Judg 3:12, Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. 
	In our passage this morning, we have a most confounding thing that is recorded. Many of us would stop and say something along the lines of “Hey. That’s not right! How can God strengthen the enemies of His Chosen people? Sure, they had turned their back on Him. Sure, they were serving other gods of the people surrounding them. Sure, they were being defiantly idolatrous and utterly adulterous to the covenant of God. But still, they were His Nation, redeemed by Him from slavery to Egypt. They had conquered and inhabited the Promised Land through God’s divine power going before them into battle. How can the Lord now strengthen their enemies? That just doesn’t seem right!”
	In all honesty, when you read this and realized what was being stated as an historical certainty, that God first sold them into the hands of the king of Mesopotamia, and then later strengthened the king of Moab against Israel, how many of us had these thoughts coursing through our minds? This is something that just astounds us when we take the time to really ponder it and not just skim over it because we want to get through our daily reading of so many chapters and verses within a set period of time. 
How could the Lord turn so profoundly against this people in whom He had invested so very much? Consider His work through the plagues that brought forth their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Then think about His sustenance through all those years of His provision of manna and quail and water in their desert wanderings, to the conquering and habitation of the Promised Land! 
All along the way, they had survived and thrived only because the Lord was going before them and making every provision for them. And yet, here, at the very beginning of the time when they were to finally settle down and enjoy the inheritance provided by the Lord, we find them struggling and afflicted because God was strengthening their enemies. Really?
	We need to go back, and not very far, to the Book of Joshua, to read why this was taking place. It was not some obscure thing that they had secretly somehow transgressed to deserve this punishment. It is very clearly declared to all the people by The Lord through Joshua as recorded in Joshua Chapter 24, verses 11-23. This was at the end of the days of Joshua as he was trying to make absolutely certain that the people knew what would take place if they denied the Lord and broke the covenant with Him. Joshua set before them, very definitely and accurately, the very specific Word of God as to what their choices were and what would happen if they turned their backs on Jehovah; their God, their Redeemer, and their Lord.
	Josh 24:11-23, 'And you crossed the Jordan and came to Jericho; and the citizens of Jericho fought against you, and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Girgashite, the Hivite and the Jebusite. Thus I gave them into your hand. 'Then I sent the hornet before you and it drove out the two kings of the Amorites from before you, but not by your sword or your bow. 'And I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities which you had not built, and you have lived in them; you are eating of vineyards and olive groves which you did not plant.' "Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." And the people answered and said, "Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; for the Lord our God is He who brought us and our fathers up out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and who did these great signs in our sight and preserved us through all the way in which we went and among all the peoples through whose midst we passed. "And the Lord drove out from before us all the peoples, even the Amorites who lived in the land. We also will serve the Lord, for He is our God." Then Joshua said to the people, "You will not be able to serve the Lord, for He is a holy God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgression or your sins. If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you after He has done good to you." And the people said to Joshua, "No, but we will serve the Lord." And Joshua said to the people, "You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve Him." And they said, "We are witnesses." "Now therefore, put away the foreign gods which are in your midst, and incline your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel." 
	As is abundantly evident in our morning’s reading, the nation rapidly and ardently played the harlot, taking to themselves the false gods and idols of the nations surrounding them. Their own words of commitment and dedication to the Lord were selfishly discarded as their cravings and lusts for something new and exciting urged them into the shattering asunder of their covenant with Jehovah. As Joshua had so boldly and vibrantly proclaimed, their promise unto the Lord became the witness against them as to what choice they sought despite the privileged condition of enjoying the fruit of the Lord’s blessing upon them in the Promised Land.
	The Lord is very, very faithful in all that He states He will do. When He promises blessing because we are faithful to our commitment to Him, as when the people of God first entered the Promised Land, He will bless and bless with all the storehouses of Heaven!
As well, when we are faithless, caught up in our disobedience and our turning away from Him and His Word, we allow the expressed curses to befall us! It will always happen as the Lord has said! We cannot argue and try to explain away our disobedience and our adulterous activities! We will receive that which has been fully and openly and concisely explained and declared by the Lord God Almighty. He is absolutely true to His Word!
	There are two other aspects to this whole reality in which The Lord will use even our enemies to bring about that which needs to take place within our hearts and our renewal of commitment unto Him. Remember, God always hears us, whether we are asking for His help and His salvation, or whether we are denying our relationship with Him. 
He hears every prayer and every curse that proceeds from our hearts and not necessarily as spoken forth from our lips. With our lips, we may say all the correct verbiage, giving voice to all the platitudes and memorized phraseology that we have been taught. The Lord hears that which proceeds from our innermost being. He intimately knows those thoughts and those schemes and those motives that prompt the expressions of our mouths. 
	He also works in the hearts of those enemies that are the instruments of delivering His Sovereign plans and purposes unto His Chosen people. The work of the Lord is not limited to just revealing Who He is and His Omnipotent essence to those who know Him. He also shows His Power and His Dominion to those who promote themselves as the end all of this earth. 
Consider what the Lord revealed to Pharaoh in the manner of the deliverance of His people from that king’s hands. Please open to Ex 9:13-17.
	Ex 9:13-17, Then the Lord said to Moses, "Rise up early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews," Let My people go, that they may serve Me. For this time I will send all My plagues on you and your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth. For if by now I had put forth My hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, you would then have been cut off from the earth. But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. 
	Hear and take notice of this truth again and again. …But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. 
The Lord deals with all His created beings to show forth the fact that Yahweh, The Lord God Almighty, is the only living and true God of all that He has created! Every other god or idol, including the promotion of oneself as the lord of one’s own life, is a false hope with no power or sustaining presence. Only the Lord God is eternal! Only Jehovah is Sovereign in all the lives of all the people on this earth! There is no one, even the most devout of the pagan populations of this earth who are beyond the scope of His Dominion and the power of His Word!
