This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “I Samuel 1-7” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 19, 1997.

I should have prepared you in more ways than one for our scripture reading this morning. We are indeed in one of those R-rated sections of the scriptures, and we are turning to Judges chapter 19. This demands some explanation for you. A Levite who has moved his home to the hill country of Ephraim, has seen his wife leave him. She has departed from him in acts of harlotry. He has gone after her and pursued her and wooed her back, and presently he is taking her back to their home in the hill country of Ephraim. On the way, they are looking for a place to stay the night, and they come to the territory Benjamin, and there they put up in one of the cities of that territory, the city of Gibeah, and that’s where we pick up.

A man from the city has welcomed them into his house, and this is what we find beginning at verse 22 in Judges 19. While they were making Mary, Behold, the men of the city, certain worthless fellows, surrounded the house, pounding the door, and they spoke to the owner of the house, the old man, saying, Bring out the man who came into your house, that we may have relations with him.

Then the man, the owner of the house, went out to the men and said to them, No, my fellows, please do not act so wickedly. Since this man has come into my house, do not commit this act of folly. Here is my virgin daughter and his concubine. Please let me bring them out that you may ravish them and do to them whatever you wish, but do not commit such an act of folly against this man.

The men would not listen to him, so the man seized the concubine and brought her out to them, and they raped her and abused her all night until morning, and then let her go at the approach of dawn. As the day began to dawn, the woman came and fell down at the doorway of the man’s house where her master was until full daylight. When her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, then behold, his concubine was lying at the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, Get up and let us go.

But there was no answer. Then he placed her on his donkey, and the man arose and went to his home. And when he entered his house, he took a knife and laid hold of his concubine and cut her in twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout the territory of Israel. And it came about that all who saw it said, Nothing like this has ever happened or been seen from the day when the sons of Israel came up from the land of Egypt to this day.

Consider it, take counsel, and speak up. And then turning over to chapter 21 in Judges, as the story progresses, the Israelites demand vengeance upon Gibeah. Benjamin refuses. The rest of the tribes go to war against Benjamin, subdue Benjamin. Now this means that Benjamin is devastated and there are no women because of the devastation for the remaining Benjamin men. So we pick up in verse 16 of Judges 21.

Then the elders of the congregation said, ìWhat shall we do for wives for those who are left, since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin?î And they said, ìThere must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin that a tribe that may not be blotted out from Israel.î But we cannot give them wives of our daughters, for the sons of Israel have sworn, saying, Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin.

So they said, Behold, there is a feast of the Lord from year to year in Shiloh, which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of a highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and on the south side of Labanah. And they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and watch. And behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to take part in the dances, then you shall come out of the vineyards, and each of you shall catch his wife from the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin. And it shall come about when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, that we shall say to them, Give them to us voluntarily. because we did not take for each man of Benjamin a wife in battle, nor did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.

And the sons of Benjamin did so, and took wives according to their number from those who danced, whom they carried away. And they went and returned to their inheritance, and rebuilt the cities and lived in them. And the sons of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family.” and every one of them went out from there to his inheritance. In those days, there was no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” that you would be kind to your people throughout the world, that you would bless them in lands and under governments where there is justice, where there is a fear of you. We pray, our Father, that you would also encourage them to pray as we do for those who are in authority over them. Father, grant to us that we might live peaceful lives, even as we are granted liberties which we enjoy to worship you. We ask, too, Father, for freedom for your word, even as it is proclaimed to the ends of the earth, that your elect may be gathered and, Father, they incorporated into the Church. This we pray in Jesus’ name.

If the book of Joshua has had among its readers those who recoil at its account of the holy wars and those bloody devastations, what today would be called the genocide of the Canaanites at the hand of the Jews. The Book of Judges has had among its readers those who recoil at the account of the spiritual and moral rot among the Jews. The Book of Judges tells us about the Israelites who, although now settled in the land of promise, having arrived, are repeatedly subjected to what seems to be the ever-revolving wheel of sin, judgment, and deliverance, idolatrous abandonment of Jehovah, which brings in its wake disastrous subjugation from outside powers, which in turn brings the Lord’s response in a deliverer, a judge, a whose help, however, is but short-lived, and once more the tribes plunge into willful desertion of God.

