A Hard Victory (Part A)

It's always motivating to see a united stand against evil, and it is going to be as motivating to see them remain united in the face of defeat.

But they had a duty to perform, and they are ready for it as best as they can be, and they appear to be disciplined troops, which is a mark of the leadership, a positive mark on the leadership that they are under. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Judges.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick in Judges chapter 20 as he begins a brand new message called, A Hard Victory. Judges chapter 20, a hard victory is before us that a lot of lessons though, and a lot of information.

I won't comment too much as I like to do on the battle scenes because there's so much information elsewhere. I don't want to use up my time there, but the perversity that was in this town of Gibeah is now going to cost the nation heavily. A lot of bloodshed is going to take place in this chapter, and it took carnage and courage together to purge the land of this entrenched evil. It was deeply embedded in Benjamin, not only the sexual perversity but the arrogance and the total resistance to being corrected, just a tribe that had gone rogue and almost wiped them out completely if it were not for the restraint showed by the other tribes.

But they had no alternative. The other tribes that came against Gibeah for the heinous crime they committed, as we read in chapter 19, left them with no alternative because of their impenitent spirit. And one of the lessons out of this chapter is that in resisting evil, things can go violent and be very fierce, not just one episode of violence but a very intense experience. Paul warned us of these things, so did, of course, so many other places in scripture, but one that stands out that is a very appropriate preface to this chapter is Paul's comment on spiritual wickedness because that was behind all of this, the bloodshed, the madness, spiritual wickedness. Ephesians 6, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual host of wickedness in heavenly places, spiritual places, and that is showing up in the lives of these combatants from Benjamin's tribe.

Not only, again, were they violent, they were obnoxious. Wickedness just grabbed hold of them and the lessons are here for us. So we look now at verse 1. So 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 Yahweh at Mizpah. Well, you remember that last chapter concluded with that grotesque dismembering of the Levites' concubine and then he sent pieces throughout the tribes to rally them to war.

Well, it served its purpose. It's interesting or it's good to see that even the Transjordan tribes, the two and a half tribes on the east side of the Jordan, they also gathered here against this. Remember, this is the early days of the book of Judges of Israel's time in the Promised Land. Phineas, who is the grandson of Aaron, who served with Moses and Joshua, he's the high priest so he's still alive and at that time stamp that this is early in their history in the Promised Land.

You would expect to find this in the back end of the book after Samson, you know, everything just fell apart and no, that's not the case. Well, here the nation is stirred to action. A great moral passion has flamed out but a great wicked passion has reared its head to meet it head on.

There's a lesson for us. If you're going to do righteous things in this life, if you're going to stand up for your faith, if you're going to attack that which is wrong, you can end up with a fierce opponent. It is not a trivial or a light matter and we're going to see a tribe that was, you cannot account for why this tribe, Benjamin, doubled down against righteousness.

You just can't, not just early in their history. Except spiritual wickedness, just like the times we live in. What's in back of the madness that we're looking at these days? It's Satan, the spiritual.

You have no way to deny these things and call yourself a child of the Lord and a student of scripture. It is very, very clear. Well, these things in Israel and these things today in the church, they're not random. There is an antagonist and he has many assistants and they are determined to do harm. They hate human beings. They will never change. Their doom is sealed but until execution of sentences is administered, we've got to deal with this but it's worth it. One of the lessons we're going to get out of this is in the face of defeat, we have no reason to not get back in it until we get the victory. Now here in verse one where it says all the children of Israel from Dan to Bathsheba, all of the leaders, these are the men of war, all the leaders of the people have come together for this.

They have understood how awful this is and that it has to be met head on. It's sad to see churches look the other way in the face of blatant sin and that will ruin a congregation, it will ruin the church. God cannot bless that church if they turn their back on blatant and obnoxious sin, staring down righteousness as these Benjamites were doing.

They would not receive correction. I'll get to that if you don't know the story. Well, it also says here in verse one, the congregation gathered together as one man before the Lord and that's certainly a positive that God is in this. Now you would think, you would think, okay, they went to the Lord at Shiloh and they sought him.

Now he's going to bless them and they're doing a good thing. They're fighting wickedness and they're just, this should be smooth sailing. Being right is not enough to dislodge such evil as this. It's not enough to be right. You've got to also be close and that's one of the big lessons out of this chapter.

I enjoy being right, but it's not enough. We've got to walk with the Lord. The Ark of the Covenant may be shuttled back and forth from Shiloh to the battlefield.

Can't tell for sure. We know that will be in their future history. This mention of Mizpah, there are six of them in the Old Testament mentioned. This one is near Gibeah where the crime was committed, the murder of the concubine and all of the other perversity that went along with it.