	That is what needs to be established in the hearts of the people who swear their allegiance to the Lord God Almighty. They were not some obscure people who had not witnessed the Almighty in action. This was the nation whom God had chosen unto Himself. This was the people who had been given the direct commandments of God. These were the redeemed of the Lord who were voluntarily surrendering themselves to the course of the Hand of God. Something was needed to bring them back to their senses from the foolishness and the inane stupidity of seeking after that which would knowingly never bring them anything but pain and suffering. This people of God were subjecting themselves to the fulfillment of the curse of their vial and evil choice in turning their backs on the One Who had set them free from their enslavement to all the powers of this earth.
	The Lord, through Joshua, had very clearly warned them of the consequences of their choice to deny God. They had no excuse and no reason to think that it would be any different for them if they deliberately sought after the idols and the man-made gods of wood and stone and metal, rather than the True God of their salvation. We find this detailed warning, again declared so clearly in Josh 23:14-16.
	Josh 23:14-16, "Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed. And it shall come about that just as all the good words which the Lord your God spoke to you have come upon you, so the Lord will bring upon you all the threats, until He has destroyed you from off this good land which the Lord your God has given you. When you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, and go and serve other gods, and bow down to them, then the anger of the Lord will burn against you, and you shall perish quickly from off the good land which He has given you."
	They knew exactly what would happen and why it would take place. They had the choice to remain true to their commitment and their vow unto the Lord God. However, in just a couple of generations, they allowed themselves to be traitorous and repulsive to God. They brought upon themselves the disciple of the Lord as meted out through the chastisement and the harassment of those enemies whom God used for the purpose of once again turning Israel’s heart back to Him. 
	We read this last time in Judg 2:19-23. They began a pattern of behavior that is often the same one as many of us have set before us in our lives. They would be faithful to the Lord for a time. Then they would lapse into the habits and the activities of their perversion which required the Hand of the Lord, through the adversaries surrounding them, to cause them to turn back to the Lord and cry out for deliverance. 
Judg 2:19-23, 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. 
Over and over, again and again, we find the same pattern of commitment, betrayal, chastisement, and weeping for help; commitment, betrayal, chastisement and crying out for help. It is a cycle that is manifested because we, in our sinful human nature, think that we can be as gods unto ourselves.
	 This use of pagan enemies by the Lord to accomplish His purpose in the hearts and minds of His people is further recounted in 1 Sam 12:8-10. 1 Sam 12:8-10, When Jacob went into Egypt and your fathers cried out to the Lord, then the Lord sent Moses and Aaron who brought your fathers out of Egypt and settled them in this place. But they forgot the Lord their God, so He sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the army of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the king of Moab, and they fought against them. 
	As we will be reading throughout this Book of Judges, we will see over and over again how the enemies of the people of the Lord were the active agents used by God to cause the people to remember unto Whom they belonged and in Whom they had any hope of deliverance! As much as they would seek after the gods of this age, so frequently would they falter and find themselves enslaved, once again, to that from which they had been previously delivered. It seemed that they craved the lusts of their natural hearts with an overpowering sense of trying to show God that they could make it on their own. 
	Then, when everything crumbled around them, they would remember. When the chains of the addiction to the adulterous activities of their hearts would harangue and harass them with all the torments and empty promises and deceit and lies and tawdry babbles of plastic trinkets, they would recall the glorious work of the Lord. They would then again cry out for deliverance and seek to be honoring to the Lord once more. 
He always heard that sincere call of their hearts, and the humbleness that had been brought into their beings through the persecution and the tribulations brought on by their foes. Then, in their humble and earnest weeping, God would hear! God would listen! God would act! God would deliver them!
	The Prophet Nehemiah declared this against the nation, as in Neh 9:28-31. It was a pattern that could and would only cease when the people would be delivered from that heart of stone which sought after only that which would feed the lust of their selfishness. It all needed to be broken asunder once and for all and replaced with a heart of flesh that would reverence and obey and desire only what honored and pleased God!
	Neh 9:28-31, But as soon as they had rest, they did evil again before Thee; Therefore Thou didst abandon them to the hand of their enemies, so that they ruled over them. When they cried again to Thee, Thou didst hear from heaven, And many times Thou didst rescue them according to Thy compassion, And admonished them in order to turn them back to Thy law. Yet they acted arrogantly and did not listen to Thy commandments but sinned against Thine ordinances, By which if a man observes them he shall live. And they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck, and would not listen. "However, Thou didst bear with them for many years, And admonished them by Thy Spirit through Thy prophets, Yet they would not give ear. Therefore Thou didst give them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. "Nevertheless, in Thy great compassion Thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them, For Thou art a gracious and compassionate God. 
	How often we reiterate in our own lives, the fact that God bears with us, even in our very patterns of disobedience to Him. He is a gracious and compassionate God. He has made the way for us to always come to Him with hearts that are now made of flesh. They are soft toward Him and toward the needs of others rather than just concretely set in our own self-centered lie that the universe revolves around us. 
Now, in Christ Jesus, through His new life coursing in our beings, we are made alive unto the Lord God Almighty! We can have that pattern broken asunder. We can be eternally focused upon that which brings only honor and glory to God, Alone! 
	We will proceed forward, next time, Lord willing with the effects and the means of the Lord using such as our enemies and our antagonists to work His plan and His purpose in the lives of His people for our good on this earth. So be it.
Now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel, because they had done evil in the sight of the Lord. Amen.

			
This morning’s benediction is Isa 48:17. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; "I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, Who leads you in the way you should go. Amen.