Gooding, David: 22 - Contending for the Faith

In the book of Judges, which forms the last major section of the book. It is concerned with the doings of the all-tribal assembly, and how, on one occasion, the discipline that they sought to exert in the fulfillment of their duties went sadly astray. We are not to think, as I said in the previous talk, we are not to think that the all-tribal assembly proved so disastrous in their, the fulfillment of their duties always. Presumably, there were many occasions when fulfilling their duties in the fear of God, they helped to preserve the health of the nation as a whole. This is simply one instance, another straw in the wind, however, how that at this time in history, the institutions in Israel fail. We met the all-tribal assembly in chapter one. At that stage, it would have been largely a military assembly. It was after the death of Joshua, you remember, when the first phase of the conquest was complete. Now the individual tribes had, one by one or two by two, to peel off and to make their way to the part of the country allotted to them, there to drive out the enemy that still remained, and so to enter their inheritance. And that being a delicate maneuver, and not one to be performed without some danger, the all-tribal assembly met before God and inquired who should go up first, and the Lord answered that Judah should go up first into his inheritance. You see then the tribes, the whole lot of them gathered, the all-tribal assembly, largely military here in character, uh, waiting on God for his direction in the matter of the settlement of the land. After the tribes were settled, it still had a function, as you see now in this closing story. And the story reminds us that it had a function to maintain the sanctities of life, particularly in the realms of travel, hospitality, and sex. You'll see, in the ancient world, these things tended to be connected. If a man traveled, it could be dangerous. It is not as we who travel in these civilized countries, though there are still parts of the world where we too could be in danger if we travel. But even within the bounds of the civilized Roman Empire in Paul's day, you, uh, hear him say, as one of the privations that he had to face and the dangers, that he was in travel and in danger in travel many a time. The danger in travel was, of course, simply that you would be killed by some barbarian. Generally, the barbarian might kill you for the sake of your money. Lodging houses, even in the time of the Roman Republic, were notorious, some of them. You entered the lodging house for the night, you never knew whether the innkeeper himself might attend you in the middle of the night, slit your throat and take your money. They were notorious for it. Moreover, the other danger, if you travel, was that you would be sexually abused. And it is a case of that that meets us, a very horrible case of that, that meets us in this story. So, to preserve the sanctities of travel, hospitality, and sex, in those far off days, the all-tribal assembly exercised its powers of discipline among the tribe. It had to be done in the very nature of things, not simply by the individual tribes, but by the all-tribal assembly. Other nations, of course, were concerned with this. In Homeric times in Greece, and for a long while afterwards, they held that their supreme god, Zeus, was the special guardian of travelers and guests. And that if guests were abused or in any way harmed, then Zeus was the avenger of them. So when Paris, the famous and the handsome dandy from Troy, stayed as a guest in the home of Menelaus and Helen, and took advantage of the occasion to corrupt Menelaus's wife and elope with her. Then the Greeks expected Zeus to avenge this cry. For now it wasn't the host, but the guest who had outraged the sanctities of hospitality. And the Greeks expected the wrath of Zeus Xenos to fall on them. I trust I've said enough to remind you of the seriousness of this kind of thing in civilized countries. With that, we come to the story of the Levite. He had this concubine, who knows what the woman's exact status was. She ran off and apparently played the harlot. He pursued her to his father's home. Reconciliation took place, and the Levite proposed to take the dear lady and go back to the country and town he came from. Then we have a delightful cameo of hospitality in the ancient world. Wouldn't suit us in particular, who have to get up at seven thirty every morning and catch the eight o'clock, uh, train into town, or the overhead, or whatever it is, uh, you'll see. We haven't time for such gracious hospitality. When the young man said, I'm now going, Papa, he said, oh, don't go today, uh, you stay and we'll have a feast today, and I'll let you go tomorrow. When tomorrow came, the process was repeated. Typical oriental hospitality. To take leave of your parents might take you two or three days, uh, do you see? Uh, which is why our Lord forbade his disciple to go home first and say farewell to them that were at his home. It might have, might have taken him a week