Amen, well, good to see everyone this evening. Our sermon text this evening is Judges, the last three chapters of Judges, Judges 19, 20, and 21. A lot of material there. I'm gonna begin by reading a few verses, as we've done in the past. I won't hit every detail, but... hit these major points of the narrative. Lord willing, we will learn much from this conclusion to the book of Judges. So hear this now, the word of the living God, beginning Judges 19, verse one. And it came to pass in those days when there was no king in Israel that there was a certain Levite staying in the remote mountains of Ephraim. He took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. But his concubine played the harlot against him and went away from him to her father's house at Bethlehem in Judah, and was there four whole months. Then her husband arose and went after her to speak kindly to her and bring her back, having a servant and a couple of donkeys with him. So she brought him into her father's house, and when the father of the young woman saw him, he was glad to meet him. Now his father-in-law, The young woman's father detained him and he stayed with him three days. So they ate and drank and lodged there. This is the word of the living God. We say thanks be to God, amen. Please be seated. Let's pray together. Ask for the Lord's blessing on his word. Lord, we thank you for the ways that you provide for us and here you've provided for us an illustration of depravity, that we may know that we are lawbreakers, that we may know we need a savior. And I pray that as we examine your scriptures tonight, as we hear it, that we may apply it to our lives, that we may live in light of it for your word. Even these parts of your word are good, they're from you, they're for us, and they're for your glory. So may all of this be to your glory. Use me Even me is your mouthpiece, we pray. In Christ's name, amen. Well, there's sin in these three chapters. There's a number of ways that the scriptures describe sin. Sin is missing the mark. You could say that sin is a failure to please God. You could say that sin is wickedness. You could say that sin is unrighteousness. Don Carson, one prominent evangelical scholar, says that sin, every time we sin, is an attempt to dethrone God. God is king. And each time we sin, we say to him, you are not king, I know better than you. And it's to attempt to dethrone God, if you will. And in God's providence this morning, we saw an example of this in Pastor Ryan's sermon. Remember, Pharaoh asked the question of Moses, who is Yahweh that I should listen to him? Who is Yahweh that I should obey his voice? So that's the voice of the evil one. Pharaoh is dethroning God. He believes that he is the authority. Our narrative this evening begins with this phrase, and this is a refrain that we've heard elsewhere in Judges. Judges 19.1 begins with this phrase, and the very end, the last verse of 21, it's the same phrase. So these are bookends. It's one narrative unit, and the phrase is this. It came to pass in those days where there was no king in Israel. Elsewhere we see in the book of Judges, When it says that there is no king in Israel, there's another phrase that comes alongside it, and it's everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That's what Pharaoh did, as we saw in Exodus 5 this morning. And on an individual level, that's what every Israelite in the book of Judges is doing. They are dethroning God. They are doing what is right in their own eyes. They are asserting themselves as authority. They disregard God's commands, God's promises. There is no king in Israel, except for all those little individual kings out there who believe that they know better than God. And it's shameful. And as we'll see, shame begets shame. Sin begets sin. At the end of the book, we'll see a confused, depraved people. There's perhaps no better illustration in all of scripture, in fact. This is a passage with some pretty gruesome details. I'll do my best to be sensitive. as we cover these things. Let's begin tonight by looking at these first four verses, the four verses I've just read. I wanna introduce some of the people involved. There's a Levite priest, there's a concubine, and then there's the concubine's father. So the Levite priest, his concubine, has played the harlot, and she's left him. and he goes on a journey to find her, and find her he does. She was staying with her father, and the father, verse three, is glad to meet the Levite, and welcomes him. And we'll read more about their exchange, but a note here. It's interesting that she is called a concubine in certain parts of this passage, but then later, she is referred to as his wife. So there's sort of an interplay of these words. Why is that? Well, it seems as if this Levite is treating her as a master. She's sort of beneath the status of wife. In verse five, it came to pass on the fourth day they arose early in the morning and he stood to depart. So the man, this Levite, He goes and he finds his concubine, and he stays with the father-in-law, and he stays several days, and each time they go, they eat, they're merry, and then the father-in-law talks him into staying another day. And he says, refresh your heart with a morsel of bread, and then