Christian Atheism, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. When you take God out of the equation, the strong inevitably begin to oppress the weak. We who are in positions of strength ought constantly to make sure that justice is not being skewed toward the strong because that happens inevitably and very easily, and we ought to empathize with those around us who have not enjoyed the same positions of strength throughout history that we have. Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. Today we've come to the final message in our series on the book of Judges titled Broken Saviors. And if you missed any part, you can hear all the previous messages and access this month's book, Honest Questions, Quick Answers, when you visit jdgreer.com. Today we're looking at the collection of stories from Judges chapter 17 to 21. These are accounts that reveal the tragic outcome when a society turns its back on God's leading. Ever wonder what Christian atheism looks like?

Well, we'll get a clear picture today. So grab your Bible and let's join pastor J.D. The next several stories are going to show you what happens when you redefine God and when you try to use God. They show you what life looks like on a cultural scale and on an individual scale when God is absent. I'm going to try to summarize them as best I can and move through them, but you're going to have to hang on.

You ready? Chapter 19, verse 1, now another priest took a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah, but she was unfaithful to him and she left him and went back to her mom and dad's home in Bethlehem. So he goes and tries to convince her dad to make her come back with him since he purchased her fair and square. And so make a long story short, he convinces her dad to let her come back and he puts her on his donkey and starts the journey back up to where he lives. Well, as they're traveling, they get near this town called Gibeah in the tribe of Benjamin.

And when they stop there to spend the night, they go out into the city square, but nobody took him in for the night, which is kind of rude. Finally, an old guy shows up and he says, verse 20, you're welcome at my house, the old man said, but whatever you do, do not spend the night in the city square. Well, they're settling in for the night when suddenly, verse 22, some of the wicked men of the city surround the house, pounding on the door, they shout to the old man who owns the house, bring out the man who came to your house so that we can have sex with him. Well, the old man and the priest now scared, offer up the concubine and say, why don't you take her?

Leave us alone, you can have her, rape her instead. Verse 25, so the Levite took his concubine and sent her outside of them and they raped her throughout the night. At daybreak, the woman went back to the house where her master was staying and she fell down with her hands outstretched on the threshold of the door and she lay there until daylight. When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine falling in the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold.

Then he said to her, get up, let's go, but there was no answer. So when the man put her on her donkey and set out for home, verse 29, when he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine limb by limb into 12 parts and sent them into all the different areas of Israel. Verse 20, then all Israel from Dan to Beersheba came together as one and assembled before the Lord in a place called Mizpah. And they said to the priest, the Levite, tell us how this awful thing happened. So the Levite explains the story conveniently leaving out the part where he sent his concubine out to get raped to save his own skin. Well, the story provokes moral outrage, verse 11, so the Israelites get together and unite as one against the city and they amass an army of 400,000 soldiers to go march against the Benjamites and they demand that the Benjamites surrender the men of the city who did this thing, but the leaders of Benjamin won't do it. So this massive fight breaks out and at first the armies of Benjamin are winning. Verse 26, so all the Israelites, the whole army goes up to Bethel where they sit weeping before the Lord and the Lord responds to them, go again for tomorrow I will give them into your hands.

And God did, it was a route. Verse 48, the men of Israel put all the towns of Benjamin to the sword, killing the animals and everything else they found. They didn't leave a single thing alive. Only 600 Benjamites escape and they're all male soldiers. They flee and they go hide in some caves in the mountains. Chapter 21, the Israelites, knowing that these 600 have escaped, take a vow. They say not one of us will give his daughter in marriage to a Benjamite if these guys ever emerge.

Well, a few months go by, tempers cool, these 600 Benjamites come out from hiding. And they say look, all of our wives and our daughters are all dead and we're a bunch of guys and so we have nobody to marry and have kids and continue on the lineage of our tribe. Well, now they're in a pickle because all the Israelites have made this vow that nobody can ever marry a Benjamite.

