When False Worship Becomes Moral Chaos - Judges 18:16 – 19:30 (Session 17)

Judges 18 continues the story of Micah, his household idols, and the Levite he hired as a private priest. When six hundred armed Danites arrive, they steal Micah’s religious objects and persuade the Levite to leave with them by offering him a larger congregation.

In this session, Glenn and Steve examine the danger of measuring spiritual success primarily by numbers, money, influence, or prestige. The Levite is delighted by the opportunity to serve an entire tribe, but neither he nor the Danites shows concern for obedience to God or the spiritual maturity of the people.

The Danites eventually establish Micah’s stolen idol and a separate center of worship in the northern city of Dan. This corrupt worship continues and later provides a foundation for the golden calf established there by King Jeroboam. A small departure from God’s revealed pattern produces consequences that continue for generations.

Judges 19 then records one of the darkest events in Scripture. A Levite travels with his concubine and eventually stays in Gibeah, a town belonging to the tribe of Benjamin. During the night, wicked men surround the house and demand that the Levite be sent out to them.

The men inside respond with cowardice and moral failure. The Levite’s concubine is handed over to the mob, brutally abused throughout the night, and left dying at the doorway. The Levite later cuts her body into twelve pieces and sends them throughout Israel.

The Bible records this evil without approving it. The story reveals what happens when people reject God’s authority, corrupt worship, ignore His Word, and continually do what is right in their own eyes.

Scripture: Judges 18:16–19:29
Series: The Book of Judges — An RTTB Study

 Questions discussed in this session:

• Is church growth measured in numbers of people? 
• Can a child of God can be distracted from the Lord’s work? 
• How can a society get so immoral to wink at murder?
• Are we equally guilty of not dealing with murder near us?  

Transcript

Spiritual Growth and Church Success

Speaker 2 0:20

Welcome back to Reasoning through the Bible and we continue our journey through the Book of Judges . We're at the end of Judges . We went through chapters 17 and almost all of 18 last time and just a little bit of a summation . We've seen where this Levite priest has been hired out by a person by the name of Micah . Where we left off last time is there was a group of Danites . As they were going up , relocating their tribe from the southern , southwestern side of the land of Canaan up into the northern part of it , they grabbed this Levite priest that they had known before and have taken him and want him to go with them up to the northern area where they are . So , glenn , if you want to pick up where we left off last time in 18 .

Speaker 1 1:05

So I'm going to pick up in Judges , chapter 18 , starting of verse 16 .

Speaker 1 1:09

The 600 men armed with their weapons of war , who were of the sons of Dan , stood by the entrance of the gate . Now , the five men who went to spy out the land went up and entered there and took the graven image and the ephid and the household idols and the molten image , while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed with weapons of war . When these went into Micah's house and took the graven image , the ephid and household idols and the molten image , the priest said to them what are you doing ? They said to him be silent , put your hand over your mouth and come with us and be to us , a father and a priest . Is it better for you to be a priest of the house of one man or to be a priest to a tribe and a family in Israel ? The priest heart was glad and he took the ephid and household idols and the graven image and went among the people . Okay , steve , what do you think of this ?

Speaker 2 2:00

Levite he's way , way , way off base . He's just out in left field .

Speaker 1 2:04

I have a question for you , Steve . What happens if your gods get stolen ?

Speaker 2 2:07

That's exactly right . I mean , you're in a heap of trouble if your gods can be stolen .

Speaker 1 2:13

I'd say if your gods get stolen , you need to get a new one . You need to get one that can't be stolen , and I would say if your gods get stolen , your gods are too small . If a god can't protect itself from being stolen , that god's too small , that's not a very powerful god .

Speaker 2 2:28

It harkens back to earlier in Judges , where Gideon went out and destroyed the Baal and the Astoroth in the middle of the night and the people rose up against him and they came down and said we're going to kill him . And his father stood up and said hey , let Baal contend for himself , don't kill my son , because Baal can be defeated . So this is kind of harkens to that . What kind of a god is it that can be stolen ?

