Holding Onto Perspective

We have arrived at the final week of our women's Bible study on the book of Judges, which we called A Time of Turning. This final lesson, week seven, I titled Turning from Perspective. We might say losing perspective. Perspective is defined as the state of one's ideas. The state of one's ideas, that is your perspective. We're doing five chapters, the last five chapters of Judges. It is not in chronological order. It is an epilogue. In other words, we just finished Samson. All these things did not happen after Samson. They happened during the time of the whole Judges, the book, the times of the Judges. Like Samson was the worst judge, didn't we think? These chapters are the worst chapters in the book, and maybe that's why they were one reason they were saved, you know, for the end. Put it all together at the end. We find repetitive bookmarks in these chapters, and I'll put it up on the screen for you. You can see four references where we find some variation of, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Four times this is punctuated for us in this final epilogue. So we need to ask the question, what does it mean that there was no king in Israel? Of course there was no king in Israel. There never has been a king in Israel, except the fake King Abimelech that appointed himself. But so what does it mean? Well here's what it means. God intended when he rescued his people, when he delivered them from Egypt and brought them into the land that he wanted to give them, he intended for them to live under a theocracy. That was to be their form of government where he himself was their king. And so he brought them to Mount Sinai where he explained to them the moral law which showed them what his character was like, what he is like, and how they could be like, they could display the same sort of character. He showed them the civil law which explained to them how they were going to get along together in this new promised land. And he shared with them the ceremonial law for their religious life that if they followed this law, it would constantly, continually be pointing their faces in the direction of the Messiah to come. And so God was to be their king. They were to honor him, they were to obey him, and they were to flourish under this kind of a rulership. And this would give them the proper perspective of life, the proper perspective of truth, the proper state of their ideas. But of course it was a time of turning, so they rejected God as king. They turned from God, they turned to idols, which caused them to turn from perspective. This is the way things go. Since there was no king in Israel, they honored no real law, and the only thing left for them was to follow their heart, to do what was right in their own eyes. So in Israel, morality became a moving target. What you said was right wasn't what the other person said was right. And civil unrest became the norm because they had no sense of unity, they couldn't agree on things. And religious life for them often became a sham. It was now integrated with idols, ephods, icons. So we have too many verses in these five chapters for us to go through each one of them. I'm gonna do quite a bit of summarizing. So I made an outline like I like to do. I'll put it on the screen for you. This is an outline of how we're going to look at these five chapters. Part one will be the confusion about their religious life. This will be chapters 17 and 18. Part two, confusion about family life. And part three, confusion about civic life. Now I haven't made a chart of application this week, but the confusion that we face in our own culture is obvious to every one of us, and it parallels what we see in the book of Judges. We too have a distorted view of religion and spiritual things. We too have a distorted view of what makes a family, what marriage is all about. And we too have a distorted and destructive civil life. We can't even agree on truth. We have in our culture lost perspective, and this is why we need revival because perspective is not restored by legislation. Perspective, since perspective is lost because people turn from God, the only way to regain perspective is a return to God. And so this is why we pray for revival. We pray for people to know who the Lord is. We pray for people to obey him, to honor him, to return to him. All right, let's start with part one. Part one is when a nation returns from perspective, there is confusion about religious life. And here's what we're going to see in these two chapters. We are going to see a do-it-yourself religion that is filled with, like I said, carved images, ephods, filled with exactly what God told them not to do on Mount Sinai, the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me, or do not make a graven image. We're going to see Levites for hire rather than being taken care of by Israel as the law of God had told them to. We're going to see priests made of people not from the line of Aaron. And we're going to see a general sense of superstition over the people. So Judges chapter 17, there was a man from the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. Now stop right there, because I'm also going to ask you to take note of some geographical references throughout these five chapters. You'll be happy you did when we get to the end. But there's two of them. This is the first one, the hill country of Ephraim. It's going to be a little bit surprising how frequently we run into that. Verse two, and he said to his mother, the 1100 pieces of silver that were taken from you about which you uttered a curse and also spoken in my ears. Behold, the silver is with me. I took it. And like every good mother whose child steals something, she says to him, blessed be my son by the Lord. And we're just cock our head and we're wondering. And so the silver is restored and ultimately they take a portion of that silver and make it says a carved image and a metal image. And it was in the house of Micah. That's how he was rewarded for his theft. Verse five, and the man Micah had a shrine and he made an ephod and household gods and ordained one of his sons who became his priest. And remember, the priests were not only to become come from the tribe of Levi, but from the line