to do it. Eventually the man left, but now because he had been detained by the hospitality of his father-in-law, it was late in the day when he set out, and evening was coming on, and it was obvious he wouldn't get home that evening. He must stay somewhere and put up for the night. He proposed to stay in Jebus. At least that was the initial proposal. Jebus at the time was still inhabited by Jebusites. And, uh, they feared to go there. Never could tell what the morals or the immorals of the Jebusites, pagans, would get up to in the course of the night. So they pushed on to the town of Gibeah. That was inhabited by Israelites of the tribe of Benjamin. They had to sit in the street, and nobody appeared to take the initiative to entertain them. That's a lot on the reputation of the town to start with. Many an Arab town in North Africa, for a person to come and visit the town and sit in the street and nobody invite them in for the night, that is a terrible blot on the reputation of the city, so given to hospitality are some tribes in those quarters. At last, an elderly man of the town invited them in, and they stayed the night. The outrage occurred. Dark, loathsome, hideous violation, such as you scarce would have got in a town of the pagan Jebusites. What an eloquent and graphic, poignant description it is. When the Levite rose in the morning and went outside, saw his concubine on the doorstep and her hands towards the door, wherein lies she had been vainly seeking protection for men that would stand for the sanctity of human- of a man- of a life, and of sex in particular. And he called her, there was no voice. A beautiful body, but no person. That's what unrestrained animal lust does to human beings. Bodies depersonalized. When he got back, he took gruesome means to bring it to the attention of all Israel. The all-tribal assembly solemnly met and sent a deputation to the men of Benjamin. But instead of the men of Benjamin in general, the whole tribe of Benjamin, agreeing that this was an intolerable outrage, they took side with their fellow tribal tribesmen in the city of Gibeah and threatened the nation as a whole. Now, gentlemen, you will very soon perceive, so I'll tell you anyway, I have never been an elder in a church. There are days when I thank God for that, as I see the massive responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of elders. And remark how tremendous is the need this world through for godly elders. And I notice one of the biggest weaknesses in assemblies around this world is the lack of elders that are real elders and not simply organizers of the electricity. So you will perceive that I speak from wide inexperience, and I shouldn't really be talking to you about these things. Some of you at least are elders of many years experience. It does happen sometimes within a church, and a Christian church at that, when discipline needs to be exercised on someone who has notoriously sinned, brought the name of the Lord and the name of the gospel into disgrace. But instead of the assembly agreeing with the discipline, they split on family line, and blood proves thicker than water. Family for family reasons support and give comfort to the people who ought to be disciplined. It happened here. Now, discipline is a necessary thing, isn't it? And I think for the moment, in broader terms. The reformers in their day, some of them felt, before they came to real power, that one of the troubles with the corruptions of medieval Christendom was that there was no true discipline, that the church had become a mixture of believers and unbelievers. And notoriously immoral sinners were in the church and in the hierarchy indeed. And some of the reformers, it would appear, determined that things from now on would be different, that the church would be a gathering of believers. The people who profess Christianity must be expected to live according to Christian norms of behavior, and people who were guilty of unchristian and antisocial sins of a flagrant nature must, if they would not repent, be disciplined and excommunicated out of the church. Then some of the, uh, uh, magisterial reformers decided in the end that that was impossible. Luther is going to be supported by the German princes and must have their support, and some of the German princes are notoriously immoral men. How can Luther excommunicate them out of the church when he needs their support? And if you have a system of a state church where the monarch, by definition, is head of the church. What do you do if the monarch is so immoral that the satirical newspapers of the day constantly publish their cartoons about him and mock his immorality? But he is head of the church. How will you excommunicate the head of the church? Some people have said, therefore, that we should not try. They have indeed quoted scripture to say that church discipline is undesirable and in fact contrary to the mind of the Lord. And they have quoted, have they not, people like Saint Augustine and follow, the parable of the tares and the wheat, where the servants came to the master and