A Damaged People (Part C)

I don't know, does it seem like to you there are less and less people moved by the Gospel? There are just less and less people even interested? I don't know, 20 years ago you could get somebody to dialogue with you about Christ.

It seems so difficult, more than I remember. You reap what you sow, whether as an individual or as a nation. Fortunately, there are a lot of righteous people in this land resisting the darkness that is trying to engulf it entirely. 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 conclude his study called, A Damaged People, as he teaches in Judges chapter 21. 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 crimes and no one can say anything because it's inflammatory. You can be immoral as you want, 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, verse 12, 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 on 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, you know, had other means. But anyway, that's the easiest one to believe from Josephus. It's would be nice if you had footnotes like that in the Bible. You didn't have to spend two, three hours digging for that stuff like that. You know, one commentator can make a comment and I hope, 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's like 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. I had 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, 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 show 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 Jabesh Gilead and maybe we should, well anyway, 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 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. And that's, how does Yahweh, 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 in 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 and they will be worse. And so, verse 18, however, we cannot give them wives from our daughters for the children of Israel have sworn an oath saying, cursed be the ones who gives a wife to Benjamin. So the snow will talk about we have taken an oath, and we're going to keep our oath in front of everybody for appearances. But what is really happening here is that they made the oath so that they could circumvent the oath, which is what they're doing right now. They're finding a sneaky way around their own oath to get what they want.

And that is how sinister the deceitful heart is, desperately wicked above all things. Who can know it? I, the Lord, test the mind. The Lord knows.

He tests the heart. So these leaders devise a scheme where they could technically keep the terms of the oath. So they're not going to their daughters and saying, here, I'm giving you to a Benjamite for a husband, to be a wife, he'll be your husband. They can't do that.

So how, what to do, what to do, what to do? This is hypocritical, righteous fiction. That's what we're looking at. It's not righteousness. And the Jews as a people, unfortunately, many of them became very skillful in the passing years. Christ had to deal with it.

Paul had to deal with it. In this hypocrisy, this righteous fiction, this finding a way, there's an old saying, if the rabbi says no, we'll just find another rabbi who can make it happen. Christians do it too. There's nothing we can really charge the Jews with that we don't do too, because sinners are sinners.

And we better not lose sight of that. Well, of course, Jesus had to meet with these very things in his day and the scribes and the Pharisees and all the other experts who knew how to keep the letter of the law while trampling the spirit of the law at the same time, which is exactly what we're reading right in this 21st chapter. Surely there is a way to not be bound by integrity while appearing to retain integrity. And they reasoned that directly giving their daughters to the Benjamites would violate their oath. So they created a condition to sidestep the oath and it will worsen matters. Verse 19, then they said, in fact, there is a yearly feast of Yahweh in Shiloh, which is north of Bethel on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem and south to Lebanon.

Yeah, well, we're not too interested in that part right now, but someone has come up with a good idea. And there are others that are agreeing with this idea, this clever way to sidestep the oath without consequence, they think. Verse 20, therefore, they instructed the children of Benjamin saying, go lie in wait in the vineyards and watch. And just when the daughters of Shiloh come out to perform their dances, then come out from the vineyards and every man catch a wife for himself from the daughters of Shiloh, then go to the land of Benjamin.

Well, they learned this tactic. Now what's happening, the virgin daughters would come out at Shiloh, the men of Shiloh who are part of this team. They're not part of the leadership, the elders, but they're part of the people under these elders. They don't know this plan is being hatched on their daughters. They're just up in Shiloh doing what they do. And the leaders are behind closed tents and they're saying, look, the daughters are going to come out. They have this festival every year and they do this dance and we want the men to just jump out and take himself a wife.

Now they learned this tactic from a local biker gang that's just up the road in Shechem. They said, you know, what we, how do you get your wife? Well, they come out to dance, we take them. This is why we don't allow the women to dance interpretively in church. We're afraid, we're shielding you.

