1 Sam 7:2, And it came about from the day that the ark remained at Kiriath-jearim that the time was long, for it was twenty years; and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. 
	In this morning’s reading, we are presented with a situation that is very common to every Christian over the course of our walk with the Lord. It may replay itself over and over again at various stages of our Christian growth due to the residue of our old nature which will take the rest of our earthly days to have done with. The key that we want to consider is not the focus on the sinful nature, but the manner in which we are to recognize it and beseech The Lord to deal with it. 
There is a reality of our spiritual nature which needs to become a constant guard against anything which would hinder our walk and our growth into the greater measure of our living relationship with the Lord. It is this heart after God which laments when we are not in true and earnest fellowship with Him because of the sin that may be infesting and cloaking that desire in our being.
	How do we respond to sin in our minds and in our hearts and in our souls? Do we allow it to rule the manner of our day to day sojourn on this earth? Do we give into it when it presents those lusts of our minds and our actions on this earth? Does our anger and our frustration and our self-centered imagination of everything revolving around us become the focus of our mind, blinding us to the needs and the cares that surround us, masking the thoughtless, but tremendous harm that we do to others? 
	Or, does all that garbage and wasteful selfishness and self-idolatry cause us to begin to view ourselves with a more heavenly vision which brings forth lament in the manner in which we are presenting anything but God and His so great love in our dealings with those around us? Do we find ourselves lamenting the loss of our connection and our growth with the Lord and His ways of expressing loving-kindness and gentleness and longsuffering to those in such need? This is the course of what we need to have worked into our hearts when sin begins to rear its ugliness, trying to separate us from our new found source of life in Jesus Christ. 
	We return to the Book of Judges, as we begin to trace how this whole process is worked out in the hearts and minds of the people whom God has chosen unto Himself. Judges Chapter 2, verses 1-4, if you would please read along with me.
	Judg 2:1-4, Now the angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, "I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land which I have sworn to your fathers; and I said, 'I will never break My covenant with you, and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.' But you have not obeyed Me; what is this you have done? "Therefore I also said, 'I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.'" And it came about when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the sons of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept.
	The Children of Israel had been blessed by the Lord God Jehovah in the covenant in which He had made Himself their God and they were His people, His Chosen Nation. However, when they had gone into the Promised Land, they began to play the harlot with the gods of the nations in the land. They had become adulterous in their behaviors and in their dedications. They had scorned the One unto Whom they had sworn their fidelity and their fealty. Thus the Lord reminded them of their terrible actions and set before them the consequences of their defiled choices. 
This caused the people to weep before the Lord. They recognized that they had sinned and they were ashamed of having turned away from the Lord as well as dreading the manner of how God was going to punish their adulterous actions. They cried out to the Lord in the acceptance of how He was going to deal with them in the course of what they would have to suffer because of their so great transgression of breaking this covenant with God. It mattered to God and it mattered to them for a while.
As we noted in our study of the Book of Judges, there was in place that cyclical relationship with the Lord that may well describe our walk before God. This is detailed later in this 2nd Chapter of Judges, verses 16-23.
Judg 2:16-23, Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. And yet they did not listen to their judges, for they played the harlot after other gods and bowed themselves down to them. They turned aside quickly from the way in which their fathers had walked in obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do as their fathers. And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But it came about when the judge died, that they would turn back and act more corruptly than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their practices or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said, "Because this nation has transgressed My covenant which I commanded their fathers, and has not listened to My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations which Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it as their fathers did, or not." So the Lord allowed those nations to remain, not driving them out quickly; and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua. 
We may well find, as we look back on the course of our walk with the Lord heretofore, there is a similar pattern with us. We are on fire for the Lord for a period of time, until that flame begins to flare out a bit. We become distracted by this or that idol of the world which is ceaselessly bombarding us with all its filth and depravity. Oft times it may be disguised as something that looks good, but is in reality merely as a pig plastered with makeup, dressed in flimsy attire, and bedecked with gaudy trinkets. Underneath it all, it is just a filthy swine to which we offer our adoration and our consecration.
Therefore the Lord, Our loving Lord, Our Longsuffering Lord, Our Righteous and Holy Lord sets before us those trials and tribulations which serve to show how much we need Him to make it through the day to day sojourn we have on this earth. We are tried and tested constantly in order to learn just how vital and true is our relationship with God. This is in utter opposition to the corruptness of the tawdry attractions that this age sets as traps and snares. We need God to guide us safely and victoriously through those minefields that would otherwise lead to our catastrophic annihilation. 
This was the heartbreaking course that these Israelites were following. Later, after several generations, as recounted in 1 Sam 12:10, the Lord had to again deal with His people’s idolatrous behavior by the scourge of the affliction of the nations surrounding them. These were the same nation’s from whom the Children of Israel once again had assimilated the worship of idols and false gods to whom they gave their worship. 
After a period of suffering under the oppression of those nations, the Children of Israel wept before the Lord and they admitted their sin and their shameful action and attitude unto God. The sought for His help from the affliction and oppression. They needed to become humble and earnestly commit themselves again and again to the Lord as His people. He was their only hope of deliverance, as He in ours.
	1 Sam 12:10, And they cried out to the Lord and said, 'We have sinned because we have forsaken the Lord and have served the Baals and the Ashtaroth; but now deliver us from the hands of our enemies, and we will serve Thee.' 