afterward, go your way. And this pattern is repeated. Verse nine, when the man stood to depart, he and his concubine and his servant, his father-in-law, the young woman's father, said to him, look, the day is now drawing near toward evening. Please spend the night. See, the day is coming to an end. Lodge here, that your heart may be merry. Tomorrow, go your way early, that you may get home. This happens three times. And on the fourth time, the man was not willing to spend the night. So he rose and he departed, but he departs halfway through the day. This is dangerous, perhaps even foolish, because now he has to make a long journey. So we can see that they will arrive at their next town, which we'll read about, late because they left late. Would this have prevented anything? Perhaps. But there's this long narrative here at the beginning where this father-in-law begs him to stay day after day after day. And as they approach the next town, no one, except an outsider, is willing to host them. So perhaps, here at the beginning, this man is an example of good hospitality, where when they get to the town that they are going, there will be no good example of hospitality. They turn into a town called Gibeah, and it's a town of the tribe of Benjamin. And they turn into Gibeah instead of Jerusalem, which at the time, Jerusalem was a city of foreigners. They're well supplied, they have all they need, they have food, they have drink, they even have food for their donkeys. They just need shelter. No one provides for these travelers, this man and his concubine and his servant. But a man comes who's not actually from that town. He's not a Benjaminite. And so right away, we know that the people of Gibeah, they're not hospitable, but an outsider is. No one extends help to an Israelite who is passing through. The old man tells them, do not stay in the open square, but come lodge with me. Perhaps already you'll see parallels with another story from Genesis 19, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. You would expect that by skipping over the city of foreigners and turning into a town of Israelites, they would have received better treatment. But this is an illusion here, it's an echo back to this previous story, it's setting us up to see an example of Sodom and Gomorrah revisited. Now verse 22 and the following, and these are the more colorful verses, if you will. The people are now inside the house, verse 22. You may want to read this carefully. As they were enjoying themselves, suddenly certain men of the city, perverted men, surrounded the house and they beat on the door. And they spoke to the master of the house, the old man, saying, bring out the man who came to your house that we may know him carnally. I think we can gather what that means. They're beating on the house, trying to get in. They're not looking for the woman. They're looking for the man, in this case. These are men seeking after a man. Verse 23, but the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, no, my brethren, I beg you, do not act so wickedly. Seeing this man has come into my house, do not commit this outrage. Look, here is my virgin daughter and the man's concubine. Let me bring them out now. Humble them and do with them as you please. But to this man, do no such vile thing. But the men would not heed him. So the man, that is the Levite, took his concubine and brought her out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night. until morning, and when the day began to break, they let her go. So there are parallels here to Genesis 19, to the narrative Sodom and Gomorrah. The parallels are rich, and they're quite obvious, I think, once you look at some of these details. In Genesis 19, you may recall, There were two angels that went into a city, and it was a wicked city, and God intended to overthrow this city. But a righteous man named Lot lived there. Lot meets them, and he compels these two men not to stay in the town square. Judges 19, the old man compels the Levite and his concubine, do not stay in the open square. Another parallel, Lot was not actually from Sodom and Gomorrah. In Judges 19, the old man was not a native of Gibeah. In Genesis 19, the house was surrounded by men who wanted men. They wanted to know them carnally. Same thing is true in Judges 19. In Judges, in Genesis 19, Lot offers his two virgin daughters. In Judges 19, the old man offers his virgin daughter and the man's concubine. But there's one great difference. In Genesis 19, Lot was hosting angels, and you may recall the angels struck the men with blindness and told Lot to escape while they destroyed the city with fire and brimstone, which came later. So Genesis 19 serves as an example for us to this day, but it was also an example for the people of Israel, even in the time of the judges. The Israelites did not heed this example. These pagan people in Sodom and Gomorrah were an example of what not to do. And now, as we've walked through judges, we have come to a place where the people of God have become so carnal, so wicked, that they have gone so far backwards. It's as if they don't have the law of God. It's as if they've never had any inkling of the promises of God, it's as if they have no hope and they are acting like the pagans. Sodom