Lonely man may grab you and run out the building and then, well, you know, we can't have that all every week. So the tribes weren't violating their oath because they were not giving their girls as brides. They're playing with words. They were having their brides kidnapped in a situation they created.

It's the goofiest thing. It is a direct, indirect plan. And they must have said it's going to work like, just watch how this works. It didn't work for them, but it was wrong before God. And again, it's not little because these things issued in the period of judges. That is one of the big parts is to know the word to when you get to these latter chapters and you find Phinehas the priest is ministering during this time. Well, he lived in the days of Aaron and Moses and Joshua, so we know where this is happening. This is taking place early in the book of Judges. And it's this kind of behavior that led the people to worship false gods and to live as they lived and bring the judgment upon themselves that we had to just trek through this entire book. So what we have is a better understanding how things got to be so bad. I mean, what happened with Samson? What was that?

To be so gifted and to end up so flat on his face. None of the judges brought spiritual improvement. They saved the people from, you know, hardship and oppression. They would have to wait for Samuel and David before they got real spiritual leadership. It's so bad that when we get to the first chapter of Samuel, we read about Eli and his sons for the first four chapters and how awful things were under their spiritual leadership and what his sons were doing with the women at the temple of God. And so spiritual effects are nice preaching. I got to tell you, as long as they don't, you know, get too close.

Better than special effects. Verse 22, then it shall be when their fathers or their brothers come to us to complain that we will say to them, be kind to them for our sakes because we did not take a wife for any of them in the war for it is not as though you have given the women to them at this time making yourselves guilty of your oath. What a bunch of nonsense. Be nice to your son-outlaw because that's what these Benjamites were. And it's not like you're breaking your oath because they're kidnapped.

We planned it this way. So none of us have broken our oaths. It's like the little child that, you know, you say don't touch the knob and the child takes its doll's hand and touches the knob. I'm not touching it.

The doll's touching it. And this is the kind of craziness that adults do in churches. And Christians get offended when someone stands up and says this isn't right. They can't do this.

Nepotism and other things begin to creep in. Verse 23, and the children of Benjamin did so. They took enough wives.

How stupid is that? They took enough wives. It's not like you go to the market to get fruit. You know, I got enough nectarines.

Let's go. And the children of Benjamin did so. They took enough wives for their number from those who danced and they caught.

Then they went and returned to their inheritance and they rebuilt their cities and dwelt in them. So how'd you two meet? Now, eight years ago I did this study in Judges and I just couldn't hold it. It was just so crazy. All of a sudden you get these pictures, but I've matured evidently. And I'm not losing it. I'm just, it's not, it's old news now. Anyway, I don't think they did this dance after that anymore. I think they just said, you know what? We're going to just do something else.

I mean, who'd risk it after a stunt like this? Could you imagine the girls that escape these men? What? Come home screaming, what is it? What is it? We're dancing and twirling and these men come out of the vineyard.

Okay. Verse 24, so the children of Israel departed from there at the time, every man to his tribe and family. They went out of there, every man to his inheritance.

So let's just summarize what's been going on. Again, the Benjamites surround the house where the religious man was with a man that was from another tribe entertaining him. They wanted to violate the man. The host, as did Lot, offered the virgin daughters, which that alone, even in that culture was particularly heinous because virginity was viewed as something very honorable. And of course, he throws the unnamed concubine out to the wolves.

They kill her. And after that comes the carnage, the destruction, and the kidnapping, all because of a band of criminals and a Levite's ungodly response. So the tribe of Benjamin was then punished. The citizens of Gibeah, they were wiped out, slaughtered except for 400 of the girls. The tribal leaders found a way to boast that they did not violate their oath when they were lying when they did it.

If they did, say it to anyone. The 600 men got their brides. The 11 tribes felt that they kept their vow to not give their brides. And the 12 tribes were saved. And then the 600, with their new caught brides, they cleaned up the debris of their towns and repaired their cities and started life over again. And when they started that life over again, they plunged into idolatry. And then would come the Ammonites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Philistines, and everybody else that needed to strip from them whatever they could take.