This Mizpah is only four miles or so from it and about 15 from Shiloh. So not on, I say that because later we're going to see the elders going to the house of the Lord in Shiloh so that they can get the victory. Mizpah's assembly ground throughout the Old Testament even into the Maccabean era. Well anyway, verse two, 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.

So the artist came with them, those who could draw the sword. So this is a big force, 400,000 men. That's almost half a million troops, a serious show of force, but their combat skills are questionable. How many of these men have seen combat with Joshua? Well, we'd like to think a lot, but the way this story unfolds, you get a suspicion that some of these guys were inexperienced because things do not go well in the first two battles.

They go horribly wrong. These 400,000, that would, that's about a 15 to 1 match up with Benjamin's 20 some thousand, 25 thousand, 26, we'll get to the number in a little bit. You would think this would be an easy victory, and it's not. And of course this would not be all the men of war in Israel. They would leave, they had probably had about 600,000 men for war and they would leave the home guard in the various tribes.

They would not leave their people unattended. In verse three now, now the children of Benjamin heard that the children of Israel had gone up to Mizpah. Then the children of Israel said, tell us how did this wicked deed happen? Okay, so they want, they're launching their investigation, the inquiry. They need scriptural justification.

They're pretty sure they've got it, else they wouldn't have brought all these troops with them, but they want to go over this again. And of course the Old Testament has full support for their action. Probably Deuteronomy 13 is where the largest justification from scripture would come for them. Benjamin's crimes were not only heinous but numerous. In verse four, so the Levite, the husband of the woman who was murdered, answered and said, my concubine and I went into Gibeah, which belongs to Benjamin to spend the night. And the men of Gibeah, verse five, rose against me and surrounded the house at night because of me. They intended to kill me, but instead they ravished my concubine so that she died.

Well, I'm going through this as though you're up on what we talked about last session. The concubine also in some cases was also a secondary wife, and that's why he refers to his wife and concubine. This guy of course is a despicable person, this Levite. There's nothing redeeming about him, but he leaves out a critical part of the story that he threw her to the wolves rather than stand up or face them himself.

And I don't think it was right and I don't think anybody else does either. In Genesis 49, Jacob had prophesied about his son Benjamin's descendants. He said, Benjamin is a ravenous wolf. In the morning, he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.

And we are watching Benjamin behave as a ravenous wolf. In verse six now, so I took hold of my concubine, cut her in pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of the inheritance of Israel because they committed lewdness and outrage in Israel. Well, there's no love mentioned in this story, just this grotesque act to seek justice. It is a selective indignation.

He's really seems like to me more upset that he has been personally offended. He doesn't even name her. She's dehumanized in the story. And it is, again, he is one of the most despicable characters in the scripture.

There are some that match this, maybe go a little further, but he's in there. He continues in this sixth verse, because they committed lewdness and outrage in Israel. Well, what did he commit? By tossing her out the door and then stepping out the next morning and saying, get up.

Just cold. The Hebrew word there for lewdness denotes a severe sin, a vile sin that would meet with capital punishment. And evidenced by the nation's response is dismembering her and sending her throughout the tribes. Well, we're adults and this is what the word teaches here and we can't skip around this. But it is repulsive to us now, it should be, and it was revolting as much to them in that day or else again they would not have gathered like this. The social breakdown is spiritual. It's a sin matter and we must not lose sight of that. In the midst of the days we live in, we are still to be those who seek love, those who stay close to the Lord, and those who keep our faith strong. If these tribes had ignored this sin, then the sin would have engulfed the nation and there would be no Jewish people to produce the Messiah. And of course that wasn't going to happen and we're watching what it costs to fight against this blitz by Satan to destroy the nation. If one entire tribe could be so infested with sin, where would this go if someone doesn't do something? Verse 7, he's still speaking to Levite, Look, all of you are children of Israel.

Give your advice and counsel here and now. The strong voice, he's just, you know, indignant. We've got to do something and that's true. That part is true, but I think he should have went down with the ship. Could you imagine if you were a captain? Okay, he was captain on your ship and it was sinking.

You'd hear something over the announcement contrary to popular belief about women and children first. We do it differently here. That's me, your captain. Well, we just saw that a few years ago in Italy.

The captain got off the ship, the ship is sinking and he's saying, I'm going for help. It's true, he's in jail right now. That's the same guy, maybe descended.

I don't know. Verse 8, so all the people arose as one man saying, none of us will go to his tent nor will any turn back to his house. Well, it's true sometimes, such horrific news, some atrocity like this comes down the road and it makes ordinary sin seem to not matter so much.

This is so bad. When, when's the last time that I guess we can really say we've seen something like this? My first guess would be the Holocaust. I mean, everybody was just, are you kidding me? Well, not everybody.

There's always that percentage, but most normal, sensible, professional people would be just greatly alarmed to arms to do something about this. Verse 9, but now this is the thing which we will do to Gibeah. Again, Gibeah is where the crime was committed.