of Aaron. And he just takes his son. You're going to be my priest. I'm going to ordain you as a priest. Do it yourself religion. Why were things so messed up? Why was their religious life so messed up? Look at the next verse. Verse six, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah, and that's the second geographical phrase that I want you to take note of as we go through our lesson. Bethlehem in Judah. Who was a Levite and he sojourned there and the man departed from the town of Bethlehem to sojourn where he could find a place. And as he journeyed, he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. And Micah said to him, well where do you come from? And he said, I'm a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah and I'm going to sojourn where I might find a place. And Micah said, oh well stay with me and be to me a father and a priest. I'll give you ten pieces of silver a year and a suit of clothes and you're living. And the Levite came to him. He was content to dwell with the man and the young man became like one of his own sons and Micah ordained the Levite. And the young man became his priest and was in the house of Micah. So he's making a collection. This is the second individual he has now ordained as a priest, but this guy's a Levite. And so he was probably feeling like it's a higher, on the lucky charm scale, it's a little bit higher. Verse 13, Micah said, now I know that the Lord will prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest. And so when people turn from perspective, this is one thing that happens, they think the blessing of the Lord comes by what they do, what they collect, the vows that they make, the repetitions in prayers, the different things that they do. Judges chapter 18, in those days there was no king in Israel and in those days the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking for itself an inheritance to dwell in. For until then, no inheritance among the people of Dan. among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them. All right. They had been given an inheritance by Joshua along with all of the other tribes. It just had not fallen to them. It had not fallen into their laps. They had not been able to be victorious in the area that Joshua gave to them. So they'd been given a lane in life. It was hard. They didn't want that lane. They wanted to find a different lane in life that was easier for them. So they grabbed five men, and they say, go find a different lane, different territory that we can settle. And these men begin searching, going out. And they end up at the house of Micah, this guy we're talking about. And they see, they hear this Levite. And they recognize his accent. And they say to him, what are you doing here? And he says, well, Micah has hired me as a priest. And they're like, oh, you're a priest? Like a fortune teller. And so they say, well, inquire of God, then, that we may know whether our journey on which we were setting out will succeed. And I don't think this Levite had ever considered that he had the ministry of a seer, but he's going to try it out here. And he says, go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the Lord. Doesn't that sound mystical and religious? And somewhat has a little poetic irony, because everybody was doing what was right in their own eyes. And he proclaims to them, your journey is under the eye of the Lord. So the spies take off. And they head up north until they finally find this land that they see. And they believe the people are quiet and unsuspecting. And they think, this is a much better lane for us. This will be a much easier path for us to take. And so they return home to where the rest of their tribe is, gather 600 men, which they are going to take up there and to do the deed and capture that land. And now this small army of 600 men comes through the hill country of Ephraim and lands at the house of Micah. And to make a long story short, in verse 17, it says that they took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed with weapons of war. And I imagine this priest, this Levite priest, was objecting and saying, um, you guys can't just take that. And they say to him, keep quiet. Put your hand over your mouth. Come with us and be to us a father and a priest. It's better for you to be a priest to the house of, or they say, is it better for you to be the priest to the house of one man or to be the priest of a tribe and a clan in Israel? It says the priest's heart was glad. So he took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image, and he went along with the people. Everyone loves a promotion. And so he was happy. And no one loves to be stolen from. And so Micah was angry. And so when he found out about it, he gets some neighbors, and they make a posse, and they take after the Danites, and they finally meet up with them, and they confront him. But they quickly realized they were outgunned and outnumbered, and this was not going to end well. And so they gave up and just went home. And when we read that, do not we all find just a little satisfaction in our heart that the thief has himself now been stolen from? I don't know if that's proper for us to feel that, but we do. We like things to be set right. So to finish up with Dan, they go up to the city of Laish, they strike it down, they burn it, they rebuild it, and they name it Dan after their ancestor. And it ended up becoming their land until Israel was taken away to captivity. Even though that is not the land Joshua had given to them. But there's a few little interesting things about this story. One interesting thing is, since you probably looked at it and you saw it on your map, it's way up north, now we have this phrase that you will find 35 times from this reference all the way to the end of 2 Chronicles. From Dan to Beersheba. Do you remember that as you're reading through things in the Old Testament? From Dan to Beersheba. Well, this is where it started. Also, the Jordan River, Jor Dan. Jor means out of, out of Dan, because that's the source of the Jordan River that runs all the way down. And it says in verse 30, the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, which was their own do-it-yourself religion. And then we find out who this