Too bad, again, about the heartache created in the lives of tens of thousand war victims and their loved ones. Verse 25, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

It actually reads without the translators helping us out. In those days, no king in Israel. Everyone did right in his own eyes. It does alter the meaning a little bit.

Everybody was content with whatever it is that they did. They would justify it some kind of way. We're living in a, I don't know, does it seem like to you there are less and less people moved by the gospel? There are just less and less people even interested. I don't know, 20 years ago, you could get somebody to dialogue with you about Christ.

It seems so difficult, more than I remember. You reap what you sow, whether as an individual or as a nation. Fortunately, there are a lot of righteous people in this land resisting the darkness that is trying to engulf it entirely. Well, where it says in verse 25, in those days, that is the period after Joshua that I've been mentioning throughout. It's held up as a stark contrast, is it not, to, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord versus as for me and my house, we'll do what's right the way we think it's right in our own eyes. Deuteronomy 12, 8, there in the law, you shall not, you shall not at all do as we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes.

I mean, it's just patent. It's clear in the scripture. This is not what God wanted. And what we learn and hopefully share is that deep passions that are deep in our heart for Christ line up with him as quickly as hopefully instantly.

We don't disagree with him ever. We may struggle to obey, but we don't disagree. And the deepest passion of Christ is not the glory of man. It's the glory of God. But in saving men from their sins, God gets the glory. In helping humans, God is glorified. If, in the work of Christ, of course, is what I'm talking, I'm talking about humanitarian aid or something like that. I am saying that the most important thing in the heart of Christ was to do the will of his father.

He would say that often. And in doing that and doing the will of his father, he saved men to the glory of his father and to the benefit of people. And this is what Christianity is. And Christianity is not understood that way by a great many folks who are resisting what they don't even know who they're resisting. They may repeat something they picked up about Christ and it's a false Christ.

And they are going to hell over bad information and we're supposed to bring the light because we are the light of the world. No king in Israel. And again, while the judges did the work that God sent them to do, they did not bring the spiritual leadership. Samuel will really bring that and David, you know, David pumped so much spiritual, so many spiritual blessings into the nation through his Psalms alone.

It's unmatched. He took those men that came out to follow him in the caves and out in the wilderness and he taught them righteousness, just the way he lived. The songs he would sing around the campfires.

What an influence and an encouragement. Today, there's no king in Israel because the nation chose Barabbas. They did not choose Jesus Christ. And he says here also everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Well, because they did not fear God. And while we look at the anarchy around us today, thereby it's committed by people who don't fear God. They have no care about what happens and they die or how they live. And they do what they feel is right because God has not believed on God's terms. And just like their father the devil, they don't know this, some of them.

Some of them have heard the clear gospel and reject it and hopefully those who preach the gospel, there are some that are praying for them because the fight goes on. So this book is, it is depressing if you look at it at face value. If you just, you know, if you're looking for a pick-me-up, you don't send someone to judges.

Feeling bad about yourself? Why don't you go read judges? I mean, you'd send them to maybe Philippians or Thessalonians.

If you want to excite them, you send them to Acts. If you want to confuse them to Revelation because they're going to be happy at the end and not know why. So we know why. It's because we know the victory is ours even though we don't understand so many details, which is a good rebuke for those who say, well, I don't read the Bible because I don't understand it. Well, I read Revelation.

I don't understand all of it, but I know it's true and I'm, yeah, it's quite powerful. Well, anyway, we come to the end of this book and glad in the way that we read it because of the lessons and God says, I've recorded these lessons. I don't want you to miss them. I want you to learn from them. I want you to understand that they are vital and without heeding the lessons from the scripture, you become damaged. These were a damaged people that we just read in these last four chapters of the book because they chose not to follow the Lord.

May it not be so with us ever. 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.