and Gomorrah are a byword in the Bible. Even in the New Testament, Sodom and Gomorrah are a byword. A byword is a hiss. When you think of a certain town, it's a hiss. It's a name that you would hiss at. It's a byword. So, for an example, I was in Indonesia doing some mission work and I was traveling to another city. And my friends actually happened to live in this city. And a man warned me, he said, do not go to that city. And there's a language barrier and we struggled to figure out what was, I struggled to figure out what he was trying to say. But this city in Indonesia was a byword to the rest of the island. And he finally, with my little translation book, peered it open and kept flipping and flipping and flipping, and then he found the word he was looking for, and it said, pickpocket. In that town, there are pickpockets, and they will steal your money, and they will do very bad things to you. Well, Sodom and Gomorrah are like that in the scriptures, but worse than just pickpockets. When we read of Sodom and Gomorrah, we read of a place that as soon as we hear of it, we should be filled with a reminder of what's nasty, of what's vain, what's awful, what's possible when people become wicked, totally depraved. So the point here is a number of scholars, including Matthew Henry, have pointed out that the parallel in Judges 19 is that this is Sodom and Gomorrah revisited. A woman is taken out to a crowd and she's given over to them and she is abused all night. And there's something callous about the Levite man who just kind of voluntarily gives her over. And speaking with one or two of you before the service started, as you've read this passage in preparation to hear this sermon, some of you have told me, I think rightly, that you had a physiological reaction to reading this. You read this and you might gag. You read this and something inside your body is repulsed. And that's the right response. That's the point that the author of Judges wants us to get. But there's more than just a physiological reaction here that I want you to have. I want you to see that the people of God, the people who had the laws of God, have become this very people who are doing this vile thing. Here again is Henry. He says this, who would have expected such extreme abomination to come out of the loins of Jacob? Even the worst pagans were saints to them. What did it avail them that they had the ark of God in Shiloh when they had Sodom in their streets, God's law in their fringes, but the devil in their hearts? Nothing but hell itself can yield a worse creature than a depraved Israelite. And that's right, we should feel that this evening. The Israelite, the very people of God, have become like Sodom and Gomorrah, and I would argue, perhaps even worse. Read verses 26 and 27 with me. The woman came as the day was dawning and fell down at the door of the man's house where her master was, till it was light. When her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go his way, there was his concubine, fallen at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, get up and let us be going. but there was no answer. So the man lifted her onto the donkey and the man got up and went to his place. How callous is this man, this Levite? Imagine this woman for a minute being ravished all night, now she comes back, she finds the house and she falls down and all she can do is manage to reach out for the doorway and she touches, what an image that is. She just falls onto the threshold of the door and holds onto it. as if she's trying to climb in. And then this callous Levite says to her, get up, let us be going. There's no answer. She's dead. She falls down dead at the door. And again, the point is, is to feel the weight of this. And now he picks her up and he puts her onto the donkey And the man got up and he goes home, he goes to his place. Verse 29, when he entered his house, he took a knife, he laid out his concubine. and he divided her into 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. And so it was that all who saw it said, no such deed has been done or seen from the day that the children of Israel came up from the land of Egypt until this day. Consider it, confer, and speak up. So when he takes a knife and he lays out his concubine, he goes home, that means that he cut her up into 12 pieces, and then he gets mail carriers to take these various body parts to each tribe of Israel. And then he calls for Israel to gather and to speak into this situation. He says, consider this, confer, speak up. Read verse 30 again with me. No such deed has been done or seen from the day that the children of Israel came up from the land of Egypt. Nothing like this. This is the end of the line. As we've walked through the book of Judges, we've continued to follow their fall, their downward spiral into sin. And this story, by the way, it's not the last story in the book of Judges. This actually happened somewhat early on in the time of the Judges, but the author of Judges strategically placed this story last. And why did he do that? He did that because he wants us to see this is the end of the line. This is the end of the downward spiral. The people of God, have walked backwards. They've become like the pagans, the worst of pagans. And