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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
JUDGES 20
(Reading: Romans 12:1-21; Judges 19)
When Man Does Rule
Church of our Lord Jesus Christ…
We have here another fascinating passage from Judges.
And perhaps you’ve read it already.
Chapter 19 last week baited your breath.
You just had to see what happened after that terrible tale.
It shocked us, didn’t it?
To think that such evil could come into the Old Testament Church!
So reading a little into chapter 20 would have settled us a little.
There we saw the Israelites getting together to deal with this crime.
Justice would be done!
Or would it?
It’s not quite as simple as it seems.
Actually, we would have noted that the way of right had a rough ride.
Even when it was finally done, it all seemed rather heavy-handed!
Let’s hear, then, of what the Lord is telling us here.
And, firstly, though it’s technically right, yet there was something wrong.
For what comes out of the verses 1 till 25 is really the attitude, WE’RE GOING TO GET THEM!
This is the first aspect to our sermon.
And didn’t we feel the same?
Imagine having one of your family - a young woman - raped and brutally murdered like that!
The most terribly sexual abuse and violent death!
It should make us sick each time we hear or read of it!
If it ever came close to any of us, as maybe some of us have experienced, then what an anger there is within!
And doesn’t it really boil when they’ve got away with it!
You’ve been violated!
You’ve been hurt!
On that basic emotional reaction everyone feels for the victim.
Don’t opinion polls consistently call for harsher penalties for these crimes?
So we’re not surprised that our chapter begins, “Then all the people of Israel came out, from Dan to Beersheba, including the land of Gilead, and the congregation assembled as one man to the LORD at Mizpah.”
And they’re ready for action!
Verse 2 goes on, “And the chiefs of all the people, of all the tribes of Israel, presented themselves in the assembly of the people of God, 400,000 men on foot that drew the sword.”
Here’s no protesting crowd of a few thousand from a population of several million.
This is everyone!
Everyone except, sadly, the Benjamites.
But the other eleven tribes are there.
There - before the Lord.
It’s a huge church service!
What an attendance!
Yet, what was it that brought them all there? “Why, isn’t it always this way with such a special situation?”
“Doesn’t our church become the focal place during a time of disaster?”
Some of us will remember the tremendous church attendances during World War 2.
Now, though, don’t you wonder where they’ve all gone?
Because they don’t go to church anymore.
In fact, as soon as the war was over they didn’t see the inside of a church anymore.
You see, congregation, the outside looks alright.
But the inside’s absolutely rotten!
And that’s exactly how it is to God!
Oh, the people go through the format of worship.
They use priests as they should.
And the Lord does tell them what to do.
Yet their hearts are far from true worship.
They aren’t there to serve the covenant God.
For what they’re really there for is revenge!
WE’RE GOING TO GET THEM!
Then, of course, they were going to say, as verse 8 records, “None of us will go to his tent, and none of us will return to his house.”
We’re all in!
You better believe it, bud!
We’re going to take care of this one!
It seemed the best of intentions.
The law in Deuteronomy must be followed.
Doesn’t it state there in chapter 22 verse 22, “If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife … the man … must die.
“You must purge this evil from Israel.”
So the reply of the Benjaminites simply confirmed their self-righteousness.
In this way the stage was set quite clearly.
And that those Benjaminites banded together to defend that vile city of Gibeah showed how straight-forward it would all be!
For what was their tiny force of 26,000 against our huge army of 400,000!
In thinking so much about revenge, though, the Israelites had really forgotten themselves!
Yes, they went through the motions.
But, underneath, they didn’t remember!
In fact, they had failed the true test for doing what the Lord wanted them to do.
This is what the Lord Jesus spoke of in Mark 7.
There, in the verses 20 till 23, he says, “What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean’.
For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly.
“All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean’.”
As much as the Israelites looked like they were doing the right thing on the outside, they missed what really mattered on the inside.
There wasn’t a heart of faith.
And the Lord knows our souls.
He examines our minds.
And he will reward a man according to his behaviour.
The question is for us, too, congregation.
Are you keeping in step with the Spirit?
Is the fruit of Christ filling up your life?
You see, something else had been filling up this Old Testament church!
This guilt of Gibeah hadn’t occurred in a vacuum.
And rather than so quickly condemning those Benjaminites - as we also do to other believers - there had to be, first of all, the dedication of ourselves to the Lord.
