There Was No King Until Jesus Came

We're going to turn to the last verse of Judges, Judges chapter 21. And I want to read that with you because it really is the key verse to these entire five chapters. Judges 21 verse 25. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

This morning, I just want to begin with a bit of a warning and a preamble, that we are actually going to be dealing with some heavy themes, heavy stories in the book of Judges. In fact, if you've been thinking, wow, Judges is pretty grim and dark up to this point, I think it gets even darker today. So I've actually warned some families that are going to attend this morning, and I want to warn families at home as well listening to this, that we're going to deal with some things that their kids may not want to deal with just yet. So if you're at home, if you want to listen to this first and then decide that for yourself, I welcome that. And at the same time, also want to say that there may be some women here who have experienced some of the violence that we'll be talking about this morning.

Violence of an especially intimate nature. And if you feel that it is upsetting or that you feel it has put you in a place that you can't really deal with that quite well, I want to give you the opportunity to talk with someone in our church, my mum, Gradi, who is a trained counsellor, who's said to me she's very willing to help and to discuss these things. But also, if you're not necessarily keen on that, Brave Hearts is an organisation that has dealt with some of these issues. Brave Hearts is also worth checking out. If you Google that, I'm sure you can find them as well.

An organisation very much Christian in influence, and they'd be worthwhile as well. So I just wanted to start with that, so we have fair warning. But now, to summarise the story of Judges chapter 17, the next chapter after Samson, which we dealt with last week, all the way up to chapter 21. In chapters seventeen and eighteen, we find the story of a man called Micah. By the way, these five chapters cover two main story arcs, but they have this repeating theme, which is what we've just read in verse 25.

Chapters seventeen and eighteen are about a man called Micah, who has stolen 1,100 shekels of silver from none other than his own mum. Great start to a great story. He hears his mum calling out curses upon the man who has stolen from her. Feeling really bad about that, fearing for what these curses may mean, he confesses to the theft, gives back that money to his mum. She in turn prays that God will bless him.

But things are already smelling pretty fishy. Micah in the story never repents, never asks for forgiveness for what he has done to his mum or to God. Likewise, Micah's mum promises to dedicate this newly restored money, which was a large amount of money, to the Lord. She will dedicate this to the Lord. She says in verse three of chapter 17, I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son.

But get this, she dedicates that money in order to make an idol out of it, a graven image to the Lord. The next verse says that she takes 200 shekels of silver and gives it to the silversmith. But wait a minute, she had 1,100 shekels of silver returned to her, which she dedicated to the Lord. She will only use 200 to make this idol to the Lord. She keeps back for herself 900 shekels of silver.

Now after this silver idol is made, Micah decides to put it in his home, in a shrine that he has made for himself. Yet God has told Moses and Israel that there is to be one central place of worship. Israel was not to make graven images of God, which is done. Israel is meant to worship at the tabernacle, the one central location, which is not done. Micah also makes for himself an ephod, which is a high priestly garment.

And he appoints his own son to be the local priest. Again, God has said that there will only be one line of priests in the nation of Israel, the Levites, the descendants of Aaron. And that is how chapters 17 through to 21 starts. And we're starting to see some of the themes that will unfold over these chapters. Verse six, if you want to have a look at that, is an important verse because it introduces that line that we've also just read, which becomes a repeating refrain.

Verse six of chapter 17. In those days, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. We see that from the account of Micah and his mum, that this is exactly what happens. People are making up rules about God, for God, at their own pleasure. They decide how to live a moral life.

Micah's mum decides that she wants to worship God by making an idol of him. And we might ask, what's the problem with that? Is it okay to have little images of God? Well, the problem with that is that as soon as we've created God and made him into an image that we can see and touch and imagine, we've already started ruling out other shapes that God may also take and also is. If God is in the shape of a man, and this is, you know, verging on the problem with little crucifixes and so on.

If God is in the shape of a man, some man that we've imagined, he is human, and then he can't be spiritual. And yet, we believed he can be. If he is in the shape of an ox like the golden calf was when Aaron made that wasn't a foreign god, that was Yahweh. God is strong like an ox, but then he cannot be knowledgeable like he is at the same time, and so on. As soon as we do something like that, we've created a box for God to fit in.

