The Hope of a King
This morning, we are wrapping our series on Judges called Broken Saviors. It’s about how everybody needs a savior at some point in life. But before we dive into the text, I feel the need to give a bit of a parental advisory for this message: these chapters in Judges cover one of the darkest and hardest subjects in not just Judges, but in the whole Bible… We will briefly discuss the Israelites act of violence towards a young woman and while I will do my best to not be graphic with it, it’s a graphic story so if there are still kids in here who you may feel are too young for that, you may want to dismiss them back to kids ministry.
Judges has been a difficult book to cover. Time and time again we have seen leader after leader start things off well but then totally fail and lead not just themselves away from God, but the Israelite people as a whole. Broken saviors lead to broken lives. And while the chapters we are covering this morning are a level of darkness and depravity we have not yet descended to, we will see that there is still hope and it is not in a broken savior. That hope is in the real savior of Jesus Christ. For believers who are gathered here this morning, I pray you will be assured that nothing in this life will fulfill you, sustain you, or save you as Jesus has. And for skeptics, I hope and pray the same but I also hope that you will practically see that if you are here this morning and your hope or trust is being placed in some kind of hero, author, politician, leader, king… whatever. I hope that you’ll see they will fail you as they have done for generations. But the real Savior and the real King will never fail us.
Go ahead and turn in your bibles to Judges 17. If you open to the middle of your bible and keep turning left, you’ll find Judges. We are going to be doing a bit of verse hopping this morning so if you need to just follow along on the screen that will work. The title of the message this morning is the Hope of a King and the big idea this morning is: No matter how far we fall, we are never beyond the redeeming hope of Jesus.
Here’s our context. The book of Judges records the historical events that took place after the Israelites were freed from Egyptian slavery and entered the Promised Land. They were supposed to live and be faithful to the Lord in the Promised Land, but they started being unfaithful to the Lord. They started going through a continual cycle of sin, suffering, and crying out to the Lord for salvation. So, the Lord raises up some judges, some leaders to save them, but they’re all broken saviors. Last week in Ch.’s 14-16, we learned about Samson and that even though sin had destroyed his life, the grace and power of Jesus restored his life in the end. Let’s begin in verse 1 of chapter 17.
Verse 1-3 says: “There was a man named Micah, who lived in the hill country of Ephraim. One day he said to his mother, “I heard you place a curse on a person who stole 1,100 pieces of silver from you. Well, I have the money. I was the one who took it.” “The Lord bless you for admitting it,” his mother replied. He returned the money to her, and she said, “I now dedicate these silver coins to the Lord. In honor of my son, I will have an image carved and an idol cast.”
Right off the bat, we are introduced to these characters: Micah and his mother who don’t feel genuine, straightlaced, or devoted to the Lord at all. This would be the equivalent of stealing from your parents, admitting you stole to them and your parents telling you to keep it and instead of using it for something good, taking the money to the casino and burning it on the roulette table in Jesus’ name!
He then goes on to set up a shrine for the idol and appoints one of his sons as his personal priest which was a big no-no concerning the law of priests because they were not from the tribe of Levi. He was religious, but he was religious on his own terms. Last week we observed similar behavior from Samson who did what was right in his own eyes and it did not work out well for him. We don’t know much about Micah other than he is an Israelite and he is meant to embody the religious confusion and spiritual compromise of this time period. And things don’t get better for him.
In verse 6, it says: “In those days, Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.” We are going to revisit this shortly but for now I want to jump ahead to verse 7: “One day a young Levite, who had been living in Bethlehem in Judah, arrived in that area. He had left Bethlehem in search of another place to live, and as he traveled, he came to the hill country of Ephraim. He happened to stop at Micah’s house as he was traveling through. “Where are you from?” Micah asked him. He replied, “I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am looking for a place to live. Verse 10, “Stay here with me,” Micah said, “and you can be a father and priest to me. I will give you ten pieces of silver a year, plus a change of clothes and your food.” The Levite agreed to this, and the young man became like one of Micah’s sons. So Micah installed the Levit as his personal priest, and he lived in Micah’s house. “I know the Lord will bless me now,” Micah said, “because I have a Levite serving as my priest.”
