but they knew where they were going, they knew what their goals were, and they set about achieving them.

Someone recently wrote about Al Qa'eda. The article called it a very successful franchise. Bin Laden and his immediate supporters don’t really carry out a lot of terror. But they have produced a plan, a plan to disrupt western institutions and destroy western power.

So others form mini–Al Qa’eda groups. They design their own strategies in line with the main Al Qa’eda aims, and Bin Laden just checks the proposals for feasibility and decides how much he can spend on these plans.

In a sense, that was how Israel found itself. God had given a blueprint for conquest and settlement, and the Israelites were putting it into effect. The difference was that they had no–one to refer their strategies to. They just went out and did it.

They had no king; they had no prophet or president. But the God who had led them in the desert also led them in their land. If they needed a leader for a special task, God raised him or her up; otherwise he left them to find their own best way to do it.

You know, we Baptists have always had an ambivalent attitude to leadership; we always keep asking who should run the ship.

Our church is a little unusual. We have only had a few light brushes with that kind of attitude. But many churches have been torn apart by internal groups who feel that pastors and other leaders can’t be trusted. They resist giving any authority to leaders, they are always suspicious that someone, somewhere, is plotting to hand the church over to the Pope or The Antichrist, or perhaps both.

Leadership is important to any group. And we need to choose to trust our leaders unless they show themselves untrustworthy.

But we also need to discover ways to take responsibility for ourselves. Israel had to learn that lesson. You can’t sit back forever hoping for a leader to take you where you want to be.

The ideal is to have leaders who set the parameters, leaders who state the policy, and leaders who act within that policy.

And that was what God did. He set the policy; he expected the people — and the leaders who arose among them — to act within that policy and recapture the land.

EXAMPLES OF THE CAMPAIGN

In our passage we read about the people of Judah capturing territory.

JDG 1:17 Then the men of Judah went with the Simeonites their brothers and attacked the Canaanites living in Zephath, and they totally destroyed the city. Therefore it was called Hormah. ¹⁸ The men of Judah also took Gaza, Ashkelon and Ekron--each city with its territory.

Here we see the people successfully working together to do what God called them to do.

We see something similar with the story of how the Joseph tribe captured Bethel:

JDG 1:22 Now the house of Joseph attacked Bethel, and the LORD was with them. ²³ When they sent men to spy out Bethel (formerly called Luz), ²⁴ the spies saw a man coming out of the city and they said to him, “Show us how to get into the city and we will see that you are treated well.” ²⁵ So he showed them, and they put the city to the sword but spared the man and his whole family.

We also read,

JDG 1:19 The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country...

The Israelites were doing pretty well. They were having an impact on the land, taking over territory, driving out the inhabitants.

You might wonder why God gave them the right to dispossess these people. We don’t have all the answers. But it seems that the land was filled with violence, with petty city states pitted against other petty city states, and God planned to bring peace to the land. It also seems that the Israelites had many Hebrew kinspeople in the land who suffered under the Amorites and the Hivites and all the rest, so there may have been an element of rescuing their own people from oppression. We aren’t told God’s reasons, all we can do is trust that he is good and fair in his judgments.

So the Israelites began taking the land, and they were very successful in their campaign.

We are called to take territory, too. Jesus is our head, the king who truly stands in the place of God for us. He leads us into the land to capture territory for the Kingdom of God. As we do justice, as we work love and mercy among the people, as we confront the evil powers, we capture territory from the hands of the devil and joyfully hand it to the Lord of the heavenly armies.

Are we taking territory for him? That’s what our services, our meetings, our gatherings are about. Not all are evangelistic, but all exist to promote the taking of the land in Jesus’ name.

AREAS OF FAILURE

But the truth is that the Israelites didn’t do the job thoroughly. They failed to drive their enemies out. For example, we read that the Judahites captured the hill country, but the entire verse reads,

JDG 1:19 The LORD was with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.

This story is repeated over and over.

²⁰ As Moses had promised, Hebron was given to Caleb, who drove from it the three sons of Anak. ²¹ The Benjamites, however, failed to dislodge the Jebusites, who were living in Jerusalem; to this day the Jebusites live there with the Benjamites.

