A Damaged People (Part B)

The New Testament teaches that we want you who are spiritual to restore such a one, but not at the cost of obedience. You cannot restore, bring back into the flock those who will refuse to tell the truth about their ways and agree with God.

And that's what we're getting here with these 600 and that's what the leaders are missing. Whenever people are more merciful than God, you have a problem. 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. Today Pastor Rick will continue in Judges chapter 21 with his study called A Damaged People. Verse 3, it said, O Yahweh God of Israel, why has this come to pass in Israel that today there should be one tribe missing in Israel? Cough, cough, you took the oath. You're the ones that created this situation. There's 600 of them still held out and of course they're concerned at how they're going to get wives for them to continue the tribe. It's just not the whole story.

That's another problem we're going to come across. So they made a spiritual effort and what they ended up with because they didn't wait for God was a bizarre plan that caused more suffering, more bloodshed, more tears. We've covered spiritual derangement as we've been going through Judges. This is just a damage to people. And remember this is early in the book of Judges. This is the appendix. The writer goes back to the days right after Joshua and that's about the time that these events are taking place.

It actually sets the stage for the judges to come along and that was not as smooth as we would have liked it. So they go to the house of God. They call out to him but they don't appear to wait for him and the reason why we can say that because there's no recorded answer from God. There's no thus says the Lord. They just go to him, they cry, they pray and they build an altar and they sacrifice and then they come up with these goofy plans and they are goofy by any culture standard. Well maybe not any culture.

There's some pretty goofy ones out there. Verse 4, so it was on the next morning that the people rose early and built an altar there and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. Well here's why some of the commentators will say well they're at Bethel and that's why they built the altar there probably before the Ark of the Covenant. But the scripture was forbade random altars. It had to be at God's place which was Shiloh where the tabernacle was and as I mentioned when we get to verse 12 we'll find them centered at Shiloh.

I think what is going on is that the altar of Moses was in a state of disrepair, was not able to handle the volume of sacrifices and so at Shiloh they erected auxiliary altars which is would not have been a problem but to go to high places to offer make offerings that would have been a problem. Either anyway verse 5, the children of Israel said who is there among all the tribes of Israel who did not come up with the assembly to Yahweh for they had made a great oath concerning anyone who had not come to Yahweh at Mizpah saying he shall surely be put to death. Well these guys are just full of oaths. So the first ones we're not giving our wives to the Benjamites that survive and the second oath was in any of the tribes that don't answer the call to war we are going to deal with them also.

They're going to put them to death. Time stamps are good here because Barak and Deborah are going to be confronted with a very identical situation and so will Gideon in a lesser way be confronted with this and neither of those judges will make a mess of things like these group of leaders here. The generation that came out of the wilderness with Joshua and Ahniel, the first judge, they're all gone.

Maybe now's a good time to take that. Judges chapter 2 verse 7, so the people served Yahweh all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua who had seen all the great works of Yahweh which he had done for Israel. So they served the Lord in the days of Joshua but after Joshua things began to and the generation that came out with Joshua but after that verse 11, then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of Yahweh and served the Baals and there begins the book of Judges. Up to this point in the book of Judges it's sort of been you know the preface to the book with you know what was taking place still in Joshua's leadership and those under his leadership and now beginning in midway in chapter 2, we have this in the period of the judges which ends with chapter 16 and Samson and then the writer then goes back at chapter 17 through 21 and say well let me also tell you about something that happened and that's where we get these two ugly stories from. So coming back now to Judges chapter 21, they make this next vow that they're going to put to death those who don't come to war verse 6 now.

Well pause for a minute. They felt if they did not put a death penalty on not showing up for the war that a lot of tribes would not have come and they would have been understaffed. I'm not saying they were wrong for doing that but how they go about executing this is way out of bounds. Verse 6 now, and the children of Israel grieved for Benjamin their brother and said one tribe is cut off from Israel today. So here we have patriotism and compassion and regret and those are all under these circumstances virtuous. There's still not enough and that's what we've been coming across in the book of Judges. It's not enough to be right.

That was last week. You have to be close to God also and here in this chapter it's not enough to be sincere, not enough to be compassionate. You have to still be plugged into the Lord, abiding in Christ. For us Christians in the New Testament, they were to abide with Yahweh. Samuel told Saul the king, it's better to obey than sacrifice. Keep your religion, give me obedience. Or you keep your ritual of religion is the idea. And so because they were not listening to the Lord or waiting long enough for him, human logic prevailed.

That's what we're going to get. Human logic with religious attire. Verse 7, what shall we do for wives for those who remain seeing we have sworn to Yahweh that we will not give them daughters as wives. Now you think of this.

You thought of that before you made the oath, right? But there's a big problem. Leniency shown to the criminal, misplaced leniency often means cruelty to the victim. I mean these guys created, the perverted men of Gibeah, how many other crimes did they commit and didn't get caught? But this one that came out, they created tens of thousands of deaths and sorrows and families and now at the end when you've got them with, well you know these guys all that's left. The danger of becoming too mild is what they fell for and in so doing again the innocent were indirectly punished. How would you like to have lost you know your father or brother or a husband on the battlefield because of these Benjamites just to find out that the survivors are going to be rewarded and still never repent of the terrible sins.