This section again shows his idolatry and while Micah seems to be the main character in this first chapter, the priest is actually our broken savior in these verses. He is leaving Bethlehem, we don’t know why but what we will see in the coming verses, I think we can assume why. He is going to go where he is paid and where he is safe. But we will continue with the priest in a moment. I want to continue talking about Micah for a moment. He also isn’t winning the most committed person alive award because as soon as this Levite comes into the picture, he’s essentially like, “Hey son, thanks but no thanks for filling in your priestly duties for me. Now that an actual priest is here, I’m gonna go with him.” He barely knows anything about this guy other than the fact that he is from the tribe of Levi and from Bethlehem in Judah and that’s all he needs to know to ensure that he can cover his spiritual bases and check off his pompous reiligiosity. It actually fits with his character. While we don’t know if he is from the tribe of Ephraim, he is living in Ephraim. Ephraim was one of the strongest and largest tribes of Israel. They were often trying to assert their spiritual and political dominance and were most often rebuked for their pride and spiritual unfaithfulness (Hosea 4:17). Micah fits those characteristics well. He appears to think he can purchase his way into God’s good graces. Interestingly enough, I did feel a tinge of sympathy for Micah as I was studying this week because there is no one leading Israel right now. Remember, they had no king, no priest, no judge. He is doing what he can to get into God’s good graces but failing miserably and if you’re taking notes this morning, and I hope you are, the first thing I want us to remember is:
#1: We cannot manufacture God’s grace.
Micah was trying to manufacture God’s grace.
He thought he could buy God’s grace with confession. He thought he could get spiritually straight with an idol and a shrine. When that felt wrong he replaced it with a priest – a sketchy priest at best. By trying to get a priest to bless his idolatry, Micah believed he could get God to churn out the goods and blessings he was craving. Micah was trying to redefine God rather than submit to him. He was trying to substitute true faith in God with this religiosity and it was built on the premise that God exists for him and if he did the right things, God owed him something.
Let me clear about two things this morning City Awakening.
#1 – God doesn’t exist for us. He is not some magical wizard in the sky delivering blessings to us when we obey him. We exist for Him. We are his creation and the pride in us doesn’t like this statement but he can do with us as he pleases.
Now you may be thinking, “Boy, I sure am glad I decided to come to City Awakening on Thanksgiving Weekend to hear that God can do with me what he wants.” But really there isn’t anything capable of moving us towards thankfulness and gratitude more than realizing God didn’t need us, didn’t have to save us, He could’ve destroyed us all and gone back to his enjoyment of the angels and all the rest of his creation worshipping him but instead he saved us. He sent Jesus for us. He wants us. We are his children and he desires relationship with us.
#2 – God doesn’t owe us anything.
I think as a culture we are more guilty of this than thinking God exists for us. Our culture stinks of pharisaical effort more than it ever has. We think by giving to the poor, posting Bible verses on our social medias, attending church, and simply speaking out against injustice that God owes us something. He doesn’t. And that may not be the “Happy Thanksgiving let’s kick off the Christmas season” message you were hoping for but that may be revealing in your heart exactly what it’s supposed to this morning.
And while Micah didn’t have a king or a priest or a judge to lead him, he knew his ten commandments. His claim to ignorance thinking he was doing good did not excuse it. Ignorant worship is still false worship.
Chapter 17 talks about Micah’s idolatry and chapter 18 talks about the idolatry of the entire tribe of Dan. I am going to do my best to summarize this chapter and hit the key moments because it really just harps on the point that these final chapters of Judges portray a fallen people seemingly beyond the hope of redemption.