said, an enemy has sown tares amongst your wheat. Wilt thou that we go and root up the tares? And the master said, no, leave the tares where they are and let both grow together, lest in uprooting the tares you uproot the wor- uh, the wheat also. Let them be until the final judgment. And these people have said that their jealousy is Christ's mind for the church. The church, you must expect, is to be a body that contains both tares and wheat. Not for you to go poking around and suggesting some are tares and some are wheat. You must leave both to grow together, leave it to the Lord to sort it all out at the end. But it won't do, will it? That is not the beginnings of what our Lord was teaching. In his own explanation, he informed us that the field where wheat and tares were was not the church, but the world. The people who came asking should they root up the tares were not the lo- the elders of a local assembly. They were the angels of God, commissioned to execute the final judgment. The rooting up of the tares was not excommunication from a Christian judge. It was the execution of the sentence of the final judgment and banishment to the lake of fire. The purpose of the rooting out of the tares also was not the purpose for which assembly discipline is normally needed. One takes the example in one Corinthians five, the point of the discipline and its purpose was this, that the man should be restored and saved in the day of the Lord. The purpose of the rooting out of the tares was for their complete destruction at the final judgment. It is therefore a grievous mistake to suppose that the parable of the wheat and tares was aimed at forbidding discipline in the church. Why must there be discipline in the church? One Corinthians five reminds us, first, the reputation of the very gospel. It is commonly reported among you that there is immorality among you, such as would shock the very Gentiles. Now the Greeks took some shocking gentlemen when it came to these matters. Now for a man to marry the widow of his father was such a shocking thing that the gr- even the Greeks would have accounted it an abomination. And if a man who professes to be a Christian was going to behave like this, and the church, instead of mourning, puffed themselves up, proudly exhibiting what they would have called their liberty, then the first thing that would be denigrated was the reputation of the gospel in Corinth. No good preaching to a Greek that you need to be saved. And Christ has a salvation. If he can point to a church member and say, is he saved? Oh yes. Uh, oh, so this is what salvation is, committing this kind of immorality is it? And you allow that in your church? Well, that's the last time the Greek would listen to the message of the need to be saved. For the very gospel's sake, church must, when need arises, execute discipline. Then, of course, Paul appeal- appeals to another principle. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. In ancient Israel, if you would keep the feast of Passover, you must immediately and without any lapse of time proceed to keep the feast of unleavened bread. And so, says Paul, you must in Christianity. Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Every believer who partakes the benefit of it is immediately obliged, and forthwith and without delay, start cleaning the leaven out of his life, to live not one week only per year, but the whole of life, getting rid of the leaven of malice and hypocrisy. It has to be done at the individual level. It must be done in the church. Mark that Paul is not saying that every sin upon the part of each believer must be dealt with by excommunication. Because there wouldn't be a church to excommunicate anybody from, would there? Or list the categories of sins that call for this discipline. That said, we return to our story. When the tribe, instead of repenting, condemning the sin that had been perpetrated, and instead of joining the rest of the tribes in dealing with it and trying to make sure that such a thing never happened again, when instead of that they took the side of the offender on tribal ground. Then the all-tribal assembly met in solemn session. For now, severe discipline was obviously in order and must be executed. They met before God, asking, who shall go up for us first to battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. An unhappy difference, gentlemen, from the first occasion that we met them in chapter one, asking the Lord, who shall go up for us first? And he replied, the tribe of Be- uh, of Judah. You'll see the tribe of Judah shall go up first. For that occasion was the tribe of Judah going up to smite the pagan enemy and to enter their inheritance. This time, alas, the tribe of Judah is called upon to go up first, not to smite the enemy, but to discipline a brother tribe. Sad, isn't it? The children of Judah went up. Twice they went up. And twice the benjaminites came out and slaughtered many of them. Till the all-tribal assembly met in consternation and in tears by the Ark of the Covenant. What now had gone wrong? The Lord himself