This is not cruelty. Yes, Jabesh is going to be the group that does not show up. They're guilty of not coming to the battlefield and they needed to be disciplined but not like what's going on and then like Benjamin get away with this, at least 600 of them. So they're going to slaughter those at Jabesh Gilead because it's going to suit their purposes better it seems like that's how the whole story goes.

But continuing here in verse seven, these surviving members of Benjamin are held out and we're told in verse 47, chapter 20 in verse 47, we're told that it was a four-month deal and these 600 soldiers stranded here at the rock of Rimmon were impenitent. You cannot restore in a righteous environment a person who is not repenting, who is impenitent. They've got to own their sin and if they do not do that, there's nothing more you can do. I mean when we say to a couple, look we're trying to uphold the sanctity of marriage. You can't just as Christians live together and not be married and then come into the fellowship.

That's blatant disobedience. We're not hating on you, we're not saying we don't like you, we're just saying we have to disfellowship you because you can't fix this. And we'll do whatever we can to help you. Go get the marriage license on, you know, we'll marry you right away. Or perform the service of course, that would be polygamy.

Just getting you warmed up a little bit for Sunday because I'm thinking that's what it takes. Anyway, again, how many families suffered because of the 600 and the other 26,000 other Benjamites that are now dead because of their impenitent ways? And so the elders, they're just overlooking this. Well, it's time to restore them now.

Okay, it's fine you want to restore them, then bring them to Shiloh. Have them confess their sins. John the Baptist stressed this with the first message of John the Baptist was to repent. Then Jesus, who enters into ministry, public ministry while John is still in public ministry, picks up John's message.

He doesn't start off, come out with his own message yet. He's going to develop that, Christ is. But he preaches John's message. And by doing this he says, I'm not usurping the authority of John that I've given him. Well, repentance is the first word of the Gospel. And it's demonstrated of course by water baptism. Paul, from dealing with that church at Corinth that had good people but a lot of troublemakers, he writes to them in his second letter about another visit he paid to them and they didn't clean up their act.

And he's, you know, he wants this fixed. He says, Les, when I come again my God will humble me among you and I shall mourn for many who have sinned before and have not repented of the uncleanest fornication and lewdness which they have practiced. The New Testament wants, it teaches that we want you who are spiritual restore such a one but not at the cost of obedience. You don't, you cannot restore, bring back into the flock those who will refuse to tell the truth about their ways and agree with God. And that's what we're getting here with these 600 and that's what the leaders are missing. Whenever people are more merciful than God, you have a problem.

And we need to make sure that we can do this with love and firmness. And let the chips fall where they may. Verse 8, and they said, what one is there from the tribes of Israel who did not come up to Mizpah to the Lord. That's Yahweh, his covenant name. And in fact, no one had come to the camp from Jabesh Gilead to the assembly. For when the people, verse 9, were counted, indeed not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead was there.

So, they take a roll call who didn't show up. The people of Jabesh Gilead, they did not come and so now the elders have found their sacrifice. Again, the church does not deal with sin by sweeping it under the rug.

But that's not what's going on here. They are going to kill more of their own people after the Civil War. When Deborah and Barak were faced with tribes that didn't show up to the battlefield, Manasseh, Gad, half of the tribe of Manasseh, Gad, Reuben, and a portion of Neftali, Barak's not Barak, Barak's own tribe, they did not go to kill them, go to war with them. They wrote about them, they put it into the records and they rebuked them and the Lord rebuked them, but they did not amass an army and go wipe them out. When Gideon was chasing after the enemies of God's people and he arrived at one Jewish town and he asked for provisions, they told him, no, we're not going to help you.

You might lose this and we're going to be stuck. And Gideon said, well, I'm going to deal with you after I put these kings down. And Gideon does. He comes back and he scourges them. I mean, he probably killed some of them, but he did not do the whole village, just the leaders.

Those events happened again chronologically after this event here in chapter 21. Maybe they learned their lesson, but the fact remains, this was overkill. Verse 10, so the congregation sent out their 12,000 of the most valiant men and commanded them saying, go strike the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, including the women and the children. This is un-instructed zeal.

Hey, I got a good idea. Let's go deal with those who have not come to the war and let's take the virgins from those people and we'll give them to the Benjamites, and this way that tribe can continue. It's not easy to find out how the events unfolded, but in the end, that's the picture. Paul dealt with this.

He made a great comment about this kind of behavior, just a very short sentence. Speaking of the Jews, he says, for I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. It's their own zeal. It's not matching what we know from God's word. That's what Paul was saying and that's what they crucified Christ, their own Messiah.

