Introduction:
See: Judges 17:6, 21:25 | Judges 1:1 | Joshua 24:16 | Judges 3:7 | Judges 2:1-2
Three Consequences of Partial Obedience (Judges 1-3):
- Your life gets Harder (Judges 2:3).
Exodus 23:33 - They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.
- Your spirit gets Miserable (Judges 2:4-5).
Psalm 51:12 - Restore to me the joy of your salvation...
Ephesians 4:30 - do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
- Your children get Apathetic . (Judges 2:7-10)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:43-00:44
The book of Judges.
00:47-00:59
We're starting a new series today called, "Do What's Right." And today's message is really an introduction to the whole series.
01:00-01:01
Sort of laying the foundation.
01:02-01:09
And it's called, "Good Enough Isn't Enough." So I'd like you to bow your heads with me please.
01:10-01:19
Pray for me to be faithful to God's Word, and I will pray for you to open up to receive God's Word.
01:24-01:32
When all of God's people said, "Amen." For those of you who were here in July, how about those guest speakers, huh?
01:38-01:42
surprised to see me back. Yeah, yeah, they weren't bad.
01:44-02:08
They're like, "Well, what did you do all month?" Well, I followed the news, and if you're like me, maybe you have been following the headlines, and I want to ask you this morning if you happen to see these headlines. "Morbidly obese Peace world leader fatally stabbed and left in bathroom stall.
02:08-02:09
Did you see that one?
02:11-02:12
How about this one?
02:13-02:16
Military cutbacks reduce national army to 300.
02:18-02:19
Did you see that one?
02:20-02:21
How about this headline?
02:22-02:25
Soldier returns home, kills daughter.
02:28-02:29
This one really caught my attention.
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and destroys worship center.
02:34-02:36
More than 3,000 dead.
02:36-02:37
Did you see those headlines?
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Maybe you didn't see them, because they would have been published in Israel around 1200 B.C.
02:45-02:49
Because these are all things that happen in the book of Judges.
02:52-02:57
Judges is violent and shocking.
02:58-03:10
I was just talking to Mark Ord this morning. I remember the first time as a young Christian reading the book of Judges thinking, "I can't believe this stuff is in the Bible." Like, really? Yeah.
03:11-03:14
It's a period of Israel's history, a dark period.
03:16-03:23
It's characterized by a statement that's made twice in Judges, that a Christian read at the end of that video.
03:25-03:27
It says, "In those days there was no king in Israel.
03:28-03:32
Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
03:34-03:36
Notice that statement, it doesn't say everyone did what was right.
03:39-03:43
It says everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
03:44-03:47
Meaning, listen, I do what I think is best.
03:48-03:52
No one tells me what to do, not even God tells me what to do.
03:53-03:55
I do what I think is right.
03:56-03:59
And they were days of spiritual anarchy.
04:01-04:02
Just like today.
04:05-04:14
The book of Judges gives us examples of people, yes, very flawed people, but people who served God in such a time.
04:14-04:24
And it teaches us, very flawed people, how we can serve Jesus Christ in a day of complete spiritual anarchy.
04:26-04:35
So to get us all caught up to speed on where the book of Judges falls in Jewish history, this is about the shortest summary I can give you.
04:35-04:38
Remember, Moses led Israel out of Egypt.
04:40-04:46
But it was Joshua that led the Israelites into the Promised Land to begin the conquest.
04:47-04:50
And that takes us to Judges 1.1.
04:50-04:52
If you'll look at that with me, please.
04:52-05:11
It says, "After the death of Joshua, the people of Israel inquired of the Lord, 'Who shall go up first for us against the Canaanites to fight against them?'" You see, God promised Abraham and Abraham's offspring this piece of land.
05:11-05:13
It was already occupied.
05:14-05:19
So Joshua began the conquest of driving the people out.
05:19-05:24
And here we have a major shift between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges.
05:24-05:25
And here's the shift.
05:25-05:32
In Joshua, you have trust in God, you have obedience to God, you have victory in the Lord, and then you go to Judges.
05:34-05:36
And you have the opposite of all of that.
05:36-05:39
You have unbelief, you have disobedience, you have defeat.
