A Damaged People (Part C)

Hello does this seem like you there less and less people moved by the gospel, just less and less people even interested 20 years and you can get somebody to dialogue with you about Christ seem so difficult more than I remember. You reap what you sow.

Whether as an individual or as a nation. Fortunately, there are a lot of righteous people in this land resisting the darkness that is trying to engulf it entirely. This is cross reference radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston.

Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville.

Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Judges. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross reference radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching today. Pastor Rick will conclude his study called a damaged people as he teaches in Judges chapter 21 inflammatory speech to tell the truth. It's actually the other way around.

Paul talks about that in Romans. He says they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It's not honorable to do that is not only dishonorable.

It's harmful because you then. How convenient do you you can commit you in all crimes and no one can say anything as inflammatory. You can be immoral as you want to destroy all generation that's okay. Well, we disagree, we we disagree and it's okay to tell it. In fact, it is our duty to tell the people of the world they engages in conversation.

It is our duty to say. We disagree with you, and we side with God want you to like it and if you don't cough but were not going to change what we believe and if you persecute us will be persecuted well with salt story that's were another story because in getting to whole civil laws and stuff like that but anyway verse 11 and this is the thing that you shall do. You shall utterly destroy every male in every woman who has known a man intimately so they found among the inhabitants of Davis Killian 400 young virgins who had not known a man intimately and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh which is in the land of Canaan, lives at Shiloh reference in verse 12 I mentioned earlier so since the solution spare the virgins. Josephus tells us that the virgin girls wore certain Todd had a certain attire guard. I think it was longer sleeves on their and their clothing with one of their tunics and so they would. That would've made them more easy to identify. We find it mentioned about the daughters of King David is the the virgin daughters of the King and second Samuel. They had a special tunics made for them and so that would've helped identify who not to kill in the heat of battle or the took them captive and and just you know that other means. But anyway, that's them the easiest one to believe from Josephus, it's would be nice if you had footnotes like that in the Bible.

He did not spend too three hours digging for the stuff like that one commentator can make a comment and I hope great how my going to verify this. This would be really nice if I could verify and many times he just can't find it like it is something he just walked on this one. Other times, you gotta cut through so many ancient writings and stuff his home managed to do the commentary. I know, this no comment for this well where are we okay verse 13.

Here they are now going with their in this case to putting their tribe to community their families ahead of God. Human logic is a follow God.

You will always put every body you would be better for everybody. By following God in human logic goes the other way gets to point would think sick you can do better. Verse 13 then the whole congregation sent word to the children. Benjamin, who work at the rock of room on an announced piece to them.

These are the 600 holdouts that have not repented and yet they're announcing peace with them. So Benjamin came back at that time and they gave them the women whom they had saved alive of the women of Davis Killian and yet had found not that had not found enough of them. So the restoration without repentance brings big trouble and their compromise is not solve the problem is. Still, they still come up short. At no point is there any indication that they figure any of the cell. At no point is you know what we okay we should tomato the oath about the Benjamite's and yet we maybe should play field about killing you know where it ensures up the battle that will work for us, but they never come out and say you maybe we shouldn't wiped out on people and in Davis Killian and maybe we should just stick the money was gone with goofy story.

Verse 15 and the people grieved for Benjamin because Yahweh had made a void in the tribes of Israel. Now the historian is writing with the peak, the sentiment of the people at the time. Blaming God is always a step in the wrong direction. It is so easy to do and you get nowhere with it, except of guilt feeling of guilt for doing it.

When you come back to your senses. That's how does Yahweh else would he do all by commanding men not to be perverted as they were to not murder anyway. Verse 16 then the elders of the congregation said, what shall we do for wives.

For those who remain since the women of Benjamin have been destroyed. Verse 17 and they said there must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin that the tribe may not be destroyed from Israel. So now we're going to get is the end justifies the means, which is worldly thought this human logic is not God's. God forbids it. Paul talks about in Romans three verse eight and why not say let us do evil that good may come to rhetorical policy and will do that which arch would do anything we don't do it that way, we do good, the good may come.

We do not do evil that good may come good, but does not come from doing evil, you may not suffer the consequences.

Instantly, what you will and they will be worse and so verse 18. However, we cannot give them wives from our daughters for the children of Israel have sworn an old saying, cursed be the ones who gives the wife to Benjamin so the snow will talk about. We have taken an oath and were going to keep our old in front of anybody for appearances, but what is really happening here is that they made the oath so that they could circumvent the oath, which is what they're doing right now is finding a sneaky way around their own oath to get what they want and that is how sinister the deceitful heart is desperately wicked above all things. Who can know the Lord testimony. Lord knows he tests the heart. So these leaders devise a scheme where they could technically keep the terms of the oath, so they're not going to their daughters and saying here.

I'm giving you to a Benjamite for a husband to be a wife of your husband. They can do that. So how what to do, what to do to do this is hypocritical, righteous fiction, that's what we're looking at its it's not righteousness, and the Jews as a people.

