Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro - PG-13 Warning

Today’s sermon is a tough one.

It is a dark and disturbing story.

And, quite seriously, this one comes with at least a PG-13 rating for violent and sexual content.

Maybe R rated.

These are the very last sequence of events in Judges.

The come at the end, not necessarily because it is the last thing to happen in time, but because this event in particular echoes down in Israel as one of the darkest and most sinful moments in their history.

Moral Chaos - Judges 19

Not his wife… his concubine.

And she was unfaithful to him.

Right away, we have sin and sin, though it is possible her “unfaithfulness” was not sexual unfaithfulness but the act of going back to her father’s house itself.

A time of separation, setting the stage for reunion.

Joyous reunion.

And dad keeps son-in-law around.

Every day trying to leave and every day Dad throws a feast until it’s too late to leave.

This place into the story because finally, on the fifth day, even though it is late in the day, they decide to leave.

This right there is an embarrassment of hospitality.

They didn’t have motels, guests or sojourners would wait in the square of these small towns and someone would (should) offer to house them.

To someone in the Ancient Near East, the scandal has already begun with these words.

Finally someone, a sojourner himself, offers to give him a place to sleep.

So the men of Gibeah look bad already in the way that they are treating this Levite, and are shown up in hospitality by this Ephraimite.

And then… things get really dark.

we may “know him” is a Biblical idiom for “we want to have sex with him.”

This is rape.

Reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah… but this time it is the people of Israel who are attempting to assault this man and no angels arrive on the scene to save them.

These are “worthless fellows” but given their boldness and, later, how they are defended by city and tribe, they appear as representatives of the city.

They have no fear of reprisal, they have the power of the mob, and they demand the guest be surrendered to them.

The old man refuses, a man of courage, but a man of twisted morality.

He makes a horrible counter proposal:

That’s… not better.

In defending his guest, he would sacrifice his daughter and his guest’s concubine.

Sick and twisted… and the fact that he specifies his daughter’s virginity is… this is dark, sick and twisted.

This is evil.

But the men don’t listen, they continue to want to rape the man, so he acts in his own defense.

He was sleeping?

All night… while she...

The coldness of this guy.

It doesn’t say when or how the concubine died.

For all we know, this is the moment of her death.

But the man turns her body into a flag of outrage, sending pieces of her to every tribe of Israel, presumably with a messenger to tell the story.

And it has the effect he is looking for.

Total Depravity and Moral Chaos (Relativism)

Everyone in this story is sinful:

The concubine is the most innocent, sinful perhaps in her “unfaithfulness” depending on what that means.

The old man has his own brand of morality, but it is sick and twisted, that he would offer his own daughter and an innocent women up to the mob.

The men of Gibeah.

What has to go wrong within a man, within a town, within a society to drive them to this?

And yet… this isn’t alien to our world, is it?

Rape and abuse, men and women victims of the worst within humanity.

Absolute tragedy.

Finally, the Levite man.

He is no paragon of virtue.

He sins in “taking” a concubine.

He pushes his own concubine out the door to be raped and abused all night… sleeps, and tosses her on donkey in the morning.

He is nothing like a hero, nothing like an innocent.

He is at least as guilty as the rest, steeped in sin and darkness.

These are the times he lives in.

These final chapters are bringing home what has been a rising theme in the Judges period.

Moral chaos.

Moral relativism.

And because everyone was “doing what was right in their own eyes”… there was nothing and no one to truly appeal to to say what the men of Gibeah did was wrong.

So what does the man do?

Something gruesome.

Something dramatic.

It is the theater of moral outrage.

In the moral chaos of Israel the Levite man resorts to gruesome theatrics in order to generate enough moral outrage to obtain justice.

In the moral chaos of Israel the Levite man resorts to gruesome theatrics in order to generate enough moral outrage to obtain justice.

This is what happens when everyone does what they want, with no moral compass or "true north" Anarchy.

A competition in outrage theater.

This was Israel at the end of the period of Judges.

This is our current society.

We live in a “post-Christian” society (if it was ever Christian in any true sense).

There is no moral authority to appeal to.

There is legal authority, but legality is not morality.

Everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

That describes our world.

And without a moral compass, we know where that leads.

It leads to darkness.

That road doesn’t lead to “freedom for everyone”…

Everyone in this story doing what they want to the extent they have the power to control… and the weaker or more vulnerable they are the worse their lot is.

We should not be surprised when sinners are sinners…

And the worst part… the tragic heart-breaking part… these aren’t the heathens.

The them.

These are the so-called people of God.

The Kingdom of God

There is some light in Judges, some heros, lights in the darkness, moments of restored hope.

The book of Ruth takes place during this period, a beautiful story of hope and faithfulness, of adoption into the Kingdom and Family of God.

It is the line of the Messiah threaded through the darkness of the Judges period.

The solution to the moral chaos and spiritual darkness of this period isn’t found in human kings.

That begins in hope but also devolves into idolatry and darkness.

The solution comes when there is finally a true King in Israel.

Jesus comes announcing the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God (or the Kingdom of Heaven) is here!

What is the Kingdom of God?

Kingdom of God - King’s Dominion - The place where the King’s will is done (dominion).

Where what God wants done is done.

Instead of “there is no king in Israel.

Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

There is a king in Israel, and everyone serves him.

Jesus gives a powerful sermon, announcing the radical availability of the Kingdom of God, and then, bit by bit, he builds a picture of what that Kingdom looks like as it takes root within a person, within a people, within society.