nothing like this has ever been done. Later on, in the scriptures, in Hosea, we will read about the people of Gibeah who committed this crime. Sodom and Gomorrah were a byword. They're a hiss. When people pass by the town of Sodom and Gomorrah, it's the sort of town that you would hiss at. Well, Gibeah becomes that way. In the book of Hosea, chapter nine, verse nine, we read this. They have deeply corrupted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity. He will punish their sins. So when Israel or when another nation becomes extremely sinful, They are like Gibeah. That's what they've become like. They are a byword. They will be remembered for this, it's so awful. Let's keep moving. Now chapter 20, there's some details here that are helpful to cover. There will now be, congregational meetings, so chapter 20, verse one. All the children of Israel came out from Dan to Beersheba, as well as from the land of Gilead, and the congregation gathered together as one man before the Lord at Mizpah. And the leaders of all the people, all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God. 400,000 foot soldiers who drew the sword. Then the children of Israel said, tell us, how did this wicked deed happen? And so the Levite describes the situation. My concubine and I went into Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin, to spend the night, and the men of Gibeah rose against me. They intended to kill me, but instead they ravished my concubine. He doesn't quite tell the story quite right. They tried to kill me, but ravished my concubine. He kind of leaves out some of these details, doesn't he? They committed lewdness and outrage in Israel. Verse seven, look all you who are children of Israel, give your advice and counsel here and now. So Israel reacts to this event. 400,000 soldiers gather as they should. They are united as one man. We don't always see that in the book of Judges. This is a good sign. They come together before the Lord. That's another good sign. They're approaching God. Verse 8, again it says, the people arose as one man, and here's their answer. None of us will return home, will go to his tent, nor will any turn back until this is the thing we will do to Gibeah. We will go up against it by lot. We will take 10 men out of every 100 throughout all the tribes of Israel, 100 out of every 1,000, and 1,000 out of every 10,000 to make provisions for the people. and they go up and they approach Gibeah as one man. This is a good and right response. Verse 12, the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin. They gather together, they are united, but Benjamin, notice, verse 13, they will not heed the Israelites' advice or counsel. Israel gathers and they say, Benjamin, hand over this particular city to us that we may punish them with the sword. But what does Benjamin do? They do not listen to the voice of their brethren, the children of Israel. Instead, the children of Benjamin go to battle against the other 11 tribes of Israel. Benjamin is totally in the wrong here. God's law is clear. Anyone who does such an act deserves to die. And besides that, natural law is clear as well. But there are 11 tribes united together against you. These 11 tribes gathered together before the Lord and they're approaching you. Hand them over and they will not do it. And then there's practical reasons that Benjamin should heed this advice. There are 400,000 Israelites ready to fight them. Practically speaking, they're not going to win. There are 26,000 Benjaminite soldiers. But Benjamin defends Gibeah instead of giving them over. And now verse 18, the children of Israel arose and went up to the house of God to inquire of God. And they said, which of us shall go up to fight against Benjamin first? And the Lord said, Judah first. Does that sound familiar? Judah first. Early on in the book of Judges, as the people are conquering the promised land, the people gather together and they say, which one of us shall go up and fight our enemies first? And the Lord says, Judah first. And now at the end, that's the way the book starts. That's actually chapter one, verse one and two. And now here we are at the end and we get the same phrase But Judah is now gonna go fight its own people. This is the spiral. Now we have the first two of three battles. There ends up being three battles against the Benjaminites. The Israelites lose the first two battles. You can read about this really from verses 19 through 28. Israel loses, verse 21, they lose the first battle, verse 25, they lose a second battle, but then in verse 26, something changes in Israel. They seek the Lord with weeping, with humility, with fasting, and with sacrifices. All the people, they went up, they came to the house of God, they weep, and they sat there before the Lord, and they fasted that day. They inquired of the Lord. And by the way, the Ark of the Covenant of God was there in those days. And Phineas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before it in those days. So there's a high priest, and they seek the guidance of the high priest. And then they ask of the Lord, shall I yet again go out to battle against the children of my brother Benjamin, or shall I cease? And God tells them, to go fight again and that they will