Why So Soon?

Why So Soon ?

We have two golden retrievers, and they love sharing slices of mandarin oranges with my dad (or is it the other way around?)  They recognize the bag when it enters the house with the rest of the groceries, and they get excited just like it’s a bag of dog treats. However, if the bag has a squishy orange in it, or if the bowl of oranges sits a little too long, the taste turns. If dad doesn’t like an orange, he will toss all the pieces to the dogs, but even they usually refuse to eat the less desirable (but yet not rotten) pieces.

Anyone who has studied the Old Testament is familiar with the cycle depicted in the book of Judges. The people of Israel began immediately after the death of Joshua and his generation to fall into idolatry and sin, so God sent oppressors to punish them. The start of this cycle was described in detail in Judges 2:10-15:

“And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.”

Each time Israel repented, God would send a judge to free them from their enemies. But like clockwork, they would continue serving God until that judge perished, and then they would fall back into idolatry and sin once more.

The question, however, is WHY did the people fall away from God’s commands so quickly and easily when they had just been reminded of God’s goodness and mercy a few years earlier? Why did they fall away from the teachings of their fathers and their God so soon? It began with a pattern of forgetfulness that came from a lack of national memory.

Multiple times in the Old Law, God commanded the Israelites to remember Him and His works and to remind their children of these things. There are several examples of this but the most memorable is in Deuteronomy 6:6-9:

“And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.  You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

God told the Israelites to set up other memorials during the time that Joshua led the people in to conquer Canaan. As they crossed the Jordan River, stones were picked up, which would be used to set up a memorial in Gilgal (Joshua 4:20-24). In the next chapter, all the sons of Israel were circumcised, and then the Passover feast was observed (Joshua 5:2-12). All were reminders that these people were specifically chosen and cared for by God, reminders to remain faithful to Him, and signs to other nations that God’s protection was with this group of people.

These reminders, despite being powerful testaments to God’s sovereignty at the time, would not have any significant impact on the following generations if those children were not taught about the events (and reminded continually to teach them to their children as well). The Israelites did not continue to remind their children to follow the ways of God, and instead were influenced by those around them to follow idols and leave God behind.

We, too, can fall into a similar problem today that the Israelites faced. The Apostle Paul discussed this in Galatians 1, when he remarked that the Galatians were very quickly turning away from the gospel that he had preached to them when he passed through their cities the first time. He warned them in Galatians 1:8-9 in strong words:

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”

This warning to beware of the influences around you is a common one in the scriptures, and the consequences of not following this are evident in the history of the time of the Judges.

The ultimate answer to the question of why the Israelites and Galatians fell so quickly from the truth of God’s Word was the fact that they began to compromise with the worldly and idolatrous forces around them. Even minor compromises can lead to the assumption that you agree with the people you are compromising with, and this can lead to you becoming more aligned with those people. When Paul is condemning various kinds of sins in Romans 1, he says in verse 32:

“Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.”

Warnings similar to this one were ignored by the Israelites, the Galatians, and also many individuals today. The warnings are plain; stay grounded in the truth, or you too will fall “so soon.”

Galatians 5:9 reminds us of the damage a little bit of leavening can do to a whole lump of bread dough, just as my dogs remind my dad to share all the oranges quickly, before a bad one spreads to the others in the bowl!  We must be diligent to see sinful behavior as a thing to be dealt with, not compromised with.

- Ben Smith

View Full Content Source:
https://www.cedarparkchurchofchrist.org/resources/articles/2025/12/21/why-so-soon