Speaker 1 2:54

And this Levite in the story was a paid holy man . He was on salary here by this man , micah . So these soldiers from the tribe of Dan come and steal the idols while he's standing there watching them Verses 19 and 20, . This hired priest took the idols that belonged to Micah and went along with the stronger people , the Danites . He seemed more concerned about having a larger congregation than he did about the spiritual growth of the people he was serving , says . He was glad when he heard that I could go get a bigger congregation . Here's a question especially important , as in our day , is a pastor successful if he has a larger and larger congregation ? No , are churches successful quote unquote if they get more people ?

Speaker 2 3:42

If that's the standard that you're going to , then yes . If it's the standard that you're just going to take and preach the word of God and let God take the church where it needs to go and how large it needs to be , then no , this is exactly the question here in Judges 18 , verses 19 .

Speaker 1 3:59

These people come in and they say is it better for you to be a priest to the house of one man or to be the priest of a tribe and a family , A whole bunch of people ? Same question we have in our churches today Is church growth measured in numbers of people in the congregation ? Is that the way we should measure growth ? No , it's not . More people may not equal growth . It could be that you've got much more people , but if they're not more mature , if they're not growing in the Lord , then that church is not growing . It's because there's many more people there Doesn't mean that there's really growth . Always ask whether the people in a congregation are maturing . If a church grows in numbers of people but not in maturity , I would submit it's not successful .

Speaker 2 4:46

In this example here , the people themselves that were enticing this Levite priest . They were off base themselves . They had just got through stealing a bunch of idols . They weren't worshiping the one true God in themselves . So they're off base .

Speaker 1 5:00

Now I have seen some churches that were so small they were in danger of not being viable as far as a congregation . There's just not enough new people coming to keep the church go . I've seen that . So , yes , there's nothing wrong with more people . In some cases I've seen churches that do need more people just because there's not enough of them to kind of keep a viable church going , or at least they're in danger of getting to that point .

Speaker 1 5:22

But true maturity is whether the people are growing , whether the people are following the Lord . Just drawing a crowd is not hard . It's not hard to draw a crowd . If you put on enough of a show you can get a crowd . The question is are people maturing and are you doing the work of the Lord ?

Worldly Worship and Moral Decay

Speaker 1 5:39

God helped the pastor or God helped the priest , who was more concerned with money and prestige and the size of the congregation than he is with spiritual health and the people he's serving ? I used to work in a factory and there was one of the shift workers there who was also a pastor of a small church and because he worked shift work he couldn't always be there on all the Sunday mornings and it wasn't a really big church and he would tell me oh , what I really want is to be a pastor of a large church and work eight to five and have a car and a secretary . He was more concerned with the trappings and the money than he was the spiritual well-being of his congregation .

Speaker 2 6:17

There is a well-known pastor on the East Coast . His philosophy has turned to doing what we can to get the lost world people into the church so that they can hear the sermons that are preached . In the past few years they have been playing actual rock songs from rock bands Secular worldly songs in their church . Here is this pastor who is saying we're going to be worldly in order to get worldly people into the church so that they can then hear the word of God . In my opinion , my advice would be be very , very careful how much of the world you allow into your church and up on your stage .

Speaker 1 7:07

I've seen messages that were secular , worldly messages in churches . I've seen messages that were psychological help things and self-help messages , and I heard a message in a church once that I was visiting that the entire message was how to argue fairly with your spouse , and not one mention of scripture in the entire message . Here's the way I think of it . I had a job for a while . I worked at upscale hotels that had conference centers in them . We'd get business people for business meetings . They looked like business people and they acted like business people . Well , we had this one group that came in for lunch once and they didn't look like business people . They were in the big ballroom and there was a lot of them and I couldn't tell exactly what they were doing in there . But those people are singing and they had a message that some guy was talking to this message . I asked around who is this group and they said well , that's the Optimist Club .

