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Brothers and sisters, if you
have your Bibles with you, please turn with me to chapter 20 of
the book of Judges. We have come nearly to the end
of Judges, where we are now being shown the evil that the people
did in the eyes of the Lord. Starting back at chapter 17,
we've seen unfolded for us godlessness, that leads to wickedness. And
so last week and these next two weeks are all really one story.
The gross immorality of Chapter 19 leads to the reprisals, the
punishment of Chapter 20. And their solution to the problem
necessitates another problem, a solution to their near extermination,
a solution that's nearly as wicked as or maybe as wicked as everything
else that's taken place. I will not read the entire chapter,
though we will in outline form deal with all of it. But what
I want to deal with more than the details of the passage are
the questions that rise up in our hearts and minds as we consider
this account. Pray with me, please. Father,
open our ears, open our hearts to hear your word. Give us understanding,
Father, that apart from the Holy Spirit, I am sure we would remain
blank, unable to hear and understand. Lord, guide me in the things
that I would say this day, that we do expose and express the
truth and may hear it and believe We ask these things in Jesus'
name, amen. This is a, again, not so much
time spent on the details, but I want to address the questions
that are here. The first thing we see, of course, is that Israel
is united, almost completely. as I say, beginning at verse
20, at verse 1 of chapter 20. Then all the people of Israel
came out from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead. And the congregation assembled
as one man to the Lord at Mizpah. And the chiefs of all the people
of all the tribes of Israel presented themselves in the assembly of
the people of God, 400,000 men on foot that drew the sword. Now the people of Benjamin heard
that the people of Israel had gone up to Mizpah. And the people
of Israel said, tell us, how did this evil happen? And the
Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, answered and
said, I came to Gibeah that belongs to Benjamin, I and my concubine,
to spend the night. And the leaders of Gibeah rose
against me and surrounded the house against me by night. They
meant to kill me, and they violated my concubine, and she is dead.
So I took hold of my concubine and cut her in pieces and sent
her throughout all the country in the inheritance of Israel,
for they have committed abomination and outrage in Israel. Behold,
you people of Israel, all of you give your advice and counsel
here. And all the people arose as one
man saying, none of us will go to his tent and none of us will
return to his house. But now this is what we will
do to Gibeah. We will go up against it by lot. And that's exactly what they
did. The word went out from Dan to Beersheba. That's like Maine
to Florida. If you were in colonial days,
from Boston to Savannah. And by the way, some of those
providences that may be on the other side of the mountains that
we're bringing them to. So even the eastern tribes, the tribes
east of the Jordan, They gathered all the people. They made an
assembly of all the people of God. And so 400,000 gather. 400,000 men of arms gather. Benjamin, you'll notice, was
not invited. Or at least that seems to be the implication.
The people of Benjamin heard that the people of Israel had
gone to Mizpah. These were the perpetrators.
And were they not invited? Or did they get the invitation
and decided, no, we're not coming anyway. I think it's probably
more the previous. And as they gather, they receive
the testimony of the Levite, shaded very nicely, you'll notice,
so that he looks pretty good in this story. He makes no mention
of, well, so I threw her out to them. No, I came completely
in peace, and it was all their fault, and I was just a gentleman
and a perfect, gracious host in all of this. Others had to
have testified, we know from the scripture, because it would
take more than one witness to condemn someone to death or particularly
the city worth in this case. And so the verdict is rendered
at verse nine in that they will go up against it by lot. At verse 13, we're going to learn
that they will put them to death. They're going to remove the evil. from among them. The men of Gibeah
must be destroyed. Now, it's clear it's the men
of Gibeah that they are going against. There's no hint of the
destruction of the whole tribe. It's the wicked men. But this
will change. They were acting as one. This
is the first time in the book of Judges where that phrase all
Israel gathered is used. And it's three times here, verse
one, verse eight, verse 11, united as one man, united as one man,
and repeatedly in the passage, as one, as one, all Israel. How sad. How dreadfully sad. That the first time Israel can
really come together is not to defeat the Canaanites and the
Philistines and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Ammonites,
but a tribe in Israel. They are unified. All but Benjamin,
Benjamin Balks. It seems that they have been
excluded from the proceedings. You wonder what might have been
different if Israel had gone to the Benjaminites and said,
You understand what happened here, what are you going to do
about it? Because if you aren't going to deal with it, we are.
