Ending his excellent commentary on Judges, Daniel Block writes, “No book in the Old Testament offers the modern church as telling a mirror as this book. … All the marks of Canaanite degeneracy are evident in the church and its leaders today. This book is a wake-up call for a church [dying] in its own selfish pursuits. Instead of heeding the call of truly godly leaders and letting Jesus Christ be Lord of the church, everywhere congregations and their leaders do what is right in their own eyes.” ¹

I think he is right. Ironically, as we began this series, many today protest a book like Judges being part of the Scripture and connected to a God who loves the world, because of its gruesome warfare and judgment, while it is probably one of the books the church needs most to hear. For it indeed is much like a mirror. And even as we see where the trajectory of this book in its spiraling decline of morality has taken us, so it might serve to show us where we are headed unless the church soon begins to return to a desire and diligent effort to obey God’s Word in all its commands at all costs (that is, if we are not already there).

Thus, fittingly, this last narrative in the book of Judges is one that the reader might have trouble getting through as he reads it. And I think that is the intent of the author because, for some reason, it is far easier for us to see the sins in others than it is in ourselves. Therefore, I think the author wants us to see this story and be horrified and disgusted by sin not simply so that we can say, “Isn’t Israel evil at this time in history?” but so that we might say, “Isn’t sin in our own lives to be hated and battled and fought at great cost?” Indeed, Paul assures us of such application as he wrote to the Corinthians of the Israelites’ judgment in the wilderness, “Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” and again, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:6, 11).

Therefore, I think it is right that we look at the story of the text this morning not simply so that we might understand what occurred and gain knowledge but so that we might learn how we as a church in the twenty-first century should respond. However, let us first turn to the story itself in order to make sure we understand the events and details thereof.

This story continues the theme we saw last week. For though it takes up the story of only a few people at first, it is representative of the entire nation at this period, namely, everyone was doing what was right in his own eyes (21:25). The story begins with a Levite going to get his concubine. We do not know if she is referred to as such because he has another wife or considers her second class in some way. What we do know, however, is that she had become angry with him ² and left to go back to her father’s house. And so he sets off after her and is received warmly as her father has the Levite stay night after night in a show of great hospitality. Ultimately, however, this costs him because he ends up leaving too late one evening and is unable to make it home by nightfall. Consequently, he has to stop and stay somewhere.

Now, Jebus was the first place they had come to in which they could have stayed, but it was home to the Jebusites and the Levite said, “We will not turn aside into the city of foreigners, who do not belong to the people of Israel, but we will pass on to Gibeah” (19:12). He simply did not want to face the lack of hospitality and trouble that he could face among a foreign people but chose to wait until he could get to an Israelite city. This decision, however, would turn out to be tragic.

As the Levite and his concubine arrived in Gibeah they found that the hospitality he had hoped for was completely absent. There was simply nowhere to stay. Thus, he decided to stay in the town square for the night. However, soon there came along a man from the hill country of Ephraim. He had not been a permanent resident of the city, but apparently knew the city quite well because he insisted that the man and his concubine absolutely must not stay in the square but come to his house. At this point the reader is led to wonder if the man knows something bad about the town that is not being said.

Sure enough, the reader’s suspicions are confirmed as that night some men in the city show up at the man’s door demanding that they hand his guest over to them so that they could engage in raping him. But this is even more than rape, this is homosexuality as well. Then, the host offers to them his virgin daughter and the man’s concubine instead.

At this point, the reader should be thinking, “Now wait a second. Haven’t I read this story before in Genesis?” because this is quite similar to Genesis 19 as we read of Sodom. Thus, I think the author wants us to see that Israel has become as bad as Sodom.

Sure enough, the men take the concubine and rape her and abuse her all night long so that the next morning she dies trying to drag herself back to the door of the host. Thus, as the insensitive husband walks out, says, “Get up, let us be going,” and realizes she is dead, he devises a plan to arouse Israel to the evil within her midst. He cuts up the woman’s body into pieces and sends them throughout the land.