05:40-05:44
And really, two verses sort of encapsulate this whole thing.
05:46-06:15
As we approach the book of Judges, Actually, you go back to Joshua 24.16, in Joshua's day, the people answered, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods." And then you fast forward a couple of years and turn a couple of pages in your Bible, and you get to Judges 3.7 that says, "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asherah - those were idols.
06:19-06:22
And we have to ask ourselves, how did they get to that point?
06:25-06:29
How could they so quickly forget the Lord?
06:30-06:41
And it's real easy to look at the pages of this book and say, "How did they do that?" But really, what we need to ask ourselves How do we get to that point?
06:44-06:47
Because the truth is, we're all guilty of this from time to time.
06:48-07:01
"Oh, you know, we come to Christ and we're baptized, and we are ready to die for Jesus Christ!" And then the next thing you know, we're allowing other things to take priority in our lives.
07:03-07:04
And that's called idolatry.
07:06-07:07
Jump over to Judges 2.
07:10-07:11
Look at verse 1.
07:12-07:21
It says, "Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Boshem." I just want to pause here.
07:22-07:30
When you see the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament in passages like this, this is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ.
07:32-07:41
There are different times in the Old Testament Jesus actually showed up before the incarnation, and I believe this is one of those times.
07:42-07:54
So Jesus shows up, says He went up from Gilgal to Boshem, and He said, "I brought you up from Egypt." See, that's why I think this is God speaking.
07:54-08:02
He says, "I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers.
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I said, "I will never break my covenant with you.
08:09-08:13
And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land.
08:15-08:17
You shall break down their altars.
08:21-08:22
But you have not obeyed my voice.
08:24-08:29
What is this you have done?" What's the problem?
08:30-08:42
What happened in chapter 1 that caused God to personally show up in chapter 2 saying, "What are you guys doing?" Well, here's the thing.
08:42-08:47
And I encourage you to read this, but we're not going to actually read all three chapters here together this morning.
08:48-08:57
I encourage you to go back and read this, but when you read Judges 1, it might seem on the surface like it's just a bunch of boring lists.
09:00-09:08
But really, Judges 1 shows us the problem that plagued Israel throughout her Old Testament history.
09:10-09:15
And it shows us a problem that plagues our own lives.
09:17-09:18
We're going to play a game here.
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See if you can spot the pattern. Are you ready?
09:22-09:24
We're going back to chapter 1, look at verse 27.
09:24-09:26
I'm just going to fly through some of these verses.
09:27-09:29
And I want you to see if you notice a pattern. Are you ready?
09:29-09:41
Judges 1.27, talking about tribes of Israel and some of the actions that they were not involved in.
09:41-09:41
You ready?
09:42-10:21
Verse 27, "Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-she-an." Verse 28, "Did not drive them out completely." Verse 29, "Ephraim did not drive out the Canaanites." 1 Thirty, Zebulun, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Kitron." 1 Thirty-one, Asher, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Akko." 1 Thirty-two, "they did not drive them out." 1 Thirty-three, Naphtali, "did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth-shemesh." See a pattern? Did you catch it?
10:22-10:23
Pretty obvious, wasn't it?
10:23-10:35
It's almost like the Lord was trying to really drive home a point by saying they did not drive them out.
10:38-10:40
Over and over and over.
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They didn't drive them out. They didn't drive them out. They didn't drive them out.
10:43-10:44
And this is the point.
10:46-10:50
Israel was to go in and drive them all out completely.
10:51-10:56
100% get rid of them, give them their eviction papers, they are gone.
10:59-11:01
The problem is they compromised.
11:03-11:07
The problem is Israel was partially obedient.
11:09-11:11
I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here.
11:13-11:17
I don't think Israel set out to deliberately disobey.
11:18-11:28
I don't think that they were folding their arms and saying, "You know what? I know what God said, but we're not going to do it." I don't think that was the attitude that was behind this.
11:28-11:51
I think what happened, Joshua led the conquest and so much ground was gained, I think that Israel got to a point that they sort of looked around and went, "That's good enough. I mean, it's not perfect, but it's good enough, right?" And that's the danger that you and I face in our walks with Jesus Christ.
11:54-11:55
It's compromise.