Speaker 1 8:01

Here's my question for all the churches what's the difference in your church and the Optimist Club ? The Optimist Club , they sing songs and they get together for fellowship meals and they have inspiring messages that uplift the people and the guy can tell a joke at the beginning . Have three points and an invitation . They go out and feed the poor . What's the difference in your church and the Optimist Club , I would submit ? If there's none , then why not go join the Optimist ?

Speaker 2 8:28

Club and with all of these things . When we bring up these examples , we're tying it back to the particular passage that we're looking at now . We don't say this from an approach of a pious that we're better than we've , smarter than everybody . We're bringing it back to that . These people , these Danites , were way off base . They were taking idols and setting up a place of worship up north and they had taken this Levite priest that was way out on the limb himself that he wasn't in the right place . It's a worldly approach to worship and , as we pointed out in the last session , they're not truly worshiping God . They're doing what's right in their own eyes . We're just drawing analogies as well as examples from our life that we have seen that's going on in the world today .

Speaker 1 9:18

In relation to this passage itself , Just doing our best to teach the passage . In Judges 18 , verses 21 to 26 , Micah then chases after the Danites and asked them why they stole his idols . And in verse 25 , the men of Dan tell Micah be quiet or we'll kill you Verse 27 , the Danites kill the people of the next town and they take the city and this becomes the city of Dan , one of the northernmost cities in Israel . In verse 31 , the Danites set up the most expensive idol they had stolen from Micah . They set that up in the city as an idol to worship . Look at verse 30 . Note that this verse mentions who was the tribal priests until the day of the captivity of the land .

Speaker 1 10:03

Now , phrases like that give us some clues as to the time of the writing of the book and we've mentioned this as we've gone through just because it's semi-important to people that care Phrases like that the tribal priests were there until the day of the captivity . There was no reason to believe this was the later captivity of the Assyrians or the Babylonians . The Philistines took the land of Israel prior to King Saul . The Philistines even took the Ark of the Covenant . At one point they were in control . They had it in captivity . Philistine captivity was the time of Eli the priest . There could have been other captivity . It's a clue , but we can't really take that to be a later time .

Speaker 2 10:45

I was going to say in the next verse talks about the Tabernacle and Shiloh . So it could have been talking about the captivity of the Ark of the Covenant by the Philistines . That could be the captivity that it's referring to .

Speaker 1 10:56

Now in the next chapter , judges 19, . We have this Levite in chapter 19 . That's apparently a different one than the last two chapters . It mentions a Levite in Judges 19 , but I take it it's a different person . And in chapter 19 , verse 1 , it reminds us that there was no king in Israel . This meant that everyone was doing what seemed right to them , which means it was chaos . And this Levi was in the remote parts of the hill country , which was where the enemy had pushed Israel into . So Israel should have pushed out the enemy from the land , just as Joshua had . We have this next story . It's one of the most ugly ones in the Bible and by the time we're done this should get to near the end of the book . But it's really an ugly story and I think the inspired word of God put it here for a reason .

Speaker 2 11:45

Before we go in this , can I just bring up a couple of things at the end of chapter 18 there real quick , in regards to Dan . In verse 31 , they said they set up for themselves Micah's graven image , which he had made all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh's . This shows that here they are , up in the northern part setting up a separate place of worship from where the real worship was taking place , of the tabernacle in Shiloh . And this comes back later when we read over in 1 Kings , chapter 12 , with King Jeroboam . There's just three verses here . I'd like to read , glenn , verses 28 through 30 .

Speaker 2 12:19

So the king this is King Jeroboam consulted and made two golden calves and he said to them it is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem . Behold your gods , o Israel , that brought you up from the land of Egypt . So he's not given attribution to Yahweh , he's given attributed to these other gods . Okay , he set one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan . Now this thing became a sin , for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan . So here we come in later when there are kings in this place where Dan , the tribe of Dan that started just right here in chapter 18 , this place of worship comes back and we see a king of Israel , jeroboam . He splits the worship and he goes ahead and takes this place up in Dan , where it had already been , and starts worshiping again with a golden calf up there . So it's again just something of a little bit of sin and a little bit of getting off base can cause many , many problems down the line .