Obviously the people of Israel soon demand an explanation for this, gather together, and demand that the tribe of Benjamin give the inhabitants of Gibeah into their hands. However, the Benjaminites refuse and gather the troops to fight Israel. And at first, the Benjaminites are successful in defeating the Israelites, but soon as Israel seeks the Lord as to whether or not they really are to attack the Benjaminites the Lord says, “Go up, for tomorrow I will give them into our hand” (20:28).

And the next day, Israel sets up the Benjaminites in an ambush, luring them out, coming behind them and setting the city on fire, killing everything in it, and then destroying the soldiers, killing 25,000 of them. In fact, 20:35 says, “And the LORD defeated Benjamin before Israel, and the people of Israel.”

However, as the Israelites begin to take account of what has happened, they begin to pity the Benjaminites and long for the 600 surviving soldiers to have wives. Now, they can’t provide them wives from their own daughters because they had earlier made a vow that they would do no such a thing. Yet, they devise a plan to kill the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead and take their virgin daughters for them. But this only accounts for 400 of the men. Thus, they are in a difficult position of wondering how to get 200 more virgin women. Thus, the Israelites gave the Benjaminites permission to capture 200 more virgin girls who would be dancing at a festival. This wouldn’t violate the vow since the daughters of Israelite men would be captured by the Benjaminites instead of being given to them. Thus, the Benjaminites capture the 200 girls, marry them, and go back to their land and rebuild it.

Then, the author adds one comment, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25). And so ends the book of Judges.

So, what is it that we are to learn from this drastic picture? Well, as we have seen before, this text was not simply written for those who lived through this but for us as well, for our instruction, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Thus, this text teaches us something about evil, about sin. Therefore, let’s look at some of these lessons that we should not miss having read this text.

If we never pause to examine our own lives in light of God’s Word, then we will soon mirror those things we should be standing against

We see this in the text in an interesting way as the Levite does not want to go to Jebus because they are not of the people of Israel. That is to say, he doesn’t want to be amidst a group of people that have no sign of being like the people of God. However, as he goes to Gibeah he soon finds a group of men insisting on homosexual rape, raping and abusing his concubine, and leaving her dead. Clearly Israel has been thoroughly Canaanized. They are living and mirroring exactly that which they should have been standing against. Clearly they had not evaluated their own lives in light of God’s commands and were now mirroring that against which they should be standing.

It is interesting the characteristics that they saw in Gibeah: inhospitality, homosexuality, and men not sacrificing themselves for women but sacrificing women instead. These were markers of sin among God’s people, and we might be tempted to say that they are markers of the evil of our culture as well. But we might need instead to ask ourselves if these are things that exist not simply in our culture but in the church as well. Not asking this question of ourselves could end up humiliating the church. One doesn’t have to think back too far to remember Jimmy Swaggert railing against sexual sin continually in his pulpit only to be caught in disguise walking out of a hotel with a prostitute (and that more than once). We must examine ourselves and see if such sins are in the church. And, indeed, I think we might clearly answer, “yes.” And we could add a list of other numerous sins.

This is a frightening reality for us, for when we lose our distinctiveness from the culture around us we will have lost our effectiveness. Or, as Jesus says, salt that loses its saltiness is good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot.

Thus, even as we mentioned last week, I want to urge us to be a people who continually examine our lives in light of God’s Word as we meditate on it so that we might ensure we are conforming our lives to God’s commands. And as we see sin we must respond to it in a proper fashion. Specifically, this text is a reminder that …

We must war against all ungodliness, whatever the source

It’s interesting that Israel realizes in this story that she is her own worst enemy. After avoiding the Jebusites, it’s the Israelites that rape and kill the Levite’s concubine. And it is not some foreign nation protecting such evil men but the Benjaminites. Thus, all the rest of Israel declare war on the Benjaminites. They realize that something must be done about such sin. They must make war against it.

And it seems that for the first time in some time God enters the picture on behalf of Israel again. For they seek the Lord in battle and he gives the answer we saw earlier, namely, “Go up, for tomorrow I will give them into your hand” (20:28) and then we read in 20:35, “And the LORD defeated Benjamin before Israel, and the people of Israel destroyed 25,100 men of Benjamin that day.”

