Israel, Doing What Is Right in Its Own Eyes

20They commanded the children of Benjamin, saying, “Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, 21and see, and behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards, and each man catch his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin. 22It shall be, when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we didn’t take for each man his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, otherwise you would now be guilty.’” 23The children of Benjamin did so, and took wives for themselves, according to their number, of those who danced, whom they carried off. They went and returned to their inheritance, built the cities, and lived in them. 24The children of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and to his family, and they each went out from there to his own inheritance. 25In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.

I want to bring our study of Judges to a close. Through these sermons you will have learned how foolish and self-centered human beings are, and you will have seen the faith of Israel, which received grace and still hardened its heart. When people receive an answer from God, they act as if they will do well for the rest of their lives; then, the moment the problem is solved, they sin by leaving him. But there is something we must know: if it was God who solved the problem, it is also God who takes back the blessing he gave.

God’s purpose in creating the world is salvation, and its destination is heaven. He works with a thousand years as one day, and from this we know that his purpose of salvation and the love that leads us to heaven will never change. Israel cared nothing for the kingdom God longed to establish, and because of that sin God had to forgive and judge, forgive and judge, over and over again.

Sexual immorality, drunkenness, greed for wealth—all of these are what our perishable flesh craves. So only when we nail this flesh to the cross with Jesus can we cut the cord of sin. If we who were saved by Jesus’ sacrifice live with half our heart resting on God and half on the world, we will inevitably repeat the same sins.

By God’s grace Israel lived in plenty, but they forgot to give thanks and lived only for themselves, and so they went back and forth between God and idols like a bat that belongs to neither side. When they offered sacrifices they put on a show of holiness; out in the world they defiled God’s name with drunkenness, sexual depravity, and idol worship. But on the last day, when everything is settled, they will be cast off by both: by the world that perishes and by the God who judges it.

As I preached through Judges, I found myself wondering how long God’s patience could hold out for an Israel that knew nothing of grace and went on worshiping Satan to the end. The question arose because it seemed as though God was not judging their sin. But when I saw that the gospel went first to the Gentiles, I could see that God’s judgment had already come upon Israel. God’s purpose was to wait until the fullness of the Gentiles had come in, and then to save those in Israel who received the gospel—and that purpose is itself the judgment that fell on them. How deeply God must long to save Israel, to have hoped that the salvation of the Gentiles would provoke them to jealousy and that they would come back to him!

Loved so deeply, Israel still did not fear God, because they thought of themselves as the chosen people; and they made no effort to stay faithful.

Judges 21:1

1Now the men of Israel had sworn in Mizpah, saying, “None of us will give his daughter to Benjamin as a wife.”

The men of Israel who had gathered at the assembly in Mizpah resolved not to give their daughters as wives to the children of Benjamin. The decision of these men, who had gathered at Mizpah after seeing the body the Levite sent, brought home to me how great human selfishness truly is. When one tribe has fallen into corruption, they ought first to repent before God and then decide what is good for the people; but the first thing these men decided was that they would not lose what was theirs. Rather than repent of their own sinful lives, they turned the assembly into a place for blaming the other side, the children of Benjamin. With God at the center, Israel should have weighed why they had gathered, what the Levite’s trouble really was, and whether Benjamin’s corruption was Benjamin’s problem alone. Instead they gave no thought to their sin and showed nothing but selfishness. Because people like this cannot see their own faults and blame only others, they will never grasp God’s will, and every plan they make will end in failure. Israel was no different from the worthless men of Benjamin; so whatever they decided, they could go no further than refusing to give their daughters.

Having wiped out the Benjamites and returned, they went so far as to complain against God, as 21:3 records: they asked Yahweh, the God of Israel, why this had happened in Israel, and why he had caused one tribe to be lost from Israel that day. Was this really God’s doing? They had reaped failure by living apart from God, and now they blamed God as though he had brought it about. It is astonishing that anyone could say such a thing to God.

We too, when we have lived as we please in the world and then run into hardship, pray in resentment, asking God why he has sent us such suffering. We forget all the grace he has given us, live sunk in pleasure, and then, when the rod of his wrath falls, complain as though God had sent the suffering. None of the suffering we go through comes from God. It is true that there are times when he makes us pass through rough winds so that we grow spiritually. But these are the things anyone meets in life, and those who live by faith can overcome them; that is why those who are full of faith do not call them suffering.

When Benjamin had been wiped out and only 600 were left, Israel finally realized how foolishly they had acted. Yet even after offering burnt offerings and peace offerings, they did not understand how they ought to live as God’s people. Pleading that they had sworn at the assembly not to give their daughters, they would not let go of their human hardness of heart.

To avoid giving their own daughters, they needed someone else to pay the price. They went about it by looking for whoever had not come to the assembly at Mizpah. And they discovered that the men of Jabesh Gilead had not joined them.