achieve victory the next day, that verse 28. So why do they lose two battles and then on the third time they are victorious? Well, perhaps they were not seeking the Lord as they ought. Did they seek the Lord the first two times? Yes. But they did not offer burnt sacrifices. They did not fast. They did not seek the counsel of the high priest. But on the third time, they really depend on the Lord. They take advantage, if you will, of God's means of grace, to quote one theologian. And Benjamin, by the way, has none of this. Dale Ralph Davis says this, they have no ark, no priest, no direction from Yahweh, no word from heaven, no light in turmoil. Benjamin stands under judgment, for they have no voice from God. And so they will lose the next battle, and lose they do. The battle ensues, and I'll only read verses 46 to 48. This is the summary of the battles, 46 to 48. So all who fell on Benjamin that day were 25,000 men who drew the sword. All these were men of valor. But 600 men, that's it, 600, 600 men turned and fled toward the wilderness to the Rock of Rimman and they stayed at the Rock of Rimman for four months. And the men of Israel turned back against the children of Benjamin and struck them down with the edge of the sword. From every city, men and beasts, all who were found, they also set fire to all the cities they came to. Cities are set on fire, men and even beasts are slaughtered. It's tragic, it's chaotic. And this is what they were supposed to do to the nations of Canaan. But now they're slaughtering their own people and even burning their own people's cities, the people of Israel. Doing this to one another. So they've slaughtered the people of Benjamin, now there's just a remnant left. So now what? We get to chapter 21, just a few verses here. The men of Israel, Chapter 21, verse one, they had sworn an oath at Mizpah, saying, none of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife. So they made a promise to one another. We're gonna wipe out Benjamin completely, and we're not gonna give any of these men, if there's any left over, we're not gonna give them any of our wives. We're gonna utterly destroy them. But then there's a bit of a turn of heart. The people came to the house of God and remained there before God till evening. Listen to this, this is a good sign in a dark chapter. They lifted up their voices and wept bitterly and said, oh Lord God of Israel, why has this come to pass in Israel? That today there should be one tribe missing in Israel. They're sorrowful as they should be. And now, They wonder, what should we do next? Verse seven tells us this question. They say, what shall we do for the wives of those who remain, seeing we have sworn by the Lord that we will not give them our daughters as wives? They've kind of put themselves in a hard spot by making this oath. They don't want to go against their oath, but they also want to provide wives for the Benjaminites. What will they do? What would you do in this spot? Going down a little bit further, we get the answer. In verse 12, there was a tribe that did not come up to a great assembly before the Lord. The tribe was Jebesh Gilead. And so they go, because this tribe did not come up to this festival, to this gathering of the people, They take their young virgins who had not known a man intimately, and they give them to the Benjaminites. And they slaughter the rest of the people. So all the women, all the children, all the men, the only ones who survive are the young virgins. And they give those to the people of Benjamin. Only one problem. just to make this all the more colorful. The problem is is that there are still a number of men who do not have wives. So going further down, we can read verses 13 and 14, there are 600 men left who do not have wives. And they inquire, what shall we do? And each year there was an annual festival at Shiloh where young women would come and they would dance. and they decided, hey, you know what? Let's tell the people of Benjamin who do not have a wife, let's have them go sit and wait, and when the young women come out, because these are Israelite women, when they come out and they dance, have the Benjaminites go in and steal the women and take them away. That way, we will keep our oath, and that way, we can tell their husbands, we can tell their fathers, rather, that they did not break their oath either because they didn't know about it. There are some Benjaminites, well, all of the Benjaminite men, rather, walk away with wives. So verse 23, the children of Benjamin did so, they liked this plan, and they took enough wives for their number from those who danced, whom they caught. So they're catching women at this point. Then they went and returned to their inheritance, and they rebuilt the cities and dwelt in them. So the children of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family. They went out from there, every man to his inheritance. