What Shall We Do Now?

Intro:

As we have been making our way through the book of Judges we have come to the last 5 chapters. And the author here in these last chapters is really writing to describe the condition of the Nation of Israel during the time of the Judges.

And one of the ways the author attempts to describe the condition of the Nation is by giving us (2) stories that express clearly what the hearts and the minds of the people were. In the last few weeks in Chp. 17 and 18, Chad and Jay taught about a man named Micah. And we began to see the people and the Idolatry that was taking place.

This week we will begin to look at the story of a Levite. And his story will take us through the last (3) chp.

But one thing that is consistent in both stories and in the last 5 chapters is the statement ....

Judges 17:6 NKJV

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This statement is mentioned multiple times in these last few chapters and it really describes the condition of Israel, and it reveals how Israel found themselves the way they were during the times of the judges.

And both Jay and Chad talked about how this played out. The fact that the people did not have a king ruling over them , but more than that this spoke of Israel not wanting to accept God as the Authority in their Lives

And as a result of not having God as the Authority in their lives, it left them with the free reign to do whatever seemed right in their own eyes.

Transition

See when we talk about God and about God’s word we are able to understand that God is absolute truth. We understand that God’s word is absolute truth.

And so we as humans have the ability to look to God who is absolute truth, who has revealed himself through his word, which is also absolute truth; and we have the ability and the responsibility to model God’s moral standard for life.

God’s moral standard for living on this earth. We can look at the 10 commandments for instance and we can find an absolute moral standard that does not change.....

you shall not commit murder

you shall not have graven images

you shall honor your father and mother

you shall not commit adultery

we can look at these and understand .... ya I know that I should not do those things.... But how so we know that?

Because ...

We have a moral compass written on our hearts by God

Romans 2:15 NKJV

who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)

2. We have God’s word that is absolute truth

John 17:17 NKJV

Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.

And so because God is absolute truth and because he has revealed himself through His word, we have someone to look to , to rule over our hearts , our minds and our lives and we have something to look to in the word of God as the standard for living .

Now once you take God away from an individual, you are taking away the proper Authority in his life..... you are taking away the standard of living found in the word of God .... and what you are left with is someone who is now forced to replace that Authority in his life.

many will find that authority in science , in philosophies , in human logic, in self.... and the result of having someone or something else as the governing Authority in their lives other than God is, that their moral standard of living will model that which is the authority in their lives.

you will have someone who does not believe in absolute truth but in subjective truth.

Subjective Truth is based on feelings, experiences , perceptions

Therefore if i don’t believe in God or in God’s word as the Authority in my life, i therefore believe in subjective truth , or “ My truth” .... i’m sure you’ve heard that before. What that is , is i believe in what i believe in and it is for me but may not be for you… and the opposite as well, you may believe in something and its good for you , but it is not for me.

no longer do i have a moral base standard for living but now its all relative to what i believe in , what i believe to be true .... based on my feelings , my experiences , my perceptions, that becomes my standard of living.

So i will find myself doing whatever i feel is right for me, even if the moral compass of my heart says its wrong, even if the word of God says its wrong....

This is what we find in these last chapters of the book of Judges. That God was rejected as the Authority in the lives of the people and as a result they were left to do whatever they thought was right in their own eyes, Their Truth

This is the same thing that we see in our society today. you can look around and you can see and hear the same thing. People and a nation who has rejected the authority of God in their lives, and as a result everyone is doing what they feel is right in their own eyes. Even if it goes against everything we know inside of us, everything that is against God’s word says, everything that is against nature even.

Transition

I. The Levite and the Woman (v. 1-10)

A. The Condition of the Levite and the Woman (v/1- 4)

1. The Actions of the Woman (v.1-2)

And so our Story begins with the phrase that we have already talked about. “ And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king”....

The phrase keeps coming up in these last 5 chapters describing the condition of the nation of Israel. And the statement that they had no king speaks both that they did not have a pyshical King but it also spoke about the fact that they did not allow God to rule over them as the King of their lives. And as we have spoken about already, without the proper Authority in their lives, they had no standard for living. And the people did evil.

Now we are introduced to our two main characters. We have the Levite a man of God who lived in the remote mountain in Ephraim. And we are told that he took for himself a concubine from Bethlehem.

Now a concubine in the bible was a secondary wife. She was legally his wife but she had secondary rights. Meaning that if she had children, her children would be second to inherit after the children of the main wife.

In bible times we see the act of taking a concubine for different reasons like to attempt to have kids because the main wife can’t have kids, or to be used to satisfy sexual pleasures but in no ways was this approved by God.

