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Man, here we are in the final chapter of the book of Judges, and this is a wild chapter, just like the last several chapters have been. And hopefully you're understanding the pattern here. You're starting to get a grasp of the book of Judges, because I'm telling you, chapters like this are some of the most misunderstood chapters in the Bible, because people want to look at a story like this and figure out who's the good guy, who's the bad guy, and they think that just because things are happening in the Bible, that somehow those things are right, or that they're prescribed by God, or that they're condoned by God. What you need to understand about this chapter is that it is not people following God's will, it's not the children of Israel doing right in the sight of the Lord. The whole point of this part of the book of Judges is just to show how bad and how chaotic and how degenerate things have become in the nation of Israel at the end of the period of the Judges. Now, if you remember, Judges starts out with the children of Israel coming into the promised land and conquering, and then it's kind of this downward spiral till the end of the book, getting worse and worse and worse, till by the end of the book of Judges, we've got homos in Israel, and you've got an entire tribe being wiped out. You've got just total wickedness. Not only that, but we're in a special section in the book of Judges, because after the prologue of the book of Judges, you have this succession of Judges that culminates in Samson. But after chapter 16 with the story of Samson ending, you enter a new section in the book of Judges, chapters 17 through 21 are just all about this statement that occurs at the end of this chapter. Look at that last verse of chapter 21 again. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. That statement pops up in chapter 17, and it occurs throughout chapters 17 through 21. It reminds us of that every once in a while. The point that's being made in chapter 17 through 21 are just how people doing what's right in their own eyes is not sufficient. God's law has to be there. Godly leadership preaching that law, teaching that law, a government enforcing that law is necessary to have a righteous nation. And people doing what's right in their own eyes doesn't work. And it leads to all kinds of confusion and chaos and problems and judgments. And so this is a bad example. Chapter 17, bad example. 18, bad, 19, bad, 20, bad. Well, guess what 21 is? It's more bad. And that's why he brings up that verse at the very end so that you don't walk away thinking, oh, this is a good chapter about the right way to handle things. No, this is what people do. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying because when I say to you, you know, hey, this is not prescribed by God. This is not what God's telling us to do. God's not condoning of what they do in this chapter. I don't want you to think that this chapter is unprofitable unto us. You know, like, what do we need this chapter for then? It's just some wild story about what a bunch of people did. The purpose of this chapter is not to tell us how to live our lives or to tell us how to find a wife or whatever, you know, abducting wives or whatever. The point of this chapter is to show us some things about reality. So chapter 21, it doesn't show us how God wants us to live our lives. We find that elsewhere in scripture. But chapter 21 shows us some things about the reality of the world that we live in and the reality of what happens when you don't have strong leadership and the reality of what happens when you don't have people following the word of God. So it's still important that we learn this and study this. Unfortunately, these chapters, Judges 17 through 21, they're not really preached very often in most churches because they're difficult chapters and a lot of people struggle to grasp these. But I don't think they're hard chapters. Once you just get it through your head, everybody in these stories is wrong and virtually everything they do is wrong. Once you kind of figure that out, then it just makes perfect sense what God's trying to show us here, just bad examples. Now, and there are going to be shades of people who are kind of right and these people are kind of the good guys and these people are kind of the bad guys. That's the way life is. Life is filled with gray areas. Now, God's word is black and white. God's rules are black and white. There's right and there's wrong. But here's the thing. Right is black and white, but wrong has all kinds of shades of gray and people are varying degrees of being wrong. And so that's what we're seeing here. So let's jump into this chapter with that in mind. It says in verse 1 of chapter 21, Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpe saying, There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. And just a super quick review of what happened. Of course, there were a bunch of filthy sodomites, a bunch of homos in Judges Chapter 9 that committed an atrocity. And the Benjamites were harboring them. The Benjamites were tolerating them. They were protecting them. They were giving them a sanctuary. And the rest of Israel went to war against Benjamin saying, You need to give up these wicked men of Belial. You need to extradite these guys so that we can destroy them. We can have justice here. And they refused. So Israel won such a decisive victory at the end of Chapter 20 that they completely wiped out the tribe of Benjamin. And they didn't just wipe out the army. They wiped out the civilians. And again, this isn't right. This isn't what God would have had them to do. But it's what they did. They wiped out the Benjamites completely. I mean, civilians, everybody. The only people left from the tribe of Benjamin are just these men who had run up into the hills. Just a very small group, you know, 600 guys that escaped and went up into the hills. And that's it. OK. And they don't have any wives or children. So it kind of seems like a tribe