But now that they've cooled down, they don't want this tribe to go extinct because it's part of their heritage. So verse two, the people go up to Bethel again where they sit before God until evening weeping bitterly. Lord God of Israel, they cried, why has this happened to us? Why should one tribe be missing from Israel today? As if it's God's fault. What are you going to do, God?

Why did you let this happen? Well, they, not God, they come up with a plan. Verse eight, they say, well, okay, was there any tribe of Israel that when we sent out the summons to go to war, was there any tribe that didn't show up? And they figured out there was this one region called Jabesh Gilead that didn't send anybody to the war council.

All right, so here's what they do. Verse 10, so they sent 12,000 of their best warriors to Jabesh Gilead, who didn't send any representatives, with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. This is what you are to do, kill every male and every woman who is not a virgin. So they do that, but they keep alive 400 virgin girls to serve as wives for these Benjamites.

But that's not enough, there's still 200 short. So verse 20, they tell the men of Benjamin, there's this other region in Israel where they have a tradition where every fall they come out before the harvest and they do this ritual dance, but they don't bring the men with them. So why don't you go hide in the woods and when these women, verse 21, when you see the young women come out for their dances, well then rush out from the vineyards and each one of you can take home one of them to the land of Benjamin to be your wife.

We call that kidnapping. And so they do that and then the book of Judges just ends. Verse 25, in those days Israel had no king, everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

That's the last verse. When God is absent, when somebody lives like an atheist, atheism always results in two things, always. The strong oppress the weak and despair. What runs through these last chapters is a horrific callousness toward the weak.

Israel is mercilessly oppressive toward weaker tribes and weaker groups like Israelite women. The most profound achievement of the American constitution was to ground our rights not in democracy, not in the will of the majority, but in God's created order. We are endowed by our creator, they said, with inalienable rights. They are inalienable because they don't come from the majority, they come from God. And the majority didn't bestow them, the majority can't take them away. So they're not subject to the whims of the majority.

That's why I think it was Ben Franklin who said democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. The liberty is the lamb having grounds before God on which to contest the vote. So when a guy like Martin Luther King comes along, he could say that the American majority was wrong in how it treated black men and women. Even though it was the law of the land and the will of the majority, it violated, he said, a higher law, the law of the creator. If Martin Luther King had only had the will of the people to appeal to, he would have had no leg to stand on.

He said, there is a higher law that gives inalienable rights and no majority, no matter how strong can ever take them away because they didn't give them in the first place, it was the law of the creator. When a society or a person dismisses God, the strong inevitably will begin to oppress the weak. So let's ask this question, who are the weak among us today? For many years in our country, it was people of different races. For a large part of our history, the African, the Native American, the Hispanic was subject to a different standard of justice than the majority was. Even today, though the laws themselves have been corrected, we who are in positions of strength ought constantly to make sure that justice is not being skewed toward the strong because that happens inevitably and very easily.

And we ought to empathize with those around us who have not enjoyed the same positions of strength throughout history that we have. I read an article recently on the Gospel Coalition site, caught my attention because it was written by a guy named Isaac Adams. The reason it caught my attention is because Isaac Adams came to faith in Christ on the fourth row sitting right there. He was an African-American Chapel Hill University student, came to faith in Christ in our church.

He hung over from being drunk the night before, got saved the next Sunday morning here in our church. He was writing on the anniversary of the death of Eric Garner. He was not trying to pass judgment on the merits of the case. He was just trying to urge his white brothers and sisters in Christ to at least put themselves in the place of their black brothers and sisters and try to see some of these situations through their eyes. He says, and I quote, imagine being white and every cop who surrounds you is black. The cops pulling up in their car to your once peaceful scene, well, they're black too. You're the only guy in this situation who is white. One of the cops just descends on you. Then two of them, then three of them begin to pin you down. He says, imagine this happening to you.