You've reduced him to being something that you want him to be. Micah runs with this idea. And he creates a shrine in his own home. He creates a homemade religion. But then in verse seven, we meet a Levite who just so happens to be passing by.

And Micah sees an opportunity. He's going to improve his homemade religion by getting a real live Levite in his home. He offers to pay the Levite. The Levite is happy to do priestly duties for some room and board. Micah then gets an even holier priest than little Billy, who still had to grow into his priestly garments probably, that Micah had sewn together himself.

And so in verse 13, it says that Micah has his own priest and he says, now I know that the Lord will prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest. The next chapter, chapter 18 begins with this statement, in those days Israel had no king. Now the writer doesn't complete the couplets that we read earlier, included the phrase, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes. But that is what is insinuated. And what happens next proves it.

Chapter 18 introduces the tribe of Dan, the most northern tribe of Israel. Now they're still trying, by this stage, to find a place for themselves to settle in. They still are nomadic wanderers in the promised land. A group of five scouts are sent out and they stumble upon Micah and his Levite. They are invited to stay at Micah's house.

While there, they ask the priest to please intercede for them to know whether they will find a suitable homeland for their tribe. The Levite says to them, yes, you may go in peace, you will find a place. Those five scouts returned to the leaders of Dan, telling them what the Levite had told them. But now, in order to guarantee their victory, the Danites do what is good in their own eyes. They come and they ransack Micah's house.

They steal his idol, they steal his ephod, they steal his priest. The Levite isn't too unhappy about that because he's getting a promotion. Now, at first, he was a priest to a single house. He's going to be a priest to a whole tribe. He was a pastor, now he's a bishop.

Poor Micah tells them, that's not very fair. Micah the thief has just been robbed himself. But the Danites have come with 600 armed troops. Micah and little Billy are no match. So they carry off his prized homemade temple.

The tribe of Dan are successful in capturing their own city. They settle there and they set up their priest very comfortably for the rest of his life. He becomes their local priest. The Bible says that his descendants then become priests there in that place, is now the city called Dan itself, until the time of their captivity, which probably is talking about the exile by the Assyrians hundreds of years later. The Levite here is now officially identified as being Jonathan, son of Gershom, the son of Moses.

Get that. This corrupt priest, taking people's money to be a private priest, is a descendant of the great Moses. He sets up a place of worship in Dan, in the northern parts of Israel, which for hundreds of years causes a false and idolatrous worship of God, which leads to the eventual apostasy of Israel. Chapters 19 through to 21 now begins another story arc, and it's even worse. But again, if you have a look, verse one in chapter 19, it also begins with this phrase, in those days when there was no king in Israel.

But the story is absolutely terrible. We find another Levite, another supposed holy man dedicated supposedly to the service of God. This man has a wife, but he also has a second wife. A wife on the side called a concubine. Now she decides for some reason to leave the Levite.

She doesn't apparently seem very happy. So she goes back to her father's house in Bethlehem. Four months later, it doesn't seem like the Levite is too heartbroken at first, but four months later, he decides to go back to Bethlehem to find her. The father welcomes him in a very friendly way, very kind. He says, please, come and stay with us for four or five days and you may take her back.

After that short rest, the Levite and the concubine set out back home. On their way back, they meet a man in the field. He greets them and he says, where are you going? And they said, well, we probably have to stay overnight somewhere around here. We're just going to go into the town of Gibeah and stay in the town square overnight.

The old man says, please come and stay with me. Come and stay with me. Please, he says, don't stay at the town square. Now that is funny again. I mean, is it not too unusual.

People staying at strangers staying at people's homes, we're not. But this little detail, don't stay at the town square, stay away from that place, also smells fishy. During the night, a gang of local men bang on the door and say to the old man, give us this man visiting you because we want to have sex with him. The old man replies, please brothers, don't do something so wicked. This man is under my protection and I won't allow it.