11:58-12:03
Just like Israel, I don't think there's anybody sitting in this room or watching this at home.
12:05-12:18
I don't think there's anybody that's tuned into this ministry that would say, "I know what God says, but I'm not going to do it." But I do think there are a lot of us that settle for good enough.
12:21-12:26
Now listen, before we go on, I want to remind you, you are not saved by your performance, okay?
12:26-12:31
We're not talking, for those of you that are true, born-again believers in Jesus Christ.
12:31-12:33
Your salvation is not on the line.
12:34-12:40
You see, your salvation is based on the performance of Jesus Christ, not your performance.
12:41-12:47
And there is nothing, if you're a born-again believer of Jesus Christ, there is nothing that can take that from you.
12:47-12:54
You are saved by grace, believing that Jesus Christ died for your sins, that He rose to give you eternal life.
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Are we clear on that?
12:57-13:08
But at the same time, Christ calls those who would follow Him to radical obedience.
13:09-13:10
True or false?
13:12-13:30
The Bible says things like, "Take up your cross daily." "Bear fruit in keeping with repentance." "Use your spiritual gifts for the edification of the church." "Deny yourself." "Bless people, even your enemies." The Bible calls us to radical, full-heart obedience.
13:30-13:35
And I have to ask myself, and you need to ask yourself, "Is this what marks my life?
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Or have I settled for..." It's good enough. It's good enough.
13:45-13:46
This is the sermon this morning.
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Partial obedience is not good enough.
13:52-13:54
Think about it in other realms.
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I would suggest you lesser realms.
13:56-13:57
What about school?
13:58-14:15
If your teacher says you have a report due, and it's the due date, "Hey, do you have that report due?" "Well, I did some of it." teacher going to say? Well that's good enough. That's good enough. You did some of it. Is your teacher gonna say that?
14:18-14:36
Or what if, parents, what if you told your kids, hey I want you to mow the grass, okay? I want you to mow the grass so we don't get snakes. And you come home and you're like, hey, hey son, did you mow the grass? And your son's like, I mowed some of it. Parents, are you happy with that?
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No, good enough isn't enough.
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Right?
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Or what about at work?
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I know we have some nurses here.
14:45-15:03
How would that work at your work, at your hospital, if your supervisor says, "Hey, how are your patients?" And you said, "I checked on most of them." Carrie, would that fly?
15:03-15:05
Like, "Most of them, that's good.
15:05-15:06
That's good.
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No, that wouldn't fly.
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Or what if, what if you went to Eaton Park and you got one of them breakfast smiles.
15:18-15:20
You ever have one of them breakfast smiles at Eaton Park?
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You know what I'm talking about?
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And what if that breakfast smile came out and it was, it was just a, it's just a nasty, gooey puddle in the middle of the plate.
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And you're like, what is this?
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And they're like, those are your eggs.
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And you're like, "Why didn't you cook them?" And they said, "Well, we partially cooked them." Would you say, "Oh, my mistake.
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That's good enough." Would you say that?
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No.
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So do you see my point?
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In all these other realms, good enough isn't enough.
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But somehow when we talk about our walk with Christ, it's like, "Well, it's good enough, so it's going to be good enough for God." Like Israel, we allow these little strongholds to remain in our lives.
16:07-16:12
These areas where we know we're not obedient, but we've learned to excuse them.
16:12-16:13
"Hey, we're Christians.
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I'm saved.
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I'm going to heaven." So this little area where I've compromised, it's not a big deal.
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I mean, it's not like it's going to cost me my salvation.
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So it's okay if I sin.
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And when you say that, yes, it's true, it's not going to cost you your salvation if you're saved.
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That is absolutely true.
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But when you say that, do you know who you're like?
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You're like Israel right here.
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They're in the promised land and they're like, "We have arrived.
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We've arrived.
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You know what that means?
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That means the battle is over, son." And guess what?
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It's not over.
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I just want to show you from the text today, I want you to jot some things down.
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Three consequences of partial obedience.
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If you're only partly obeying the Lord, you have some area that you're not submitting to the Lord.
17:12-17:19
You're not allowing Jesus Christ to be Lord of your life in this little pocket of unconquered land in your life.