You wouldn't think twice about whether race were a factor. Imagine them saying, I can't breathe. I can't breathe.

Only to have your face further pressed into the unforgiving sidewalk. And now imagine all of this in the context of having seen the slaying of 12 year old Tamir Rice and the brutal murder of 14 year old Emmett Till and the memories of situations like Rodney King or the lynchings that took place throughout history. Might you be even just a little weary of the police?

Maybe a little discouraged? Now he is not saying that the police are bad. He is not saying that police are even guilty in each of those situations. He's not in a place to judge that. And he knows that. And he supports the due processes of law. He just wants those of us in the majority culture to consider things from the viewpoint of somebody who has not walked in our shoes and speak up for them the way that we would want someone to speak up for us or our children. Why? Why do we think that?

Because all people, black, white, brown, or whatever color are created in God's image and are given the same inalienable rights and ought to be subject to the same due processes of law of anybody else and ought to be treated like such. You're listening to the final message in our series called Broken Saviors here on Summit Life. I wanted to quickly remind you that today is the final day to get our latest resource. Just like in the book of Judges, our new book also covers some strange but brutally honest topics. We have created a second volume of honest questions, quick answers. This new book is full of new questions and answers from Pastor JD like, what is an idol?

And is it okay to ask God for success? We'd like to encourage you to reserve your copy today by calling 866-335-5220 or visit us online at JDGrier.com. Thanks for being with us today. Now let's return for the conclusion of our teaching series.

Once again, here's Pastor JD. Here is another group, the fatherless in our country. One in every three kids in the United States is growing up in a single parent home.

In most cases, it's the absence of a dad. In Durham County alone, 20,000 kids will never know what it's like to have the love of a father. Foster kids, many of them are in the foster care. There are 716 children in foster care in Wake County alone.

It's up 200 from last year. Many of them bounce from one house to another, constantly feeling like nobody wants them or loves them. Every year, hundreds of them age out of the system where 99% of the time they say they end up on the streets. Do they not deserve the love of a parent? Are they not created in the image of God just like your kids are?

Would you not want your kids to know that kind of love? Are these kids invisible to us? Have we felt their pain? Have we treated them like people made in the image of God like us and our children? The homeless.

Tonight in Durham and Wake County, these 333 children will go to bed homeless. Recovering prisoners. I read a study recently talking about how one of the primary predictors of whether somebody goes back into crime when they're released, primary predictor is whether they have healthy relationships with people on the outside. But 40% of prisoners in Durham and Wake County have no one, not a single person, come visit them a single time when they're in prison.

Not family, not friends, not somebody from church. How about the unborn? The revelation that Planned Parenthood traffics the body parts of aborted babies ought to make us ask a very uncomfortable question. What does it say about us as a society that we have a use for aborted human organs, but not a use for the baby that provides them?

Let me press this a little farther because I know this is controversial. You know, in one sense, Planned Parenthood's logic makes sense. They maintain that the unborn is not human.

Just a piece of tissue, it's like a piece of hamburger. If that's true, then nobody should have any problem destroying it or selling it. A woman does have a right to her body, and if she wants to remove part of her body and sell it, that's on her. What does not make sense is when somebody says, you know, the unborn is a human being, but a woman still ought to have the right to kill it.

But selling it, no, no, that's barbaric. Listen, if the unborn is not human, then no justification for abortion, no justification for selling body parts is really necessary. If the unborn is a human being, then no justification could we ever give would be adequate.

Are children in the womb human beings made in the image of God? If so, then how could we ever be okay with a human being being killed simply for our convenience? And if you say, well, I don't know if it's really human life. Well, then what kind of life is it?

Both science and logic demand that it's a human organism. It's human life. It is life. In Wake County alone, there are 23 abortions every single day, and we need to be brokenhearted about it. And we need to be righteously angry, and we need to do something.