Unfortunately, many of them became very skillful in the passing years Christ had to deal with it.

Paul had to deal with it in this hypocrisy. This righteous fiction. This finding a way there's an old saying of the rabbis is no would just find another rabbi who can make it happen.

Christians due to is nothing we can really charge the Jews. With that we don't do to because centers or centers and we been other side of that.

Well, of course, Jesus had to meet with these very things in his his day and the scribes and the Pharisees and all the other experts who know how to keep the letter of the law while trampling the spirit of the law the same time, which is exactly what will reading right this in this 21st chapter. Surely there is a way to not be bound by integrity while appearing to retain the integrity and they reasoned that directly giving their daughters to the Benjamite's would violate their oath so they created the condition to sidestep the oath and it will worsen matters.

Verse 19. Then they said, in fact, there is a yearly feast of Yahweh in Shiloh which is north of Bethel on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem and south to Lebanon. The hour we not too interested in that part right now. But someone has come up with a good idea, and there are others that are agreeing with this idea. This clever way to sidestep the oath without consequence. They think verse 20. Therefore they instructed the children of Benjamin St. go lie in wait in the vineyards and watch and just when the daughters of Shiloh come out to perform their dances. Then come out from the vineyard vineyards, and every man catch a wife for himself from the daughters of Shiloh, then go to the land of Benjamin well they learn this tactic know what's happening. The them the virgin daughters would come out at Shiloh and had the men of Shiloh who are part of this team did not part of the leadership, the elders, but the part of the people under these elders, they don't know. This plan is being hatched on their daughters then just up in Shiloh doing what they do and that the leaders are behind closed tents there saying what the daughters are going to come out. They had this this festival every year and they do this dance and we want the men to just jump out and take himself a wife. Now they learn this tactic from a local biker gang just up the road and then Shechem's if you know what we had. You get here.

I've really come out the dance we take. This is why we don't allow the women to dance interpretive lien church afraid was shielding you lonely man might grab you and run out the building in the world, then all we can have that all every week so the tribes weren't violating their oath because they were not giving their their girls as brides there playing with words they were having their brides kidnapped and the situation patriating is the goofiest thing.

It is a direct indirect plan and they must assist work like just what Seth is worth it work for the helmet was wrong before God. And again it is not literal because these things issued in the period of judges that is one of the big parts of into to know the word to when you get to these latter chapters you find Phineas the priest is ministering during this time will he lived in the days of Aaron and Moses and Joshua so we know where this is the happening. This is taking place early in the book of Judges and is this kind of hate behavior that led the people to worship false gods and to live as they lived and bring the judgment upon themselves that we had to just trek through this entire book. So what we have is a better understanding how things got to be so bad. I mean what what happened with Sampson ones that had to be so gifted and to end up so flat on his face. None of the judges brought spiritual improvement.

They save the people from communal hardship and oppression they would have to wait for Samuel and David before they got's real spiritual leadership. It's so bad that when we get to the first chapter of Samuel we read about Eli and his sons for the first four chapters and how awful things were under their spiritual leadership what his sons were doing to the with the women at the temple of God and so on its spiritual effects. A nice preaching anti-love.

They don't get too close better than special-effects verse 22 then it shall be when their fathers or their brothers come to us to complain that we will say to them, be kind to them for our sakes, because we did not take a wife for for any of them in the war for it is not as though you have given the women to them at this time, making yourselves guilty of your old bunch of nonsense be nice to your son outlaw because that's what these Benjamite's were and is not like you breaking euros because Dick kidnapped.

We planned this way, so none of us have broken our roles is like a little child. It you say don't touch the knob and the child takes it its doll's hand and touches the knob. I'm not touching it involves touching it and this is the kind of craziness that adults do in churches and Christians get offended when someone stands up as this is right.

You can't do this as nepotism and other things begin to creep in verse 23 and the children of Benjamin did.

So they took enough wives to fit is that it took enough wives like to go to the market to get fruit ahead. Should I got enough nectarines. Let's go in the children of Benjamin did so, and they took enough wives for their number from those who danced in the end they caught then they went and returned to their inheritance and they rebuilt their cities and wealth in them. So how'd you to me now, eight years ago I did the study and judge, and I just couldn't hold it is just so crazy all of a sudden you get these pictures but have matured evidently and and I'm not losing it. I am just it's not sold news now anyway. I don't think they did this dance after that anymore. I think I think they just said you know what were going to just do something else. I mean who would risk it. After stunt like this.

Could you imagine the girls that escape these men what come home screen. What is it what is it with the dancing and twirling an event come out of the vineyard okay verse 24, so the children of Israel departed from there. At the time every man to his tribe and family. They went out of their every man to his inheritance.

