Thorns And Snares

Judges 2: 12-13, 20-21, 3

They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, Who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.

Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and said, Because this Nation has violated the covenant that I laid down for their forefathers and has not listened to me, I will no longer drive out before them any of the Nations Joshua left when he died. 
I will use them to test Israel and see whether they will keep the way of the Lord and walk in it as their forefathers did. 

...They will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you.

God gave His people every advantage. He wanted them to know how powerful He is and how much He loved them, and wanted the very best for them. 

But they didn't drive out all the people who were already there, as God told them to; instead they let them stay and work for them, to be their slaves.

God wouldn't drive them out if the people wouldn't cooperate, so they became "thorns in their sides" and their idols became "snares" to trap them. 

And that's what happened. When that whole generation died, the new generation didn't even know their history, of how God brought them out of Egypt, gave them His Law, and brought them to this good land. And they were caught in the snare of these gods, worshiping and serving them instead of their own Lord God (verses 10 & 11). 

It only takes one generation to forget our history of where we came from and how we got here. To know who we are we need to be acquainted with what went before us. If we forget that, then we become a people without identity. 

This has been deliberately planned and carried out by our enemy, in taking out of our schools the important history they need to be taught, and the culture into which they've been born and should be a part of. 

We now have a generation who have no identity, so they grasp whatever the World is holding out to them, causing division, hatred, and violence. Exactly the opposite of what our loving Father wants for us. 

We need to know who we are. We need to learn what our forefathers learned, and build on it. We really need to go back to our foundations, the concepts that enabled us to have such great prosperity in the past.

Just like Israel, we need to turn back to the Source of all of our well-being--our finances, our relationships, our physical and mental and psychological health; and God will see to our environmental health with the weather and the "acts of God" as He did for Israel when they followed Him in His ways of thinking and living. 

When they obeyed His Law, the fields yielded abundant crops (the source of their wealth), and they had peace with the Nations around them. Life was good. 

It was when they forgot God that they were ensnared in the traps of the gods (demons) of the peoples among them, and the weather destroyed the crops, and neighboring Nations rose up and conquered them. 

We see this recorded in Judges, the cycle repeated over and over. You'd think that they (we) would learn to follow God. 

But, no, Israel asked for a king they could see, instead of their King who took care of them. He made them special, but they preferred to be like the other Nations of the World instead. 

God honored Jacob's family in giving only them His Law. He wanted for them to display to the World how wonderful God is--how He elevates His own people above all the other people who don't revere Him. So they will see, and want to also follow this God Who is so good and generous and fair and just (I Kings 8:41-43). 

Today God is calling to Himself people from every Nation, every region, every language, every tribe, every family, all over the World. Christ's church, His bride, is a new kind of Nation, that the World has never seen before. We are called out of darkness into His marvelous light, to be a nation of holy priests, belonging to Him as His own possession; so that we will proclaim His excellencies (I Peter 2:9). 

It is up to us to teach our children and grandchildren. We cannot afford to let them forget who they are, who God is, and how much He loves all of us so much. It's so important, both for now and for eternity. 

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!