But that's not what happens. 1994, some of you remember that
year. The OJ Simpson trial was that
year. I was at a presbytery meeting,
a committee meeting, Five men there, myself included. Three
of them were black pastors from the PCA. And of course the conversation,
the topic came up. And this is when they were trying
to move, when they were moving the trial from Santa Monica to
Los Angeles. And my brother said, I want you
to understand, we want him tried, but we want to do it. Not an
all white Santa Monica. We want to do it. I thought, maybe Benjamin is
feeling the same way. He says, we need to deal with
this. You need to let us deal with this. But they're not given
the opportunity. Instead, they're instructed in verse 13 to give
them up. Verse 12, and the tribes of Israel
sent men throughout all the tribe of Benjamin saying, what evil
is this that has taken place among you? Now therefore give
up the men, the worthless fellows in Gibeah, that we may put them
to death and purge evil from Israel. But the Benjaminites
would not listen to the voice of their brothers, the people
of Israel. The people of Benjamin came together
out of their cities to Gibeah to go out to battle against the
people of Israel. And so they muster 26,000 men. They bring them all to Gibeah.
They are united. in their defense of Gibeah. With them comes 700 left-handed
snipers, you might call them, as good with a sling and a stone
as David would be when he goes up against Goliath to sink a
stone into his forehead. These men could hit a hare at,
what, 150 feet, 200, 300? I don't know. And they're lefties.
Benjamin. son of the right hand. And the
best shots in the place are 700 lefties. Kind of interesting. They are united in defending
their sinful, wicked brothers. I love Matthew Henry's commentary.
So I have an aside comment here. It seems there is no cause so
bad but that it will find some patrons, some advocates to appear
for it. He does go on, but woe to those
by whom such offenses come. And we look around our own day
and we think there isn't a crazy, wild, ridiculous, or wicked scheme
that isn't presented that someone, and oftentimes many someones,
are going to join in it. I think Matthew Henry was right
on. For Benjamin, blood ties, those physical relations, are
deeper than covenant ties, than their spiritual relationship.
They're committed to that family, and it's deeper than their commitment
to the faith to which they have been bound. It may have been
the source of the problem in the tribe of Benjamin. I think sometimes we need to
ask ourselves, is that true for us? Do I have a greater loyalty
to my blood and kin, a greater commitment to my blood and kin
than I do to the Christ, to the church, the church for which
Jesus died? Jesus did not die for my personal
family. They're loaned to me, surely,
but they're all under his hand. He died for his church? Are my concerns for my personal
family greater than my concern for the body of Christ? We need
to be careful. When one came to Jesus, Luke
chapter 9, verse 59, he said, I'm ready to follow you. Just
let me bury my father first. Now, of course, what he was saying
is he isn't saying my father has died. Let me bury him. He's
saying when my father dies, well, then I'll come. And Jesus said, what? Let the
dead bury the dead. Matthew 10, for I have come to
set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. There are
times when our allegiance to the body of Christ, when our
allegiance to our King and Lord must overcome, must overrule
our commitment to our family. Does my family, the things that
I want to do with my family override worship? Does it override my
ability to be engaged in witness or in fellowship? Benjamin decides
family ties are more important than spiritual ties. And so they align themselves
with deeds of darkness. as it says in Romans 13, and
other places as well. So the battle lines are extended,
extended from Gibeah to war with Benjamin. And so at 18, we see
that Israel has determined its course, they know what they're
going to do, and now they come to the Lord. The people of Israel
arose and went up to Bethel and inquired of God, who shall go
up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin? And the
Lord said, Judah shall go up first. Then the people of Israel
arose in the morning and encamped against Gibeah. And the men of
Israel went out to fight against Benjamin. And the men of Israel
drew up the battle line against them at Gibeah. The people of
Benjamin came out of Gibeah and destroyed on that day 22,000
men of the Israelites. People, the men of Israel took
courage and again formed the battle line in the same place
where they had formed it on the first day. And the people of
Israel went up and wept this time before the Lord until evening. And they inquired of the Lord,
shall we again draw near to fight against our brothers for the
people of the people of Benjamin, our brothers? And the Lord said,
go up against them. So the people of Israel came
near against the people of Benjamin the second day. And Benjamin
went against them out of Gibeah the second day and destroyed
18,000 men of the people of Israel. All these were men who drew the
sword. And I can feel it, and I think
it's probably in you as well. Who shall go first? We've come
to the Lord. We've sought his favor. Now, we know we're in
the right. Who's supposed to take the lead? And the Lord answers,
Judah shall take the lead. In the same way, when they entered
the land, Judah would take the lead. In other words, they had
to have someone in command. But they would also be at the
front. They'd be the first to fall. They take the brunt of
the attack and 22,000 fall. Shall we continue to fight against
our brothers? They're seeking the Lord's direction.