has just gone from Israel. One tribe has been pretty much completely wiped out. And, you know, they're mourning about that. They don't like the fact that there's only 11 tribes when they want to have 12 because, you know, that's their heritage as Israel. Now, the first verse there, it says the men of Israel had sworn in Mitzvah. So when they declared war on Benjamin, they swore an oath at that time. There shall not any of us give his daughter unto Benjamin to wife. Now, a couple of things about this. First of all, making oaths is always a bad idea. OK. And in the New Testament, we're even told by Jesus, swear not at all. In the Old Testament, they were permitted to make oaths, but it was very serious to break an oath. They had to keep that oath no matter what. And so they're taking this very seriously. But the first mistake they made was making the oath in the first place. You don't have to make an oath like this to go to war with Benjamin. This was a foolish oath. And now it's put them in a weird situation where you've got these hundreds of single guys and everybody has sworn that they're not going to give a wife unto them. So what are these guys going to do and how is the tribe of Benjamin going to continue? Says in verse two, and the people came to the house of God and abode there till even before God and lift up their voices and wept sore and said, oh, Lord God of Israel, why has this come to pass in Israel that there should be today one tribe lacking in Israel? And it came to pass on the morrow that the people rose early and built there an altar and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the children of Israel said, who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation under the Lord? Now, here's the thing. When they were going to go to war with Benjamin, they all got together, right? They all assembled together and made a battle plan. And they went to war with Benjamin at that meeting where they got ready for the war. That's where they made this oath. We're not going to give any of our daughters to Benjamin. So now they're asking themselves the question, well, who wasn't there? Because if there were any towns or, you know, portions of the nation of Israel who didn't go to that meeting, then that means they didn't make the oath. And that means that they could give their daughters unto Benjamin as wives. So, you know, this is a solution that they're coming up with. And it says, for they had made a great oath concerning him that came not up to the Lord to Mizpah, saying he shall surely be put to death. Well, these people are making oaths all over the place. So number one, they made an oath that said, hey, you can't give your daughter to Benjamin to wife. And then they made another oath that said, if you don't show up and participate in this war against Benjamin and at least support us and at least send representatives from your town, at least someone from your town needs to be involved, you'll be put to death. OK, which is, again, not something that God would have had them do or prescribed, but it's the reality of what happened. So basically they're putting these two oaths together and saying, here's what we're going to do. We're going to find those turkeys that didn't show up for the battle and we're going to kill them. And then we're going to give the women to these men so that they have wives. And so that's what they do. It says the children of Israel repented them for Benjamin, verse six, their brother. That means that they, you know, changed their minds. They felt bad. They want Benjamin back on board and said, there's one tribe cut off from Israel this day. How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing we've sworn by the Lord that we will not give them of our daughters to wives? And they said, what one is there of the tribes of Israel that came not up to misbe to the Lord? And behold, there came none to the camp from Jabesh Gilead to the assembly, for the people were numbered. And behold, there was none of the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead there. And the congregation sent thither 12,000 men of valor and commanded them saying, go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead with the edge of the sword, with the women and the children. Again, not being prescribed by God, but this is what they did. Now this represents, as I said, reality. Let me explain to you some things about reality. Number one, things aren't always going to be fair. People aren't always going to do the right thing. And sometimes, you know, punishments might be too harsh or overboard. But let me say this. God is showing us some things about reality. Number one is that a society that tolerates sodomites gets destroyed. They get wiped out. You know, the Benjamites, they didn't do the sodomite actions. They were not the queers themselves. But they had brought them in and given them sanctuary. And they had tolerated them. And they all ended up getting destroyed as a result of tolerating that filthy death style. OK. That's number one. You tolerate sodomites in a society, you get destroyed. OK. Number two, you know, if you don't go to church, you get destroyed. OK. This is just life. Again, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying, you know, these are the consequences. You know, the Bible says in verse number five, and the children of Israel said, who is there among all the tribes of Israel that came not up with the congregation unto the Lord. Congregation, the word congregation in the Old Testament is literally the same word as in the New Testament church. Because whenever you see the New Testament quote the Old Testament, if it quotes a verse that says congregation, it'll do it as church in the New Testament. Same word. Because that's what church means. To us, you know, when we think of church, we just think of a Christian church. But the word church literally means a congregation or an assembly. OK. And so when we see here the congregation of the Lord in the Old Testament, the tabernacle of the congregation, that