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Well, again, yeah, it might not cost you your salvation, but there are consequences for that.
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You'll see them right from the text.
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Number one, jot this down.
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Your life gets harder.
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Your life gets harder.
17:33-17:35
Look at verse 3, picking up.
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Remember the angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ shows up.
17:38-17:40
He goes, "You've not obeyed My voice.
17:40-17:41
What is this you have done?
17:42-17:45
Why didn't you do what I told you to do?" We're going to talk more about that in a second.
17:46-17:46
Look at verse 3.
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He says, "So now I say, I will not drive them out before you.
17:55-18:04
But they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you." Do you see that?
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He goes, "Because you only partially obeyed, I'm here to tell you that your life is about to get a lot harder." Yes, you're still going to live in the land, but things are going to get hard.
18:19-18:22
Basically, you see the Lord was saying, "You know what? Have it your way.
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You wouldn't drive them out.
18:25-18:30
I told you to drive them out, and you wouldn't drive them out, so I'm not going to drive them out either.
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And there are going to be thorns in your sides.
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There are going to be snares." And this sounds very familiar, because even way back in Moses' day, go way back to Exodus 23, this was the warning given to Israel before they even stepped foot in the Promised Land.
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This was the charge to drive out these wicked pagan people that were squatting in God's land here.
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Israel was told, "They shall not dwell in your land." Why not?
19:08-19:10
"Lest they make you sin against Me.
19:12-19:25
For if you serve their gods, will surely be a snare to you." You see, what God told Israel, "I'm going to give you this land, you're going to move in, and here's what you need to do, medically speaking.
19:25-19:41
You need to remove the cancer." So Israel gets in the land, and their response is, "You know what? We're actually okay with a little cancer." And the Lord shows up and reminds them that good enough isn't enough.
19:44-19:52
"Yeah, Pastor Jeff, it's probably a tall order for this wandering band of Jewish people to just walk in and conquer these people that are established.
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Did you really expect Israel to do that?" No, absolutely, I did not expect Israel to do that.
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I expected God to do it, though, because He promised to give them the victory.
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Right?
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God never gives you a command that's impossible to fulfill.
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He doesn't do that.
20:14-20:21
Every time God gives a command, understand church, behind that command is His power to fulfill the command.
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He supplies the power.
20:25-20:28
Where God guides, He provides.
20:28-20:31
And God had promised Israel, "I'm going to win the battle.
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I'm going to go with you, and I'm going to conquer these enemies." But they compromised.
20:41-20:42
Good enough. Partial obedience.
20:44-20:52
And God shows up and He says, "Okay, if that's the way you want it, things are about to get harder.
20:58-21:09
Sin makes life hard." I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, because for those of you that are really going to be honest, I mean really going to be honest, I don't have to sell anybody on this.
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Sin makes your life hard.
21:12-21:17
Ask the addict if his life was easier or harder before the addiction.
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Ask the man who was caught in an affair, if his life was easier or harder when he was faithful to his marriage.
21:28-21:50
Ask the woman who refuses to forgive someone who wronged her, If her life was easier or harder when she wasn't harboring bitterness, how many of your hardships can be directly tied into the sin that you've allowed to remain in your life?
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For some of you, you know, you don't have any money.
21:58-21:59
Maybe it's because you waste it.
22:01-22:04
Maybe it's because you don't honor God with it first.
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And you're wondering, "Why don't I have any money?" Because it's an area of your life that you haven't allowed Jesus Christ to be Lord of.
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And it's making your life hard.
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Or men, maybe there's no intimacy in your marriage because of pornography.
22:25-22:31
Like, "Why am I just... My wife and I, we had this thing back when we got married, And it just sort of fizzled out.
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Well, maybe that's directly tied to your sin.
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Maybe your work performance has tanked because every time you show up for work, you're strung out or you're hung over.
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Sin makes life hard.
22:51-22:55
And yes, we are promised spiritual victory in Christ.
22:57-23:00
We're promised victory over all of our sin.
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And I have to ask myself, and you need to ask yourself, "Hey, am I living in victory?" Would I look at my life right now and say, "This is the victorious life, the abundant life that Christ promised through His Spirit." Or am I living in defeat because I've allowed this thing to remain that's been a snare to me?