Further away, we find,

JDG 1:27 But Manasseh did not drive out the people of Beth Shan or Taanach or Dor or Ibleam or Megiddo and their surrounding settlements, for the Canaanites were determined to live in that land. ²⁸ When Israel became strong, they pressed the Canaanites into forced labor but never drove them out completely. ²⁹ Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them. ³⁰ Neither did Zebulun drive out the Canaanites living in Kitron or Nahalol, who remained among them; but they did subject them to forced labour.

It gets worse: with the Amorites, we read,

³⁴ The Amorites confined the Danites to the hill country, not allowing them to come down into the plain. ³⁵ And the Amorites were determined also to hold out in Mount Heres, Aijalon and Shaalbim, but when the power of the house of Joseph increased, they too were pressed into forced labour.

There is no denying that the Israelites made inroads into enemy territory, but the fact is that they didn’t get very far. Many of their enemies remained exactly where they had been, some even managed to hedge the Israelites in, and the Israelites were largely stuck in the less fertile hills than in the rich farmland of the plains.

They were meant to have milk, honey and wine, but they got mainly wheat and mutton.

God wants us to live in victory, but we keep letting the enemy keep a stronghold, and the result is that we get nothing more than a toehold in the land.

WHY THEY FAILED

The Bible gives several reasons for their failure.

For the men of Judah, it says,

...they were unable to drive the people from the plains, because they had iron chariots.

That is, the enemy had technological advantages.

For Manasseh, we read that their failure was because

...the Canaanites were determined to live in the land.

The implication is that the Canaanites were more determined to live in the land than Manasseh was to get them out.

In some cases, the particular tribe just failed to do it, like the Benjaminites who

...failed to dislodge the Jebusites.

There’s another reason which is not spelled out, and that is that the tribes felt they had an alternative. If they couldn’t dislodge the enemy, they could enslave them.

It was the desire for an easy way out that betrayed their initial drive. It was their liking for ease which caused them to oppress their enemies more truly than if they had displaced them in the first place. The latter injustice was greater than the former.

Because it was too hard, because it required dedication, because it was inconvenient, the Israelites did not obey God and remove the Canaanites from the land God had given them.

GOD’S JUDGMENT

So we read,

JDG 2:1 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, ² 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? ³ 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.”

God has to judge disobedience, not because he likes to judge, but because actions have consequences. The Israelites failed to deal with their problems, and their problems turned around and bit them in sensitive places. And that’s how it always works.

God placed an opportunity before his people. As Jesus said in the Revelation,

^3:8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

There is an open door — if we are willing to go through. But we can choose to move away. We can put ourselves where the door is no longer before us. Someone else will go through, and we will suffer the consequences.

APPLICATION

Today we are taking new paths. We are trying something. As we go, we’ll discover what works and what doesn’t work. What we plan may or may not be the best path, but it is an opportunity, and we will eventually find out what works best. God didn’t tell the Israelites which methods to use to defeat the enemy. He told them to drive the people out before them. The Israelites were good guerilla fighters, who quickly captured the hill country, but they did not adapt to fight on the plains, they did not persevere with the difficult situations, they did not do the things that were inconvenient to themselves. And they suffered.

We have an opportunity. We may find in time that we are taking a hill country approach. But what if we find we have an enemy to fight on the plains? Will we be able to adapt? What if something works in one area but not in another? In the depression of the 1930s, our church ministered very well. But things changed. New groups came into the district. And we failed to adapt. We tried to reach the Greeks using old methods, and it failed. Today we are starting again. We are working in new realms. Let’s plan, right from today, never to give in until we have taken the land!

Of course, we will find many people are enormously resistant. They don’t believe that Christianity has anything to offer. They dismiss the death and resurrection of Jesus as mere myths and unsubstantiated nonsense. They are determined to stay right where they always have been.

Never forget that they are in bondage to dark powers, and that we must choose either to go with them, or to go with Jesus, our King. They may be nice, they may be kind, they may be good, but they need the truth, because it is truth that liberates.

Are we determined to fight even harder to capture that territory from the enemy of souls?

But perhaps the biggest difficulty is those situations where we are afraid to rock the boat.

Think of your friends.Think of the people you meet while shopping or at work. Think of those you deal with daily. They give support, they trade with us, they give friendship and affection.

There are always people who give us something we value, but they ask in return that we don’t ask them to change. Are we ready to suffer the loss of all things for the sake of Christ? Are we willing to face the loss of people who give us what we want?

We can either go ahead, or we can go into retreat. It will not be easy, but the rewards can easily be high. Let’s do it! AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2005. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)