Today, Monday, August 3, is the 41st Anniversary for my wife and I. Can you believe she has put up with me for 41 years? She is a strong woman. We are celebrating this milestone by me being in California doing a Monument Camp. This is how we have celebrated the last 4 or 5 anniversaries actually. After the 30th year or so, we don’t need to celebrate it on THE day. Sometimes it does take some time before we CAN celebrate, but we will get to it. I’m thinking of taking her to Prague next July when I go to a World Schools Debate tournament. Wait, wait, wait! I know what some of you are thinking. How is THAT celebrating my anniversary? I plan to leave several days early, explore the city some, do the tournament, then stay another week to travel around Europe some. That will be the celebration part.
Anyway, to my wife Jennifer, I love you more and more each year, and look forward to the next 41 years should the Lord keep me alive that long.
As I do each morning almost without fail, I read the news and then pick up where I left off on my Bible reading. I am now well into the Book of Judges. Joshua has brought the Children of Israel into the Promised Land. They have established themselves there, though they have yet to drive all of the Canaanites out completely. They were given strict orders to take the land and to drive out the inhabitants. They did do enough for the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh to return back over the Jordan to their inheritance, but the job is not totally complete. There is a very strong sense that Israel is no longer all in, and they are getting a bit weary of the fight.
So, they are leaving some of the inhabitants to live among them, putting them to forced labor and all, but God said that the people of Canaan would be a snare to them if they were not driven out or killed. But for the people of Israel, they seemed to be satisfied with what they had done by enslaving the enemy.
However, it was not long after their first capitulation that they started giving their own daughters to the Canaanites to be their wives and taking Canaanite women for their own. And this disobedience lead to the theme of the whole Book of Judges. The people did evil in the eyes of the Lord and He gave them over to the rule of a foreign nation until they cried out to the Lord. He would show mercy, the people had rest for about a generation, they the whole process started over again. And each time, the people grew less and less satisfied with God being their King.
I look at the state of the world today and compare it to when I was in high school way back in the 1900s, as one of my daughters once said. There were certainly problems in the world, but they did not seem as bad as they are now. I mean, we all at that time knew what it was to be male and female. We knew what a woman was. There were some who thought they could change from one to the other, but that was rare, and at that time was seen as very abnormal. Today, we read about the rift between Sophie Cunningham and the WNBA at large where the argument is whether biological men should be able to play against women in sports if they identify as female. How far we have fallen.
Romans 1 speaks to this. When the people insist on doing things their own way, God gives them over to their lusts and desires to the point where He gives them over to a debased mind. They think and do things they ought not to do. Though they know the truth, and know that God created everything as it is obvious to anyone who would just look, they suppress the truth and exchange the truth for a lie, and they want to take as many people down with them as possible.
But it doesn’t stop there. Paul goes on to say that anyone who goes along and gives approval to such things are just as guilty.
This goes well with the Book of Judges. What happened from judge to judge? The same thing that happened when Joshua and the elders died. No one taught the next generation. There arose a generation who didn’t know Joshua or what God did. How is that possible? The parents failed to teach the kids. That why it happens multiple times that the land had rest for 40 years. That is one generation.
How is it that we are in the state of the mess we are in? It was about 40 years ago that none of the current deviance was even spoken of. And, we have a whole generation that has been taught solely by government schools, and those kids grew up and had children who are taught even worse things. That’s how things degenerate so quickly.
But God is NOT taken by surprise, and He knew this all would happen. And He has raised up certain people to be voices of reason, and others are gaining the confidence needed to fight this battle against the foreign gods of the current culture. Because believe me, this is a spiritual battle. And it is past time for the true church to put on the full armor of God. And the weapon of our warfare, the sword, is the Word of God. And THAT is why I read through the Bible twice a year. I am in training. I want to be always ready to give an answer. And I want that for all who read this, or hear me speak anywhere. This is why I am at a camp this week and next. I am arming young people for the battle that is already raging on.
God did NOT make us to lose. He calls us to take the battle to the gates of hell, and promised that those gates will not prevail. We will win because He has ALREADY WON. The problem is, this is not being taught as much as it needs to be taught. We as parents and grandparents need to spend time giving the young people the tools necessary to be great soldiers in the army of the Most High God. But you cannot train what you do not know.
So, just as you operated during those first years of homeschooling, and stayed essentially one day ahead of your kids, train yourself in the use of the Sword of the Spirit, and then train your young warriors in the same. And let’s go out and take this battle to the front lines knowing that the battle is the Lord’s.
Amen
If you enjoyed this content, you can sign up to receive this and more to your inbox every Monday by becoming a Monument Member. Learn more here.
