“Thorns in Your Side”

Judges 2:1-4 (NJKV)

¹ Then the Angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you.

² And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this?

³ Therefore I also said, ‘I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be thorns in your side,^[a] and their gods shall be a snare to you.’”

⁴ So it was, when the Angel of the LORD spoke these words to all the children of Israel, that the people lifted up their voices and wept.

These were the consequences of the sin and idolatry. The children of Israel finally got to this Promised land, but they didn`t obey God. The whole book of Judges gives us an account of their idolatry as a result of their disobedience to God. He told them initially to drive all the surrounding nations out and destroy them because God knew the wickedness of human hearts and our weaknesses. God knew that if Israelites didn`t drive those nations out, they would succumb to their fake gods, which is exactly what they did. As the time went on, we see Israelites worshiping all these foreign worthless deities while they forsook the real God; the One who delivered them out of Egypt, the One Who provided for them all the time.

When God tells us to do something or commands not to do something, there is a good reason for it, and it sure is for our own benefit. God specifically said that regardless how harsh it may sound, you are not to share the Promised land with the inhabitants of that area, period. Israelites didn`t fully trust God`s deliverance as they tried to blame the “chariots of iron” (Judge 1:19). Here they are, in the Promised land with God as their strength, but they didn`t trust enough God to fight the “chariots of iron”, so they made this claim that they were too strong for them to fight and drive out of the area.

This is a very important principal that I learned for myself: when God tells in the Bible, or in His communication with me, to stay out of something or someone, there is a good reason for that. I remember the days when I was drinking almost every day, getting wasted, and I would skip school, and get bad grades; I would get really sick, yet I continued to do that over and over again until I got into some pretty serious problems. That really shook me up from my “lala land”. I stopped drinking, but I was too weak to resist the temptation until I cut out certain people out of my life because they were too great of a temptation for me.

This is exactly why when we get saved, our “old ways” of living, have to go and we have to leave behind desires of the flesh that we did or people that we hung out with. It is impossible to resist the temptations otherwise, and we end up succumbing to blasphemy the name of the Lord since most of the time our old friends mock God, and make fun of God. We can either cut them off, or we can play off what they are really saying. By doing the later, we reject God and embrace the lies of satan to live an “old” sinful life and blasphemy the name of the Lord. God is too Holy to coexist with sin or to compromise with our own fleshly desires to live. It`s either His way, or no way.

There is no value to the repentance if no change follows. The children of Israel wept, brought their sacrifices, but they didn`t change their ways: they didn`t drive out the idolatrous nations who led them to worship their idols (verse 4). What`s the point in weeping if it doesn`t produce obedience to God. All it is is self-pity that they had “Oh I`m in trouble now because God brings all these nations against me”, and He did. As we see in the further verses, God said:  

¹¹ Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals;

¹² and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the  land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD to anger.

¹³They forsook the LORD and served Baal and the Ashtoreths.^[c]

¹⁴ And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel. So He delivered them into the hands of plunderers who despoiled them; and He sold them into the hands of their enemies all around, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies.

¹⁵ Wherever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for calamity, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn to them. And they were greatly distressed. (Judges 2:11-15 NKJV)

The Israelites “forsook the Lord God of their fathers”. This is crucial part of the scripture to engrave in our memory. I don`t ever want to forsake what God has done for me and continues to do. I forsook Him for awhile, and I forgot what He`s done for me throughout the last 20 years, and it brought some “thorns to my side”.

It also brings an interesting point of the older generation of Israelites not teaching the new generation about God. To me that`s just strange since they had the feasts where one of them was Passover telling all about their exodus out of Egypt, so it is weird to read that newer generation forsook the Lord and how He led their fathers out of the Egypt. Don`t be like one of the Israelites who didn`t teach the next generation about what God`s done to you, so your children know God. I like how one of the pastors said: “God doesn`t have grandchildren”. It doesn`t work that way; God desires to have that personal relationships with each one of us and to be a Father to each one of us, no grandparenting in His relationship hierarchy. The reason why grandparenting wouldn`t work is for the same reason as we see in the verse 12 where “they forsook the Lord God of their fathers”. We don`t really value what God does to others if we don`t have that personal relationship with Him, so for us humans, only personal knowledge of God as a Father would work.  

¹⁷ Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. ¹⁸ But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your^[d] works, and I will show you my faith by my^[e] works. ¹⁹ You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! ²⁰ But do you want to know, O

foolish man, that faith without works is dead? (James 2:17-20 NKJV)

In other words, what James is referring to is believer producing vivid visible effects of Chris`s work in one`s heart as a result of salvation. If I am a believer, and I am saved, than I am supposed to produce results of my faith in Jesus Who died for me. If my life doesn`t produce much fruit (like I mentioned in one of my other articles), it doesn`t testify that I am a true believer. To produce fruit requires change in the way I live my life. In the scripture from Judges we see that God doesn`t coexist with the way we desire to live. God commanded Israelites to drive out other nations to cut out all possibilities for idolatry, and Israelites disobeyed the commands.

God doesn`t compromise with our ways of life. He told Israelites that all those nations that they didn`t drive out and destroy would become like “thorns on your side”. If I live in sin, that sin would become a “thorn in my side”, and only I would know the extent of that pain.

If you live your life trying to make God coexist with “the neighborhood nations that were supposed to be driven out and destroyed” (your old ways of life), He would turn those “nations” (your flesh desires and living) into the “thorns in your side”. Look into your life and check to see if you got some “chariots of iron” that you think you are not capable of driving out because God is Almighty, and He is capable to supply all kinds of resources and equipment for you to be able to conquer them as long as you are truly longing that in your heart for God to see.