I sometimes read allrecipes.com reviews just for fun. “This pad thai recipe is horrible. I basically followed the recipe, making a few little changes because I didn’t have all the ingredients. Used tofu instead of chicken, soya sauce instead of tamarind, spaghetti instead of rice noodles, and ketchup for chilli paste. So bad I couldn’t feed it to the dog. AVOID!” Typically, we know it is not wise to do things half-heartedly. At the end of his life Joshua exhorted the nation of Israel to renew their covenant commitment to the Lord, calling them to “fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness (Joshua 24:14) ” with sincerity having the sense of purity and wholeness. By Judges 1 we find the nation again suffering from half-hearted worship, as half-hearted trust led to half-hearted faithfulness, and the repeated failure to “drive out” previous inhabitants.
One key source to half-hearted trust is half-hearted remembering. Starting at Judges 2:8 we find a short three-verse summary of the death of Joshua ending with one of the saddest verses in the book: “And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. (2:10)” And so we see yet another generation not able to pass a living faith to the next. They did not heed the frequent call to remember the Lord (Deut. 6:12; 8:18), his covenant (Deut. 4:23), his promises (Deut. 7:9), and his works (Deut. 4:9; 7:18). If they remembered the Exodus, the Passover, the wilderness manna, the walls of Jericho, and the houses they didn’t build or vineyards they didn’t plant, they did not remember the God behind it all. Their hearts were far from him, evidenced by their lack of trust and the ignorance of the next generation
Something to Understand:
All of us can struggle with “spiritual amnesia”, especially when times are particularly good or particularly bad. In good times we forget how we got to where we are, and start trusting in our own strength and abilities. In difficult times we can give greater respect to circumstances than to the God who sustains the universe with the word of his power. Abiding trust in God is sustained and strengthened by regular remembrance of God!