Judg 2:21+22, 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." 
	In this morning’s reading, we have the very sad account of how the succeeding posterity of the Children of Israel turned their hearts away from the Lord. It was only one generation later that the people of God befouled themselves with the worship of the gods and the vile practices of the nations surrounding them. This breaking asunder of the covenant with the Lord caused Jehovah to declare the edict of our text. He would no longer drive out the nations, but would leave them to be a means of testing as to the true intentions and actions and motivations of His Chosen people who were now living in the Promised Land. 
	In the very next chapter of this Book of Judges, Chapter 3, verses 1-4, we can read of the precise nations whom God would use for the purpose of seeing whether His Chosen people would want to serve Him or themselves in their plight of miserable conflict and strife. The peace which had been the fruit of the victorious conquest of the land by the Lord was turned into devestation and misery because they did not choose to stay true to God. They needed the testing of their resolve unto Jehovah to have any sense of relief established in their hearts.
	Judg 3:1-4, Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to test Israel by them (that is, all who had not experienced any of the wars of Canaan; only in order that the generations of the sons of Israel might be taught war, those who had not experienced it formerly). These nations are: the five lords of the Philistines and all the Canaanites and the Sidonians and the Hivites who lived in Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath. And they were for testing Israel, to find out if they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which He had commanded their fathers through Moses. 
	The same, sadly, is true in our lives and hearts. There are many times in which the Lord needs to bring forth those testings within the course of our walk with Him to focus our hearts and minds upon Him and not on ourselves. It is too easy and too much the truth of how we operate on this earth that when everything is going smoothly, we tend to turn our eyes away from steadfastness on the Lord. We begin to focus our attention on the distractions of this world, finding that we are less and less inclined to seek after God with all our hearts and minds and beings. We strive to achieve those things which glitter and catch our eyes, like fish swimming after lures sparkling in the sunny waters.
	It is often through those testing times of The Lord that we find ourselves being brought into a deeper and more sincere and heartfelt relationship with Our God. It is when we have no other place to turn, when every prop and stay of this world gives way and crumbles that our hearts return to our faithful and loving and ever present Savior and Lord. 
	God finds it necessary, as with the case of Abraham and his beloved son, Isaac, to test the mettle of our resolve to worship and obey Him only, or put our personal wishes and will ahead of His in our lives. So often the testings are very personal and precise, targeting the things that we hold nearest and dearest. This is the case because those things and those loves of our lives are often put onto an altar of idolatry which we do not recognize until the Lord makes us choose Him or them. Will we honor and obey Him or will we try to find our happiness and our comfort in what we have established as our self-created gods? What holds the dearest place in our hearts?
	Abraham was faced with this choice as we can read in Gen 22:1+2. He was tested by God as to what was more important in Abraham’s heart. Was it God or was it the dreams of fulfillment which Abraham held with regard to this beloved progeny. Abraham loved Isaac. But it was based on more than just the love of a father for his son. This was the hope of legacy for which Abraham had earnestly desired more than 7 decades of his life. This was his son with Sarah, his beloved wife. This was the son of his waning decades in whom Abraham saw the way for a family heritage as was promised by God. 
Isaac was the means of having an enduring place in the remembrances of the posterity that would proceed forth through this child. Abraham saw the desire of a lasting legacy embodied in his son. Would he set his hope in Isaac rather than in the Lord? That was the issue at hand! 
	Gen 22:1+2, Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." And He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." 
	As we know from the continuation of this account, in verses 10-18, Abraham, indeed, put his trust in the Lord to provide for the promise of a family that would become a nation that was too large to count. Rather than trusting in his own hands and the work of his own body, Abraham withheld nothing from God. He was willing to obey the Lord no matter what the cost, because he knew Jehovah would provide. The legacy and the heritage was far greater because it was established by the Lord. 
	Gen 22:10-18, And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." And he said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, "In the mount of the Lord it will be provided." Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, "By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. And in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice." 