Transition

and as the story continues we are told that this woman played the harlot. Or in other words she went out on her husband and had affairs on her husband with other men. She goes back to the house of her father in Bethlehem and she stayed there for 4 months.

now we don’t know what the reason that she left. But we do know that she is away from her husband for 4 months.

and so as we are starting the story we begin to gain insight already to the condition of the heart of 2 of our characters.

The Levite , a man of God finds who himself a concubine, this was not something that was okay by God for his people , and specially a man of God.

The woman , maybe out of anger of being a second wife , or because of the coldness of her husband, goes out and commits adultery .

here they are both acting according to what seems right to each of them based on their circumstances and based on their emotions.

2. The Actions of the Levite (v. 3-4 )

Now we see what kind of guy this Levite is, finally after 4 months he desides to go after his wife and he travels to the house of his father in law. His plan is to speak kindly to the woman and see if he can convince her to come back home. He takes with him a servant and a couple of donkeys.

Now the father in law was glad to meet the Levite. He was probably happy to see him and hoping he was taking his daughter with him, he was probably tired of having her at home and was like come and take her back.

Now the father in law detained the man for three days and they ate and drank. This was obvious good hospitality

3. The Actions of the Father in Law (v. 5- 10)

now as the three days of hospitality are over, the Levite is ready to go home and to begin to mend his marriage.

Now on the fourth day as the Levite gets up early and wants to make his way, the father in law asks him to stay for a bit and to eat and be refreshed before they leave. Now some time must have passed and it must have been getting late as the father in law tells the Levite to stay through the night.

the Levite agrees and they stay the night and the following day we see that the same thing begins to happen. As the Levite prepares to go out in the morning , the father in law stops him and brings him in to eat and to drink before he starts his journey. And again the day begins to get away from them and it gets later in the day and the father in law wants them to stay another night. Yet this time the Levite refuses , he knows if he doesn’t go now , he will never go.

so it is towards evening now as they begin their journey on foot from Bethlehem to the mountain area of Ephraim, this was some 12- 18 miles to travel on foot with donkeys in the evening.

So they travelled from Bethlehem to Jebus which was about a 6 mile journey and it became night time. Now Jebus is actually Jerusalem, but at this time the city was controlled by pagans. King David would later conquer this City during his reign .

And so this is important for us to understand this as it leads us into the main portion of our story.

II. The Ephraimite and the Levite ( v.11-21)

A. The Common Sense Choice (v. 11-15)

so as they have been traveling in the afternoon it has become night time and they need to find a place to stay the night. The servant of the Levite suggest that they stay in Jebus as they were near it.

Now the Levite did not want to stay there as it was a pagan City run by the Jebusites. And by all means this was probably good decision . Think about what it would look like to stay in a place that you don’t know , in a city that does not worship God. There is no telling what danger could have met them there if they stayed there.

So the Levite instead says that they will go a bit further and stay in either Ramah or in Gibeah , which were both cities of the Nation of Israel. So this meant that they would have to travel an additional 3—5 miles to get there.

but the thought process is right, the Levite is under the assumption that it would be safer to travel a few more miles at night in order to stay in an area that was occupied by the people of God rather than to stay in a pagan city. The assumption is that i will be safer with the people of God rather than with Pagans

Transition

And so they come down to the City of Gibeah which was the area of the Benjamites. And as they came into the city they went and sat down in the open square.

now this was common practice as you entered a foreign city to sit in the open square, this was basically telling the city that you were passing through and that you welcomed lodging and hospitality

and normally someone would walk out to the open square and invite you into their homes. This was the normal practice.

now here it is interesting because no one offered to have them come into their house. This was not normal specifically from the people of God as , God had commanded many times about the laws of hospitality , so the fact that these people did not offer such hospitality gives us insight into the condition of this city.

B. Invitation by the Ephraimite (v. 16-21)

So we now have another character enter our story , an old man who is coming home from working out in the fields. And as he is in the city he notices the travelers sitting in the open square of the city and he asks them “ where are you going, and where are you from?”

so the Levite explains that they are passing through from Bethlehem going to Ephraim. And he explains that no one has offered hospitality even though he has his own food for himself and for his donkeys. He basically doesn’t need anything from anyone.

And so the old man offers hospitality to them and tells them to stay with him in his house and he will take them on as his responsibility to care for them..... all this was to keep them from staying in the open square over night.

so as we look at this you can begin to see some things within the city....

1. The old man does not want the people to stay in the open square of the city, there is some sense of obvious danger in the city

2. The old man takes the travelers as his responsibility as was a common practice

3. This danger in the city may be why no one offered hospitality

now we will look at what exactly this danger was

III. The Benjamites and the Levite (v. 22-25 )

WOW

Now we see what the old man was worried about. See as they are in the house enjoy the night, all of a sudden we have these perverted men from the city come and begin to beat on the door , telling the old man to give over the Levite man in order that they would know him carnally.

and what they mean is to have homosexual relations with the Levite.