Speaker 1 13:19

Anytime there's a separate worship that gets set up , the old human nature comes in and runs with it and takes it off in a devious manner . So then , judges chapter 19, . We have this Levite , and it says in verse one , he took himself a concubine . So that's not a word we hear too much anymore . What's a concubine ?

Speaker 2 13:40

Well , the actual meaning here is just like a wife . That's the word that we see here .

Speaker 1 13:45

What I can tell from scripture is there's a couple of senses to this word concubine . Sometimes and I think this is probably the case here concubines were due to the wife's family not having a dowry . A dowry was money that went along with the lady , the girl that was getting married and , like it or not , many centuries , many peoples , many nations , the marriages were done , oftentimes for financial reasons , to tie together business deals . We have this kind of romantic Valentine's Day sort of thinking around getting married . But a lot of cultures just didn't think that way . A lot of cultures people got married for expedient reasons and sometimes it was to tie together two different families that needed the income . So that's one sense of the concubine is that instead of having a lot of land and wealth to go along with the woman , they didn't have anything . So they would call her a concubine . And then there's another sense of the word concubine that you'll see sometimes in scripture that's just a sex partner . It was just purely there for physical needs .

Speaker 2 14:48

Outside of a marriage that somebody had to another woman . Then they had a concubine on the side . That's kind of what you reference in there .

Speaker 1 14:56

Correct . So as we go through this , I think there was enough clues here to think this man was married to this lady , but nevertheless we'll see what

Distracted From the Lord's Work

Speaker 1 15:05

happens . Verse three refers to the man as a husband . In verse two , this concubine was unfaithful and left him . She , it says here in verse two , played the harlot against him and she went away from him to her father's house . So she was running around cheating on him and when that broke up she went off back to daddy's house . Verse three the man goes to get her and he ultimately ends up staying five days at her father's house .

Speaker 1 15:30

The woman's father thinks he's being nice by detaining this Levite , say oh , stay another day , let's have another meal . It's late , so you might as well stay the night . The Levite stays longer than he originally intended . Here's a question to apply this for today . This Levite was supposed to be off doing the Lord's work . He's a Levite , he's a priest , he's supposed to be going and this is where the journey was supposed to be going and doing the Lord's work . Is it possible that a child of God today can be distracted from the Lord's work because the people around him don't see the need to do the Lord's work and they keep distracting him off into other duties . Is it possible that we , as Christians , can be distracted ?

Speaker 2 16:14

from the Lord's work . If you look at a practicality , this is a father who's wanting to keep his daughter around . He's making these excuses to keep this Levite distracted so that he does stay .

Speaker 1 16:24

Down in verse 10 , the man , the concubine and the servant . They leave late in the day . Verse 12 , the man didn't want to stay in the city of the Jebusites , who are not of Israel , so they're traveling . It's late in the day , it's starting to get dark . They get to this one town of the Jebusites and the man says , no , we don't want to stay there because those are not the people of Israel . So they keep going . And in verses 10 and 11 , it refers to this town of Jebus , which was the name of Jerusalem before it was called Jerusalem .

Speaker 2 16:54

And that's where the Jebusites lived . They were people from the city of Jebus .

Speaker 1 16:59

Further indication that judges was written early before Jerusalem in the time of David . Verses 14 and 15 , it gets dark when they get to the town of Gibeah . This is going to play a key part in the story , this town of Gibeah . But it gets dark . They get to the town square . This is in the land of the tribe of Benjamin . Then verses 16 through 21, . This old man comes along . He's been out working in the field . He sees the Levite and the concubine in the town square with their animals . What are you doing ? We don't have a place to stay . Oh , please come . You have to come and stay at my house .

Speaker 2 17:34

He is an Israelite who is there doing work around the town . He's showing hospitality , which is something that was supposed to been done as we're going to see , almost every character in the story is severely flawed and full of sin .

