And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges.
Judges 2:16
Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge. For the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and were more corrupt than their fathers, going after other gods, serving them and bowing down to them. They did not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he said, “Because this people have transgressed my covenant that I commanded their fathers and have not obeyed my voice, I will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will take care to walk in the way of the Lord as their fathers did, or not
Psalms 106:43
Many times he delivered them,
but they were rebellious in their purposes
and were brought low through their iniquity.
Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress,
when he heard their cry.
For their sake he remembered his covenant,
and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love
Did you take note that the time from when the Israelites took possession of the land until the time of Judges was ~450 years. During this 450 years many times the Israelites were under God’s punishment for not following Him. We can look back at this and see the first place of not obeying God was when they took over the land God had given them. They did not put away all of the people as God said to. They did right by what was in their own eyes and this lead to a continuous falling away from God. I remember shortly after I was saved, my pastor who was discipling me, said “one thing he saw and it troubled him greatly was the fact that the church seemed to always be 10 to 15 years away from whatever the current culture accepted.” What was deemed not in alignment with God’s word by the church now seemed to be ok or severely watered down within 10 to 15 years. Spend some time to think about this and see if it is not true. We ask for revival but are we willing to put away all that causes us to stumble? Have we lost sight of what God would have us do and replaced it with what the culture says God would have us do? The only way we will ever get on top of this is to personally spend time in God’s word with the intent of allowing Him to speak the truth of it into our mind and lives. If we think for a moment we will get this type of understanding from a sermon once per week we fool ourselves and will only continue to drift away from God while running full speed ahead to that which is neither God honoring or beneficial for our lives. Purpose to read daily and desire/expect God to breath life into these words in your heart, mind and soul.