But then he does the unthinkable. He says, take my virgin daughter and this Levite's concubine and do with them what you please. What happens to these women? We can't even begin to imagine. Throughout the night, they are gang raped, so that by the end of it, the concubine crawls to the house and collapses at the front door.

Meanwhile, the Bible says that the Levite wakes up as if nothing has happened without a care in the world, opens the front door and finds the concubine lying there with her hands on the threshold. That's how close she had come. And with shocking callousness, tells her, get up. We're going. But there's no response.

She's died from her injuries. But still there is no respect or dignity in this man's heart. In order to curse or to bring vengeance on the men of Gibeah, who has robbed him not of a beloved woman in his life, robbed him of his property. He takes her, chops up her body and sends 12 pieces to the 12 separate tribes of Israel. Chapter 19 ends with this statement from the Israelites who hear the story.

Such a thing has never happened in Israel. Then what follows in the last two chapters of Judges is that the whole of Israel come out to bring justice against the men of Gibeah. These men that have done these things. The Benjaminites, which is where Gibeah is located, these were Benjaminite people, closed ranks and they refused for these rapists to be punished. The Israelite elders say to each other though, we must purge this evil from Israel.

And so the 11 tribes go to war with Benjamin. In other words, civil war breaks out in Israel, and the Benjaminites are almost wiped out. Now the Israelites eventually are troubled by this idea. One of their own will be wiped out soon. They don't want Benjamin to be eradicated, but unfortunately, in their fighting with Benjamin, they have made a vow saying, we will not give one of our daughters to any of the sons of Benjamin.

So there are hundreds left in Benjamin, but there are no women for any offspring. Another dumb vow in the book of Judges. In order to patch things up, they make things worse. They decide to wipe out another innocent Israelite village, killing every man, woman and child there apart from any virgin woman. And they forcibly marry them off to the Benjaminites, so that they can start breeding offspring.

In another village in Shiloh, there's a religious festival. Some men lay in ambush. They abduct all the virgin women who were dancing during the ceremony. The leaders of Israel have planned for this, because when the fathers of these daughters come and complain, they tell them, please give these daughters graciously to us. For in this way, you won't be breaking your vows against the Benjaminites because they have been forcibly taken off your hands.

And that is where the story of Judges finishes. With the final verse, in those days there was no king. And the people did what was right in their own eyes. That is the heart of Israel in Judges 17 through to 21. But what we see as we make sense of this, as we attempt to make sense of this, is how man made solutions inevitably cause more problems than they fix. The book of Judges ends with this idea that everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes.

All throughout the book of Judges, not only in these five verses, but all throughout the book, people were doing what was right in their own eyes. And we've seen Israel essentially becoming a pagan nation. It makes decisions at best based on human reasoning, and at worst, on vengeance and promiscuity. Even when Israel intends to purge evil from our ranks, as the elders say at one point, they try to solve the problem by creating even bigger problems. They're willing to murder in order to solve their problem.

And the whole time, the whole time, God is a convenient outlet for their complaints. God is a convenient enabler for their actions. What we see in these chapters, but also throughout the book of Judges, is the fact that the moral problems of Israel is grounded in spiritual problems. It shows us how futile it is to try to solve the problem of immorality by simply telling people to be better. There is no military campaign we see.

There is no political policy we see. There is no educational curriculum which can solve the problem which resides in the human heart. It will take something akin to a restart, a new birth to do this. So on the one hand, these chapters are a picture of how a society that is not centred on God will inevitably function. This is what happens to a society that does not know God.

That society will worship things other than the true God. They will decide what they seem or think is right. Eventually, they will wonder why things don't seem to get better. Corruption, they realise, continues. Violence continues.

Oppression continues. And then to top it all off, that society decides that if God exists in all of this mess, and all of this is happening, then he surely does not care for people. That's what a society like this can conclude. So on the one hand, that is the implication of a godless society that the book of Judges explains to us. But on the other hand, and in fact more painfully, we aren't examining a pagan nation.

We are looking at Israel, the covenant community of God. We are looking at the church. Appallingly, no pagans are to blame for the oppression, the rape, the murder, the abduction, the massacres that happen across these five chapters. This is all Israel's doing. The heartbreaking story of the Levite and his concubine is reminiscent of Genesis 19, isn't it?