Judges 10:3

3After him Jair, the Gileadite arose, and he judged Israel twenty-two years.

Judges 10:3 records how Jair the Gileadite became a judge. Gilead is the name for the territory east of the Jordan, or for the people who lived there. After Israel defeated Sihon in battle, this region was allotted to Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, who drove out its inhabitants and took it as their inheritance.

Judges 20:1 says that the children of Israel all came out, from Dan even to Beersheba and from the land of Gilead, and the congregation assembled as one at Mizpah. The phrase “from Dan even to Beersheba” means the whole of Israel. The land of Gilead refers to the entire region east of the Jordan. Yet for some reason the army of Jabesh Gilead did not take part.

Israel sent 12,000 warriors against Jabesh on the grounds that it had not attended the assembly; they killed every inhabitant, women and children included, and dragged back 400 virgins by force to give to the Benjamites as wives. On the surface they spoke as though they were rebuking Jabesh for staying away from the community of Israel. But the slaughter of the townspeople and the forced seizure of 400 young women make plain how wicked Israel’s spiritual condition had become. Israel mistook the grace God had given for its own strength, and this killing of the defenseless people of Jabesh was a great sin that could not be forgiven by God.

God stands strong against a strong Satan, and toward the weak among his people he always works with gentle grace. If the people who believe in such a God are weak before Satan and show pride toward their brothers in the faith, that is sin.

Later, Nahash the Ammonite besieged Jabesh Gilead, and King Saul came to its rescue. Saul was a man of the tribe of Benjamin, and his rescue may have been a way of repaying Jabesh Gilead, which had stayed out of this war, for its 400 young women forced to marry into Benjamin. The people of Jabesh never forgot their gratitude to Saul for saving them from Ammon’s tyranny. When Saul and his three sons fell in battle against the Philistines, they risked their lives to take the bodies of Saul and his sons down from the wall of Beth Shan and bury them. When David saw this, he gave special thanks to the men of Jabesh for that good deed done at the risk of their lives, though Saul was the king who had hounded him.

Since the ties between Jabesh Gilead and the tribe of Benjamin carried on from generation to generation, the women who had been taken by force must have told their descendants about what happened. Because of this event, Jabesh and Benjamin remained on good terms.

You too, in the course of life, may come to hate someone. But because the other person’s faith may be more honest and more faithful than yours, you must not be quick to criticize and condemn; judging someone else can itself become a sin of opposing God. You need, therefore, to set your own faith upright, so that you do not devise evil against a neighbor who dwells securely beside you.

Israel is now guilty of a sin God will not forgive, because they used weak people like those of Jabesh for their wicked ends. They killed all the people of Jabesh Gilead, who were living in peace, and still do not see that it was sin. God’s own people wiped out one of the twelve tribes and then killed innocent women and children. Such a deed is a sin beyond forgiveness.

Judges 21:25

25In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did that which was right in his own eyes.

Look at Judges 21:25. The last verse of the book does not record that Israel repented and turned back. It records that in those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did that which was right in his own eyes. Even after Joshua died, God walked with them, answered their prayers, and made them experience his mighty works; yet because they did not serve God as their king, they sinned by living as they pleased. Israel was meant to restore in Canaan the Garden of Eden that Satan had ruined, but they could not resist Satan’s temptation and committed the same sin.

The book says there was no king in Israel and people did what was right in their own eyes. It means they would not acknowledge as king the God who had led them all along. Israel’s history was made by God’s grace, yet they thought only of themselves and committed one lawless act after another. When they left God, they suffered; when they repented and cried out, they received the forgiveness of a God who shows mercy. Judges is a cycle of judgment and forgiveness. Even if the people of the world, driven by their own interests, cannot help repeating such a history, those who belong to God must not live this way.

The first generation, who cast aside God’s grace and sinned, all died in the wilderness, and the second generation, born in the wilderness, entered Canaan. God, we may suppose, hoped they would build his kingdom. But they had not been taught the word by their parents; they turned their backs on God’s grace, worshiped the idols of Canaan, and fell into sexual corruption.

God is sifting out the wheat in this wilderness of a world, so we must not be chaff that the wind drives away. Each time he weighs us on the scales of faith, we must not be found wanting. For that, the word must be taught, and we need to put into practice the word we have learned.

Only when we are full of faith, as Joshua was, can we experience wonders like the fall of the walls of Jericho and the parting of the Jordan. Israel saw such wonders and came into Canaan, and yet they failed to stay faithful and sinned by killing their own kin. The God who had led them into Canaan kept raising up judges, determined to save Israel by any means, and he waited patiently, giving them chance after chance through many events to turn back. But there were those who thought only of themselves and used God for their own gain; having no fear of the word, they set out on the road of corruption. Such people received grace upon grace and still did not turn.