is symbolic or representative of church for us in the New Testament. So there's a consequence for not coming to church. Now, this is not to say, hey, if you don't come to church, we're going to punish you, or the government's going to punish you, or somebody's going to punish you. No one should go out and punish anyone for not going to church unless it's their own child. Obviously, you can punish your own children for not going to church and you can punish them for not brushing their teeth and not cleaning the room and whatever else. OK, but what this is saying, though, is the reality of the matter is that if you don't go to church, bad things are going to happen to you. You say, is that some kind of a threat or something? Yeah, I wouldn't want anything bad. I'm not saying I'm going to do it. But, you know, if you don't come to church, you know, bad things might happen to you. Well, guess what? Any time you disobey the Lord, bad things happen to you. Is anybody home? I mean, stop and think about it. You know, God said, if you love me, keep my suggestions. He said, if you love me, keep my commandments. Go if you were to Hebrews Chapter 10. Keep your finger here in Judges. Go to Hebrews Chapter 10. There's a consequence for not going to church. You know, you might just think, church isn't really that important. I'll just stay home and just, you know, go to the lake, ride my dirt bike, you know, have a picnic, sit around and watch sports. I don't need to go to church. We are the church, man. You know, but let me tell you something. There's a consequence for forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. What does the word of God say? Look at Hebrews Chapter number 10. It says in verse number 25, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more in 2021, because it says and so much the more as we see the day approaching, for if we sin willfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy with trodden underfoot the Son of God, and accounted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite under the spirit of grace. For we know him that hath said, vengeance belongeth unto me. I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, the Lord shall judge his people. Who's the Lord going to judge? Who's he going to judge? His people. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Listen, if you are a saved Christian, and you go out and forsake the assembly, forsake church, and start living a life of sin out there, let me tell you something, you will be sorely punished by God. And you will receive a sorer punishment than the type of punishments people received in the Old Testament for doing something similar. And when the Bible says here there were made of no more sacrifice for sins, you know, in the Old Testament, people would mess up, and then they'd bring an animal down, and they'd sacrifice that animal, and make things right with God that way. And it had nothing to do with salvation. Salvation has always been by calling upon the name of the Lord. It's always just been by faith and trust in the name of the Lord. But in the Old Testament, they had the system of sacrifices that we don't have in the New Testament. You know, you go out and sin, and disobey God, and forsake church, and do whatever other major sins, and pretty much, you don't, there's no animal to bring to fix that. You pretty much just wait for the bad things to happen. It's just a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. So you don't want to just take it lightly and say like, well, who cares if I go to church? It's not a big deal. I mean, God knows I love him. Well, he said, if you love me, keep my commandments. And the Bible says, whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourges every son whom he receiveth. He scourges every son whom he receiveth. Now look, what am I saying? I'm saying if you forsake the assembly, you get scourged. I mean, I don't see how anybody could disagree with that. I mean, this is what the Bible says. Every son gets scourged. Every son gets chastened. And if you're going to forsake the assembly, when God, I mean, look, it's right here in the Bible, not forsaking the assembly for, what does for mean in verse 26 there? What does the word for mean? It means because, am I right? And what part of speech is that? Somebody know grammar out there that can tell me what part of speech the word for is? Yell it out, oh grammarian. In other situations, who said conjunction? Who said that? All right, Trey, you get the award. For is a preposition other times, but in this case, it is acting as a conjunction. Okay, this is a conjunction. Remember conjunction, junction, all right? Look, a conjunction is connecting things, right? It's connecting what we just said to what we're about to say because, so don't forsake the assembly because if we sin willfully after that, we perceive the knowledge of the truth there and then on and on, all that stuff I read. So, you know, you can sit there and say, I don't think anything that we read, I don't think that had to do with forsaking the assembly. Well, you know, that word for there at the beginning of verse 26 has got to be connecting something and what did we just say in verse 25? Not to forsake the assembly. So it sounds to me like forsaking the assembly is kind of a big deal because it invokes all those verses of wrath. So we don't want to get on God's bad side. We don't want to anger him by forsaking the assembly and these people, what did they do? They forsook the assembly in Judges 21. And again, it's not that, you know, God is prescribing this punishment. It's just that bad stuff happens when you forsake the assembly. These people forsook the assembly in Judges 21 and what happened to them? They got wiped out because they forsook the assembly. Another way you could look at this in chapter 21 is that they're getting wiped out because they refused to fight the Lord's battles. They refused to take a stand against sin. They refused to stand up to the wickedness and so they ended up getting destroyed as well. Now