Context for chapter 18, the tribe of Dan was looking for a place to settle and so they sent out five warriors and those warriors went out to the hill country of Ephraim and found Micah and his Levite priest. In verse 7, the men see that Micah and his family are living “carefree lives” and they report back to their leaders there is an opportunity here to rob them and take their priest to justify their own behavior. We will pick up in verse 18: “When the priest saw the men carrying all of the sacred objects out of Micah’s shrine, he said, “What are you doing?” “Be quiet and come with us,” they said. “Be a father and priest to all of us. Isn’t it better to be a priest for an entire tribe and clan of Israel than for the household of just one man?” The young priest was happy to go with them, so he took along the sacred ephod, the household idols, and the carved image.”
Micah sees them escaping with his priest and all his gods and tries to stop them but realizes there are too many of them and lets them go. They end up coming to the town of Laish, burning it down, killing everyone, and then rebuilding it on the smoldering remains and renaming it after Dan. They then set up the carved images there and used the priest to justify their behavior.
I want to come back to this Levite priest now. He is a snake. As I mentioned earlier, we aren’t clued into why he left Bethlehem but we can imagine there was some type of scandal he was running from, a promise of more money somewhere else, or somewhere else he could go to feel valued as the savior he wanted to be. His arrogance is fully exposed and here we see him prostituting himself away to the next highest bidder. The men of Dan come along and say don’t you want to actually make a difference? Here you are only helping a family, with us you can save an entire tribe. The young Levite priest’s pride is stoked and motivated by money, safety, and his unquenchable desire to feel important is happy to abandon Micah and go with them. After he leaves with them he watches the men from the tribe of Dan commit atrocity after atrocity as they destroy a village and rebuild it for their people. This broken savior is the traitor of all traitors watching his vain efforts to save lead to destruction.
Chapter 19 kicks off the point of our text this morning where I want to warn you again of the sexual and violent nature of the text. If you’d like your younger students to go back to kid’s ministry for the remainder of the message, our kid’s ministry volunteers are ready for them in the back. As dark as things seem to have left off in chapter 18, they get exponentially worse in chapter 19.
Verse 1 begins: “Now in those days Israel had no king. There was a man from the tribe of Levi living in a remote area of the hill country of Ephraim. One day he brought home a woman from Bethlehem in Judah to be his concubine. But she became angry with him and returned to her father’s home in Bethlehem.”
We are shifting the characters and the setting here. Now we are introduced to a man from the tribe of Levi, and he takes a woman to be his concubine from Bethlehem. Notice he doesn’t take her to be his wife… A concubine in this time meant they were living together but not married. In other words, they were not committed to each other. He basically told her “I want the fun of having a woman around without the responsibility.” They eventually get into some type of domestic scuffle and instead of making an effort to work things out and restore their relationship, he picks up the video game controller and the beer and she leaves him to return home to Daddy’s house.
Verse 2 says, “After about four months, her husband set out for Bethlehem to speak personally to her and persuade her to come back. He took with him a servant and a pair of donkeys. When he arrived at her father’s house, her father saw him and welcomed him. Her father urged him to stay awhile, so he stayed three days, eating, drinking, and sleeping there.”
Savannah and I are approaching our ten-year wedding anniversary. I certainly don’t have everything figured out in marriage – not even close. But I do feel like I learned early on that waiting 4 months to pursue her and convince her to come back after a fight would probably not have worked out for the good of our relationship. What we are seeing early in this story is pattern behavior of “people who have no king.” They have no direction, no leadership, no purpose. And because of that, they are noncommittal, they are fighting, they are abandoning, and they are lazy. Not only that, but when he finally decides to go and retrieve his concubine, he spends the time drinking and eating and spending more intentional time with the father. He does this for two more nights before he finally decides he needs to leave and return home.
