"I Told you So."

           "Well, I told you so." Sometimes I would hear those words from one or both of my parents in regard to some new learning experience. Even though we hear those words, we still wanted to try it out for ourselves. After deciding on a course for my life, my mother forbid me to play in any contact sports for fear of getting injured. I wasn't very good at them anyway, so it was no big loss to the sports world. A person in Indiana who couldn't play basketball was almost unheard of but that was me. I did try out for track and field and specialized in running the half mile race. You may have remembered that one day, I fell on the cinder track and had a number of cindeers in my hands and knees for a time afterwards and as my mother would pick out the cinders, I would often hear the words, "Well, I told you so." Sometimes we learn by the book and sometimes we learn by experience. Israel had a hard time learning by the book and so they had to learn by experience what it meant to follow God in all areas of their lives. Judges 3:15 says, "But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD, the LORD raised them up a deliverer, Ehud the son of Gera, a Benjamite, a man lefthanded: and by him the children of Israel sent a present unto Eglon the king of Moab." 

          God had given them clear instructions on what to do when they entered the promised land but they failed to do so and as a result, were faced with problems for many years to come. The book of Judges gives the account of Israel's rise and fall some twenty or so times. They would serve God and things would be going well but when they disobeyed and began to follow idols of one sort or another, God would give them a thorn in some oppression by a foreign power until they repented of their sin and got back on the right path. The first line of the passage for today says, "But when the children of Israel cried unto the LORD..." That's when God could have said, "Well, I told you so." A new judge would come on the scene and as long as Israel followed God, things would go well for them and when the cycle began to start again, they would be under the oppression of a another foreign army. There are both individual and national applications to this book even in the world in which we live. We could save ourselves a lot of grief if we followed the direction that the LORD has given to us. As the song writer has said, "Trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey." What about you and what about me? Do we have to experience another pitfall in order to learn the lesson of trusting God in all things? We don't have to have the same experience but we often do and then find ouselves in a predicament in which God could say, "Well, I told you so." Of all the animals in the world that were created by God, He chose to use the sheep as an example for us. We are often referred to as a lamb. It is why we hear the words of the Psalmist, "The Lord is my Shepherd...." It is because we are sheep and he is the shepherd. Sheep need a Good Shepherd and the Only One Who fits the description is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Praise God today that He picks up the pieces when we fail.