a lot of people would look at this and say, you know, that's the Old Testament. God's different in the New Testament. You're right, God is different in the New Testament because in Hebrews 10 it says he'll punish you soarer than he would have in the Old Testament. And of course, God never changes but God's behavior is different in the New Testament than in the Old Testament because the Bible says unto whom much is given of him so much be required. So you're right, God in the New Testament is a little more strict than he was in the Old Testament. That's a fact. Anybody who says, oh, you know, Old Testament God, you know, the wrathful God is just somebody who doesn't know anything about the Bible. They might as well just say, I know nothing about the Bible. Let me confess my ignorance to you. The God of the Old Testament is the wrathful God. You haven't read the Bible because in the New Testament, Jesus is constantly comparing the Old Testament situation to the New Testament situation and everything's more strict in the New Testament. I mean, in the times of this ignorance, God winked at. But now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. You know, you've heard that it has been said, thou shalt not kill. But I say unto you, whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, you know. So it's all getting stricter in the New Testament. God is punishing more in the New Testament. And the most wrathful book in the Bible, hands down, bar none, there's no competition. Revelation is the most wrathful book. And it's solidly, squarely in the New Testament, isn't it? That's where the most carnage is happening. The most hell, fire and damnation. The most brimstone. More people are drinking blood in the Book of Revelation than they are in Exodus. And by the way, drinking blood when you're thirsty will cause you to die because of the fact that it has the salinity almost of salt water. It's almost like drinking ocean water. If you drink blood to quench your thirst. If you're ever dying of thirst, drinking blood is not the answer. This may save your life someday. I'm not kidding. If you're in a survival situation and you find some animal whose blood you can drink, if you drink blood, it will make you actually die sooner. Because it's like if you're out in the ocean and you drink ocean water, it's no good for you for survival. Okay, that was for free. That's not part of the sermon. But God has the same wrath in the New Testament as the Old Testament. Is there a difference between God and the New Testament and the Old Testament? Not in his character because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. But in his behavior, in his attitude, in the New Testament, you're going to see him being stricter because more is given, more is required in the New Testament than in the Old Testament. God really let people get away with a lot more in the Old Testament. If you actually know the Bible, you'd know that. You don't even need me to even emphasize that to you. But here's the thing, you know, in the Old Testament, God wiped out Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone from heaven. He destroyed it in Genesis 19. Then in the New Testament, he says in Jude, verse 7, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. He says that Sodom and Gomorrah are the example in the New Testament. They're the example. And what's interesting, we even have a historical example of this in the New Testament with Pompeii being destroyed in the first century AD. Juja, didn't you go to some kind of a museum and they had a Pompeii exhibit, but children couldn't go because it was too obscene? It was too filthy? It was like a warning label on that exhibit, am I right? Yeah, a portion of the Pompeii exhibit had a warning label, 18 and over, warning, it's obscene, because if you know anything about the city of Pompeii, this is a city that just had homo stuff everywhere, perverted images everywhere, all this garbage everywhere. And it was destroyed with fire and brimstone and it was after Christ. Now it's not recorded in scripture because, you know, obviously the Bible only gives us like example events, but there are other things that have happened in this world that aren't in scripture where God is still at work and doing stuff, right? I mean, if we wrote down everything Jesus did, the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. And so, you know, throughout history, God has acted in a human history. And let me tell you something. It's not a coincidence that one of the most perverted, faggoty cities in the history of mankind, Pompeii, was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. And let me tell you something, more of that is coming in the future. If you read the book of Revelation, oh, there's more coming. There are active volcanoes all over the world and there are major cities that are near active volcanoes all over the world. And so, you know, Portland and Seattle, they really ought to be minding their Ps and Qs. Okay. I mean, I wouldn't want to be them right now, you know, getting more and more sinful, more and more wicked, more and more filthy, you know, because you can look at the sites of some volcanoes and, and you check that out, do a little research on that and, you know, it's coming at some point. Okay. Okay. And, you know, what is a volcano but hellfire and brimstone? I mean, it's pretty much that, you know, when you think of hellfire and brimstone, probably the thing on this earth that you could look at that would probably, you know, indicate that to you the most would be like looking at a volcano, right? Like if you wanted to think of like a natural illustration of, of what you think of with the lake of fire and hell and obviously hell being in the heart of the earth, and then you think about this molten hot lava coming up from under the earth and that stuff can flow at incredible speeds because it's these clouds of, of, of burning ash that just, they, they move. I mean, the Pompeii citizens were like, some of them were like frozen in motion. Like