had enjoined it upon them that they must go up and discipline Benjamin, and yet the Lord had allowed the Benjamites come to come out and slaughter some of the Judahites. Whatever had gone wrong. Now the tears began to flow. First mention of them. Why do you think the Lord allowed it? Because it is a very ticklish thing, isn't it, to discipline others? To go up in some proud spirit, as though the putting right of wrong was a simple thing, when all the time it isn't. They who try to discipline in the godliest of spirits sometimes get hurt. What shall we say if we attempt to discipline others when our own hearts are not as they should be before God? Now hurt and bruised and perplexed, the all-tribal assembly meets before God and examines its conscience and confesses its sins and weeps before the Lord. That was a better attitude, wasn't it, to proceed from in order to discipline their brethren. But alas, the human spirit is never at ease except when it's going to extremes. Now they went up, they virtually slaughtered every Benjamite inside. Unless it had been for a contingent of Benjamites that managed to act swiftly and get away or riding on their beast, the whole lot would have been obliterated and a whole tribe lost. What extremes we can go to? Having done it, they were subsequently appalled at what they had done. The whole tribe should perish out of Israel by a discipline that was obviously completely out of proportion to the original sin. Paul had to remind the Corinthians of a similar thing, didn't he? And over one case he had to tell them, gentlemen, now look, ease up, gentlemen, ease up on your discipline. Else you'll destroy the very man you're trying to restore. The aim of church discipline is not to exterminate a brother, but eventually to des- to restore a brother. Sufficient has been the punishment, says Paul, inflicted by the many. Now, brethren, ease up. And in that special case in two Corinthians two, he adds this observation. Do ease up, he says he, because we are not ignorant of Satan's thoughts, his devices. We can well see what Satan will do if you take this thing to extremes. He will take advantage of you. For if he can't take advantage of your laxity, he will a- take advantage of your extreme severity. Instead of restoring of other, the man will be lost forever. Oh, what a delicate thing it is not to be taken in hand by any novice. Now, when they saw what appalling thing they had done by this excessive discipline, now they were at a difficulty to know how on earth they could put it right. They had an elders meeting. The all-tribal assembly. How are these Benjamites that were left? They had no wives. Hm. Said, we can't give them our wives. We've sworn an oath before the Lord. We couldn't give them our daughters, I mean. We couldn't give them our daughters to wife. That would break an oath, wouldn't it? How could we get round that? It's a funny business when you have to get round an oath of the Lord, generally it's a little difficult. Uh, they do know what? We swore this great oath that demanded that all the tribes must come to engage in this corporate act of discipline. It wouldn't be a, wouldn't that be a fortunate thing if we could find a tribe that didn't come? Somebody said, yes, there is such a tribe. Who's that? Jabes Gilead. The men of Jabes Gilead didn't come. They didn't respond to the oath. They stood on the fence. They didn't engage in the discipline. Oh, they said, marvelous, good, that's lovely. They've broken the oath. Now we can go and slaughter them. So in holy dignity, Dignity. They I went went to to slaughter the men of Jebus Gilead, ostensibly on the ground because they had sat on the fence and not joined with them in the corporate discipline aforementioned, but really because slaughtering the men was a way of getting a collection of women that they could then give to the Gib- the Benjamites that had survived, and so get them out of their terrible trouble that they had nearly exterminated the tribe permanently out of Israel, or if these surviving men didn't get girls to marry, the tribe itself would become extinct. What a way to treat an oath of the Lord. And for men whose task as the all-tribal assembly was to maintain the sanctity of the Lord's oath, what a way for them to treat the oath of the Lord. Well, they got these women, having slaughtered the men of Jabez Gilead for a lesser offense than the original offense. Still, there weren't enough women to go around. They said, you know, this is decidedly unfortunate. We can't give our daughters to these men because we've sworn an oath that we can't. Any way we could get round that oath? They hit upon an idea. There's going to be a festival, and the girls normally come out dancing in Shiloh. Those of you who have been to that, uh, place will have been told by your guides that this is where the girls came out to dance. We'll alert the men of Benjamin that the girls are coming out to dance, and when they come, of course, we're not going to give them the girls, but the idea would be that the Benjamite chaps will come out and and