THE WARNING ANGEL

 

Dr. W. A. Criswell

 

Judges 2

 

02-21-60

 

This is the Pastor bringing the early morning message entitled The Warning Angel.  At this service next Sunday morning, the title of the message will be “The Terrible Meek.”  It is a message on the first three judges—Othniel, Ehud and Shamgar: “The Terrible Meek.”  The sermon this morning is The Warning Angel.  If you will turn to the Book of Judges, you can easily follow the message and it will mean more to you as the pastor delivers it.  In the Book of Judges, chapter two, verse seven.  The Book of Judges chapter two, verse seven: “And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord that he did for Israel.  And Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord died.”  Now verse ten: “and there arose another generation after them, which new not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel.”  That is one of the saddest verses in the Book: “and there arose another generation after them who knew not the Lord.” 

In the lifetime of Joshua, in the lifetime of all the men who knew Joshua, they served God.  But when Joshua died, and that generation died, it was as though a great magnet had been taken away and the loose filings fell down in a heap and a mass.  For some reason, it is impossible for any generation to live off of the devotion and the religious experience of a previous generation.  Religion is of all things personal.  And prayer means nothing at all if all that prayer means is that our grandfather’s prayed or our forefather’s believed in the efficacy of beseeching God.  Conversion is nothing at all if all we know about it is that our grandfathers were converted or our forefathers believed in the power of regeneration.  The presence and the miracle working power of God is nothing if all we know about it is that our grandfathers experienced the presence of the Lord and our forefathers knew about the miracle working power of God. 

Religion can never be, not for long—religion can never be, can never exist, as long as it lives upon tradition or hearsay or somebody else’s experience.  For it to have any meaning, any pertinency at all, it must be felt by us.  If prayer means anything at all, it has to mean that to you.  If the presence of God means anything at all, it has to mean that to you.  All of those things that happen in the days of Joshua were great things.  But when this generation arose up who knew not the works of the Lord, those things in the life and ministry of Joshua were just hearsay.  They were just stories.  They were just traditions.  They were just things of some other day and some other generation and some other yesteryear.  So when you come down to this verse—“the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, . . . and there arose another generation after them who knew not the Lord”—you cannot help but experience, in just reading that, the poverty of spirit of that generation that knew not the Lord.  They are bankrupt.  They are the weights that the ages must carry.  They are the burdens of the centuries.  History dies in them.  Isn’t that one of the saddest circumstances you could ever see described here in the Book—and there arose another generation after them who knew not the Lord”?  Great days here when George Truett was pastor; but penniless bankrupt days now.  Great marvelous spiritual tides in Texas when B. H. Carroll preached the gospel, but poverty of spirit and bankruptcy of soul now.  Marvelous revivals in the days of Finney and of Moody, but all of God’s people now have even forgotten the tremendous searching power of the Lord.  Wouldn’t those be pitiful things to say about us—“in the days of Joshua, they served the Lord, . . . but there arose another generation, . . . who knew not the Lord nor yet the works which He had done for Israel”? 

You know, we read about marvelous things, and my library is filled with them.  I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Books out there that describe incomparable things God has done in days past.  All of that is just like fiction.  It is just like myth.  It is just like tradition and legend, unless we are able to recreate those same things in our day and in our time and in our generation.  There ought to be witnesses down here in the front of this sacred place every Sunday.  There ought to be witnesses of marvelous conversions, every Lord’s Day.  There ought to be in our time and in our generation, marvelous spiritual revivals.  There ought to be answers to prayers ever day of our lives.  If we were to have a testimony service here at this church, there ought to be ten thousand of our members able to stand up every week and say, "I have had an experience with God and this is what God has done for me."  Instead, I would think that most of us would have to stand up and say, "I have heard about a great experience over there and I have read about a marvelous outpouring of God’s presence back yonder, but I have not seen it in my day.  I have not seen it in my life.  I do not know what it is to be touched by the great moving presence and power of God"—a spiritually bankrupt generation. 

Isn’t it, I say, one of the saddest verses in the Bible—“and there arose another generation after them, who knew not the Lord nor the works which He had done for Israel”?  Now, what would you expect to follow?  If you did not know, if you had not read the Book of Judges, if you had never heard any body to speak of it, what would you expect to follow after that?  Exactly what does follow.  It became a generation of skepticism.  It became a generation of unbelief.  It became a generation of compromise, and finally, of gross idolatry and iniquity.  Why, I would be surprised to read anything else after that verse.  I would be amazed if, after I read that verse, I came upon great revelations from God and great marvelous spiritual experiences.  Why, the generation is filled from the beginning with all of those emptinesses in which the demons of darkness delight to live, to move, to possess.  This generation that knew not the Lord and forgot the works which He had done for Israel.  Well, I expect to read of terrible declensions and awful skepticism and doubt and unbelief and backslidings.  I expect to read about a bankrupt people.  And when I turn to the Book of Judges, it is exactly as you might expect. 