For dear believer, if we presume the Lord to be on our side, he won’t be!
Then we become like the Pharisees who assumed that they had such a standing before God that they could act as God!
Doing this only puts us under the Lord’s judgment.
Then we need dealing with, before we can be ready to take the speck out of our brother’s eye.
And the Lord will do that!
He certainly did it to these self-confident Israelites!
Far from wiping out the Benjamite army in one decisive battle, which, considering the vast difference in army size, should have logically happened, the Israelites were roundly defeated.
And not just once.
Twice!
Forty thousand soldiers cut down in two days!
Well, the Benjaminites were quite determined.
They had a band of seven hundred specialists - an ancient Commando force.
All left-handed and the most accurate marksmen.
And they were desperate.
They fought hard.
Using their intricate knowledge of the territory, they killed nearly double their own number with just two battles!
But, still, it shouldn’t have happened like this.
‘So what is happening?’ we might well wonder.
‘Didn’t the side in the right also have all the might?’
It took a while, and two severe setbacks, before the Israelites saw the light.
For they had been in darkness.
They had shut themselves from the Lord.
But their covenant God was crying out!
“Wait!”
“Be still!”
“Consider who I am!”
Those Israelites had to see THE LORD WILL PUNISH THEM.
This is the second aspect to this chapter.
You see, the great “I AM WHO I AM” demanded their very souls.
He who had led them victoriously through the wilderness and into the Promised Land, commanded they be his.
Completely!
And so in verse 26 we read, “Then all the people of Israel, the whole army, went up to Bethel and wept.”
Now, it seems much the same as before the first two battles.
Then too they had gone up before the Lord at his special place in Bethel.
Yet, note congregation, what it is all the people are doing here.
You see, this verse goes on.
It also tells us that “They sat there before the LORD and fasted that day until evening, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the LORD.”
Here’s a drastic change!
They fasted!
And this showed their recognition of the Lord’s grace had gone missing.
For they thought they had had it in themselves.
But where were they without the Lord’s favour?
And that despite the huge size and strength of their army!
God’s people are humbled.
They are reduced to seeing what they really are!
And that amounts to nothing - absolutely nothing!
Now the LORD could use them!
It certainly is a strange way to deal with us.
The Lord takes away our self-esteem, and swaps it for other-esteem!
Yes, that’s right!
Our motivation becomes other-oriented.
Naturally this begins with our Saviour God.
As it was the Lord who had brought them out of captivity into this marvellous wealth of the Promised Land, so that’s realised now.
It’s old news but now it’s also the good news!
Congregation, there’s this drawing in of what we’re not.
Because that’s becoming more Christ-like.
That’s the covenant community being open to the Lord’s leading!
Deuteronomy 8:16 gives one example of this from their past.
As Moses reminded the people about their Lord, “He gave you manna to eat in the desert, something your father’s had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.”
So there’s been a change in the people in our text.
While before they had that thought WE’RE GOING TO GET THEM, now it’s quite different.
For they are humbled to realise THE LORD WILL PUNISH THEM!
And some acknowledgement it is, too!
Because we don’t like to admit we can’t do it.
But until we do we cannot expect true blessing.
The Israelites show us that well.
In the verses 26 till 47 it’s clear what our humbling under the Lord does.
Dear friend, has that touched you?
Have your eyes been opened to the blessing of the Lord?
Is the covenant God busy in your life?
Notice verse 29.
Immediately after the Lord’s response, and not how this time it’s quite specific, there’s a creative cleverness at work.
“So Israel set men in ambush around Gibeah”, it says.
Suddenly the Lord’s people are alive to his possibilities.
Rather than fall into the same old sinful traps, their God turns it around.
No longer is there this blinding and foolish rage of men.
Or, for the matter, the casual ease with which we somehow expected it all to fall into our laps!
In fact, as our Saviour God has so pre-planned his love for us in Christ Jesus, so we are carefully considering all around us as well.
It may seem I stretch this point into some type of health-and-wealth message.
You know, as though, instantly, everything goes just right for us.
Actually, it’s quite the opposite!
We’re being led into a way quite different to human success.
Just as God’s love so graciously poured out upon that curse of the Cross, and became a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, so we have received the mystery of faith!
Mind you, it makes us very uncomfortable.
To know now that freedom is really being on the Lord’s pathway doesn’t come easily to we who were so used to believing that the wide highway of the world gave us freedom!