Speaker 1 17:50

But one thing we can say good about this man is he's been out working all day . Later in this town we're going to meet some people they call worthless fellows that were staying up all night . And if you're working out in the field all day , you're not going to be staying up all night . So at least we can give this man credit . He's been out working doing what he's supposed to do mining his business and when he comes in he sees somebody that needed to stay . They didn't have motels and hotels in those days . If somebody didn't take you in , then you're sleeping outside .

Speaker 2 18:20

They're in Gibbia , which is in the land of Benjamin or Benjaminite . It says he is from Ephraim , so he is an Ephraimite . They're visiting this area . He himself is not a Benjaminite , and that becomes important and latter part of the story .

Speaker 1 18:36

Verse 18 , the Levite says he's on his way to the Lord's house , presumably to do priestly work in the Tabernacle . So is it ever the case that we could be doing the Lord's work , mining our own business , and then worthless fellows try hard to keep us from it ? That can happen sometimes . We learn as we go through this story . It was not safe for an honest man to stay in the open town . Many of our cities are like that today , and this old man knew that .

Speaker 2 19:01

He tells them don't stay in the center here , you need to come with me . There's something that and what we're going to read here . As far as what happens , it was not a good place . Gibbia was not a good town , was not a good city to be in .

Speaker 1 19:14

Kind of give you a contrast . In our own country I remember my mother telling about a relative of hers that two generations ago would get off a work this was a single woman would get off a work late at night . She had to walk home in a major town . She walked down the middle of the street because she was afraid to walk alone on the sidewalks at night as a single woman . So she'd walk home down the middle of the street because it was a little more well-lit . Well , here we are , two generations later and it's not safe for a man to walk the streets during the broad daylight . I saw a video yesterday telling people in another major town don't walk around here , don't stop for gas , don't stop to buy anything at the store , because you could get shot here . Our western world is getting very quickly to the point where it's like Gibbia the man was coming from the field . Now we get to kind of a key part of the story . Steve , if you could start in Judges 19 , starting at verse 22 , and then read down through 29 .

Speaker 2 20:14

While they were celebrating , 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 so that we may have relations with him . Then the man , the owner of the house , went out to them 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's 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 . But the man would not listen to him . So the man seized his concubine and brought her out to them and they raped her and abused her all night until morning . Then let her go .

Judges 19

Speaker 2 21:05

At the approach of Don , as the day began to Don , 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 laying in the doorway of the house with her hands on the threshold . He said to her get up and let's go . But there was no answer . Then he placed her on the donkey and the man arose and went to his home . When he entered his house he took a knife and laid hold of his concubine and cut her in 12 pieces limb by limb and sent her throughout the territory of Israel very horrible story .

Speaker 1 21:45

None of the men in this story acted Righteously . It's an awful , awful story in verse 22 . It says here the men of the city were worthless Fellows is the term it said which were wanted to rape the Levite . And the owner of the house Offers up his daughter and the concubine . The Levite does end up giving up the concubine and they rape her to death . No excuse for this action . The Bible records this . But as we've tried hard , as we've gone through judges , to make very clear these people were in disobedience . Every character in the story here we could hold this poor woman in a sense of this , this being raped to death . But all the men were in total disobedience and all the way back from the very first chapter of judges , over and over and over all these characters , gross disobedience to the Lord , god .

Speaker 2 22:36

It culminates in this awful act here and the story parallels another story from Genesis , which was what happened in Sodom . The same thing whenever the two angels went down to Sodom and they were in the house , the Hospitality of Lot's house in , the men of Sodom came and said bring out those two men , because we want to have relations with them . This parallels that here we are , hundreds of years later , and this is where the people of Gibeah , who are Benjamin's , who are of the nation of Israel , this is where they are we want to be clear here .

Speaker 1 23:13

There's no excuse for this action . We could say that we don't know the Atmosphere that was around this whether it was just a few men outside or whether it was a few hundred could have easily been a riot . The two men inside the house could have feared for their lives , but even then it's not an excuse . If this Levite was a man and he was scared for his life because there's a riot going on outside his door , if he was a strong man , he would have given his life to protect his wife , and he doesn't . He sends her out to be killed . So the men were complete , total disaster . Here we want to just be really clear . God does not approve of this . By by no means . Is there anybody in this story that seeks God's guidance ?