Now, why was the Lord appearing now? I think it’s because Israel had at least regained (if only a bit and only for a short time) a glimpse of how horrible sin is and how seriously it needs to be fought against. Thus, we see the scene with the Benjaminites that should have been what we saw over and over again at the beginning of the book toward the Canaanites – Israel conducting holy war. And though they weren’t fighting the Canaanites in these chapters but one of their own number, it is still quite clear that the Lord shows up to illustrate that sin, no matter the source, needs to be dealt with.

This is a message we need to hear in the church. Again, it is quite easy for the church to rail against sin in the world and excuse it in her midst. However, even this week I’ve heard of three episodes of great sin taking place in churches. In one of them there is a girl in open sexual immorality (not hiding it one bit) and the church doing nothing about it. Such is abominable in God’s sight. We must war against sin even in our own midst.

But why don’t we? That is, why don’t we battle sin among those in the church but rather feel much more comfortable railing against the world for acting like the world? I think it’s because we have a wrong understanding of love and have exchanged real love for shallow sentimentality. But this text teaches us something toward that as well, showing us that …

There is a kind of sentimentality among God’s people that is from the pits of hell

At the point that Israel had finally begun to fight and make war against sin they fall into this sentimentality that pities the Benjaminites in such a way that they are willing to sin for them. They feel bad that the Benjaminites won’t have wives and will die out as a tribe and so they kill and steal in order to provide them wives.

This is what often occurs in our churches as well. We see clearly the commands of Scripture such as confronting others in sin and walking through the process of church discipline, yet we blatantly ignore those commands in the name of love (which is really cheap and shallow sentiment) and are willing to sin in order to carry out not what God has commanded but what is best in our own eyes. Again, such sentiment is from the pits of hell. It is a shallow sentiment that would rather see men go to hell than hear the gospel or be confronted with their sin.

And notice in the text that as long as Israel is waging holy war against sin, God’s presence is with them. It is only when they refuse to do this, driven by this shallow sentiment, that his presence again leaves them. In his book A Treatise on Church Order, J. L. Dagg wrote two centuries ago, “It has been remarked, that when discipline leaves a church, Christ goes with it.” ³ I fear that the book of Judges is much more of a mirror of our churches than we might like to admit and that this statement by Dagg has become a reality among us.

So, what do we do? Have we blown all chances and is God simply going to ignore his church and disregard us? No. For just as Israel was a chosen vessel through which he would bring his Son, so his church is the chosen vessel through which he will glorify his name and take his gospel to all nations. Rather, we should see two points as we close.

1) God is still working all things together for the good of his people, ultimately so that they might be conformed to the image of his Son.

Notice that even in the text the Lord works it for God. For though Israel sins greatly, Benjamin is preserved, and it will be from that tribe that the Lord will bring forth a Johnny-come-lately apostle named Paul, whom he used as an apostle to the Gentiles, which we are. Indeed, even our own salvation is seeing its seeds in the Lord’s grace here. So, be hopeful because God is working even now.

2) And secondly, realize that God’s commands should begin to be obeyed at any point.

That is, do not think it too late to obey in life, but begin obeying wherever. That is our labor with the churches. It is the reason we prayed for another local church in our corporate prayer time this morning. We believe that if God’s people will even now begin to return to his Word for right doctrine and practice that God will work through them mightily. As your elders, we are quite hopeful, even dreamlike, for what God might do through his church even in Jackson, Tennessee.

Thus, do not assume that all is lost even as we might have been tempted to do with Israel in these chapters. For at the first sign of obedience the Lord went out before them again as the Divine Warrior that he is. May God grant us grace for such obedience. Amen.

¹ Daniel Block, Judges-Ruth: New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1999), 586.
² The text could also indicate that she had been unfaithful to him, as there is inconsistency in the text. However, it is probably best taken that she was angry with him.
³ J.L.Dagg, A Treatise on Church Order (Charleston: The Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1858), 274.

LOOKING INTO A MIRROR: A CALL FOR REFORMATION