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Where a Canaanite town by the name of Sodom is found to have two angelic messengers come to it, to a man called Lot. Lot looks after these messengers and men also from the town come and say, we are going to have our way with these two men. Lot also offers his two daughters in their place. But God strikes the men with blindness. In Judges, there is no escape.

Here is the tragedy. Sodom was a pagan town. Gibeah in Benjamin is part of the nation of Israel. For us, as Christians in the church, the book of Judges holds up a mirror to God's people and says, do you realise what you are capable of if you leave your God behind? Do you understand that this is who you could be if you do not watch out?

Will you see the dangers in the things that you are starting to toy with? You see, we find it so easy to lay blame on everything and everyone else that is happening in the church. We think that it might be left wing politics or activists. We think it will be shameless media. We think it might be our state schools that are indoctrinating our kids.

We might say it's powerful faceless men who run the world through corruption and the love of money. We mourn how weak the church is to resist all these schemes and meanwhile, the book of Judges forces us to reflect on just how terrible the church of God can be if it's lost its sight of God. Instead of putting all our energy into the things that really matter, things like the preaching of God's true word, the careful adherence of God's people to that word, a daily return to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the ongoing commitment of believers to encourage one another in that walk. These are the central hard won habits that if the church loses it, there is no distinction between it and the pagan world. And so even as we wrestle with a whole bunch of stuff, in the church, on the church, because of the church, we may argue that we are trying to win ground for God.

When we are actually melting down little silver pieces to make a self-made depiction of God to meet our own interests. And we will say, this is what God wants for us. The deeply disturbing stories of Judges depicts the Old Testament church who looked at everything and everyone around itself, tried to do what was right in her own eyes, and forgot that God had already given them everything they needed to know what was right. Open house church, do we love the word of God? Do we prioritise truly the word of God?

Do we believe that answers are found in that word that can really help our day to day? Or do we find answers in what our own eyes convince us to be right? God tells the prophet Hosea just before the northern tribe is lost. Hosea four verse six, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. That little Levite, Jonathan of Gershom, of Moses, the lack of his knowledge, the lack of the people of Dan, of Benjamin. The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

Israel's downfall was never the result of the nations around them and what they were doing. They fell because they didn't believe and they didn't obey. And so the truth is that our moral downfall, my moral downfall, starts with a downfall of my spiritual health. God's people are destroyed for their lack of faith. The second thing we see is that we need a king.

All throughout we see, in that time there was no king. And that is an interesting change because nowhere else before that is the king mentioned. They were deliverers. The judges were raised by God to save Israel at various times, to rule over Israel at various times, and now, the mention of the king starts being made. Why is that important?

Well, like I said, we've seen God raise deliverers, but these weren't good leaders. More often than not, they reflected the heart and the sin of Israel itself. By the time we come to the end of this book, we begin to wonder, is there really anyone capable of rescuing God's people? Well, the Bible says that after this, someone is found. A king is established.

He's the best king. He's David. And for a while, he has authority to rule over God's people, and they do live under God's rule. But sadly, the histories of 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicles, they will tell us that the line of human kings coming after David, well, they don't act much better than the judges themselves. By the end of these historical accounts, and by the end of the Old Testament, we are left with a deeper question.

If God's people needed a king, and even a decent king like David could not establish a people of lasting obedience to God, who else could it be? Well, the power of the book of Judges and why it is worthwhile for us to study it, is not only that it holds a mirror to our depravity, the depravity of the human heart, but it creates within the heart one quiet but unmistakable question, is there a better rescuer? And throughout the whole book of Judges, as we've worked through the Ehuds and the Gideons and the Samsons, what's been beautifully, supernaturally created is a huge hole that a saviour must step into. Of all the things that Samson and Gideon and Ehud and Deborah couldn't be, we find someone that must be that in order for true salvation to be achieved. And so we are shown a king.

