We may not break a covenant with Jehovah, but if we make a deal with the devil, same difference.
At the beginning of Judges 2, we are confronted with an awe-inspiring Visitor. “Then the Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim” (v 1). There is a debate as to who this is, but who else except the Lord could say, “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’”? Here was the problem. They had been told, “You shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars” (v 2). But what did we read? “That they put the Canaanites under tribute” (1:28). You see the real problem. It wasn’t so much the Canaanites. Rahab and her family were welcomed. It was those Canaanite altars that weren’t torn down. It was the demonic gods those altars represented. It was the diabolical evils those gods incited. That was the real problem. It was an either/or proposition. They thought they could live with both, with Jehovah and Moloch as next-door neighbors! The idea was preposterous. And do you think this is only a problem in far-off Canaan? What about Corinth? “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s table and of the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He?” (1 Cor 10:21-22). We see it everywhere around us. The worship of Mother Earth, where humans are the intruders and must make their votive offerings to her in repentance for living; of the unbridled god of power politics where only might is right; of the Moloch-like slaughter of children for the worship of degraded lust; and of Mammon whose image is on every street corner, crying, “More! More!” “Little children, keep yourselves from idols” (1 Jn 5:21).