Moving on to the book of Judges. Here is a little background. Israel is now in Canaan, the promise land and they continue the vicious cycle of disobeying God and falling for the false gods of the Canaanites. Take a look at Judges 1:27-36 to see why they keep falling into this pit of disobedience. Here is one verse of the list:

Judges 1:29
29 Nor did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, but the Canaanites continued to live there among them.

This is just a snipet of the list of tribes that did not force out the pagans, yet they let these people dwell in their Promise Land alongside.

What’s the problem here? Isn’t this the peaceful way to exist? The problem that I see is in the clue that these people were pagans-they worshiped FALSE GODS! The ONE and ONLY God is very jealous and demands undivided attention and worship. So, when the Israelites allowed these Canaanites to live among them, they were subjecting themselves to the temptation to fall in line with the pagans and worship these false idols.

And, yes, this is exactly what happened. Thus, we now have the book of Judges. The Lord appointed a Judge to basically watch over and protect the Israelites and whip them in shape. We will read more about how and why these Judges were elected by God.

So, back to these false idols…the lesson here is that when we do not clean house and sweet out things that divide our attention, these pesks can creep in and do just that. Just like fleas or vermin, they find cracks in our house and slither their way in to turn us away from our one true God.

The Israelites should have done some major spring cleaning when they took over their inherited land. Do you have some sweeping out to do for yourself?