FBC Daily Devotional – September 7, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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A good Tuesday morning. Did you have a good holiday yesterday? Were you able to get some extra rest, some refreshment, take in the outdoors, and enjoy it?

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I hope so. I hope that was a good day for you, and the Lord blessed you in it.

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Well, today, here we are on Tuesday morning, and today we read in Judges chapter 21, and man alive, how convoluted our thinking can be when we don't have the

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Word of God, or don't use God's Word, to guide our thinking, and to guide our decisions.

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So, this last chapter in the book of Judges is a good illustration of that very thing.

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It follows up on the story in chapter 19 -20, where this

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Levite had a concubine that got abused by Benjamite men, and she ended up dying from the sexual abuse that she experienced at their hands.

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Then he cuts her up and sends her parts and parts of her body throughout the land, and tells people, you need to come and deal with these

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Benjamites. And they all come, and they go to fight against the Benjamites, and pretty much wipe them out.

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And they kill so many of the Benjamites. There's just a handful of them left. But the problem is, at least the way they see it, is here are these

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Benjamites, and we've annihilated all of the rest, these are

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Benjamite men, we've annihilated all of the other people in the tribe, the

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Benjamite tribe, so there aren't any women for them to marry within their tribe.

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And therefore, this is a tribe in Israel that is going to be destroyed. The problem is, they say, we made a promise that we would never give any of our daughters to any

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Benjamite men. Well, there's so much about that that's just totally bizarre and wrong.

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I mean, totally, without any question. But here they are. So they're perfectly willing to go through all the stuff that they've already done that is a bit outrageous, and making outrageous vows, and so on and so forth.

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And now, they're very concerned about offending the Lord should they violate that vow and give some of their daughters to these

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Benjamite guys to marry and to perpetuate the tribe. So they have to come up with an alternative.

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What are we going to do? How in the world are we going to provide wives for these

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Benjamite men? They come up with a plan. First thing we're going to do, they say, is we're going to find out, is there a community that didn't come help us fight the

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Benjamites in the first place? And they do a little poll, and they find out, yep, there's this community. They didn't send any warriors.

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They say, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to go in and kill all the men in that community, and we'll take the virgin women from that community and give them to the

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Benjamites for brides. Okay, where did you get any divine guidance for that?

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Obviously they did not, but that's exactly what they did. And they get the brides for the men, and yet there's not enough of them.

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There's still a bunch of Benjamite men who don't have a wife. So now what are we going to do?

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Well, there's a festival coming up, and at this particular festival, all the virgins of the community, of the area, they go out and they do this dance and so forth.

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And so the other tribal leaders, they say to these

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Benjamites, okay, here's what you need to do. You need to go hide in the bushes until all the virgins come out, and when you see them come out, then you rush and grab yourself one, and that'll be your wife.

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You say, oh yeah, sounds like a good idea, but they'll kill us if we do that. And these tribal leaders say, no, don't worry about that.

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We'll take care of it. We'll cover for you. So go for it. And they did, and they went for it, and they all got themselves wives, and they all lived happily ever after, right?

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Well, they didn't all live happily ever after in that community that got annihilated so that some brides could be given to the

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Benjamite guys, and the parents of the people whose daughters got kidnapped, they didn't live happily ever after, after having their daughters kidnapped, and the men of that community who had all the eligible ladies taken away from the community, they didn't live happily ever after.

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What a mess. What an absolute mess. And this is recorded in the scriptures, and it's recorded for our learning, for our understanding.

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And what is the lesson that is communicated here in this chapter, in this book?

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The lesson, the message, is what's written in the last verse of the book.

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And it says this, In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

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The message of the book of Judges is that we need the right king, and that is

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Jesus, and we need divine guidance to know how to live.

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If we're left to figure it out on our own, so that everyone does what's right in his own eyes, there is nothing but downwardly spiraling chaos, anarchy, spiritual, moral, religious, even governmental anarchy.

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We need the king, Jesus, and we need his word, the

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Bible. Let's be sure we've learned that lesson and learned it well in our lives.

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Father, we do thank you for even recording these sordid tales in your word, stories and things that happened in Israel's history that serve to warn us and teach us and serve as examples, some good, many bad.

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Thank you for teaching us just how desperately we need to live our lives according to your word under the authority of the king,

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King Jesus. And this we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, well