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Three consequences of partial obedience.
23:28-23:30
Number one, your life gets harder.
23:31-23:33
Again, not much I have to sell us on that.
23:35-23:39
Number two, jot this down, your spirit gets miserable.
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Your spirit gets miserable.
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Look at verses 4 and 5.
23:46-23:51
So the Lord shows up, makes His announcement, like, "Hey, you know what? You want to drive me out? I'm not going to either.
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Things are about to get really tough for you." Verses 4 and 5 give the response. Look at this.
23:57-24:10
"And as soon as the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the people of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept." They got it. They understood.
24:12-24:14
We messed up.
24:16-24:29
Verse 5, "And they called the name of that place Boshem." That name means "weeper." "Crying." And they sacrifice there to the Lord.
24:31-24:34
So not only does your life get harder, your spirit gets miserable.
24:37-24:40
And this just flows right from the first point.
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There's just no joy in partial obedience. There's just not.
24:47-24:51
And the road of partial obedience leads to bosom.
24:54-25:00
There's just no joy in a half-hearted commitment to Jesus Christ.
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And I've already told you a couple of times, "Yes, it's true that you cannot lose your salvation, but understand, with sin, there is something that you can lose.
25:12-25:15
Not your salvation, but you can lose the joy of your salvation.
25:15-25:16
Did you know that?
25:17-25:30
That's why David said in Psalm 51, verse 12, he says, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation." That yeah, you might be saved, you might be heading to heaven, but you feel miserable the entire way. Why?
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Because you lost the joy of your salvation.
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And David wrote that psalm in response to consequences of sin in his own life.
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He goes, "I get it.
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There was an area of my life where I compromised.
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And I am miserable!
25:49-25:52
I know I'm going to heaven, but I feel miserable!
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Is there anybody here that can relate to that?
25:58-26:04
Because you see, you might think the most miserable person in the world is someone who doesn't know Jesus Christ.
26:05-26:08
Some pagan friend out there, you're like, "Well, he doesn't know the Lord.
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He must be miserable." Guess what? He's not.
26:11-26:13
I'll tell you who the most miserable person in the world is.
26:14-26:19
The most miserable person in the world is a believer who's compromised along the way.
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A true follower of Jesus Christ who somehow has not fully committed to Jesus Christ in some area.
26:27-26:30
That is the most miserable person you're going to meet. Why?
26:34-26:38
Because the Bible says sin grieves the Spirit of God. Did you know that?
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Ephesians 4:30 says, "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God." That sick feeling you experience when you sin, Christian, that's way more than just some sort of guilt or shame.
26:54-26:56
It's way more than that.
26:56-27:15
That restlessness, that discontent, that discouragement, that "in the pit of my soul" feeling that I have when I sin, I'm just like, "You know what I'm talking about?" Like, spiritually sick. "You know what I'm talking about?" Any other Christian in here besides me ever sin?
27:15-27:24
"You know what I'm talking about?" "Okay, thank you. You don't leave me up here." Going home today like, "Oh man, I'm the only one that's ever sinned in that church.
27:24-27:31
And they made me the pastor." That sick feeling in your soul.
27:35-27:39
That's the Holy Spirit grieving at your choices.
27:40-27:46
Because your actions aren't lining up with the person that He's called and empowered you to be.
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And your life turns into Judges 2.5.
27:53-27:59
You may be worshipping, but you're also weeping.
28:00-28:01
You're miserable.
28:04-28:06
Three consequences of partial obedience.
28:06-28:07
Your life gets harder, your spirit gets miserable.
28:07-28:12
Number three, your children get apathetic.
28:13-28:14
Your children get apathetic.
28:15-28:16
Let's jump down to verse 7.
28:17-28:27
It says, "And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.
28:28-28:55
And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years." Verse 9, "And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Timnath-hariz, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gash." I think that's how you pronounce that.
28:55-28:58
In verse 10, look at this.
28:58-29:02
"And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers.
29:05-29:20
And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, or the work that He had done for Israel." This is a huge consequence of partial obedience is your children get apathetic.
29:20-29:24
See, in this verse here in verse 10, to meet the next generation.