they weren't even, they're like just living their life, you know, it's like they, they don't, they seem like they're just living a normal day and it's just like, boom, they just get smoked, you know, suddenly. Does the Bible say anything about that? You know, they're eating and drinking, they're marrying and giving a marriage and then just sudden destruction comes upon them. And, you know, it's possible, and here's the thing, you know, the Bible talks about how the Lord sent fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah from heaven, but here's the thing. It's possible that God used something like a volcano or something to do that. You know, he could have either used something just completely supernatural where he's just raining, or he could have just supernaturally timed it and just made it happen with a volcano erupting or whatever. And, you know, when we went there, when we did the Beyond Jordan, we went there and the whole, the whole landscape where Sodom was, it all is just like, it all just looks like burned up. It's just, everything's just like black and charred and burnt even thousands of years later, you know, where in the, in the general location where this would have been. And so somebody even sent me an article this week where they, you know, about all these archeologists coming up with different theories about, you know, how Sodom and Gomorrah was wiped out, you know, talking about like a meteor, you know, volcano or whatever. But here's the thing, whatever it was, whatever it was, it could have either been just a supernatural thing or sometimes God uses natural disasters to wipe people out as well. But either way, he did it again in the first century with Pompeii because you think God just doesn't notice when volcanoes go off or something and he's just kind of like, oh, whoa, those people got smoked. God is in control of the forces of nature. God has planned all these things and God knows what he's doing with the force of nature. He sends rain on the just and on the unjust and he has the power, the winds and the seas obey him. So if the winds and the seas obey him, so do the rocks and the mountains and the faults and the volcanoes obey him as well. That should be obvious, right? And so God still hates this sin. God will still punish this sin severely and societies who tolerate the sin are going to get smoked and so are people who refuse to take a stand. You know, churches that refuse to take a stand, they ought to be scared right now. You know, it's like, aren't you scared about preaching hard against the sodomites in 2021? Hey, I'd be scared not to. I'm scared not to. Yeah, but did you hear about what happened to Pastor Mejia? Pastor Mejia has nothing to fear because greater is he that is in him than he that is in the world. So he doesn't have anything to fear. You know, it's like the scared guy that's with Elisha and Elisha has to pray that his eyes will be open so that he could see all the hosts of angels and camping around about Elijah and Elisha and protecting him. You know, open his eyes that he'd be able to see that. Well, guess what? That's not just Elisha that has that. The Bible teaches that the angels are sent forth as ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. And the Bible says the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him. Do you fear him? Do I fear him? Then that means the angel of the Lord encamps around us. I mean, if the Lord is my strength and my shield, whom then shall I fear? Of whom shall I be afraid? I'll tell you who, the Lord, because it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Now, obviously, none of us are in peril of going to hell as long as we've believed on the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior, as long as we've called upon the name of the Lord as our savior and believed that God raised him from the dead. If our faith and trust is in Christ, we're going to heaven no matter what. But I don't know about you, I don't want God to turn his anger toward me on this earth because I'm still going to be on this earth, God willing, hopefully, for many decades. And I'd hate to have God fighting against me during that time and punishing me during that time. You know, I'd rather have God blessing me. I mean, don't you care about how you live right now on this earth? Or is it just like, well, I'm going to heaven, torture me for the next 40 years? Yeah, you know, I want to be blessed right now, too. Hey, it can be scary, the things that could happen to you on this earth. That's the fearful thing falling into the hands of the living God for us as Christians. So a lot of people are like, oh, well, you know, oh, you believe once saved, always saved. Of course we believe once saved, always saved. That's what the Bible clearly teaches. Oh, so you're just saying you can just do whatever you want? Yeah, I can do whatever I want and still go to heaven. But I am going to get tore up on this earth if I do whatever I want. If I just go out there and live a life of sin, severe punishments will happen to me on this earth. I mean, you see the tribe of Benjamin getting totally wiped out. Do you think they were all unsaved? Probably a lot of saved people getting wiped out among the Benjaminites. How about these guys? How about these peaceniks who didn't come to the battle from Jabesh Gilead, right? These conscientious objectors that were bleeding hearts for the homos. Well, guess what? I guarantee you some of them were saved, too. Some of them are in heaven right now. But it doesn't really mean that you want to get wiped out on this earth either, does it? You know, I don't know about you. I want my days to be long on the earth. I want it to be well with me. And I want my days to be long on the earth in addition to being saved. Being saved is by far the most important thing. But I also want my life to be blessed right now on this earth. I assume that everybody else here feels the same way. And so there's a lot of reasons to do what's right besides just getting into heaven. Done. I'm in. But I want