Speaker 1 23:56

No nobody nobody does nobody stops and says God , please protect us . God , can you help us ? I mean , peter was sinking in the sea . We had a two-word prayer you know , save me . These people in this story were really in disobedience . How could a society get this Immoral ? I tell you how it's by forgetting God in his ways . It's by everyone doing what's right in his own eyes , by Nobody here stopping and saying oh lord , my goodness , please help me . Nobody appeals to God .

Speaker 2 24:27

He's not mentioned at all and of course , we see that culmination in and everything we've been talking about . They're worshiping idols , they're taking other idols , they're not worshiping God at all .

Speaker 1 24:36

Well , it makes it increasingly horrible is that in the morning , when I read the account of the Levite , he acts so calm and so matter-of-factly . Okay , let's go . At least that's kind of the way it reads . The it's depravity at its worst . Are there things in our society today that our ancestors would be shocked at ?

Speaker 2 24:56

but we seem very Matter-of-fact well , yes , and the other thing is that way it describes her . It says that she was laying At the door with her hand on the threshold . So you get the sense that after they had raped her and left her for dead , she was at the door knocking on the door Seeking help after it happened . And he's inside and he's well , everybody inside just slept while she essentially Died . I can't think of anything any more to praise . Another thing that is here is , again , this is a sordid story . This is not pleasant . It's not something that you like to go and discuss , but again , I think you can make the point of its reality , because if you wanted to gloss over things , you wouldn't put this type of a story in In your narrative , in your book of judges that you have here that are depicting the times . Why would anybody that was making something up want to put a story like this in it ?

Speaker 1 25:53

I don't think it's fair to try to compare sin and try to accept , okay , which sins worse ? But this is really horrible and I could make a list of also horrible things . In our societies today . The crime is bad . We've got open sex in the streets . We've got homelessness . We've got their families that are all broken down , things that would shock our ancestors that lived in a little bit more Gentile time . When we read this story here in judges 19 . We are rightfully shocked . It's a horrible thing , but we also have horrible things going on in our society .

Speaker 2 26:27

No way to compare degrees of Horribleness today we we have the countries and the nations and the terrible things are going on . We don't hear people crying out to God for help . Our leaders I'm talking about they're doing things that are on their own initiative and what's right in their own mind to Counter these evil things that are being done in Nazi Germany , many towns had right outside of the town the slave camps , the that turned into death

Society's Guilt in Horrendous Crimes

Speaker 2 26:55

camps .

Speaker 1 26:55

When the Allied forces came , they could smell the smell from a couple of miles away . The people in the towns knew what was going on and they went about their lives on a daily basis , knowing that there were people dying horrible deaths right outside their city , and they just went about their business , matter of factly , just like this Levite did in In judges 19 . Okay , get up , let's go . Oh , you're dead . Put you on the horse and I submit to you . We're not any better than this Levite and I'm not any better than this Levite in our Society is not even better than the people of Nazi Germany when the death was happening right around us .

Speaker 1 27:35

This lady got carved to bits and in our societies today they are carving babies to bits right down the street from most of us . We go about our business , we go about our daily life and we go through our little entertainment things and we don't think twice about it . We are just as guilty as this Levite . I am just as guilty as this Levite because we live in a day where they're carving Babies to bits , just like they carved this woman to bits . I submit that it's equally possible for us to be equally Guilty of not being shocked by these horrible crimes .

Speaker 1 28:15

When we see the words human trafficking , I mean that's a nice phrase . There it really means sex slaves , and it goes on all around us in every major city today . Most of us sit idly by and we don't do anything about it . We're gonna end it on a real Debbie down or note there , but nevertheless we're gonna stop there because of time . But next time we're gonna find out what happens when the people of Israel learn of this crime and it creates even more problems . Next time we'll get into judges . Chapter 20 on reasoning through the Bible .