Why? Because every human created in the image of God has the same right to dignity and respect and love as any of the rest of us. What we cannot do is be silent. And I should see in the face of every aborted unborn child, the face of my own children, because no children that are killed in the womb are not any different than my own children. They're both made in the image of God. If there is no God, we do not need to be worried about anybody's pain but our own. But if there is a God, then we recognize that each person created in the image of God is worthy of respect and dignity and ought to be loved. We believers, we Christians ought to speak up for anybody in the position of weakness. That's how you can measure whether or not we understand God and the gospel. Let me switch gears for a minute.

High school students, do you speak up for those who are being picked on in the lunchroom? There are few times you are more like God than when you stand up for someone who is being oppressed. And there are few times that you anger God like when you participate in or sit silent during the bullying of somebody else.

Let me give one more. Christians for us, we know that there are millions of people in the world who've never heard the name of Jesus. Each one of these people is made in the image of God, just like you and me. They know what it's like to feel pain. They know what it's like to feel lonely.

They know what it's like to be afraid. For them going to hell would be every bit the tragedy that it is would be for you or me, for our kids. And so now it's when we talk about people around the world that have no access to the gospel, we kind of just put it into the category of statistic.

Oh, 2.2 billion people have never heard the name of Jesus. Joseph Stalin, who I typically don't quote during sermons, but Joseph Stalin said, the death of one is a tragedy. The death of a million is just a statistic.

This is not a statistic. These are people made in the image of God. And what that means is that we ought to love them the way we want somebody to love us because their eternal suffering will be no different than if it was for us or our children. I realize that each of you cannot be involved in all of these ministries, but one thing is true of people who really believe in God and really understand the gospel is that they give themselves away for the week. It is the sign that you have met God.

You can't be involved in all of them, but you should be involved in some of them. Here's the last thing here. When God is absent, we live with despair. When God is absent, we live with despair. As I noted, this book ends with a note of desperation. It tells these horrific stories and the author kind of puts his hands up and then just says, in those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

It was so appealing at the beginning, was it not? You're watching the story of Mike and you're like, oh, look, he gets to make his own God just like he wants. And this God guarantees that his life is going to go good and he's going to be blessed. And then it always ends in darkness. I get to define God as I want him to be.

He becomes my lucky rabbit's foot, but it ends with hell on earth. But see, that's where the story takes a turn. The book of Judges does not exist by itself in the Bible. In fact, listen, there is another book in the Bible that is written in parallel with the last chapters of the book of Judges. You may not know this, but there's another book, comes right after Judges, that actually overlaps with Judges.

When chapter 17 begins, so does this book. And that book is called the book of Ruth. Ironically enough, Ruth is a woman who's not even an Israelite and she's a widow.

When you're a non-Israelite widow in Israel, that's about as low on the totem pole as you can get. But unlike the Jewish heroes of faith, unlike Samson, she's going to trust God in the face of impossible odds. And though she is weak and though she is poor, her book ends with this verse, Ruth 4 21.

Remember, Judges ends with there's no king and everybody's doing what's right in his own eyes. Ruth ends this way. And Boaz, who married Ruth, through her father to a guy named Obed, and Obed father to a guy named Jesse, and Jesse father to a guy named David. And David one day would have a son who would have a son, who would have a son, who would have a son, who would have a son, whose name would be Jesus. You see these books written in parallel show you that where the strength of Israel fails, God would save through one considered weak, like Ruth.

One who was an outcast, like Ruth. The king that Israel did not have, but clearly needed would come, not as one who was strong like Samson, not as one who would force people to obey like Samson did, he would come as one who was weak like Ruth, who would be an outcast like Ruth, who would not force people to obey, but he would change their hearts so that they wanted to obey. His death would be a horrible gruesome thing, a distorted perversion of justice, just like we see here in the last chapters of the book of Judges. You see though these chapters in Judges are dark and they are gruesome, they are not the darkest and most gruesome chapters in the Bible. The most gruesome, perverted, distorted, dark chapters of the Bible are about the crucifixion of Jesus. The Roman historian Cicero said that when the Romans crucified somebody, their goal, their goal was to send a message that would make somebody terrified of the thought of ever, ever rebelling against Rome.