29:28-29:29
And suddenly everything's different.
29:31-29:31
Everything changes.
29:33-29:34
Like how bad did it get?
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Look at verse 11, the very next verse.
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Look at it. It says, "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals." What?
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What in the world just happened?
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Did he went from Joshua, be strong and courageous and conquer to...
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Let's worship the veils.
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What happened?
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The next generation up often has this tendency to accept the status quo, and to lose the vision of the first generation.
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I heard a preacher one time call that the second generation syndrome.
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And it's where the parents' urgency becomes the children's apathy.
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Do you know what I'm talking about?
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This Joshua's generation was on fire, "We're going to conquer, grab your weapons boys, we're going to take this land." And the next generation up was just like, "Hmm." and dad were awfully fired up about that, but that was kind of their thing, I guess.
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And they were apathetic. And I have to wonder, what happened? Where was the leadership gap here? Did they not disciple people to be leaders in the next generation? I just think it's so many questions about how this happened in one generation. But it happens. I'm going I'm going to be honest with you, church.
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Do you know who I think is the biggest danger to this church right here?
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The biggest danger to keep this church from thriving and staying on mission and leading people to Jesus Christ?
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Do you know who I think the biggest danger is?
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Like the worldly people, right? No.
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The church can withstand them.
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Gates of hell, that's nothing for the church.
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Do you know who concerns me most about keeping this church on mission?
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They're up in the nursery right now.
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They're up in our Harvest Kids ministry right now.
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Those are the people that concern me.
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The Cade Millers.
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The Evan Millers.
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The children in this church.
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Those are the ones that concern me the most.
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Because I know the parents, right?
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And I think of some of you parents who have been with us for so long, like the Thompsons, and worked so hard storming the gates of hell, delivering the life-saving message of Jesus Christ, and have children.
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Just being honest, guys, we have children that are prime candidates to catch the second generation syndrome.
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How? Well, verse 10 tells us.
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It says, "They did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel." Now, that doesn't mean they were ignorant.
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That they're like, "I've never heard of the Red Sea.
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I've never heard of manna.
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I've never heard of water from a rock.
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I've never heard of any of these things." That's not what that means at all.
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It means they knew about God, but they didn't know God.
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And because of that, they became complacent.
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We've heard it all before.
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We've heard it all before.
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Oh gosh, dad's telling us the story of the Red Sea again.
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We've heard this before.
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You know what the Bible calls that?
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Lukewarmness.
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It's apathy about biblical truths that we've heard from our Sunday school teachers our whole lives.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, we know, we've heard.
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Yeah, Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead.
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And we treat this, eternal, awesome work of God like it's some common thing.
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And that's why, church, please hear me, that's why the second generation can be easily tempted to sit back and enjoy all of the blessings of the church that Jesus built through you.
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Through you!
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And the next generation up can become blessing-centered instead of Christ-centered.
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You're like, "Well, where's the hope?" We're going to close with that.
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Because God has a strategy against apathy.
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God wasn't taken unawares.
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You realize God's never in heaven pacing, like, "Oh no, now what am I going to do?
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They didn't listen. Plan B." God never is taken unawares.
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Like, here's His plan. Look at chapter 3.
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It says, in the first four verses, "Now these are the nations that the Lord left..." Look at this, "...to test Israel by them." That is, all in Israel who had not experienced all the wars in Canaan.
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It was only in order that the generations of the people of Israel might know war.
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To teach war to those who had not known it before.
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These are the nations.
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The five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived on Mount Lebanon from Mount Bel-Herman as far as Lebo-Hamath.
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Verse 4, "They were for the testing of Israel to know whether Israel would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses." So here's God's strategy.
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He says, "Okay, you're not going to remove the enemy completely.
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I'm not going to either.
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What I'm going to do is I'm going to use them.
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I mean, why not? They're right there. I'll use them.
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You're like, "Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. Back up a second. Back up a second." That's God's strategy?
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How in the world is that any kind of strategy to prevent the second generation syndrome?
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When you got saved, those of you that are true believers, when you got saved, why didn't God just remove the sin nature from your flesh?
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Have you ever wondered that?