So let's just summarize what's been going on there. Again the Benjamite's around the house with her religious man was with a man that was from another tribe entertaining him. They wanted to violate the man, the host, as did lot offered the virgin daughters which that alone even in that culture was particularly heinous because virginity was was viewed as something very honorable and of course he throws the unnamed concubine out to the walls. They kill her and after that comes the carnage, the destruction, the kidnapping, all because of a band of criminals and a Levites ungodly response. So the tribe of Benjamin was then punish the citizens of give your they were wiped out, slaughtered except for 400 of the girls, the tribal leaders found a way to boast that they did not violate their oath when they were lying when they did it.

If they did say that anyone the 600 men got their brides 11 tribes felt that they kept their vow to not give their brides and the 12 tribes which were saved and then the 600 with their new caught brides.

They cleaned up the debris of their towns and repair their cities and started life over again, and when they started their life over again.

They plunged into idolatry and then would come the ammonites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Philistines and everybody else that needed to strip from them whatever they could take to bad again about the Hardy created in the lives of tens of thousand war victims and their loved ones of verse 25. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes that actually reads without the translators are helping us out in those days, no king in Israel. Everyone did right in his own eyes.

It does alter the meaning a little bit. Everybody was content with what ever it is that they did. They were justified some kind of what we're living in a in a general doesn't seem like you there less and less people moved by the gospel are just less and less people even interested. I don't know. 20 years ago you could get somebody to dialogue with you about Christ.

It seems so difficult more than I remember.

You reap what you sow. Where there is an individual or as a nation.

Fortunately, there are a lot of righteous people in this land resisting the darkness that is trying to engulf it entirely well where it says in verse 25. In those days that is the. After Joshua that I've been mentioning throughout its held up as a stark contrast, is it not to. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord versus as for me and my house would do it right when we think it's right in our own eyes. Deuteronomy 12 eight. There, in the law, you shall not, you shall not at all do as we are doing here today every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes, immunities's patent.

It's clear in Scripture. This is not what God wanted and what we learn and hopefully share is that deep passions that are deep in our heart for Christ line up with him as quickly as it hopefully instantly. We we don't disagree with him ever. We may struggle to obey, but we don't disagree and the deepest passion of Christ is not the glory of man, it's the glory of God.

But in saving men from their sins.

God gets the glory in helping humans. God is glorified. If in in the work of Christ, of course, is what I'm talking about human humanitarian aid or something like that. I am saying that the most important thing in the heart of Christ was to do the will of his father, he would say that often and in doing that in doing the will of his father he saved men, to the glory of his father into the benefit of people. This is what Christianity is in Christianity is not understood that way by a great many folks who are resisting what they don't even they don't even know they resisting that they they Meme repeat something they picked up about crisis or false Christ and they are going to hell over bad information and were supposed to bring the light because we are the light of the world.

No king in Israel and again while the judges did the work of God sent them to do.

They did not bring the spiritual leadership. Samuel really bring that David no David pump so much spiritual so many spiritual blessings into the nation through his Psalms alone its unmatched. He took those men that came out to follow him in the caves and out in the wilderness and he taught them righteousness just the way he lived. The songs he would sing around the campfires. What an influence and an encouragement today is no king in Israel because nation shows Barabbas they did not choose Jesus Christ and he says here also. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes well because they did not fear God, and while we look at the anarchy around us today, thereby it's committed by people who don't fear God and no care about what happens and they die or how they live and they do what they feel is right because God is not believed on God's terms. And just like their father the devil, they don't know this, some of them some of them have heard a clear gospel and rejected. Hopefully, those who preach the gospel.

Are there some that are praying for them because the fight goes on. So this book is. It is depressing. If you look at it at face value. If you just you know if you're looking for. Pick me up. You don't send someone the judges feeling bad about yourself are jewelry judges.

I mean you send them to maybe Philippians the Thessalonians. You want to excite them send them to ask if you want to confuse them to revelation because they got be happy at the end and not know why her rearview week we nowise because we know we were the victory is ours. Even though we don't understand the deep so many details, which is a good rebuke for those us.

They will not only the Bible that understand why we revelation understand all of it, but I know it's true and the evidence is quite powerful.

Well anyway, we come to the end of this book and Glenda in the way that we read it because of the lessons and in God says I've recorded these lessons. I don't want you to miss them. I want you to learn from them. I want you to understand that their vital and without heating the lessons from the Scripture become damaged.

These were damaged. People that we just read in these last four chapters of the book because they chose not to follow may not be so with us ever move thanks for tuning in to cross reference radio for this study in the book of Judges cross reference radio is the teaching ministry pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel in Mechanicsville, Virginia. If you'd like more information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website cross reference radio.com will find additional teachings from Pastor Rick available there, and we encourage you to subscribe to our podcast by doing so you will be notified of each new edition of cross reference radio. You can search for cross reference radio on your favorite podcast that work just follow the links and cross reference radio.com that's all the time we have for today. Join us next time to continue learning more from the book of Judges right here cross reference rate