God to bless me right now. Well then, I've got to make sure that when God says, hey, show up to the congregation, I better show up. And when God asks me to take a stand about something, I better take that stand. And I better not go soft on sin and tolerate this abomination. Because I don't want to end up like the people in this story. So let's keep going in the story here quickly. So Jabesh Gilead, they didn't show up. They sent the 12,000 guys to wipe them out and take the wives. It says they found among the inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead 400 young virgins that had known no man by lying with any male. And they brought them under the camp to Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan. So they got 600 guys and they got 400 wives. I mean, that's enough to get the tribe cranking again. But, you know, they want the tribe to get up to numbers. They want all 600 of these guys to be able to be married and live their lives. And so they still need 200 more wives, OK, for these guys. So it says in verse 13, the whole congregation sent some to speak to the children of Benjamin that were in the rock ribbon and to call peaceably unto them. And Benjamin came again at that time and they gave them wives which they had saved alive of the women of Jabesh Gilead. And yet so they suffice them not, right, because they're 200 short. And the people repented them for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel. Then the elders of the congregation said, How shall we do for wives for them that remain, seeing that the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? And they said, There must be an inheritance for them that be escaped of Benjamin, that a tribe be not destroyed out of Israel. Verse 18, Howbeit we may not give them wives of our daughters, for the children of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he that giveth a wife to Benjamin. Then they said, Behold, there's a feast of the Lord and Shiloh yearly in a place which is on the north side of Bethel on the east side of the highway that goeth up from Bethel to Shechem and on the south of Labona. Therefore, they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, Go in line, wait in the vineyards and see and behold if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance and dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you, every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh and go to land of Benjamin. So the first 400 guys had it pretty easy because their wives just handed to them. The other 200 guys, they're like, Hey, what about us? You know, you got any women for us? You got to go out and get it yourself, buddy. These guys have a little harder job. So they, the other 200 guys, they sneak up, they hide in the vineyards, and they wait for these daughters to come out and dance. And these young single girls are out there dancing, and they basically just abduct the one that they want and run off with her. Now you say, is this godly? No, but what you have to understand is that the whole purpose of this chapter is showing us a low point, showing us chaos, showing us lack of leadership, because what's he going to say right after they abduct their wives? It says in those days, there's no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes, right? So get the context here. This is not prescriptive. It's descriptive. It's describing what happened. It's not prescribing what you should go do, young man. All right. Unfortunately, you're not going to have either of these situations. A wife isn't going to be handed to you on a silver platter, number one. And number two, don't go abducting a woman as your wife, caveman style or something, OK? So neither of these situations apply to you, OK? You're going to have to do things the hard way. Both of these are easier than the real way that you get married, by the way. But that's another sermon that shall be preached in another time. It says in verse number 22, and it shall be when their fathers or their brethren come unto us to complain. You know, when they call the police and say, you know, hey, my daughter just got abducted last time I started. She was out there dancing. Some guy grabbed her. Then we will say unto them, just let it go, all right? Just don't press charges this time, all right? Be favorable unto them for our sakes, because we reserve not to each man as wife. Look, we messed up. We made some bad oaths. So just go with it, OK? You're doing a duty for the cause here. Just go with it. For ye did not give unto them at this time that ye should be guilty. So basically, here's what's going on. The first 400, they worked out because the people whose daughters they were had never made the oath because they never showed up in the first place. Now, these people right here, these fathers and brothers actually had made the oath. We will not give our daughters to Benjamin. So what they're telling them is they're like, well, you didn't really give your daughters to Benjamin because they were abducted by Benjamin. So you didn't. You're guiltless. This isn't your fault. You didn't give them. So then the OK, yeah, you got a point. They're probably saying, hey, at least we don't have to pay for a big wedding and stuff. We got off the hook easy for this one. But just kidding. And the children of Benjamin did so and took them wives according to their number of them that danced, whom they caught. And they went and returned to their inheritance and repaired the cities and dwelt in them. Because remember, all the cities of Benjamin got burned to the ground. Everybody got killed. Every city got burned down to the ground. So they go back, they rebuild, they repair. And the children of Israel departed thence at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family. And they went out from thence, every man to his inheritance. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Now, this is why, by the way, when we get into 1 Samuel, because the story picks up in 1 Samuel, Ruth is a little interlude that doesn't have anything to do with the chronological order here. It's just a story that happened during the time of the judges. Ruth gets stuck between judges in 1 Samuel because you want to put it before 1 Samuel because it happens before 1 Samuel. It basically happens parallel with judges. Sometime during judges, this Ruth story happened. But it would have made no sense to put the story of Ruth in the book of Judges because Ruth is this nice story and Judges is this gnarly book. I mean, if Ruth was in the book of Judges, Ruth would be like cutting off somebody's head or dropping a rock on somebody's head or putting a spike through their head. She'd be murdering people if it was in Judges. Am I right? I mean, that's the kind of stories that are in Judges. Nobody's getting murdered or no bodies are being mutilated. And so therefore, this is a happy book. So it gets put in a separate section here, just the book of Ruth. But the story is actually going to pick up in 1 Samuel, right? So Judges leads into 1 Samuel, which is basically the end of the period of the judges, because you get into the kings. So 1 Samuel shows us the anointing of the first king of Israel. Who's the first king of Israel? Saul. And then who is the second king of Israel? David, right? And then we get into the long lineage of David. But here's the thing about Saul. What tribe is Saul from? Saul is from Benjamin. And if you remember, when Benjamin gets picked, what does he say? He says, wait a minute. Are you sure you have the right guy? He says, am I not of the least tribe? I'm paraphrasing. But he says, I'm of the least tribe. Now here's the thing. Without the book of Judges, that wouldn't really make sense. Because if you study the books of Moses, you'll find that Benjamin is not the least tribe. You know, Benjamin is right there with the rest of the tribes. It's not the smallest tribe. But guess what? By the time Saul comes around, it is the smallest tribe by far, because it got reduced down to 600 men and their wives. Whereas the rest of the tribes of Israel have tens of thousands of people, even hundreds of thousands of people, possibly. But tens of thousands of people minimum. And then one tribe gets whittled down to only 600 guys. A little bit of time goes by before you get to King Saul, but still Benjamin is dramatically smaller than any of the other tribes because of this event. So this kind of connects Judges to 1 Samuel, because you can see how Benjamin got just totally wiped out down to 600 guys. And then that's why Saul is saying, man, I'm from the least tribe. Why would that matter? Because, you know, these tribes, they kind of have their own identity, and people are kind of loyal to the tribe. I would liken it to, say, the 13 colonies of the United States in the beginning, or even today the 50 states. You know, some people are more loyal to their state than to America. You know, Texas. Excuse me. You know, they're just so into being from Texas or whatever. So, you know, they're more loyal to that. And here's the thing about our government. These days, people aren't really as divided along state lines. We're more divided versus, like, Christian versus heathen. And those are kind of the issues that really divide us in America today. There's a very immoral segment of the population, very un-Christian, immoral, heathen part of the population. And then there's a God-fearing Christian, evangelical part of the population in America. You know, wouldn't we care more about those issues than, say, you know, New Mexico versus Arizona? Right? We don't really, it's not really a thing, is it? We'd be more divided on issues like abortion or issues like, you know, politics and religion and things like that. But in the early days of our country, there were a lot of sharp divisions between states. And so it was very important that each state be represented. And that's why you have things like the Senate, where every state sends two people. Whereas the House of Representatives is based on population. But they wanted to make sure each state gets represented, even if that state has a really small population. Okay. So you want to have your guy from your state. So here's the thing. It wouldn't really make a lot of sense if Benjamin is this tiny tribe to have their guy running everything because he's from the smallest tribe. Like he represents the least amount of people. Does everybody understand what I'm saying? He represents very few people. It'd be like having like, you know, like six Jews and three Catholics on the Supreme Court when, you know, when like 50, more than 50% of America is evangelical Christian. And you just have like 1% of the population are Jews, but you have like six Jews and three Catholics. I mean, not that that would ever happen in our country, you know, but I'm just saying, hypothetically speaking, if you had no evangelical Christians on the Supreme Court, just Jews and Roman Catholics, you know, that wouldn't really represent us, would it? So basically the thing is, you know, that's why he's surprised like that he would be picked to be the leader because he represents the smallest tribe. But God chooses him. God, you know, God sees a lot of good attributes in him. He's humble. God had a plan and a purpose in choosing him. And so that's who he chooses. So it makes sense in light of this story. So to wrap things up with this story, you know, what can we learn from this chapter? You know, again, we're not learning anything about dating or marriage. We're not learning about justice. We're not learning about government. You want to learn about justice and government? You know, go back to the law of Moses and see what God tells them to do, what the punishments are, what the rules are. This is a picture of reality in all of its nastiness, because let me tell you something, the world is a nasty place out there, and all kinds of unfair and unjust things happen constantly. People are killed all the time. Innocent people are hurt. Innocent people are harmed. There's all kinds of people out there, just like the Benjamites, just