certain Levite was. He's named Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses. And his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. And so they set up Micah's carved image that he made as long as the house of God was at Shiloh. So Moses' own grandson was the one who was complicit with this. And sort of set up an alternate religious system up in the territory of Dan. So this part one was about losing perspective in religious life, in spiritual life. Here we come to part two. And this is losing perspective in family life. Losing perspective in what makes a family, what marriage is for. A family unit is the core of any flourishing society. We learned that from Genesis chapter two. It was God's idea. It is the stability of a society. And now we're about to read concubine, which is just a fancy word for living together and not being married. Which erases a man's responsibility and devalues a woman's design. It is not a good idea. When human life is thus devalued, we begin to see abuse and neglect. Judges chapter 19, in those days there was no king in Israel. And a certain Levite was sojourning in the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim who took to himself a concubine from Bethlehem in Judah. A concubine. She's never even named in this narrative. We even name our pets. She is not named. She's property. And we can see that the culture is sort of like used to that. Verse two, his concubine was unfaithful to him because family life is messed up in this time. And she went away from him to her father's house at Bethlehem in Judah for some four months. And then her husband arose and went after her to speak kindly to her and to bring her back. And so here they are. This, it says her husband, but it's a concubine. They are not married. There's no covenant relationship with them. But this concubine's dad sort of likes this guy. And he keeps saying, you know, oh, don't leave yet. Stay and eat. Have another meal, drink. It's like in Minnesota. Just stay, have a little lunch before you go, you know. And they do that for five days until the Levite finally says, he says, you know, I gotta be going. And it was late that day. And so they take off and they get as far as Jebus, which we know as Jerusalem, formerly Jebus. And the servant said, we should stay here. The day is waning, we should stay. And verse 12, the master said, we will not turn aside into the city of foreigners who do not belong to the house of Israel, far be it from us. We will pass on to go to Gibeah. And he has the strong virtue signal that that is something I would never do. Because when you lose perspective, you just make up your own ideas of what's extremely important and what's unimportant. And so they do. They go on to Gibeah and they're at the town square. And verse 16, behold, an old man was coming from his work in the field at evening. And the man was, look, from the hill country of Ephraim. And he was sojourning in Gibeah. The men of the place were Benjamites. He saw the travelers and he asked, well, where are you going? Where do you come from? And the Levite says, well, we're passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim. And so they find out they have this in common. Oh, you're going to the place, that's my home. Like, do you know so-and-so? And you know, our neighbor, let's, we have this in common. You know, when you find someone who grew up in the town that you grew up in, it's like, all of a sudden you're friends, right? And so this old man takes them into his house, feeds the donkeys, washes their feet, gives them food. They ate and drank and everything is going well. And the music now turns very minor and foreboding. Verse 22, behold, the men of the city, worthless fellows, surrounded the house, beating on the door. And they said to the old man, bring out the man who came into your house, that we may know him. You know what that means, right? That we may have sexual relations with him. And the master of the house went out to the. And he said, no, my brothers, do not act so wickedly since this man has come into my house. Do not do this vile thing. Behold, here are my virgin daughter and his concubine. Let me bring them out now. Violate them and do to them what seems good to you. But against this man, do not do this outrageous thing. And this chapter 19 is shockingly similar to another chapter 19 that we read in Genesis at the town of Sodom. Almost identical in many, many ways. And what we want as the reader right here is we want these men to stand up and to fight. We want them to take a bullet for the girls. We want them to be protectors. No woman should endure this unless her man got killed first. But what do they do? Let's read verse 25. But the worthless men would not listen. So the man seized his concubine. And he made her go out to them. And they knew her and abused her all night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go. And as morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man's house where her master was until it was light. And her master rose up in the morning. And when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, get up. Let's get going. But there was no answer. She was dead. And then he put her on the donkey. And the man rose up. And he went away to his home. Why is this story in the book of Judges? Why do we have to read it? And I read the entire narrative word for word on purpose to give us the shock value. But it helps the thinking reader to really understand and feel the weight of the depravity of a society that turns from God. A time of turning, when a society turns from God, it gets this dark. This also shows us a very interesting contrast from where Israel began in chapter 1 of this book. Do you remember the girl's name, Aksah? She was the daughter of Caleb. Caleb loved her, honored her, cherished her, took care of her, said, no man is good enough for you to marry unless he is a noble, valiant warrior. When I find that man, I will give you in marriage. And Othniel was that warrior. And then dad gives her the ranch, remember, and the springs. And then we get through this time of turning, turning from God. And here we find a woman who doesn't even get a name in the scriptures, who is a concubine, doesn't even