For instance, many in our society might think that sexual freedom consists of having as many partners as you like.
That’s being liberated, they say.
But aside from the venereal and other diseases, what does that lifestyle teach us about the value of commitment?
How are those qualities which produce good relationships, and result in healthy families, shown in one-night stands?
They simply aren’t!
And they cannot be!
To be truly free is to be without guilt, and causing no harm!
And that can only be found in the One who has cleansed each spot, blemish, and stain from those he calls his own.
It was in this divine empowering that the children of Israel went out the third time.
Congregation, let that also be the spirit in us, as we live his life all the time!
Then it doesn’t surprise us to see the way victory came to Israel.
Indeed, this battle was only a slight foretaste of the mighty triumph Jesus would have over all the hosts of evil!
But, then, it happens again!
Just as it seemed the church was so closely reflecting her Master above, there comes the crippling embrace of what is below!
It’s only the one verse.
Yet it’s the saddest way to end what could have been the most promising chapter!
For verse 48 says, “And the men of Israel turned back against the people of Benjamin and struck them with the edge of the sword, men and beasts and all that they found.
“And all the towns they found they set on fire.”
Here was no sense of being the Lord’s agents.
And no way was this a reflection of the disciplining love of the LORD.
For the Israelites turned away from pursuing the rest of the warriors to attacking the unarmed and defenceless.
The very sin for which they had taken up this cause - the murder of a helpless woman - they now did themselves!
And what a massacre!
It was so terrible!
The sin should have been dealt with - not the sinner!
They shouldn’t have been doing to their fellow countrymen what they should have done long ago to the Canaanites who had cause all this rot!
How the Lord’s people had fallen!
They had come right back to that wrong attitude this chapter began with.
Except that this time it wasn’t WE’RE GOING TO GET THEM but WE REALLY DID THEM.
This is our third part to this twentieth chapter of Judges.
The attitude has turned right around again.
This time it is WE REALLY DID THEM!
Naturally we ask, “Couldn’t they trust God?”
“Didn’t they know his Word - the Word where the Lord specifically says in Deuteronomy 32 verse 35, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay.’”
That’s what we also read of in Romans 12:19.
Having tasted the goodness of grace they spat it out!
How that would have hurt the heart of their Father above!
That the blessing he poured out so richly and fully in his Son, and used by these ones in the offerings and vows which so looked forward to the promise of this One, was despised!
It vividly sets the scene for when the Saviour would come himself.
The people whom he loved to the utmost degree would scorn him to his face.
As they had shown throughout so much of covenantal history.
And, yet, are we of the New Covenant any better?
Having realised the fullness in the light of Christ what was only a shadow in the Old Testament, is the blessing becoming that much richer in us?
Haven’t we damaged the sinner, even in these past seven days?
How much were we creatively caring for others by separating the sin from the sinner?
Didn’t you slash out?
Didn’t you psychologically cripple and maim your dear brother or sister - whether related physically or spiritually?
WE REALLY DID THEM!
Now, what was that worth?
Proverbs 16, verse 32, makes the point well.
It says, “Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper that one who takes a city.”
Our covenant God cries out!
“Wait!”
“Be still!”
“Think about who I am!”
He who has bought us with his own life-blood demands that we be his own.
Totally!
And he, no less than his direct Word to the Israelites, tells us also today.
For don’t we, even more, have his Word?
Isn’t this, his own dear Son, right with us, in faith?
So I lay this plea before you now - don’t burn your Bible!
Well, you might be thinking, that’s a strange thing to say now.
Of course we’re not going to go out and physically put our Bible in a fire.
Yet, congregation, that’s exactly what we do spiritually each time we take the Lord’s judgment into our own hands.
Then we say we’re good enough to decide.
The same “good intentions” which led to some of the cruellest dictatorships man has even known, can also trap us, too.
You see, that’s when we believe in ourselves!
Then WE REALLY DID THEM!
And what good’s a Saviour then?
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
Lord God, again we’ve had this warning from the Scriptures.
We’ve seen how fickle your people have been in the past.
How quickly we change against you.
And all because we want to do it our way.
For your Way couldn’t be clearer.
And with the coming of your Son we know what you have done for us.
Still, we are no better than the Israelites of old.
The first chance we get and we go our own way - again!
Please Lord, humble us.
Keep us looking up.
And so don’t let us look down on anyone.
Through Christ our Lord, we pray.
Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2021, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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