But as if this proverbial spinning wheel weren’t enough, the judges themselves are not a very compelling lot. They are, in fact, a surprising company. Ehud, a left-handed nobody. Deborah, a woman. Gideon, a man of especially weak, not strong, weak faith. Jephthah, a rash and superstitious man. whose foolishness costs him his own dear daughter. And, of course, Samson, that notorious, hot-headed, fornicating show-off.

Add to this particularly depressing picture the utter political chaos of the time, the continuing resistance of the remaining Canaanite tribes, the inter-tribal squabbles among the Jews, the vain jealousies, the reprisals, and the open anarchy. After all, the author’s ending comment about the time of the judges is as we read this morning in those days, there was no king in Israel, everyone did what was right in his own eyes. But if matters during the time of the judges in the eyes of many concern only the spiritual and political declension, these people have convinced themselves that they can remain unmoved by the account that they find here in this book. Their reaction tends to be, when focusing upon these matters, the spiritual and political declension, one of two jerks of the knee.

The one, of course, a great big yawn, a rather pronounced shrug of the shoulders, to the words, so what else is new? Isn’t this the way that it is? Nothing ever changes, does it? The other, more holy to be sure, is a spirited attempt to save the judges themselves. by incorporating into them all of the powers of spiritual and social normalcy, making of them almost fearless heroes in whose lives we find the stuff of personal courage, devotion to God, and admirable loyalty to the nation. Not that the judges don’t have their moments.

Not that they don’t have their positive features, those especially compelling. We see this particularly in Deborah. Not that we aren’t able to see in them even the features of the coming Messiah. In fact, those features being the only vehicle by which we might appropriate that in them which is truly positive. Still, in spite of all the good we may want to say about the judges individually, they are anything but the epitome of permanence and spiritual and social normalcy.

So much is this the case that as the book of Judges closes, we are given in chapters 17 through 21 Not yet one more grand story about an early Jewish superhero, but one of the most disturbing stories in all biblical literature. In it, we have our noses pushed into a nauseous stench, a stench depicting the complete corruption morally and spiritually of the Levitical order. The figure prominent in those last chapters is this Levite of whom we have spoken. We also find in these chapters the stench of that uncontrollable bloodlust of the imperialistic tribe of Dan. we find the sodomite perversity of the Benjamite city of Gibeah, the full hearty and absolute bankrupt statesmanship of the nation as a whole, in the asinine oath by which they bind themselves to deny wives to the tribe of Benjamin in the aftermath of their war. And the complicitous sanction of the entire nation in an effort to rectify this idiotic oath in the rape of the virgins of Shiloh.

This is how the book of Judges ends. Not a very pretty picture. It is one, I might add, in which no figure of a judge of a deliverer, of a savior, such as we found in the earlier chapters, appears. Now, why do you think the book of Judges ends this way?

Why this overpowering, even lurid conclusion? so startling, so shocking, that many in reading their Bibles have deliberately closed their eyes, if not closed their Bibles, at encountering it. Now, I dare venture that these chapters are hardly your favorites. You don’t find yourself regularly turning to them for inspiration. By no means am I suggesting to you that they should be your favorites, but what I must insist on is that we all face up to these chapters. Israel never did. She didn’t even in the days that followed, in the times of the kings. She didn’t even into the times of Jesus. And her inability and refusal to face up to these chapters spells her undoing.

You see, as much as Israel might have met herself in those earlier chapters of the Judges, or even in the accounts of earlier times, such as those of the times of Moses and the wilderness wanderings of the people in the desert, or the times of Joshua and the territorial conquest, it is specifically these chapters now that bring home to Israel her own desperate and depraved heart of darkness.

Long before Joseph Conrad ever opened up Europe’s vain and blasphemous Africa of the soul, in his grand, eloquent novel, The Heart of Darkness, the Holy Spirit, through the writer of the Book of the Judges, has exposed Israel’s and humanity’s underbelly. The Holy Spirit is telling Israel that despite her election, despite her uniqueness as God’s chosen vessel, despite the fact that she’s the Lord’s assembly, the church underage, as it were, she has no excuse for breast-thumping vanity or pride.

In fact, for all her advantages, she is turning out to be indistinguishable from the vilest of heathen. Here is the calculated intention of this story about the Levite at Gibeah in Judges 19. You note, do you not, the similarities between this story and another story in Scripture? Do I need to back you up a bit to Genesis chapter 19, and the story that we find there about the angelic visitors to Lot’s house in the city of Sodom, who encounter the same threat as this Levite among the Benjamites? The power of this whole matter is both overwhelming and unmistakable.

