I had had a late night, sleeping at past 2am. So waking up was a bit difficult. At some point while tossing and turning, my mind went to what I'd read this morning in the book of judges chapter 2. I didn't get it initially but when I eventually did I suddenly became fully awake.
The background to the passage was the Lord's fulfilment of his centuries old promise to the patriarchs of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He had promised to give their descendants the entire land of Canaan as their possession. However He hadn't given them a time limit for doing so. Fast forward several centuries and they had crossed miraculously over river Jordan to claim the possession God had given them under the leadership of Joshua.
However they discovered after several years of warfare that they couldn't dislodge all the inhabitants of the massive lands of their inheritance. At the point of his death even Joshua told the people of Israel (Joshua 23:5) "the Lord shall expel and drive them out. . . And ye shall possess their land". Joshua was letting the Israelites know that it is God himself that overcomes our challenges for us.
Even when He has shown us what to do and we feel execution is straight forward, it is still God that executes! It is the realization that we can never accomplish anything at all without God's active help that we can call faith.
In judges 1, in spite of the comprehensive knowledge the Israelites had of the land and that it was theirs by inheritance, it was documented that Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulun, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan were not able to fully dislodge all the inhabitants of their lands. Eventually the best they could achieve was subjecting the peoples to slavery.
In judges 2 we are told that the people forsook the Lord after Joshua died. He became angry and in V21 the Lord says, "I will no longer drive out the nations Joshua left behind when he died". V22 "I will TEST the Israelites with these nations to see whether or not they will carefully follow the Lord's ways as their ancestors did".
The Lord tests. He doesn't tempt. The former builds strength and resolve, the latter raises doubt.
After over a century on the land of their inheritance, the Israelites discovered that though the Lord had given them the land, they were still not able to possess it without His help. And even though the Lord never withholds help from us, He seeks to build a strong relationship with his people while delivering them into their inheritance. When that relationship is absent it is then easy to fall prey to worshipping other gods.
Brethren what matters most is our relationship with God and absolute faith and reliance on Him for everything. He says in John 15:5-6 that "without me ye can do nothing"!
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