I also will not henceforth drive out any from before them of the nations that Joshua left when he died;
So, the angel of the Lord came and said, "You failed. God said He would never break His covenant with you." But they broke the covenant. God is always faithful to His side of the covenant. It is man who breaks the covenant with God, not God who breaks the covenant with man. No man can ever say "God broke His covenant with me." Not so. Man is guilty of breaking his covenant with God, his part of the covenant with God, but God doesn't break His covenant with man.And so the angel said, "You've broken the covenant. You made the league, you've made the treaties, you've left their places of worship; their altars, their idols. And now they're gonna be like traps, snares to you." And the people wept, they sacrificed unto God, but they didn't change. Now that, that is so typical of so many people today. God lays a heavy trip on them. "Oh, oh I'm so sorry God. I'm so sorry." And they weep but they don't change. So there's very little value to the repentance.There seems to be a vast difference between sorrow and true repentance. Many people, out of sorrow weep, truly weep because of sorrow. But it doesn't really indicate always that there is repentance just because you're weeping. I don't suppose there's a single man in the county jail that isn't sorry for the crime that got him there, but not necessarily sorry that he did it, but sorry for the mistake that got him caught. So you weep over your apprehension. You weep over the fact that I've been apprehended but you don't really have a true repentance for the things that you were doing. They're released. They go back out and do the things again, so often. Means there's no repentance.The children of Israel, they wept. Looking at it you say, "Oh my, isn't that wonderful? They're weeping. God got to them." No, He didn't. It's just a surface emotional experience. They're gonna wail and weep for a while and go right back out and do the same thing over again. They're still not gonna drive out the enemy. They're still not going to obey the voice of God. They're gonna continue in their same path. So there is a form of religion, a form of godliness but no true repentance. And that same condition continues to exist to the present day.Now, these people that they left in the land did become a snare that God said did not destroy became as thorns. And soon we find them worshipping these gods that they left in the land. And it was a constant problem through their history is their worship of the gods of the land and the leaving of the true and the living God and worshipping these other gods.So that Jeremiah cried out unto the people, "Have you ever seen anything like this in the history of mankind where a people will turn from their God, even which are not gods, to worship another God?" And yet God cried, "My people have forsaken Me, the fountain of living water, and have hewn out for themselves cisterns, cisterns that can hold no water." The lament of God over Israel and it was their failure in the beginning. Had these forefathers been obedient to God, they could have spared the nation countless misery, countless wolves but their disobedience only opened the door for a future of calamity.