Verse 10: “So he took his two saddled donkeys and his concubine and headed in the direction of Jebus (that is, Jerusalem). It was late in the day when they neared Jebus, and the man’s servant said to him, “Let’s stop at this Jebusite town and spend the night there.” “No,” his master said, “We can’t stay in this foreign town where there are no Israelites. Instead, we will go on to Gibea. Come on, let’s try to get as far as Gibeah or Ramah, and we’ll spend the night in one of those two towns.” So they went on. The sun was setting as they came to Gibeah, a town in the land of Benjamin, so they stopped there to spend the night. They rested in the town square, but no one took them in for the night.”
I don’t want to get too into the weeds of this story, so I am going to give an overview of what happens next. The travelers end up encountering an old man coming home from his work in the fields and he invites them to stay with him. As they are eating and drinking with him, a crowd of troublemakers from the tribe of Benjamin comes to the house and begins to beat on the door shouting at the old man to let the Levite out so they can have sex with him. The old man pleads with them to leave but they insist so the old man offers his young virgin daughter and the Levite’s concubine instead. The crowd doesn’t listen and still beg for the Levite man so the Levite cowardly pushes his girlfriend outside into the arms of the wolves and they abuse her and sexually violate her until the morning. In the morning, she crawls back to the door step of the house her coward boyfriend is staying at and he opens the door to find her, dead. He takes her body home, cuts her into 12 pieces and mails her body to each of the 12 tribes of Israel.
In verse 30 it says, “Everyone who saw it said, “Such a horrible crime has not been committed in all the time since Israel left Egypt. Think about it! What are we going to do? Who’s going to speak up?”
Who… is going… to speak. up.
While this is an incredibly difficult story to read about and one of the darkest stories in scripture, it points us to our second point to remember this morning and the question
#2: WHO IS GOING TO SPEAK UP.
AKA… who is going to save us?
What happened to this Levite’s concubine was a direct result of so many failures across a people who have abandoned God. It was the fault of their countrymen for not giving them a place to stay, it was the fault of the crowd of troublemakers for their heinous evil cravings, it was the fault of the old man who let them stay with them but instead of standing up against the crowd, offered his daughter and the concubine, and it was the fault of this cowardly Levite pushing his girlfriend to the feet of the men who would kill her.
This is maybe the earliest recorded act of a religious authority complicitly standing by while sexual abuse is happening. This story made my stomach churn this week. And it should make all of our stomachs churn. When we hear about sexual abuse in general it should make us sick but when it happens in the church it is a direct result of our apathy and refusal to stand up and speak out. We have seen it happen in the catholic church, we have seen it happen in southern Baptist churches, and we will continue to see it happen until Jesus returns because as a society we have abandoned God just as the Israelites had.
And I want to take a moment to say that at City Awakening, your story is safe. We have staff and a number of people in our congregation who are counselors and we don’t want your story to go untold. We long to hold that pain and experience it with you. I’d also like to say that it is not your fault. God is not overlooking you… in fact he is weeping over it with you. And as a church, we weep with you as well. We love you. And we will stand with you.
Church, we must speak up against heinous evil. We must protect the innocent and vulnerable. God will take vengeance on those responsible and if they don’t repent and trust in Jesus as their savior, their punishment will be an eternal torment in Hell separated from God. We must do what the old man did not and stand in the door way between the evildoers and the people we must protect and either say “Take me instead” or die on the doorstep attempting to defend them.
Blocking justice is injustice.
We don’t have time to cover chapter 20 and 21 in their entirety so I will give a synopsis. The tribes of Israel receive the body of the young woman, and they unite against the tribe of Benjamin in an effort to purge Israel of this evil. They did seek the Lord in doing this. Before the battle, they go to Bethel and seek the Lord. Two times they do this, and God doesn’t immediately deliver the tribe of Benjamin to them. But the third time, he does. And as far as the tribe of Benjamin goes, they have an opportunity to turn from their sin but instead of repenting, the Benjamites took up swords to defend themselves and the ensuing battle resulted in the loss of over 40,000 Israelites and about 25,000 Benjamites.