They even come with tears. Should we continue this fight?
And the Lord says, yes. And so they go up again and 18,000
fall. And we go, Lord. They're calling upon your name.
You're giving them direction. They're supposed to have success.
They aren't supposed to have some crushing defeat. We know
the drill. The cause is right. We have the
numbers. We've sought your favor. Quote,
unquote, we've sought your direction. We should win. They were asking the Lord, you
see, to bless their plans. They hadn't sought from the beginning. This is the first time they appealed
to the Lord that we see. the first time that they've come
together to call upon the name of the Lord. They've already
decided what they're going to do. And so they just want the Lord
to tell them how to do it. Again, their cause was good.
Fifteen to one, this shouldn't be a big problem. And yet 40,000
of them fall. One-tenth of the number gathered.
One-tenth of that number had been sent back to the tribes
to gather supplies, if you look at verses 8 through 11, so that
if they had to make a siege, they were going to be well provided
for. They weren't going to have a problem. So what's going on
here? What's God doing? Is he judging the Israelites
too? Is it that they hadn't entered
this battle in some way without sin? Why hadn't they, for instance,
responded to the idolatry of the Danites back in chapter 19 because the idolatry of the tribe
was every bit as wicked as the abominations of Gibeah. Deuteronomy
13 lays it out pretty clearly what's to happen to those who
pursue idolatry. Is God punishing them? I don't
know. I certainly can't say for certain. But the question just
rings in our hearts. Lord, what are you doing? There
are times when his purposes are hidden, hidden from us. He is accomplishing his will,
but we are not always made privy to those eternal decrees and
judgments. The secret things, Deuteronomy
29, 29, the secret things belong to God. We know that he's working out
his justice and his righteousness in both the objects of that judgment
and in the instruments of that judgment. And we have to get
that into our heads because as we go through the history of
Israel, we will see it repeatedly. He'll raise up the Assyrians
or the Babylonians to bring judgment against his people. It's not
that he won't judge them, But even the prophets cried out,
Lord, what are you doing, this wicked people? There are times when his purposes
are hidden from us, and I believe this is likely one of them. He had other purposes along with
the judgment of Gibeah. So now they come a third time
to the Lord. Verse 26, and all the people
of Israel, the whole army went up and came to Bethel and wept."
Now everyone comes, and they come to Bethel. They don't just
need an oracle to tell them, do this or do that. Now they
seek the Lord. And the people of Israel inquired
of the Lord, for the ark of the covenant of God was there in
those days. And Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron,
ministered before it in those days, saying, shall we go out
once more to battle against our brothers, the people of Benjamin,
or shall we cease? And the Lord said, Now we get
the theology. Now we get the truth. Now we
get the issue. Go up, for tomorrow I will give
them into your hand. They had been seeking the Lord's
direction. Now they need his blessing and
his favor. They come to the house of the Lord in confession. They
come in humility. They bow themselves before the
Lord. Interestingly, Benjamin couldn't
do that anymore. They had cut themselves off,
cut themselves off from the means of grace, from the means of God's
ministry to them. They were far away from access.
