Today’s COMPLACENCY brings tomorrow’s CAPTIVITY. Since toleration invites bondage, we must refuse to compromise with sin. “Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years” (Judges 6:1). Because they practiced evil, Israel was plundered by the marauding Midianites for seven long years. “And Israel was greatly impoverished because of the Midianites; and the children of Israel cried unto the LORD” (Judges 6:6). In response to their cry God sent a prophet to remind them how God rescued them from Egypt. Second, God sent Gideon to deliver them once again. This cycle of sin, slavery, and deliverance was repeated time and again. The Exodus account of liberation under Moses parallels the episode that occurred in Judges with Gideon.
EGYPT EXPERIENCE. Israel’s history, under both Moses and Gideon, illustrates how complacency brings captivity. In turning from the Lord, the Lord turned them over to their captors. In Judges Chapter six Israel was taken captive by the Midianites. The same thing occurred in Egypt where they suffered immensely under Pharaoh’s hard bondage.
The compromise of American Christianity has landed us in an oppressive “Egyptian” culture. Like in Judges, the Midianites have overrun us. The lack of moral restraint among churches has resulted in a wholesale abandonment of biblical morality in our culture. As our nation went WOKE, the churches went asleep. Christmas is celebrated for one day on December 25 while PRIDE is recognized for an entire month. Because of lost vitality, the “salt” is being trodden underfoot (Matt. 5:13). The spiritual decline in our nation corresponds to the spiritual degeneracy in the professing Christian community. Savorless salt possesses no power to preserve and flavor the cultural environment. Life in modern Egypt will become increasingly difficult as the law of cause and effect plays out before our eyes. We are reaping what we have sown.
WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE. God sent Moses to deliver His people from Egypt. We are familiar with the miserable decades they spent wandering in the wilderness. God’s design was not just to get them out from under the yoke of Pharaoh, His plan was to get them into the Promised Land. But Israel failed to possess their God-given possessions in the land of promise. Unbelief cost them dearly, and an entire generation died in the desert wasteland.
God selected Gideon to deliver Israel in the book of Judges. And Gideon asked a probing and honest question, “Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites” (Judges 6:13). Gideon wanted to know why they were in captivity. He wanted an explanation for the bondage they suffered. In essence he was saying we have heard these stories of mighty deliverance but, “Where are all the miracles today?” Gideon’s question is still pertinent today—“Where are the miracles?”
How many of us are barely keeping our heads above water? Why are thriving churches the exception, and not the rule? Demoralized congregations have been nurtured on defeatist theology, and these congregations are dying. Back in the seventies, “Carnal Christianity” was touted as an option instead of a mere possibility. The deeper life was ridiculed by many, and the victorious life is still mocked. The relentless emphasis on man’s inability and depravity is regularly trumpeted by popular teachers. This climate of unbelief has normalized failure, and robbed many of expectation. Hope for transformation is the crying need of the hour, but the message of deliverance is too often drowned in a sea of pessimism. So here we are marching around in circles much like Israel wandered in the wilderness. We are like a cage full of canaries—a lot of activity, but no progress.
PROMISED LAND EXPERIENCE. Gideon was an unlikely deliverer, but God profoundly used him to destroy the popular idols of that day and defeat the Midianites. Neither did Moses’ future look promising initially. He murdered an Egyptian, and spent the ensuing forty years in the desert. It did not look like preparation for leading a nation out of bondage, but it was. In both instances weak men were the instruments of great deliverances.
Today, we can spend our lives in bondage, blunderings, or blessing. In Egypt there is bondage. In the wilderness there are blunderings. But in the Promised Land there are untold blessings. It’s time to possess all the possessions that are ours… “in Christ.” Egypt was never our destiny. The wilderness is not our destiny, because it is only delayed death. The Promised Land is our birthright. It was purchased for our inheritance, both in time and eternity.
Today’s COMPLACENCY brings tomorrow’s CAPTIVITY. Toleration invites bondage. It’s time to put away smug self-satisfaction and compromise. It’s time to rise up in utter defiance against the sins that have captivated our hearts. It’s time to cast off the powers of darkness and their incessant attacks. It is time to demolish satanic strongholds. It’s time to put away anything that dims our vision of Christ as the all-sufficient Savior. It is time to leave Egypt and the wilderness behind. It is time to apprehend and appropriate our inheritance in the land of promise. It is time to wake up, shake up, clean up, pray up, and look up; for our redemption is drawing nigh!
Today’s diligence insures tomorrow’s freedom. Start sowing the right seeds for the harvest you desire tomorrow.
Harold Vaughan