have a covenant with the man, and who is sent out, used as protection. He used her to protect himself. Once he got home, he cut her into 12 pieces. And it said he sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. And the shock value was high there. And in verse 30, all who saw it said, such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day of the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day. Maybe that's true, but it may also be true that the people had found a way to insulate themselves from really absorbing the depravity that was around them all the time. And do we not find ways to insulate ourselves? But sometimes a moment of grace comes upon a society, and God pulls back the curtains, and we come face to face with reality. This happens in our culture, where we hear a story of a woman who has been sex trafficked, and we hear an account which could be very similar to this. And the curtains are pulled back, and we're like, what in the world? Such a thing, we wouldn't say has never happened, should never happen in a nation such as ours. And the people's response was that they needed to consider it, take counsel, and speak, which takes us into part three. When a nation turns from perspective, there's confusion in civic life. Everybody has their own opinion about things, but unity is elusive. There's no agreement on what's right, what's wrong. Truth, justice, punishment become fuzzy things, and people tend to overreact and just start doing something. Judges chapter 20, 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 want to ask the Levite. Now, you basically drew us all here. Tell us what happened. So listen to his narrative. It starts in the middle of verse four. He says, well, I came to Gibeah that belongs to Benjamin, I and my concubine, to spend the night. And the leaders of Gibeah, now stop right there, wasn't told us in the first narrative. First narrative said it was worthless fellows. May have been leaders, but he says the leaders of Gibeah rose against me and surrounded the house against me by night. They meant to kill me. Actually, they wanted something else. And they violated my concubine, and now she's dead. No mention here at Mizpah of how that concubine got in their hands. That is concealed from them. No mention that he himself was hiding safe in the house, probably sleeping during the night while this was going on. But now he turns the whole problem around in front of the hearers, and he becomes the victim in this case. And he blames, really, the town of Gibeah. Verse six, so I took hold of my concubine. I cut her into pieces, and I sent her throughout all the country of the inheritance of Israel. For they, meaning Gibeah, have committed abomination and outrage in Israel. I sort of feel like he was the abomination and outrage, but behold, you people of Israel, all of you, give your advice and counsel here. So the Levite becomes the activist, and he said he wanted their advice and counsel, but he really told them how they should think about this. He already told them what to think about it. Now, rational people who have their perspective intact would say to themselves, we should investigate this. We should find out, did the crime happen the way he said it did? Where are the witnesses to this crime? Who is to blame for this? How should those responsible be punished? Is there a law in Israel for this? This is what people with proper perspective do. Those would be the steps if there was a king in Israel, but there was no king in Israel. So people become easily agitated and outraged, and they turn from the rule of law. And when you turn from the rule of law, you have nothing left except anarchy. You turn to anarchy. Now, there was a group of men who needed to be punished, probably with their life. You killed her. You violated, killed her. We kill you. That's how things go. But the suggestion had already been planted that it was the leaders of Gibeah, which implied the town of Gibeah, which sort of began to make this larger group of anyone who lived in or around Gibeah was at fault. And so now they were implied in this, and no one was waiting for a jury trial. And we have a note to self here, that when a culture no longer treats individual people on the basis of their own merit, but rather begins to group them together in a partisan group, they have turned from perspective. And they have or will turn to anarchy. This is just the way of life. I can summarize chapter 20 in about 30 seconds, which you'll be happy for, because it recounts the civil war. They set out to punish the men of Gibeah. And there's a lot of going back and forth in this chapter. But it escalated to the end that practically every one of the tribe of Benjamin had been killed, and there was heavy casualties on Israel's side too. It can just be described as a civil war. You read the narrative yourself. And now there's 600 men left of the tribe of Benjamin. And so as chapter 21 opens, Israel has cooled off. And now they're mourning. In verse 6, the people of Israel had compassion for Benjamin, their brother, and said one tribe is cut off from Israel this day. And the reason they say that is with 600 men left and no women and no ability to procreate, this tribe will cease to exist. And they feel badly about that. But there's a complication. Because when they were hot, when they were at Mizpah, they made a vow. None of it. will give anyone in our family to the men of Benjamin. They vowed before the Lord, and they made that vow in haste. We know of another judge who made a vow in haste, Jephthah. People often regret their vows that they make in haste. I think by the time we get to the Sermon on the Mount, it's like Jesus said, just don't. Like just let your yes be yes and your no be no. Just eliminate that vow business. But these, Israel had so lost perspective, the state of their ideas, that this is, this is their thinking now. They feel really bad, genuinely bad, genuine compassion for Benjamin. But they also have to protect themselves because they made a vow and they don't want to go against a vow that they've made to God. And so they say, is there anyone who didn't make this vow? Let's investigate. Oh look, the people of Jabesh Gilead. They never came to miss, but