and seize them off, seize them and run off with them, and then we should be able to say, well, we didn't give them. So our oath would still have been kept, and yet, um, the Benjamite men would have got their, our daughters as their wives. This by the all-tribal assembly, whose job it was to maintain the sanctity of oaths. In the course of trying to discipline a tribe for breaking the one sanctity, the sanctity of sex, they are themselves now undermining the very sanctity of that higher thing, the oath of God. This is a fallen and a complicated world, isn't it? And what lesson shall it bring to us? I scarce know not what to say. I'm no elder. There is one area, is there not, where a crusty old bachelor standing on the sidelines grows from time to time a laugh at the way the oath of the Lord is today treated by some Christians. Here come a delightful young couple to get married, and where the idea come from, came from, I'm not certain. I never found it in scripture, but their better and wiser heads can tell me. They are induced by their superiors to swear an oath by Almighty God. They will remain faithful to each other until death them do part, or the Lord come. Nine months down the road, as I heard of one couple, said the girl, it didn't work out, so it's all over. What has happened to the oath of the Lord? Presently, some in that situation return, and they want to get married again, and lo and behold, they, they have another oath. Well, as I say again, I'm no elder. I'm aware this situation is exceedingly complicated, and it's not for an inexperienced man like me to be laying down rules and regulations in such a sensitive area. God save us from mere legalists. But gentlemen, God save us also from encouraging the people of God first to take solemn promises in the presence of God, and then to break them, and then to come and want to make the promises again, and sometimes break them as well. Better not to vow, than having vowed to break it. That at least was the wisdom of the Old Testament. Better never to vow than to vow and not keep your word. It will be a bad thing for God's people as a whole. Vows to the Lord can be tossed aside as insignificant or be treated as things that can be got round, if keeping them is inconvenient. It has been a sorry note to end on, has it not? Though I, I bid you remember what glorious things we have learned from this book, of the saviors that God raised up among his people, and of the Savior God who stood behind. Now we must face the facts. The judges in the end themselves failed and declined. Had they only been supported by the Levites consistently, they might have had a better hope of success. But the institution of the Levites began also to fail. Even so, if the institution of the All-Tribal Assembly had maintained its sanctities, there would have been some hope. They show a tendency themselves to dishonor the very sanctities they were meant to protect. Then what about the priesthood? Surely, if theocracy was to work, was going to work, then a great burden would fall upon the priests, because if people are going to obey the Lord in direct responsibility to him, what must be maintained is the wonder and the holiness of God and the awesomeness of his presence, and it is the priest responsible to lead the people of God to know God and to worship him. Alas, under Eli, the priesthood failed. In spite of that, God, with his endless energy and enthusiasm, raised up a great prophet like Samuel, and he led a revival. What a blessing it was. The people were brought back to the Lord. But his sons? They failed. There was no option in the end to abandon the direct theocracy and appoint a king. The first one was a disaster. He was the people's choice. And then God found a man after his own heart. His name was David. He wasn't perfect, but he led Israel to a pinnacle of glory such as they had never seen before. And the first half of the reign of his son Solomon became a pattern, undying pattern in the minds of Israel, of the golden age of the past, with its foreshadowings and promises of a golden age to be in the future. Presently, the kingship itself declined. There were some revivals, but in the end, even the monarchy of Judah was swept away. The tree of the J- Davidic kings was cut down almost to its root. The monarchy ceased for centuries. What an abysmal story of decline. Take heart, gentlemen. God was showing us miserable sinners the depth of our weakness and sin. And he had the answer waiting in a person that should be the perfect savior and the perfect Levite and the perfect Lord of the assembly of his people. The perfect priest, the perfect prophet, prophet, and the perfect king. If today around us, in some countries, in a few places, there is evidence of decline, gentlemen, it's only an interval. The end shall be an end in glory when the blessed Lord, the Lord and heir of all history, shall return, and the root that has sprung out of the stump of Jesse shall fill the very earth and the universe with God's blessing. Thank you for your attention, and may God bless us all when we depart.