Israel set out from Egypt, where they had suffered as slaves for 400 years, and saw the Red Sea part and water flow from the rock. They were sheltered by the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire and received God’s complete love and protection, yet now they were left as people of the world with nothing to do with God. If we, like Israel, look with envy on the prosperity of the world, we will walk the very same path as a corrupted Israel. So we must nail this sin-filled flesh to the cross with Jesus, walk by the word, and become children who have been born again.

Judges 19:29

29When he had come into his house, he took a knife, and cut up his concubine, and divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the borders of Israel.

Here is one way to see what happened when the Levite, after a monstrous sin he should never have committed, cut up his wife’s body and sent it to Israel. Even today, a murder in which the body is cut apart horrifies people. Yet it is striking that the Bible records such a sin without softening it at all. This man is plainly an Israelite, and his work is serving in the sanctuary. Because people think of the Levite as someone who believes in God, they find this event all the harder to understand, and harder still to understand a God who did not prevent it.

An event like this could bring mockery on God and blacken his name; why, then, did God not stop it? Teaching who his children of true faith really are matters more to God than being mocked, and so he took no account of it. This Levite claimed to believe in God, yet he drank with his concubine, indulged in sexual pleasure, and even touched a corpse. Such conduct is no different from that of worldly people who live by their nature, and so he is not one of God’s own. That is why God is unconcerned even when the world mocks him.

Even so, the Levite’s sin did not end as one man’s sin; sadly, all Israel had to bear the responsibility together. In the same way, if pastors and church members cause a public scandal through pleasure-seeking and sexual sin, faithful Christians cannot share the gospel, as though they themselves had sinned. The world does not point only at one church and its pastor; it mocks God and every church in the world, and so the gospel cannot be preached. But that is not what concerns God. He will bring about still more events, solely to find those who stay faithful.

The Levite’s cutting up his wife’s body and sending it to every tribe of Israel can be seen as the plea of a man who had been wronged. But look closely, and you can see that Satan used the Levite, seizing the event as a chance to sow division in the community. Israel could grow strong only as the twelve tribes grew together; Benjamin was wiped out and the twelve were left one short because Satan’s work of division had succeeded.

Remember that Satan said Job would curse God if he were afflicted. In the same way Satan meant to use this event to hinder God’s work. Satan would have mocked God, telling him to look at this Levite: God treasured life and delighted in holy living, yet here was a Levite defying his will with wine, women, and a corpse. Satan would also have gloated that God had spent the whole of Moses’ life to bring Israel out of Egypt and expected them to build a strong kingdom once they reached Canaan, yet in the end they had yielded to Satan’s own temptation. Satan’s way of mocking God is the fall of God’s people. So if you love God, you must persevere in the fight against sin.

Satan sent the body not to one tribe but to every tribe, because he wanted people to be caught up in the event again and again. Picture the tribe of Judah. When it first received the body, its people must have been stunned; they would have whispered among themselves and wondered whether the other tribes had received one too. As word kept coming that every other tribe had received theirs, Judah would have been facing the same horror more than ten times over, and would have grown more and more bitter.

Satan chose this method to make the event as large as possible. He chose it so that people would keep retelling this terrible event until, little by little, they lost their reason, grew inflamed, and could no longer judge clearly. When Israel received the body, the first thing it should have done was seek a way to resolve the problem; to keep whispering about it was to walk the road to ruin that Satan had laid.

So those who are mature in faith, when they come upon an event that has strayed from God’s will, must pray first and think with the word at the center. Imagine someone who has lived a quiet life going out to the countryside. They hear the chorus of frogs in the pond. At first it stirs the feelings and brings a sense of ease, but before long the croaking becomes hard to bear. When they try to pray, the din keeps them from concentrating, and their heart will not settle. Then, if they shut the window, the frogs sound far away, and they can pray in quiet and listen for God’s voice.

Friends, if you do not keep your attention on God, you will be ruled by the clamor of the flesh, noisy as those frogs, and you will stumble at the whispering of the world. So arm yourselves with the word. If you fasten the belt of truth around your waist, put on the breastplate of righteousness, wear the shoes of the gospel, and take up the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, you can quench all the fiery darts of the evil one and drive back the enemy.

We must not live like Israel, who forsook the God who had protected them for so many years and sank into immorality, drink, and pleasure. God raised up judges to set the people right, yet even the judges fell; we must not share the faith of that Israel. And we must never forget why God led them all the way to Canaan: to build a kingdom in which God reigns as king.

Now I bring Judges to a close. When I preached through Joshua, there was much to learn spiritually, because the people served God with one heart. With Judges I have had to preach a word of judgment brought on by Israel’s corruption, and that has grieved me.

I hope you will be a holy people who keep God’s law and expand the Kingdom of God. To build a kingdom with God as its king is the calling of all who belong to him. So may you take Israel’s faith as a mirror and be people who exalt God.

Expository Sermons on Judges