they never made a vow. God will not strike them down. They should give their daughters to repopulate the tribe of Benjamin. But I don't know if the fathers are gonna like that very much. So what we need to do is go kill everybody that's not a virgin. So we're gonna go over there, we're gonna kill the men, we're gonna kill the women, we're gonna kill the children, so that we can take the virgins and give them to the tribe of Benjamin. Because you wouldn't want there to be adultery going on. You wouldn't want to take women who have been with a man who had a husband. You want to protect yourself from that, so you should murder and kidnap in order to protect from this. See, the turning from perspective, the state of one's ideas. The reality was, there was a handful of worthless fellows in just one town who had raped just one woman, and those men needed to be punished for this. But it escalated to this civil war, and this murdering, and this kidnapping, and it was very sad. So note to self, again, when people turn from perspective, they turn to inconsistencies. Their thinking is inconsistent. And in this case, their inconsistencies led to destroying the livelihoods of innocent people, so that they could support the livelihoods of another group of people. It was a sort of redistribution of wealth. I mean, women. Redistribution of women. And these inconsistencies don't seem to bother people who have turned from perspective. But they really bug rationally thinking people. And we just shake our heads, and we're like, what in the world? How can you think the way you think? Because they've turned from perspective, because they've turned from God. And that is why the thinking is so messed up. Well, it's not completely over. They're short 200 women. So they say, I know, there's this festival that happens at Shiloh, and part of the program of events is the virgins come out and dance. So you 200 guys that still need a wife, you hide an ambush. When you see a girl that you like, you go and snatch her. Yeah, the dads aren't going to like it very much, but we'll smooth it over. It's just going to be okay. And that's what happened. Verse 24, the people of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and they went out from there, every man to his inheritance. And the book ends with our familiar phrase, in those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes, which is an important repetitive phrase for us to be able to understand the entire book of judges. There was another repetition that I asked you to take note of, and that was the geographical references to the hill country of Ephraim and Bethlehem in Judah. Now the first 16 chapters of this book that we just studied highlighted the 12 judges. Some of them did a pretty good job of rescuing Israel, and some of them were pretty disappointing to us, but we just said about that, we said, you know what, they're supposed to point us to a more perfect judge who is to come. The last five chapters that we studied painted this pathetic picture of what a nation in decline looks like, and it did so through the narrative of two specific individuals, and they both came, both surrounding Bethlehem in Judah. The first story was Micah. He was from the hill country of Ephraim, and the Levite, Jonathan, the grandson of Moses, was from Bethlehem. They were both a disappointment to us. They were both a religious disappointment to us. The second story that we did this week, we had a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim and a concubine from Bethlehem. Big disappointment to us. It just dismantled family life completely. Do you know that human beings like things in triplets? Did you know that about us? We like stories in triplets. Jesus told about the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost son. We like the three little pigs. We like stories to end with a trilogy, and I would like to say that there is a third Bethlehem story that happened during the time of the judges. There's 85 more verses. You thought you came to the end of the book? Well, this Bethlehem story is not in the book of Judges. It is in the next book, which is the book of Boaz, and you say, wait, my Bible doesn't have that. I need a refund. It's missing a book. Now in your Bible, it's the book of Ruth, but who is the rescuer there? The rescuer is Boaz, and that story is the third Bethlehem trilogy that happens during the time of the judges, and for all the times that we said to ourselves, could they not do better? I'm disappointed in this. When we look at Boaz, as perfectly as any man on earth, any flesh and blood can do, he will not disappoint us. He is going to rescue without a disappointment because he is going to be an image of Jesus Christ, the perfect judge, the perfect rescuer, and so what I have decided is that I do not want to leave the time of the judges without finishing that third Bethlehem trilogy, so we're taking two weeks off and our next spring Bible study will be called Rescue and Rest, and we are going to do the book of Ruth because we have to satisfy, who wants to end a Bible study right here? God did not intend that. He wanted us to have a picture of the perfect rescuer, the one who always said in his heart, there is a king, God is my king, and he doesn't disappoint us. Like I said, he is flesh, he is a human being, but he will represent for us all the things that we wanted the judges to be all along. So two weeks, we'll be back here, we'll start that so that we can conclude the time of the judges. Let's pray. Father God, thank you for showing us everyone in their own heart all the things that we need to learn from your hand, and Lord, we do completely understand that these things, Lord, even though we live currently in the time of the judges, our culture is the same. Lord, we have such an assurance that you see us, you know us, you bless us, but our hearts need to treat you as though you are the king in our life. So Lord, help us to remain there, help us to trust you, help us to honor you, help us to just give our lives in service to you, Lord, and we look forward to these next 85 verses where our hearts will be warmed and enlivened where we see your intention for a true rescuer, Lord. Thank you, in Jesus' name, amen.