	Please take a moment, right now, and think back in the course of our lives as to those times when we were faced with this same testing. These were those momentous times of decision as to whether we would choose to obey the Lord and put our trust and our faith and our lives in His hands, or decide that we had every resource necessary to make it on our own? These times of testing show the real relationship that we have with the Lord. 
The platitudes and the recitation of verses and sayings only take us so far. The core reality of how much the Lord really means to us, how deep our commitment and our dedication are embedded into the recesses and crevasses of our heart and soul, are the evidence of what comes through the fiery times of utmost trials and tribulations!
	Consider how the Lord instructed the generation of the Children of Israel as recounted in Deut 8:1-6. He made it very clear to them that He had been the One Who had put them to the test in their commitment and their honor of Him as Jehovah, The Lord God Almighty. He had made them hungry and thirsty so that He could provide their every need if they would but obey Him above their craven lusts and desires after their own means and devices of survival. All of this was done as the training in which a father engages with his child. It is that hard work and exercise which establishes a growth into maturity to be enabled to stand in the midst of any situation as a man or woman who will hold onto the Lord no matter what the cost!
	Deut 8:1-6, "All the commandments that I am commanding you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your forefathers. And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you, nor did your foot swell these forty years. Thus you are to know in your heart that the Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son. Therefore, you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to fear Him. 
	It is only a few verses later that the Lord declares what would take place if the people forgot unto Whom they were so fully indebted and committed. As so frequently happens in our own lives, when we are completely honest with the Lord and with ourselves, we tend to slack off in our commitment to Him when the trials and the fiery tribulations are at an end. When He has proven Himself with His tremendous and faithful hand of deliverance, we get comfortable and we get lazy. We begin to think that we are the ones who found the means of survival, forgetting that it was all the work of the Lord. 
Thus we begin to put ourselves on the pedestal of honor. We neglect and forget and even reject the reality that God and His Word needs our constant and fervent honor and devotion! We need Him whether we are being humbled and tried by hunger and thirst, or fed and satiated in the cool pastures under His guiding rod of correction. He is to be the continual focus of our hearts and minds!
	Deut 8:11-20, "Beware lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today; lest, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart becomes proud, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water; He brought water for you out of the rock of flint. In the wilderness He fed you manna which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, 'My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.' "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God, and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the Lord your God. 
	Later, in Deut 13:1-4, The Lord also made known how the ears and the thoughts of His people needed to be kept in tune to all that the Lord was saying through His Word. He knew that there would be those who would try to capture the thoughts and the minds of the people through words of supposed prophecy and ideology that were contrary to the Word of God. They would try to insert their ideas and their theology into the mix and thereby befuddle and confuse the people. The Lord made it very clear and precise as to the fact that His people needed to hold true to His commandments and His precepts with all their heart and soul. This was in order to not be led astray by those visions and dreams and prophecies that would distract and detract and twist the truth that was given by the Lord.
	Deut 13:1-4, "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying,' Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to find out if you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall follow the Lord your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him. 
	This was actually the means of the Lord to have His people study and take to heart and know His Word. When we immerse ourselves in the Word, when we spend time in the scripture, when we go before the Lord and deal with those difficult passages and ask Him to open them up in our minds and hearts, then we are protected from any other dogma or ideology or philosophy or any such conceptual ensnarement. We will have the Holy Spirit actively working in us to show the truth and to shield us from the lies and the deceptions. When we are actively engaged in our commitment and our devotion and our dedication to the Lord in His Word and in our prayers, in complete submission to the Holy Spirit, we will have that absolute and distinct working of God within us. He will plant our feet on sure and solid ground in the midst of any testing of our faith and reliance upon God.
	Lord willing, we will continue with this reality of the fact that we need to be established by the testing of the Lord so as to never take Him for granted. We need to know that He is dealing with us as His own children, working ceaselessly to make us men and women of God who will never be shaken from our love and dedication unto Him. So be it!
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." Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 135:13. Thy name, O Lord, is everlasting, Thy remembrance, O Lord, throughout all generations. Amen.