In one of my favorite book series, there is a quote that says, “Death begets death begets death…” What is meant by this quote is that war creates more war. Violence creates more violence. Evil creates more evil.
In Chapter 21, verse 1 says, “The Israelites had vowed at Mizpah, “We will never give our daughters in marriage to a man from the tribe of Benjamin.” Now the people went to Bethel and sat in the presence of God until evening, weeping loudly and bitterly. “Oh Lord, God of Israel,” they cried out, “why has this happened in Israel? Now one of our tribes is missing from Israel!”
The Israelites are again crying out to God because an entire tribe of their nation has been wiped out. They’ve realized that sin and destruction has led to more sin and destruction. They cry out to God in mourning at the beginning of the chapter but by the end of it, they are going back on their promise to not allow their daughters to marry Benjamite men and they try to justify destroying the Benjamites by allowing the few hundred remaining men of Benjamin to take wives from the young women of Shiloh who were dancing in the festival of the Lord.
Verse 22, “And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, “Please be sympathetic. Let them have your daughters, for we didn’t find wives for all of them when we destroyed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not actually give your daughters to them in marriage.” This stinks of the serpent in the garden saying, “Did God actually say…?” They are justifying their criminal behavior yet again and doing what is right in their own eyes. The chapter ends with verse 25 saying, “In those days Israel had no king; all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes.”
Judges has shown time and time again the result of putting our faith in broken saviors and doing what is right in our own eyes. And it feels like the times we live in today. Everyone doing what seemed right in their own eyes is parallel to today’s axioms “You do you” or “I am just living my truth.” The world we live in today as a society that has abandoned God as our savior is reminiscent of the chaos and depravity we see throughout Judges. But Judges also points us to the Real Savior in every verse. Even when you turn the page to the end of Judges you see the Book of Ruth next to it and we are reminded that where the strength of Israel fails, God will save us through one considered to be weak (like Ruth), an outcast, named Jesus who descended from the line of Ruth and Boaz.
As we close this morning, we are closing the pages of Judges but opening to our Advent series titled “The Savior We Need.” You don’t need to turn there in your bibles but I do invite you to look to the screen with me as we read Isaiah 9:2-7: “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. For those who live in the land of deep darkness, a light will shine. Verse 6: “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of his ancestor David for all eternity. The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!”
The big idea of the message is no matter how far we fall, we are never beyond the redeeming hope of Jesus. The hope of Jesus. That is what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown. I was driving into my neighborhood earlier this week and saw the lights and decorations; everything from inflatable Buccee’s beavers dressed as Santa to Peppermint Candies decorating our neighborhood entrance and something struck me… I have not taken pause to remember why we celebrate Christmas so far. And I’ll be honest church family, it has been a rough few weeks. My full-time job has been exhausting. This is the most behind I have ever felt. I have never waited this long to finalize our Christmas Eve service and yet, here we are, and it is not finalized. Last year, I joked on this Sunday about how I start getting excited for Christmas much sooner these days but for the past few weeks it has been for the wrong reasons. I have been focused on the wrong things. In a way, the materialism, rest and nostalgia have all been little broken saviors in my life I have been holding onto with my excitement for Christmas. And this text from Isaiah, despite having read it hundreds of times, gave me pause this week and encouraged me to focus on the real Savior. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Messiah, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. Jesus. What the Israelites were searching for throughout the wilderness, and the judges, and the kings, and the prophets was someone to rescue them. After Judges, they began pleading with God for a king to rule them. Then a redeemer to free them from captivity. Nearly 1000 years after the events of Judges, Jesus is the fulfillment of their search. The fulfillment of their prayers. The fulfillment of their hope. As we light the HOPE advent candle today and celebrate the official beginning of the advent season may we remember what Christmas is about: the hope of Jesus. And may we express in our worship our gratefulness that he is our hope.