And now the Lord gives, when they come in confession and in
humility, when they come to know what he would do, I will give
them into your hand. We don't trust our cause just
because it's right. We don't trust our numbers or
our strength. We trust in the Lord. The battle
belongs to the Lord. We sing hymns of it. Literally,
it says the victory belongs to the Lord. Proverbs 21, 2131,
I think. I will give them into your hands. It's the Lord who will fight.
And so they enter the battle. Verses 29 through 48 show the
plan, the well-planned, the well-devised plan, the well-executed plan
of Israel before the Lord. And the Lord fought for them.
And it brings Benjamin to the verge of extinction. They set
a trap so they can draw the people out of Gibeah, the
terrain would have been such that you couldn't bring 400,000
people into the assault. You would come in narrowly, which
is why they were able to cut them down. And maybe it was those
glorious victories that they had had the first two times that
gives them a little too much confidence in Gibeah, and so
they come out against Israel. And they are flanked, and they
are deceived. because there are men in ambush
who will come to take Gibeah and take the whole city. And
as I say, the plan may have been a little, or more than a little
too well executed, because we'd grieve. Benjamin would lose 25,000
men of the sword in the battle, and then more. 600 men of arms, total 600 men,
would escape to the Rock of Rimen. And they came into the city of
Gibeah, and they killed everyone and everything in it. And once
they were done with that slaughter, and once they'd trapped those
600 men, they went to every town in Benjamin and killed everyone
and everything and burned the cities. All that were left were
600 men of the tribe. Vindication? Obeying the word
of the Lord? I don't think so. It was vengeance. 40,000 Israelites dead. You're going to pay for this.
Because everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Don't lose that. Everyone did what was right in
his own eyes. It's how the section begins.
It's how the section ends. It is what rules everything in
the middle. There was no king in Israel. And as I said, the questions
and the sorrow and the grief just rises up in us. Lord, what
is happening? What are you doing? Come back
to those three questions with which we started this study.
What does this say about God? What does this tell me about
who God is, his power, his character, his attributes, his promises?
What does it tell me about who God is? Can I answer that question
here? What does it tell us about ourselves?
What does it tell us about humanity? Does it point us to Christ, as
the Old Testament, in Jesus' words, is intended to do, to
point us toward him? Well, I believe it does, brothers
and sisters. I believe we can put some semblance of answer
to those questions. We've already declared that the
depth of the judgments of God are beyond our grasp. Isaiah
55, verse 8, our ways are not his ways. Can I know all of what God is
doing here? I cannot. Clearly, judgment on
Gibeah was just, and the Lord said, yes, go against them. Yes,
go against them. The judgment is right. But I
fight. If he was judging Israel too,
it was also his blessing to give them victory. His judgments are
perfect and righteous, but the ways may not be understood by
us. His purposes are beyond our grasp. God is much bigger than we want
to make him sometimes. You see, what the Israelites
were trying to do was simply use God as the this way or this
way, this thing or this thing. Give me the yes or no. Bring
out the Urim and Thummim. Turn it over one way or the other.
Just tell me what to do next. They weren't coming to God, humbling
themselves, bowing and saying, you are God. You rule and you
reign. And I do not know all your ways,
but Lord, bring me into those paths. We come expecting that obedience,
I fear that we come expecting that when our path is clear,
when we believe that we have understood the word or God's
instructions, that we're walking in obedience, doing what he calls
and what he asks us to do, that therefore there won't be any
suffering. And there won't be any failure, and there won't
be any difficulty, because after all, I'm doing what you told
me to do, Lord. Tell that to Paul, would you?
Paul, who wanted to go up into Asia, and God said, no, I'm sending
you further west. As a matter of fact, I want you
to go to Macedonia. OK, Lord, I hear. I'm going to Macedonia.