Now, those things do not happen without a warning from God.  Will you turn now to the first of the second chapter of the Book of Judges?  See what God does.  Before God bares His arm to strike, He always warns, always: “And the angel of the Lord—the angel of the Lord, came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt.”  This is the Lord, the second person of the Trinity.  When He was incarnate.  He had a name, Jesus; this is the second person of the trinity, the angel of the covenant. 

And the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt.  I have brought you into the land; . . . and I said. . . .

Ye shall make no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars: why have ye not obeyed my voice? 

Wherefore I also said, I will not drive out from before you; . . . these who are to be thorns in your sides, and their gods a stumbling block and a snare unto you. . . . 

And it came to pass, when the angel of the Lord spake these words unto all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voice, and wept. 

And they called the name of that place Bochim—the weepers—and they offered sin offerings, sin sacrifices there unto the Lord. 

God never fails to do that, never.  Before the Lord’s hand is bared and His arm stretched; before God extends Himself to strike, He always, always, always, warns and warns and warns.  For example, these Canaanites, whom the Lord sent Israel to exterminate.  Israel was in God’s hand the instrument of extermination and of judgment.  It was God doing it.  That seems like a heavy penalty but, oh you do not read about God without reading about the severity of the judgments of God.  And these Canaanites, the Lord gave them respite for hundreds and hundreds of years and they did not change.  And the Lord sent them an awesome warning in the judgment of God upon Sodom and Gomorrah.  And the Lord gave them great Godly examples in Abraham and in Melchizedek, but those Canaanites refused the warning of the Lord.  And the day came when the iniquity of the Amorite was full and God sent these Israelites as the messengers of the execution of the judgment of God upon the iniquity of the land. 

They are having a great convocation of all of the tribes of Israel at a place near Bethel, and suddenly there appears before all the household of Jacob, before all those assembled tribes, there appears a startling voice, a startling messenger, and He says, "I am the Captain of the hosts that gave you the commandments of what to do when I appeared unto Joshua at Gilgal.  Why is it that ye have not obeyed my voice and carried out my commandments?"  And when that angel, that messenger of the covenant, when that angel of the Lord spake unto the tribes assembled near Bethel, they were stricken in their hearts.  They saw the error of their way, and they lifted up their voice and wept.  And they called the name of that place Bochim, “the weepers.”  And there they offered sins, sacrifices unto God and they dried their eyes and hardened their hearts and forgot it.  I would like for you to find any where in the Bible this place Bochim.  I would like for you to find on any map of Israel that place Bochim.  It is never mentioned again, nor does anybody to this day know where it was.  They dried their tears.  They dried their eyes.  They stopped their ears.  They turned from that sacrifice, that sin offering.  They hardened their hearts and they went back into that same recalcitrant, incorrigible, obstreperous unbelief and unrepentance.  Now, what do you expect?  What? 

Now, will you turn with me to the fourteenth verse of the same chapter.  This is exactly what you would look for.  The fourteenth verse of chapter two: “And the anger of the Lord,” isn’t that an unusual thing, the anger of the Lord?  You don’t ever here about that nowadays.  It is always the love of God.  Always the sweetness of God.  Always the graciousness and mercy of God.  I do not hear any body nowadays writing, speaking or referring to the severity of God and the judgments of God and the anger of God.  But it is in the Bible and it is on every page.  Judges 2:14: “And the anger of the Lord” burned, flamed, “was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.”  Why, the liquid cloud ran over them as though they were mole hills, and the vice and the sinners of the day mocked and laughed at them.  They could not stand before their enemies; “Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had said, and as the Lord had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed.”  The heavens scorched them.  The horizon burned them, and the very earth withered them away.  Wherever they turned and whatever they did, there they met defeat.  Ah, the severity of the judgments of God.  God is as true to His threats as He is to His promises. 

When the angel of Bochim appeared, He did not smite.  He just warned.  But those warnings are always followed by the terrible judgments of God.  I tell you, I cannot conceive of the vapid sentiment that can blind itself to what is writ large in this Book and on the pages all history.  How are you going to escape the story of the flood?  When, because of the vile iniquity and wickedness of men, God destroyed the whole earth except righteous Noah.  How are you going to—how are you going to explain away the judgment of God upon Sodom and Gomorrah?  How are you going to do it?  What are you going to say about the plagues in the wilderness that devoured the household of Israel?  What are you going to say about the Babylonian captivity, when God Himself said the place will be plowed up into heaps and the women and the children will be taken away into slavery and the men will be slain with the edge of a sword?  What are you going to say when Goering in Germany stands before a vile and fanatical crowd of Nazis and says, "We are destroying Coventry, and we are bombing London.  We are slaying innocent children, woman in households by the thousands, but no bomb will ever drop upon the Vaderlacht."  All you have to do is just to open a book and to read from the page and find out that in God’s time and in God’s day, he who reigns death on Coventry and on London shall live to see that hour when lurid death rains from the skies on the Vaderlacht.  God is not dead, and these great visitations from heaven know no respect of persons.  If the judgment of God fell upon His chosen people Israel, and upon the city that He loved and upon the very house where He said, "and my name shall be there," what do you think will fall upon us as a people, as a nation, as a family, as an individual, you? 