So they come up with a way of torture that they thought was sufficient. They would beat a man before they crucified him. With the cat of nine tails that would basically rip the flesh off of their abdomen and their back, Cicero the historian says it was not uncommon during the beating to see a rib go flying off of a man's frame during the scourging. They say that Jesus was almost surely at least partially disemboweled after the beating. The prophet Isaiah said that he was beaten to a point that he didn't even look like a man, he was unrecognizable. He would have had to know who he was to tell that it was Jesus. They would choose a public place to crucify because they wanted to humiliate them.

They would strip them naked and it was so painful that men would weep and vomit and urinate all over themselves, all the while the Jewish leaders patting themselves on the back saying we're doing justice, we're doing God's work. Why? Why are those chapters so dark and bloody and gruesome?

Because he's going into Judges 17 to 21, that's why. Dark is the stain I cannot hide. What can avail to wash it away?

Look, there is flow in a crimson tide brighter than snow you can be today. The reason the cross was so bloody was because our sin was so bad. And the price that Jesus paid for our sin had to be equal to or greater than the wickedness of our sin. And the price that Jesus paid for our sin. So yes, dark was the stain that I cannot hide.

What can avail to wash it away? Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that can pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all of our sin. You see, his death not only pays for our sin, it transforms us. And to be in the kind of people who begin to obey because we love, not because we have to, but because we want to.

It is his love and his gift for us that makes us into the graceful, he always wanted us to be. You saw this played out recently in one of these horrific stories when Dylann Roof went into Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina and killed nine African-Americans there. You remember some of you that at Roof's hearing, at his arraignment, when they brought him in, several of the families stood up and said to him, you took something from us that we can never get back. But Jesus has forgiven us and we forgive you. What gives somebody the power to do that? It's not a general sense of morality.

It's not even really a belief that God exists. The only thing that compels that is a belief that in your moment of weakness, when you deserve the condemnation of judges 17 to 21, he took it for you. He became weak for you so that you could live. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will part in and cleanse within. Grace that is greater than all of our sin. Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe. You who are longing to see his face, will you this moment, his grace receive. Do you know the true savior or are you trusting in your own broken version?

No matter where you're at spiritually, you can come to the true king today and surrender your life. You're listening to Summit Life, our Bible teacher, Pastor J.D. Greer, titled Today's Message, Christian Atheism. You can hear this program or any of our programs again by going to jdgreer.com. J.D., the resource that we're offering this month is actually inspired by another project of yours, right?

Your Ask Me Anything podcast? Yeah, Ask Me Anything was an attempt to recreate what happens when I'm on college campuses or when I'm sitting in my office and somebody asks me a question. That's not a time where I can, you know, lay out a full-on hour-long theology. I've just got to be able to answer somebody's question that they're struggling with. Sometimes it's an objection to belief. Sometimes it's a difficulty in the Christian life.

And so we just called it Honest Questions, Quick Answers. I think this is an important part of my ministry. I think it's an important part of every Christian's ministry to be able to answer the questions and remove the objections that people have toward belief and be able to instruct other Christians on how to live out the Christian life. Honest Questions, Quick Answers Volume 2 tackles some tough questions from listeners like you, such as, can you lose your salvation?

Or how can I trust Christians when so many are hypocritical? And the answers are short and concise, quick and accessible answers to facilitate friendly conversation. And if you missed Volume 1 a couple of years ago, we've printed a new edition of that as well. Today is your final opportunity to reserve your copy when you give a financial gift of $35 or more.

Call 866-335-5220 or give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. And guess what? Tomorrow Pastor J.D. Greer begins a new teaching series called Christ is Better. You'll want to dig deep into the book of Hebrews with us starting Friday right here on Summit Life. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.