And when he lands there within two weeks, what? He's in a Philippian
jail, having been beaten near to death. for no cause and without
any charges. But Lord, you sent me here, yes,
to accomplish my will in you and in these people. And of course,
we have the letter of the Philippians as some of the fruit of that.
But did it mean because he was walking in faith and in obedience
that there would be no struggle? Take the ultimate example, the
Lord Jesus, who walked in absolute, perfect obedience. He could only
do what the Lord gave him to do. He couldn't do anything else.
Did it mean, therefore, that Jesus would not suffer, that
he would not struggle, that he would not know hardship? No, it did not. And so what do
we learn about ourselves here? We learn that God's ways are
mysterious, We have to learn, brothers and sisters, that our ways are not His ways. And
if He chooses to bring struggle and suffering, even as a result
of obedience, it is because He is at work to bring glory to
Himself, honor to His name, and good for me. Give me the grace to see it,
Lord. Two other things let me just
point out quickly. One, the sin of Gibeah against, in a sense,
one person. Now, I admit it's broader than
that. It's greater than that. But it
seemed, probably in their eyes, isolated, sojourner, traveler,
who's going to care anything about it? One wicked act, what's
the big deal? Do you remember some of you about
30 years ago, maybe a little more, when we were told what
happens in the bedroom is private, it doesn't affect anybody? Right? It isn't going to affect your
life at all. It means nothing to you. We can do whatever we
want there. It's private. It's just between us. Has anybody
looked around lately to see where we are in regard to that? Private? Are you kidding? Now I am being
forced to accept, to promote things that I believe are abominations,
that I believe are biblically damaging to the soul, to the
heart, to the society. That's why they're an abomination,
because the Lord looks at it and says, you're defying that
for which I have made you. And it will have dreadful repercussions,
which, of course, we're seeing. It does. But, hey, it's a private
thing. It doesn't affect anybody else.
Pornography, it's a private thing. How many multi-billion dollar
business? Oh, yeah, that's private, all
right. The destructions of families and hearts and lives, oh, yeah,
that's private, all right. It's just one individual. What fools we are if we think
that sin doesn't have dreadful ramifications. One act by Gibeah,
100,000 people dead. Yeah, add it up. It's at least
100,000. 40,000 Israelites, 26,000 men, all the women and children besides. Yeah,
it's easy. It's just one sin. That's what I wanted to do with
you children, was to try and figure out how to show that lying
doesn't end with just one lie. It's over, it doesn't go anywhere,
it doesn't mean anything, or stealing, or any number of other
things. Parents, if you can figure out
how to teach that to your children, you are doing well, very well,
to see that those sins never remain private. It's what the
Bible teaches. The wages of sin may be death,
That's what will come ultimately, but the effect and the power
of sin is desolation. It's the destruction of what
we saw last week, the perversion and destruction of relationships,
the warping of our sensibilities and our morality, the perversion
and the destruction of our reasoning. The effect and the power of sin
is, as I say, desolation. Does it point me to Christ? That
there might be hope, that there might be deliverance, that there
might be one who comes not with the acts of wickedness, but with
acts of righteousness and holiness and purity, who himself would
be wickedly murdered. They didn't call it murder. They
said, well, this is an act of justice. He's being condemned.
For what? For being a righteous man. Praise God that the same way
that power of sin spreads its desolation and destruction, the
power of the righteousness and the holiness and the grace and
the mercy and the forgiveness of Christ can spread as well,
poured out on all those who will come, trusting in that name,
resting in that name. Yes, there is hope in that gospel. I can and will be pointed to
the king that Israel so desperately needed, not the ones that would
fail them within a generation or two of human kings, but of
a heavenly King who can rule our hearts and deliver us from
the devastation of sin, from the devastation of doing what
is right in our own eyes. Father, open our hearts and our
eyes to the power, the saving power, the redeeming, renewing
power of our Savior. So strengthen us, Lord. Build
us up in faith and life and love, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Israel's Folly
| Sermon ID | 42918174300 |
| Duration | 33:44 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Judges 20 |
| Language | English |