But they did not. They allowed certain tribes to live. They began to co-exist. They got “world comfortable.” The Israelites lived among the Canaanites…they took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.[iii]

“And served their gods….”

Before You Judge
The book of Judges is filled with these stories. Israel takes possession, they begin “living with” the people and they eventually become captive to those people they were supposedly the conquerors of. Othneil, Ehud, Shamgar, Gideon, Samson, and Deborah are the names of a few of the “judges” God sent when the people cried out for relief. Relief from the captivity. Relief from their own sinful nature.

When Deborah had led the people to victory, she sang a song. “When the princes in Israel take the lead, when the people willingly offer themselves — praise the Lord!” [iv] she shouted.

It would be so easy for us to get self-righteous. To read Ancient Israel’s story and to think, “You know, if God freed me in such a way, I’d never allow myself to get sucked back into the muck and mire of sin.” But we know that’s not the case, don’t we? We have all sinned, Paul writes in Romans. We have all fallen short of God’s glory[v]. We all play the game of testing God’s boundaries, sticking our fingers into the frosting of sin only to discover that the sugar is salt and the price is more than we can pay. Time and again we cry out to Jesus, “Save me!” Time and again, He does.