like the Sodomites, just like the Israelites. I mean, all of these stories are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come, because the same type of things that were going on back then are the same type of things that are going on now, and there's nothing new under the sun. So we're not looking at this to learn about God. You know, if we want to learn about God, we read what God says and what God tells us to do and what God does, and so there are plenty of scriptures where we learn about God. Okay, this is a chapter where we're learning about how man does when he does what's right in his own eyes, how man does without a leader, how man does when he's not following God's will for his life and God's plan. That's what we see. And so the right lesson to take from this is, hey, I don't want to be like the Benjamites. I don't want to be like those men of Jabesh Gilead. I don't want to be like these guys, and I want to understand how bad these people really are and not be fooled by the world that the Sodomites are just innocent and harmless, but to realize these people are dangerous, that this is a threat to our society, and we look at this story and understand the reality of the world that we live in. That's what we see in this chapter, okay? And we understand why do we need strong leadership? Why do we need the word of God? Why do we need church? Why do we need these things in our lives? Because without God and his word and leaders, we will degenerate as a society, and our personal lives will go down the tubes. We all need to be reined in. And look, you know, I talked to an atheist guy, and he said, you know, he's given all his arguments for atheism, and I told him flat out, and I've said this to many atheists, I said, you know what? I said, if there's no God, then everything's permissible. I mean, right? If there's no God, if we're just animals, if we just evolved from apes and we're just beasts, and there's nothing metaphysical, it's just only the natural world, there's no soul, and if there's no heaven and hell, then let's eat, drink, and be merry, because tomorrow we die! And how can you say that anything's right and wrong? I mean, do animals out in the wild, do they worry about stealing? Is murder wrong to them? I mean, they certainly aren't against adultery. I mean, you think that animals are having a tribunal for some other animal that committed adultery with another animal's animal? No. So this basically teaches, you know, if you're going to teach evolution and teach atheism, you're basically teaching people to be nihilistic and teach people basically that nothing matters, is what that comes down to at the end of the day. It's a wicked teaching. It's a wicked philosophy. That comes down to at the end of the day. It's a wicked teaching. It's a wicked philosophy. And it's stupid. The Bible says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. It's just stupid to believe that there's no God anyway. But also, it's not only a stupid belief, it's a harmful belief, because then there's no purpose, there's no morality. And I said that to this atheist, and here's what he said to me. He said, you know what? He said, you're right about that. He said, as an atheist, because, you know, usually atheists, you can't even reason with them, but this was actually a reasonable atheist. So he admitted the truth of what I was saying. And he said, you're right. He said, as an atheist, all I am left with is just my own subjective morality. That's all I can do is just kind of decide what I think is right and just go with that. And how many atheists have said this? They say like, we don't need God to tell us what's right and wrong. We don't need the Bible to tell us. We can be moral on our own. We can be good and moral. We don't need that book to tell us. We know what's right. How do you know? We know. We just know. We know what's right. And people think that they know what's right. But you know what the Bible says? Every man's way is right in his own eyes. Everybody thinks that their way is right. And so that's not going to work. Did it work in judges? No. This every man does what's right in his own eyes. It sounds good on the surface. I bet people who don't know the Bible, like say like Pastor Michael Johnson or something, you know, they would probably look at this and think this is good. Hey, they're doing what's right. Doing right in their own eyes. Yeah. Good. Woo. But it's like anybody who's actually read the book of Judges with understanding would know it's like bad story, that statement. Bad story, that statement. Bad story, that statement. Bad story, that's, I wonder where we're going with that statement. It's like this guy chopped up his concubine, mailed her out. Oh, and by the way, in those days there was no king in Israel and everybody did what was right in his own eyes. Isn't that great? It makes no sense, does it? It's bad. So if there's one thing you take away from the book of Judges, understand that doing right in your own eyes doesn't cut it. You better do what's right in God's eyes. You better do what's right according to the word of God because your subjective morality is a joke and it's not going to cut it. It didn't cut it for them. You're better than them. No, you're not. We're all human. We're all the same. There's no new thing under the sun. Human nature is human nature and in our flesh without Christ and the Holy Spirit, guess what, we'd be the same kind of people doing all these bad things. Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for this book of Judges, Lord. Thank you for allowing me to finish, Lord, and for us to be able to study this entire book together as a church. I pray that the lessons of Judges, as ugly as some of them are, Lord, I pray that these lessons would stay with us and that we would be better Christians as a result of having studied the book of Judges. Lord, help us all to be edified by your word every single day as we read it and every single week as we come to church. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.