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So that's how the book ends, with the stealing of women. And this, after civil war, And that, after Israel is likened to Sodom and Gomorrah, Israelites tell other Israelites to go woman-snatching so that they could keep their oath before God. So that's convoluted, isn't it? And there's something, I think, even morally ambiguous about that. Did they tell them the right thing to do? They did preserve the tribe of Benjamin. Let's wrestle with that for a second. Would you rather the tribe of Benjamin go away? What do you do to remedy the problem? This is what they came up with. There's something morally ambiguous, just uncomfortable. You're not supposed to steal people, that's pretty obvious. You're not supposed to go against your oath. We are not told exactly what the author of Judges believes here. He just tells us the narrative and the book ends. The book ends literally with woman stealing, and then he says, in those days there was no king in the land of Israel. And I think this ending is purposeful. I think it's effective. The writer of Judges wants us to feel uncomfortable in this moment. He wants us to feel the weight of this wickedness. He wants us to feel the weight of the chaos of sin. This is where sin gets you. So some application this evening. We'll go through these somewhat quickly. First application, so regarding these last three chapters. First application is this, be repulsed at sin. It's appropriate to be repulsed at sin. We should be marked by our love for one another, our love for God, our dedication to each other, our service to one another. We are to be a humble people. I grant all of that. We're to be clothed in meekness. We're not to be proud, we're to be humble, knowing that God has rescued us from the clutches of the evil one. Yet, if you read a passage like this and you are not repulsed, you're reading it wrong. You should be repulsed at sin. Sin should not be our meditation all the day long, but when we encounter it, when we see it in the midst of our busy week, we should respond with more than just compassion at times. Whether we see something on the news or whether we see something in our own lives, in our own hearts, there is a time where our reflex should be to be repulsed. Retain your gag reflex, if you will. We should not be desensitized to sin. Do not just say to yourself, oh, that's just the way they did it back then. Things got so bad, they had to steal some women, and it's just the way it was. I think of people taking the Lord's name in vain, how often we can get desensitized to that. Even people, you could give a smaller example, if you will, I don't think it's a small thing, people breaking the Sabbath. Saw a video the other day of a church that did a Super Bowl, service, and they acted out a kickoff, and a lady kicked a Bible, and your reaction to that should be to be repulsed. There are things that go on that should fire you up. That's good. That's appropriate. So train your reflexes. We don't wanna just say this is just something that happened back then. We want our reflexes to be biblical, to be sharp. In this story, people literally surround the house, they beat on it, they try to get inside and take advantage of a woman all night. And we should be repulsed at that. And we should be repulsed at the sins in our own day. There are babies slaughtered, think of abortion. Be repulsed at that, and let that repulsion fuel you to good works. It should fire us up when we see God being defamed, dethroned. He is king. He is worthy to be praised. People are made in his image, and when people have utter disregard for babies in the womb, we should be repulsed. There's such a flagrant disregard in our day of authority. And sometimes we can just say, oh, they just don't like authority. They don't like teachers, they don't like cops, they don't like government officials, they just kind of do what they want. No, it's much worse than that. Authority is an institute given to us by God. And anybody who just flagrantly just flips it out, who doesn't honor their father and mother, let one of our responses be repulsion. Second application is this, be grieved at sin. The people of Israel did this, actually, in this passage. The people of Israel were a good example. In chapter 21, verse 2, the people came to the house of God, they remained there before God. All day, they were there till evening, and they lifted up their voices and they wept bitterly. Why would there be one tribe missing in Israel? And then it says the people of Israel grieved for Benjamin. That's a good response too. We should grieve over sin and the effects of sin. To be grieved at sin is to imitate Christ. When Christ was in a synagogue and there was a man there with a withered hand, And the Pharisees in their hearts were saying, ah, what's that guy gonna do? Is he gonna heal him? Is he gonna heal him on the Sabbath? And they were waiting and watching that they might accuse Jesus. And when Jesus looked around the room, he was filled with anger. That's one of his responses. But then the text says this, Jesus was also grieved by their hardness of hearts. Let us imitate Christ in this way. Jesus was angry and he was grieved at the same time. And that's possible for us. We can be repulsed at sin, we can grieve at sin, and we can be angry at sin all at once. And that is to be like Christ. Let our response to sin not be one-dimensional. Let us imitate Christ. Third application, be aware of sin's spread. There are downhill effects to sin. Sin spirals out of control. Sin has a decaying effect. If you want an