The Israelites, in the land of promise, in their settled state, having arrived, have become as vile as the most profane reprobate. Think of it. The Benjamites are sodomites. The Benjamites are Sodomites, and Israel is Canaan. Israel, therefore, has not changed the land. The land has changed Israel. And in this mix, the clergy, represented by the Levite, are no prize. In this, Israel is to be confronted not just with the potential for her corruption, but with the horrifying reality of it. There is none righteous, no, not one. Psalm 14, quoted by Paul in Romans 3, speaking about the universal condition of humanity, there is none righteous, No, not one, for we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, Jew and Gentile.”

Now, at the same time that the intent of this passage is to confront Israel with herself, it has further intent by putting the judges themselves in their place. For the tendency is to glorify the heroes and to live by the memory of their exploits, even to live through them and above the moral decay and decadence of the time. But the book of the judges will not permit this. The secession of judges subject to their own weaknesses and ultimately the lack of their own permanence leaves Israel in the worst of conditions, not teetering on the precipice of hell as if to fall in at some future time, but actually tumbling headlong hopelessly into the pit.

Clearly then, for there to be any hope whatsoever, any true rescue, God Himself, not just another judge, God Himself must act, and He must move Israel, He must transport Israel beyond the time of the judges and into a new age and into a new world altogether. That is why, you see, as you come to the conclusion of the book of Judges and that statement in the last verse of the last chapter, in those days there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes, Israel is now prepared for the coming of the kingdom. Here is the Old Testament account of the coming of the Kingdom, and it shall be preparatory for its ultimate arrival. the Old Testament kingdom when it comes, itself proves to be a dead end, crying out for something more, something final, something conclusive and eternal. For just as the secession of judges gives way to that Old Testament kingdom, So the secession of kings gives way to that king, the Lord Jesus Christ, and to his gospel of eternal redemption.

And just as the radical wickedness and its exposure in Israel at the time of the period of the judges gives way to that Old Testament kingdom, so the radical wickedness and its exposure in Israel at the time of the end of the Old Testament kingdom gives way to Jesus and to his gospel.

And just as the depressing crescendo of evil in the world of the judges is interrupted by the sublime and radiantly contrasting stories of women, faithful men, and little babies, move from the end of Judges to the Book of Ruth and into the opening chapters of 1 Samuel, into the accounts of Ruth, Boaz, and their son Obed, and Elkanah and their son Samuel. Just as the depressing crescendo of the evil of that world of the judges is interrupted by the sublime and radiantly contrasting stories of women, faithful men, and little babies. So the evil world of the collapsed Old Testament kingdom is interrupted by the sublime and radiantly contrasting stories of women, faithful men, and little babies. Zacharias, Elizabeth, and John. and Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus.

Progressively, incrementally, God brings to light the full disclosure of his divine name and the full revelation of his redemption by which he provides an everlasting salvation to his church. In the final judge and the final king, heralded and anointed by the last and greatest of the prophets, not Samuel, but John the Baptist, and this for a deliverance capable of rescuing Jews and Gentiles from the just consequences of their sins. They, given life from the dead in the never-ending kingdom sanctified by the eternal priesthood of the ever-living Christ, this priesthood belonging to the heavenly sanctuary in which we all, belonging to the true Church of Christ, will feast on the true bread of the Presence, even as it is ministered to us by our Lord in his body, which bears the wounds and the marks of his humiliation and sufferings for us.

All this and more is found in the Old Testament books of 1st and 2nd Samuel. Welcome to the books of Samuel and the kingdom of God. We would stand, O God, with Israel of old, there to be confronted with our sin and our corruption, and the fact that we have no salvation outside of you. Likewise, O God, we would stand with old Israel and witness the dawning of the kingdom of God, as that dawning comes in shadow form. through the ministries of Samuel and David.

Lord, we thank you that now we are able to appropriate this message from the judges, from Ruth, from 1 and 2 Samuel, in light of the exegesis that you have provided and the fulfillment in your son. Bless us, O God, that we, with all humility, would know that we are saved from our sin and its consequence through Christ’s death, his resurrection, for life with him in the everlasting kingdom.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.