We will go up against it by lot. Now, in verse 8, where they make the pledge, none of us will go to his tent, they don't know the horror that's coming. They don't know how much it's going to cost them. They think they've got 400,000 troops. Gibeah's got less than 30,000. This should not really be that difficult.

They are wrong. That's a, there's lessons for us. Whatever spiritual endeavor we take on, we better be ready and ready in a sense of things going wrong, not as planned. So here, it's war. Verse 10, we will take 10 men out of every 100 throughout all the tribes of Israel, 100 out of every 1,000, 1,000 out of every 10,000, to make provisions for the people that when they come to Gibeah and Benjamin, they may repay all the vileness that they have done in Israel.

This is a combat supply or quartermaster corps. This signals to us that these guys had, they knew war. The leaders, not necessarily to all the troops, but the leaders knew, hey, we need logistics.

We've got to have, you know, water and swords and supplies going to the front. And that's not, if you take that verse out, it would have lost a lot faster. And that also means that this is how war was done. And when we read about war in the earlier chapters and the later chapters of the Old Testament, we know that there were those that knew how to general war, martial war.

So it just keeps it real to us. Verse 20, so all the men of Israel were gathered against the city, united together as one man. Again, perhaps using Deuteronomy 13, verses 12 through 15, to have the scriptural grounds for this. It's always motivating to see a united stand against evil. And it is going to be as motivating to see them remain united in the face of defeat. But they had a duty to perform and they are ready for it as best as they can be. And they appear to be disciplined troops, which is a mark of the leadership, a positive mark on the leadership that they are under. Verse 12, then the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin saying, what is this wickedness that has occurred among you?

So they are, again, trying to, diligently trying to make sure that they're justified when they go at these offenders. Verse 13, now therefore deliver up the men, the perverted men who are in Gibeah, that we may put them to death and remove the evil from Israel. But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brethren and the children of Israel. Arrogance, the child of depravity or a child of depravity, they refused to budge. They flat out said, no, we know about the crime.

We're not going to deal with it and you're not going to deal with it. So there you go. All they had to do was hand over the criminals. They knew who they were. In not handing them over, they honored the vileness to the death. They went to their deaths, all but 600 of them defending sickness.

We see it today. The advocates of the deplorable. These men are deplorable and they're advocating this wickedness and those who are determined to execute justice, to rid them of, rid themselves, the land of this evil.

Again, they had no idea what, how fiercely violent the opposition was going to be. Verse 14, instead the children of Benjamin gathered together from their cities to Gibeah to go to battle against the children of Israel. So they put family before God. They put their tribe, their people, their team, something was before God. Well, that had already been the case in their lives as individuals and just like leaven spread throughout Benjamin.

So they doubled down. Their solidarity is perverted. It is not admirable. Luke chapter 14 verse 26, the church needs to read this from time to time because it's so easy to stumble here. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also he cannot be my disciple. Of course, that's not the hatred. Jesus is not promoting hatred. He's making a contrast. He says, compared to the love you have for me, all other loves would be hatred. And it is, I was watching a children's show and one of the characters said I love him so much that compared to me you hate him.

And it was ha ha funny. Of course, if you know the scripture verse, you say, well, wait, that's the point. It's a contrast.

Not saying you have to hate the other person. It's, you know, you say, well, why would Jesus say it like that? I think it's an easy answer for that. So you never forget it. Because you hear it said like this, you don't forget it. It may nag you. It may gnaw on you to get to the bottom of it. Well, we just got to the bottom of it.

I hope, at least for me, I'm good. Well, anyway, here in verse 14, to go to battle against the children of Israel. Again, that Benjamin, they're willing to die defending their tribal unity, their tribal sovereignty.

How dare you come here and tell us? Well, I thought you were in this, you know, in this with the Lord too. Well, their sin affected all the land and they knew it. If we don't deal with Benjamin, God's going to deal with us.

It's going to be worse. Another New Testament verse that we know well, 1 Corinthians 5, the church that needed to hear this, I don't know how much they benefited from it. Your glorying is not good.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the lump? See, when Paul said that, it was a man in the church committing an egregious sin. And the church was yucking it up. Oh, we're showing grace. Yeah, get over it.

It's not that bad. And Paul said, are you crazy? Are you nuts? I'm telling you, I'm not even there and I'm telling you it's wrong. He said, do you not know? He said, your glorying, your thinking that you're showing grace is not good. And he says, that little leaven, if you don't fix that, it's going to take over your church.

And they did fix it. Verse 15, and from their cities at that time, the children of Benjamin numbered 26,000 men who drew the sword besides the inhabitants of Gibeah who numbered 700 select men. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the book of Judges. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. You'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app, or just follow the links at crossreferenceradio.com. That's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges, right here on Cross Reference Radio.