The old man pleads with the men and tells them not to do such an evil thing. But instead offers up his own virgin daughter and the Levites concubine instead, yet the men refuse

and so the Levite grabs his concubine and throws her outside and lets the perverted men have her. And we see that the men in the city take this concubine and abuse her and rape her all night until morning.

transition

this is crazy and gross what we are reading.

as we read this we cannot help but think of the story in Gen. 19 of Sodom and Gomorrah . We have a similar thing happen there where the two angels of the Lord enter the house of Lot and the men of the city come banging on the door asking for him to give over the two men in the house.

the story is similar in the pervertedness of the people in the city.... But with one big difference ..... The people in Sodom and Gomorrah were pagans and these men here in our story were the people of God.

The initial reason they came to Gibeah was because the Levite thought it would be safer with God’s people than with the pagans. And yet we see here that these men are just as wicked if not more than the pagans.

Transition

How does this happen? How does a child of God become corrupt and perverted in their thinking and acting , how does a child of God begin to model the actions of the world?

We talked about this already ..... When a person begins to remove God’s Authority from their lives , they will remove from their lives the basic moral standard of living found in God’s word… and they will begin to act in what seems right in their own eyes.... they will act on what feelings good, what their perception of truth is , they will act on their experiences and on their world views

and so we can look at this story and be completely grossed out by the actions that these men took . And yet as you look around society today , we see that the very same kind of actions are taking place today.

recently there was a movement on social media , of making an awareness to child trafficing , of child abuse . And the reality is that this has been taking place for a long time....

yet the interesting thing is that all the politicians and celebrities that post about child trafficing and child abuse have nothing to say about the porn industry that is a billion dollar industry. That exploits women and children daily .

See we as humans have a tendency to look at one act and call it gross and grotest and to look at another equally as evil, and call it a choice, call it “My Truth”. This is subjective truth.

And the reality is that all sin is equally evil and it all stems from a wicked heart that does not allow God as the Authority in their lives.

Transition

See we look at these Benjamites and we think “ How could they do that?” That is so wrong and gross. And your right , but what we can’t miss is the fact that all of the characters in our story suffered from the same thing. They all did what was right in their own eyes, and this was because God was not the Authority in their lives. Follow with me...

The Levite- had a concubine which was not approved by God, he is willing to throw his concubine to the perverted men to do evil things to her in order that he would be saved.

The concubine- committed adultery and left her husband for 4 months, and really this is the whole reason that they find themselves in this city

The Old Man- He was wiling to give up his virgin daughter to the perverted men in order to save the Levite and to keep his reputation in tact

The Benjamite men- were just perverted.

so the reality is that they were all doing things that were not according to God’s word . They were all wicked , they were just different degrees. And like today we can focus on the big evil sins people do and forget about he sins in my own life.

Transition

see the Benjamites did not get to be this perverted over night. They made daily choices in their lives to reject the Authority in their lives , and after a long time of rejecting God’s authority, they ended up where they were

but its important for you and i to understand that every time i do something that is contrary to God’s word, i am rejecting the Authority of God in my life.

every time i refuse to listen to my parents, every time i willfully disobey God’s word, every time i watch things i shouldn’t, every time i listen to things i shouldn’t, every time i say things i shouldn’t ..... I am rejecting the authority of God in my life

and if i am not careful , after a long time of rejecting God’s authority in my life, i can end up like the Benjamites..... Doing perverse things

that’s how it happens, by gradually rejecting the authority of God in my life.

We have seen this happen time and time again, good christian kids, little by little reject God, reject God’s word, and eventually we find them in places like the Benjamites, even to the point of calling homosexuality normal and good , and making their own truth.... and themselves engaging in these practices

We have an entire society that thinks this way..... It is because they have Rejected God’s Authority and rejected God’s word.

IV. The Levite and the Woman (v. 26- 30)

so the woman is released and she makes it back to the door of the old man’s house. And the Levite opens the door in the morning and he finds the woman on the floor and tells her to get up..... WHAT A GUY

when the woman doesn’t answer he realizes that she is dead, he puts her on his donkey and makes his way home.

once home he cuts up the woman into 12 pieces and he sends a piece of the woman to each of the 12 tribes of Israel, this was intended to bring shock and to show the level of wickedness that the Benjamites had gotten to .

That is the hope as we studied this today , that it would have caused you to be shocked but to consider your own life, and to see the areas of your own life that you’ve been rejecting God’s authority and to speak up..... or to make a stand of surrender to God....