This story in Judges has some rather strange elements to it. But, in my opinion, it is a story that well fits today’s western society. Let me share a few connections.
·
19:1: A society with no king. Even Christians struggle with this, seeking
to live for Christ without an absolute submission to Christ. The predominant theme these days is to do
what you want, to do what feels good. Peter
tells us that fleshly lusts … war against the soul (1 Pt.
2:11). In our world, if you are a man
but feel like a woman, then you go with that feeling. If your neighbor makes you angry you feel
justified to let loose with the anger.
If you think you can be happy with a different spouse or another toy or
a different church or a bigger house or whatever, few people see the need to
rule over their feelings.
·
19:2: I have seen this in several instances,
where a wife, after a few years, often after children begin to leave home, that
her attention turns outside the marriage.
·
19:3: But here’s something I seldom see: a
husband who, after his wife has played the harlot, goes after his wayward
wife. We are more often interested in
“justice” rather than forgiveness and mercy.
·
19:4,6,8: Nothing unusual here. Responsible
decisions hindered by a few micro-brews or local wines, etc.
·
19:15-16: hospitality gone by the wayside,
except by the older generation. That’s a kind of love called for in the NT but
often neglected by younger families.
·
19:22-26: It’s way politically incorrect these
days to speak of anyone as “perverted,” especially, of course, when referring
to the LGBTQ crowd. And it’s hard to
deal with them or with the issue. It’s
impossible to have a discussion because those coming from a Biblical position
are labeled as prejudiced. This is not
the only subject like that these days.
The same happens in any discussion of Creation vs. Evolution, climate
change vs. the Creator and Sustainer of the earth, and so forth. As the story continues in Judges you see that
the tribe of Benjamin stood solidly behind these perverted persons and resulted
in civil war.
·
19:29: The Levite found it necessary to use
“shock” methods to call attention to the crime.
It seems like that in our day.
Not much happens until there is a strong action that demands
attention. You can’t just get justice in
court because too often wrong is called right and right is called wrong,
because it takes too long to work through the system so that there is no sense
of deterrence for crime, and because of bribery, by which I refer to the way so
many cases are settled out of court just because it costs so much money for
people to get justice.
·
19:30: This sounds like it was a first
occurrence. What it is is extreme evil,
something that showed how far the nation had drifted from a society where right
and wrong were easily determined and commonly accepted.
The story continues through the end of
Judges. But we will stop here because we
have seen the depravity to which Israel had descended after the death of
Joshua. Today’s reading in Deuteronomy
tells us that Moses predicted such a depravity.
So we should not be surprised.
Also, there was no central government at the time. My understanding of the “restrainer” in 2 Th.
2:7 is that it is human government. That
is God’s purpose for government (Rom. 13:17). So again, we should not be
surprised. Perhaps we should not be
surprised about the depravity in our own society since there are many levels of
government where law and punishments have been loosened. It is not an excuse to say that the last days
will be characterized by this type of society (2 Tim. 3:1-5). Likewise, the end of a society where God has
given them over to sexual immorality and perversion is just what was being seen
in Judges (Rom. 1:24-32). Let us be on
the alert, committed to our calling, to be Christ-like lights in a “crooked and
perverse generation” (Phil. 1:14-16).
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