And they would make statements, search and see if any prophet has come from Nazareth and there were. So these are the problems that belong to not doing the hard work that is required to try to find out what God is actually saying. So covering one's stupidity with a greater one is not the way to go. It continues here in verse 10, with the edge of the sword, including the women and children. Again, this is unjustifiable. This is heartless, this is slaughter. These are their own people. Why don't they go do this to the Philistines and the Canaanites? Not sound execution of military justice at all.

So they didn't come to the battlefield. Find the leaders, the ones that made the decisions, do your research and investigation and then execute your punishments, but this is not right. This is shameful, but it served their purposes. And we see why the book of Judges then becomes the book of Judges, as depressing as it is, because these are the men that issued the generation into the coming chapters.

It was excessive. And I think again, Deborah and Barak and Gideon, I think they knew the story and when it was their turn to in a similar situations, they did not do this. It is true that during these days reprisals and vengeance was the law of the lands. That is no excuse. Would they have done this if the Benjamites had 600 wives already?

Would they still have done this? It's impossible to tell, but it shouldn't even be a question, and it is. It's not inflammatory to identify the guilty. Of course, that's what this demonic liberalism is all about the times we live in. Don't you dare point out the people that are committing the crimes. It's inflammatory speech to tell the truth.

It's actually the other way around. Paul talks about that in Romans. He says they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It's not honorable to do that. It's not only dishonorable, it's harmful because you then, how convenient.

You can commit, you know, crimes and no one can say anything because it's inflammatory. You can be immoral as you want and destroy a whole generation, but that's okay. Well, we disagree. We disagree, and it's okay to tell. In fact, it is our duty to tell the people of the world, if they engage us in conversation, it is our duty to say we disagree with you and we side with God.

We want you to like it, and if you don't, tough, but we're not going to change what we believe, and if you persecute us, we'll be persecuted. Well, that's for another story because then you get into whole civil laws and stuff like that. But anyway, verse 11. And this is the thing that you shall do.

You shall utterly destroy every male and every woman who has known a man intimately. So they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man intimately, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. Well, there's that Shiloh reference in verse 12 I mentioned earlier.

So see, it suited the solution. Spare the virgins. Josephus tells us that the virgin girls had a certain attire, garb. I think it was longer sleeves in their clothing or one of their tunics. And so that would have made them more easy to identify.

We find that mentioned about the daughters of King David, the virgin daughters of the king in Second Samuel, they had a special tunics made for them. And so that would have helped identify who not to kill in the heat of battle, or they took them captive and just had other means. But anyway, that's the easiest one to believe from Josephus. It would be nice if you had footnotes like that in the Bible and you didn't have to spend two, three hours digging for that, stuff like that. You know, one commentator can make a comment and they go, great, how am I going to verify this?

This would be really nice if I could verify it. And many times you just can't find it. It just sounds like he just went off on this one.

Other times, you've got to cut through so many ancient writings and stuff. It's, oh man, I still got to do the commentary. No comment, just no comment for this. Well, where are we? Okay, verse 13. Here they are now going with their, in this case, they're putting their tribe, their community, their families ahead of God, human logic, because if you follow God, you will always put everybody, it would be better for everybody by following God. But human logic goes the other way.

It gets to a point where it thinks it can do better. Verse 13, then the whole congregation sent word to the children of Benjamin, who were at the rock of Rimmon and announced peace to them. These are the 600 holdouts that have not repented and yet they're announcing peace with them. So Benjamin came back at that time and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh Gilead and yet had found not, had not found enough of them. So the restoration without repentance brings big trouble and their compromise does not solve the problem.

They're still, they still come up short. At no point is there any indication that they figure any of this out. At no point is, you know what, we, okay, we shouldn't have made the oath about the Benjamites and yeah, we maybe shouldn't have made the oath about killing, you know, whoever didn't shows up to battle, but that one's going to work for us. But they never come out and say, you know, maybe we shouldn't have wiped out our own people in, in Jabesh Gilead and maybe we should just, let's go on with the goofy story. Verse 15, and the people grieved for Benjamin because Yahweh had made a void in the tribes of Israel. Now the historian is writing what the, the sentiment of the people at the time. Blaming God is always a step in the wrong direction.

It is so easy to do and you get nowhere with it except you have a feeling of guilt for doing it when you come back to your senses. That's, how does Yahweh, how is, what did he do wrong? By commanding men not to be perverted as they were? To not murder? Anyway, verse 16, then the elders of the congregation said, what shall we do for wives for those who remain since the women of Benjamin have been destroyed?

Verse 17, and they said there must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin that the tribe may not be destroyed from Israel. So now what we're going to get is the end justifies the means, which is a worldly thought. It is human logic. It is not God's.

God forbids it. Paul talks about it. Romans 3 verse 8 and why not say let us do evil that good may come?

It's rhetorical. Of course, Paul is saying we don't do that. We're charged with doing these things. We don't do it that way. We do good that good may come. We do not do evil that good may come because good does not come from doing evil. You may not suffer the consequences instantly, but you will.

They will be worse. 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, Pennsylvania. 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.