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My Christian walk would be a whole lot easier if I didn't live in this sinful flesh and have these temptations.
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You know what I'm talking about? It would be a whole lot easier.
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So, could God remove my sin nature? Is that possible?
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Absolutely! God can do anything.
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So the question is, why didn't He eliminate my sin nature?
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Why didn't He eliminate my weaknesses?
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I'll be honest with you, for years, as a very young Christian and a young pastor, I went to the prayer room on my face, asking God to remove temptation.
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Asking God to remove sin nature from me.
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For years I prayed that.
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You know, one day, same prayer room, I'm on my face praying, "God, just take this sin nature from me." And in his still small voice, he reminded me, he said, "That's not how I work." He says, "I don't remove the sin nature. What I do is, I give you my Holy Spirit." You see, the Lord uses difficulty to teach us and to teach our kids how to wage spiritual war.
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You see, God doesn't say, "Now that you're saved, expect peace for the rest of your life." He says, "Now that you're saved, what does Ephesians 6 say?
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Put on the armor of God." Why would I need armor?
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Because you're going to war!
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There's a battle!
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And that's what God did with Israel here.
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Said, "Hey, we're going to teach some kids how to fight.
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That's why we're going to keep them.
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I'm going to use them.
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You wouldn't get rid of them, I'm not.
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We're going to use them.
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They're going to learn how to fight." And God says the same thing to us.
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That sin nature is going to stay, and you're going to learn how to walk by the Spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
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You're going to learn what it means to trust Me every step of the way.
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Otherwise, you know what my Christian walk would be?
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It would be like, "Hey, you know what? Back in 1995, I trusted Jesus Christ." Like, "Well, how's that gone today?" It doesn't matter, because I don't need Him today like I did in 1995.
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No, you know what?
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I am more aware of my need for Jesus Christ's power in my life today than I was however many years ago that was when I came to Him.
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We learn to trust Him with every step.
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Because church, when the enemy looks unstoppable, when the mountain looks too high and that path looks too long and our resources are completely gone.
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All of a sudden, do you know what we have?
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A teachable spirit.
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We have a hand that reaches up and says, "God, you know what? I need you." And church, we can't stand still.
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Like Israel, there's still enemies to be faced.
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There's still ground to be gained, and if the battle is going to continue until the Lord returns, you had better recruit and train your kids.
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Do what's right.
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And it starts by doing it 100%.
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Not partially.
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Not, "I did it mostly!" This is war.
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And in war, good enough isn't enough.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, Your Word tells us that You've given us these accounts in Your Word to serve as examples for us, to teach us some things.
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Father, if we're honest, this hits pretty close to home today.
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Because Father, we are so much like Israel.
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God, we confess to You that we allow areas of unconquered land in our own hearts.
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We face the same consequences that Israel faced.
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Father, right now we want to thank You for the victory of Jesus Christ.
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We do thank You, Father, that our salvation is based on what He did, not on what we do.
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But at the same time, Father, we cry out that we would experience His power in a renewed and fresh way.
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And Father, that has to start with You making us aware of our need for His power.
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And I pray, Father, if nothing else happened today, I pray that that's something Your Word accomplished was it awakens the need for each of Your true people here and watching and listening.
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I pray, Father, that this awakens us again and afresh to the need that we have for daily reliance on Your Spirit.
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That yes, you have promised to conquer the enemies, but somehow you use us as part of that whole process.
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On a way that we can choose to obey and go with you, or a way that we can choose to sit back and say that's good enough.
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Grab us today, Father.
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Grant us repentance.
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Glorify Your name.
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Father, just now we're going to stand and lift our voices up in worship.
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Let us celebrate the victory of Christ, the victory He won in the past, and the victory that He is going to give us today.
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We praise You in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Judges 2:1-5
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Describe in your own words how Israel sinned. Why was this such a big deal to the Lord (Judges 2:1-3)?
Read Ephesians 4:30. How do you grieve the Holy Spirit? How do you know you have? How can you stop grieving the Spirit? How do you know you have?
What is the “second generation syndrome”? How does that happen? How can we prevent that with our kids (and the kids at HBC)?
Breakout
Pray for one another. In what area(s) have you been “partially obedient”?