example of that, just read through the book of Judges again. There is no better example, perhaps. This book did not begin with the Israelites imitating Sodom and Gomorrah. Far from that. The book began with the people of Israel going into the Promised Land. It did not begin with civil war, with desecrating the priesthood. Remember, we saw that last week. They desecrated the priesthood. They just made a mockery of it. It started with something small. It started with the Israelites failing to take dominion over the land. They refused to obey God fully. They did not wipe out the peoples of Canaan. That was their sin. You could call it a sin of omission. But that sin of omission led to idolatry. And that idolatry led to more idolatry. And now we end with what we've read tonight. How much of this book can be summed up? This is Judges 2, 17. They turn quickly, quickly from their way that their fathers walked. Isn't that the story? really of all of us, how often, I even think of the boys and girls in here, how often have we been taught the right thing to do and yet we turn away? Are we any different than them? More on that in a moment. The people of Israel had the patriarchs, they had the promises, they had the laws of God and they forsook them all. And 2 Peter says it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. We end with Benjamin almost being wiped out. But on the flip side, let's think of it this way. Sin spreads, but so does goodness, so do our good works. And we can be aware of good spreading as well. What happens when one family lives well in the midst of a wicked neighborhood? What happens when one Christian in the midst of a wicked workplace lives faithfully in the eyes of God? Let us pray and dream about how God may use the spread of good. May we throw out handfuls of salt everywhere we are. Let us shine light in dark places. Good spreads just as sin does. We also see that message in this book. When conclusion now is the fourth, Final application, no-sins remedy. One of the most famous examples of God pouring out his wrath in the Bible is when he rained down fire from the sky upon Sodom and Gomorrah. And it captures our imagination. You read the story once and it sticks. Even non-believers know this story. We don't know the numbers of people who were killed in Sodom and Gomorrah, but it's quite likely that more people died in Judges 20 because of what happened in Gibeah. An entire tribe was almost wiped out. God's wrath, in this case, did not rain down fire from the sky. Instead, it came through war, through pestilence, and all these other various ways. The consequences of sin are grave. Your sins will find you out. And finally, perhaps though, you feel distance from this book of judges. Perhaps you feel distant from Sodom and Gomorrah. You feel as if you would never stoop so low as the people in these chapters did. You may think that you would never surround the house of someone and beat on the door to try to abuse someone. But there is something even worse than this. There were people in Jesus' day who saw the great deeds that Jesus did, and they still did not believe him. The second person of the Trinity became man, he walked and he taught among the people of Israel, he does miracles, he fulfills the scriptures, he loves God, he loves people, and the people got to see this with their own two eyes. And how many thousands actually got to see him? And how many rejected him and his works? And before you and I become high-minded, thinking we would never stoop so low to become like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, know this, that Jesus said that those who reject him are worse than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Matthew 11, Jesus began to rebuke the cities in which he had done many miracles because they did not repent. For instance, in Capernaum, He said, O Capernaum, who are exalted to heaven, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for Sodom than for you. To reject the work of Christ is a more severe thing than what we've read about this evening. So that's a warning to anyone who's not a Christian in here. To reject Christ, to hear of his good works, and to still reject him is more severe. But the sins in this book, they are not, they are not surpassed by those who reject Christ. And yet, Christ, despite our sin, this most wonderful man, though he is God, he humbled himself, and though our sins are worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, for how often have we rejected him or dethroned him? While we were still sinners, he died for us. Romans 9, and I'll close with this. Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah. That is our end were it not for Christ. If it were not for Christ keeping his seed within us, if it were not for Christ giving us his spirit, we would have become like the people we just read about. Let us not be haughty. but let us pray for his help. Let's pray together. Our Father, thank you for this book. May we learn from it and submit to Christ all the more fully. There's a lot of bad news in this book, but yet you've give us hope. And what a gift it is that you show us our need for a Savior. May we come to him and approach him and dedicate our lives to him. We pray in his name, amen.