When these people turned and forgot, that story just follows afterwards.  They all grow on the same stem.  Sin and punishment are on the same plant.  Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens in the flower of the pleasure that conceal it, that wrap it round about.  Punishment is inherent in the sin.  They are together.  The fruit is in the seed and the harvest is in the sowing.  You do not separate them.  God put it there.  It was not any biochemist that put the harvest in the sowing, it was not any unusual scientific genius that was able to put the fruit in the seed.  God put it there.  No man could do it, nor can any man disassociate it.  The fruit is in that seed.  God made it that way.  And the punishment for sin is in the sin itself.  It is carried along.  It is a concomitant.  It is a corollary.  It is inherent.  It is constitutional.  It is the presence of God.  He welded that length together.  Sin and punishment; sin and death; sin and the judgment of God; they are together, and it starts right where it begins. 

They left those heathen altars in the land, when God said they were to be thrown down.  And those heathen altars demanded sacrifice.  They left those heathen idols in the land.  They refused to cast them down according to the Word of God and those heathen gods demanded worship.  And when they were left in the land by the choice of Israel, we like these little divinities.  We like these little gods of the day.  We are going to leave them.  Yeah, we are going to associate with them.  Yeah, we are going to intermarry with them.  Then they became party to a life and a faith they could not control.  I am not talking about these Israelites who lived thirteen hundred years before Jesus.  I am talking about us.  For within the radius of this pulpit, in this city, there are uncounted thousands and thousands that worship at the shrine of the divinities of the day.  And they offer sacrifice unto the gods of expediency and of this world.  And the judgment of God falls.  It falls upon the soul.  It falls upon the heart.  It falls upon the children.  It falls upon the city.  It falls upon the nation.  We live in the imponderables of God.  Oh it makes you to tremble, to tremble, to tremble. 

Like last Sunday morning, we are not going to leave it like that.  Will you turn with me just—no man should ever paint a picture of a forest without a road out.  No man should ever preach a sermon ever, no man should ever preach a sermon about the judgment of God and the warning angel of the Lord, without preaching also the mercy and the forgiveness of Jehovah.  Will you turn with me to chapter ten?  Will you look at verse ten and follow?  In verse eight it says the Philistines “oppressed the children of God [Israel]: eighteen years” [Judges 10:8].  That is a long time to live under the thumb of a bitter, unbelieving, uncircumcised Philistine, eighteen years.  Now, verse ten:

And the children of Israel cried unto the Lord saying, We have sinned against thee, both because we have forsaken our God, and served Baalim. 

And the Lord said unto the children of Israel: Did not I deliver you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? 

The Zidonians also, and the Amalekites, and the Moabites, did oppress you; and you cried to me, and I delivered you out of their hand. 

Yet, yet, ye have forsaken me—and sacrificed—and served other gods: wherefore, I will deliver you no more. 

Go, cry unto the gods whom ye have chosen; let them deliver you in the time of your tribulation. 

And the children of Israel said unto the Lord,: We have sinned: do thou unto us whatsoever seemeth good unto thee, deliver us only, we pray thee, deliver us this day. 

And they put away the strange gods from among them, and served the Lord. and God’s soul was grieved for the misery of Israel. 

And you have the story again of the forgiveness and the deliverance of the Lord:  And it is always that way, always.  That is God.  The thief enters paradise, today, the thief is with Jesus.  Paul, the persecutor, is forgiven.  He obtains mercy.  And the children of Israel are taken back into the forgiveness and love and mercy of God.  And when the Lord looked on their misery and on their tears and on their repentance and upon their beseeching and crying:  Oh God, do with us whatever pleaseth Thee, only, only Lord remember us.  Look on our misery.  And God’s soul was grieved, grieved for the agony of Israel.  That is my only answer to this question: Why doesn’t God destroy the evil world in which we live?  When whole governments blasphemy His name, why doesn’t God destroy the iniquity of our own people and our own mission?  And why doesn’t God destroy us?  That is the answer.  Maybe somebody will turn and repent.  Maybe somebody will be saved.  And the longsuffering of God waits and appeals and makes invitation.  And the Lord looks and He waits, maybe some body will turn and be saved.  Oh how a man can but feel the goodness of God.  That He loves us, when we are unlovely.  God waits for us when our backs are turned to Him.  Hope against hope, appeals against appeal.  Maybe some body will turn and be saved. 

Wouldn’t it be great this morning hour if some body did?  If some body turned this day, and said this day, this hour, I do open my heart to God.  His Spirit is welcome within my soul.  My life now is not my own but His.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some body did? If you have listened on the radio, maybe today you would bow your head, humble your heart and say, “Lord God, today I turn on for Thee." Maybe in this great throng of people at this hour, some body, you, would give his heart to Jesus.  Is there a family this morning to put his life with us in the church?  As the Spirit of God shall open the way and make the appeal, would you make it now?  Would you make it this morning?  On the first note of that first stanza, is there some body here who ought to come?  Would you make it now, while we stand and while we sing?