This is a few things that we see. Firstly, that this king needs to be one who comes without being called for. Judges shows that people don't even know that they need a saviour. They don't know what sort of saviour they need. They might need a deliverer at one point, but they don't know exactly what that saviour has to do in their hearts.

By the time of Samson, for example, the latest judge, the Philistines are ruling over Israel and Israel does not even cry out for deliverance. God just gives Samson. The king needs to be one sent by God alone, who rightly knows what His people need. Secondly, the saviour, the king must love His people and love His God more than himself. Take the example of Gideon.

Gideon, the one with the weakest faith of all the judges, tries every trick in the book to get out of saving his people. Fleece after fleece. Question after question. Why? Because he seemingly doesn't love his people enough, and he definitely does not believe in God enough.

Thirdly, we see from the book of Judges how this king must single-handedly rescue God's people. They are not in a state to do it in any way to contribute to their own salvation. Gideon, when he goes to war finally, asks his people, if anyone here is scared, God says, go home. Two thirds of his army leave. Two thirds of his army leave.

They're not willing to save themselves. They're not willing to save God's people. Time and time again, a faithful saviour will need to single-handedly rise up to claim victory on behalf of the people. This is the type of king that Israel will need. And then fourth and finally, and perhaps most significantly, God's people need a king who will purge the evil from Israel.

In the final story of Judges, the leaders of Israel tell the tribe of Benjamin, verse 13 of chapter 20, give up these men who have committed these horrific crimes so that we may put them to death and purge the evil from Israel. Benjamin runs away from justice. And then, the men, in their vengeance and anger at the disrespect, decide to kill all the Benjaminites. What we see is that the human heart is so ensnared in tribalism and self justifying pride that even God's people, even God's people, is willing to evade justice. Israel was unable to purge the evil from itself because it would not allow the evil of their own hearts to be purged.

In every one of these areas that we see in Judges, we find this king shaped hole. And as Christians, we believe of course, that was Jesus. When the world didn't know what we needed, Jesus said in John 15 verse 16, you did not choose me, I chose you. When we needed a king who loved God, Jesus said in John 14, the father has commanded me and therefore I can show you that the father loves me because I obey the father. And when we needed a king who loved us as much as he loved God, Jesus said, as the father loves me, so I love you.

When we needed a king who single-handedly would conquer the greatest enemies that we would face, Jesus said in John 10 verse 17, I lay down my life of my own accord. No one takes my life from me and I have the authority to take it back up again. But ultimately, in order not only to be a king but also the saviour, we needed a king who would purge the evil from our hearts. We needed the power to see ourselves for what we really are, to know our need. Without Jesus in our life, we will continue to do what is right in our own eyes.

There is no life outside of Jesus. We need a king or otherwise, we will always do what is right in our own eyes and it will always lead to more problems. Friends, I want to encourage you to reflect on the parts of your life that can so easily be swayed by reasonable sounding arguments from very noisy individuals, and be just that step away from being the true word of God. May our church and the wider church of Christ turn back from any sense of doing things in our own strength. May the spirit open our eyes to blindness and may God purify us that we may never perish for lack of knowledge.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord, for even these hard parts of scripture that sometimes very few of us dare to go to. But we thank you, Lord Jesus, for the hope, for the questions that get stirred in our heart as we read these things. We know these things were not right.

How could they ever be? We know these things were not from you. How could they ever be? Oh God, help us to see that without Jesus Christ as our king, we will do what is right in our own eyes and things will always be worse. For those of us listening, Lord, to this, some of us who have never been sure, never been convinced of Jesus Christ being both Lord, king and saviour.

Lord, I pray that you will work in their hearts. For those who are willing to profess you this morning, Lord. Forgive them. Save them. Begin that work in them that will lead to life, that will lead to restoration, that will lead to sanctification, that the making holy of their lives.

Help them this morning to realise that in Jesus Christ, they can be washed as white as snow forever. And then for the rest of us, those of us who have tasted your grace, who have seen your salvation. Help us to never go back to that squalid slavery of sin. Help us, Lord, to love your word, to prioritise the knowledge of it, the preaching of it, the study of it, and the obedience to it. Purify your church, Lord. Strengthen your body.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.