	One of the aspects that we need to take to heart is that we all face that sin in our lives on this earth. Not one of us is perfect in any form or fashion. We all make those mistakes in this world which is sin. It is against the new nature of Christ Who dwells within us. Any time we are living for ourselves rather than for the Lord, we are focusing on self-gratification rather than honoring Christ. That is something which is sinful in nature and thus it is transgression before the Throne of God. 
	As humans, we try to justify, we try to minimize, and we try to explain away all that the Lord has put into place in Jesus Christ. We make those distinctions in our minds, arguing with God and with ourselves that our trespass is not that bad, that we are not as sinful as so-and-so. We try to put up areas of gray into the course of how we look at our motivations and our responses to the world around us. 
That is what the Israelites did when they first marched forth into the Promised Land. They made those accommodations with the inhabitants. They did not utterly destroy those peoples as God had directed. They rationalized and they minimized and they theorized, all to explain their lack of true consecration to the Holiness of the Lord. They thought they could distinguish that which might be OK from that which was absolutely forbidden by Jehovah.
Accordingly the Lord had to show them, through the persecution and the oppression of these foreign nations, that they were far from the expression of the Holy People of the Lord God Jehovah that they were intended to be! They were to be a light of Yahweh to the nations surrounding them, not the same as those sinful and corrupt peoples. 
Therefore over and over again, the Lord used their enemies to drive them back to Himself. They would realize that they had sinned and they would then seek Him with those hearts which were broken and those eyes which burned with tears of regret at having made themselves the object of contempt in their adulterous and malicious activities.
The reality of the need for humble and earnest crying out unto the Lord with respect to the fact that the people had sinned worked on the heart of Solomon. This was detailed in 1 Kings 8:35+36, as he was dedicating the Temple of the Lord. Solomon knew of the way in which the people would waiver in their relationship with God. Therefore he called out to the Lord in his prayer to hear the cry of the people if they would submit themselves to Jehovah in humble contrition.
	1 Kings 8:35+36, "When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain, because they have sinned against Thee, and they pray toward this place and confess Thy name and turn from their sin when Thou dost afflict them, then hear Thou in heaven and forgive the sin of Thy servants and of Thy people Israel, indeed, teach them the good way in which they should walk. And send rain on Thy land, which Thou hast given Thy people for an inheritance. 
	Solomon besought the Lord that if the people, suffering the consequences of their being distracted and allured from the worship of God, would recognize their sinful ways and cry out to God and turn back to Him and forsake their sinful choices, that God would listen and respond. This required the confession and the humbleness and the obedience of being God’s Chosen Nation which was to characterize the walk with God that was ever His design for humanity.
	God responded to King Solomon in this regard, as recorded in 2 Chron 7:12-15. This is the type of contrition that will move the heart of Our most gracious and merciful Lord God Almighty. This is if we will respond to the urging of the Holy Spirit within us, repent from our sin and transgression, humble our hearts, and turn away from that sin in obedience to the Lord.
	2 Chron 7:12-15, Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. 
	This is where we are right now in these days. We, as a society, have turned away from God. We have generally accepted the lie that there is no right and there is no wrong. To us, everything is subjective and needs to be assessed in the terms of the context of the action. What might be wrong today may not be wrong tomorrow since this or that has taken place. The ends justify the means is a most widely held ideology and justification for the most heinous of actions. 
Everything is now measured on a sliding scale of emotional and psychologically acceptable motivations and pretext and validation. “What is right for me may not be right for you, but don’t you dare judge me for the way I choose to live my life”, is the established mantra of our society. Every sort of awful thing is now socially acceptable and must never be spoken against because we must be politically correct and accepting of every person’s ideas of self-realization. 
	The truth, however, is so far from this lie of self-gratification! There is right and there is wrong! It is black and white! There is no gray area with God! What He spoke against, in His Word way back in the days of the wilderness wandering of His Chosen people is as true and to be esteemed today as it was then. The Ten Commandments stand as the measure of how we are to live our lives this very day.
The fact that Christ held them up for the measure of how He lived on this earth is the example we are to hold near and dear in our hearts. We are not under the Law, but we are to reverence the Word of God and are to rejoice in the fulfillment of the Law by our Lord and Savior. 
	We are freed from the legalistic chains of the religiosity that had become the curse of the law in its death clause. Christ has paid that debt forevermore! As a glorious result, we are to cherish Jehovah’s giving of those commandments for the sake of our safe keeping and spiritual well being. Jesus Christ stands as the beacon of our hope and our joy and our source of true life. 
Accordingly, whenever we are involved in anything that would cause Him grief, we are sinning! We need to humbly and earnestly cry out to God to forgive our trespass! We need to beseech Him to direct us into those paths of His righteousness which will lead us away from death and into His more unfathomably satisfying and honoring and holy walk of praise and worship and thanksgiving unto Him. 
	Lord willing, we will continue with this need to cry out to God in humble contrition, asking Him to teach us the more and more perfect obedience unto His will. We need Him more and more as each day unfolds. To walk with Christ in these days requires utter obedience and adoring reverence for Who He is and all that He has done and ever will do! So be it!	 
And it came about from the day that the ark remained at Kiriath-jearim that the time was long, for it was twenty years; and all the house of Israel lamented after the Lord. Amen. 

	
This morning’s benediction is Phil 2:1+2. If therefore there is any encouragement in Christ, if there is any consolation of love, if there is any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Amen.