Judges 2:2-3 – You must never make a treaty with the people who live in this land. You must tear down their altars.’ But you didn’t obey me. What do you think you’re doing? So I have this to say, ‘I will not force them out of your way. They will be like thorns in your sides, and their gods will become a trap for you.’
Some promises are unconditional. Others aren’t. Even if 99% was done, it still wasn’t completed and it prevents Yahweh from completing his part of the promise. The sad part is, the incompletion of the terms now becomes a thorn in our side. But not a Paul type of thorn that is supposed to help, but a thorn that will torture.
Judges 6:6 – So the Israelites became very poor because of Midian and cried out to the Lord for help.
This is what is amazing about our God. We mess up. The Israelites messed up, but he still responds when we cry out to him. He is well within his rights to leave us to our mess and our problems, but he responds. Now if we’re honest with ourselves by the third or fourth time in this cycle, we (as in us people) would have been, “Ah done. Leh dem fend fuh demselves. Dey too harden.” But Yahweh still helps. He still saves, even though we broke our promise, he still helps.
Judges 7:13 – When Gideon got there, he heard a man telling his friend a dream. The man said, “I had a strange dream. There was a loaf of barley bread rolling around in the camp of Midian. When it got to the command post, the loaf of bread hit that tent so hard that the tent collapsed, turned upside down, and fell flat.
You without a doubt send the strangest dreams. I don’t even understand the logic behind a loaf of barley bread. But you sent the dream in all its weirdness for a reason.