Judges 21

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Alright, let's read the chapter.
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Now the men of Israel had sworn at Mizpah, saying, None of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin in marriage.
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So the people came to Bethel, sat there before God until evening, and they lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.
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They said, Why, O Lord God of Israel, has this come about in Israel, so that one tribe should be missing today in Israel? It came about the next day that the people rose early, they built an altar there, and they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
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Then the sons of Israel said, Who was there among all the tribes of Israel who did not come up in the assembly to the Lord? For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah, saying, He shall surely be put to death.
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And the sons of Israel were sorry for their brother Benjamin and said, One tribe is cut off from Israel today.
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What shall we do for wives, those who are left since we have sworn by the Lord not to give them any of our daughters in marriage? And they said, What one is there, tribes of Israel, who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah? And behold, no one came up from the camp of Jabesh-Gilead to the assembly.
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For when the people were numbered, behold, not one of the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead was there.
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And the congregation sent 12,000 of the valiant warriors there and commanded them, saying, Go, strike the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead by the edge of the sword with the women, with the little ones, and this is the thing you shall surely do.
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You shall utterly destroy every man, every woman who has lain with a man.
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And when they had found among the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man by laying with him, they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
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And the whole congregation sent word and spoke to the sons of Benjamin who were at the Rock of Ramon and proclaimed peace to them.
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Benjamin returned at that time.
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They gave them the women who they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-Gilead, yet there was not enough of them.
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And the people were sorry for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
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Then the elders of the congregation said, What shall we do for wives of those who are left since the women have been destroyed out of Benjamin? They said, There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin so the tribe will not be blotted out from Israel.
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But we cannot give them our daughters for wives.
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For the sons of Israel had sworn, saying, Cursed is he who gives his wives to Benjamin.
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And they said, Behold, there is a feast of the Lord year by year at Shiloh, which is on the north side of Bethel, on the east side of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem and the south side of Labona.
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And they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards and watch, and behold, the daughters of Shiloh will come out to take part in their dances.
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And then you shall come out of the vineyards and each one shall catch his wife from the daughters of Shiloh and go to the land of Benjamin.
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And it shall come about that when your fathers or their brothers that 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 will be guilty.
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The sons of Benjamin did so and took wives according to their number from those who danced whom they had carried away, and they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the cities and lived in them.
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And the sons of Israel departed from there at that time and every man to his tribe and family, and each one of them went out from there to his inheritance.
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And in those days there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in his own eyes." That's some weird stuff, man.
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So, the last chapter, how many times did they entreat the Lord before they went up against Benjamin? Three.
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First time, losers.
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Second time, loser.
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Third time, what did they do? Anybody remember? Who all was here last week? Everybody.
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What did they do the third time? They set an ambush.
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Lied in wait.
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Yep, they lied in wait.
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They entreated the Lord this time.
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Judah was supposed to go first.
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They did.
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How many got slaughtered? 22,000.
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How many got slaughtered here? 18.
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A bunch.
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A bunch.
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And I think, if you read it, there's kind of a discrepancy of numbers a little bit here and there.
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Ultimately, it was around 25,000, 100,000, 26,000.
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It's in that area.
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A bunch.
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Now, when they came to here and they did the ambush, what did they do that the Lord told them not to do? I'm sorry, let me correct that.
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What did they do that the Lord did not specifically instruct them to do? Cause this whole problem.
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They destroyed the city with everybody in it.
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What's that? They destroyed the city with everybody in it.
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Everybody in it.
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So, right here, they killed women and children.
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God did not instruct them to do that.
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I know you say, well, we're speaking out of silence.
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There's nowhere with the exception of one time that I can find, and you may know, or you may know, that where God told them to go in, other than the Canaanites, the Amalekites, and all the other enemies, where they were supposed to go in and kill every man, woman, boy, girl, infant, cattle, everything.
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The only other person I remember them doing that with, you might remember when Andy was teaching through Joshua, was when he did Achan and his family.
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That was it.
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Who was guilty of the sins of Benjamin? Was it the Benjamin men or the women and children? The men.
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So, when all this came about, Benjamin had the opportunity to give over the men that raped and mob-raped the concubine to death, didn't they? They had the opportunity to do that.
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But what was more important? Tribal solidarity.
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So, they were more concerned with tribe unity than the covenant to God.
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That's a huge problem.
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They were more dedicated to their brothers of Benjamin.
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Talking about the Benjamites, okay? This is what we're talking about.
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The Benjamites.
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They were more dedicated to themselves than they were to the covenant of God.
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Those men should have been brought out and put to death.
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Under the Mosaic legislation, what should have happened to those men? They should have been taken outside the camp and stoned to death.
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Or however they did it then.
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There wasn't an actual camp.
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They would have taken them outside the city and stoned them to death.
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So, here it is.
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Now, we've had all these men and women killed.
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Boys, children.
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Women gone.
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And what's the issue? Well, it says here, we'll begin in verse 1.
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It says, Now the men of Israel had sworn at Mizpah, saying none of us shall give his daughter to Benjamin in marriage.
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That's a foolish vow.
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It's a foolish vow.
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It says, So the people came to Bethel and sat there before God until evening and lifted up their voices and wept bitterly.
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And they said, Why, O Lord God of Israel, has this come about in Israel so that one tribe should be missing today in Israel? That is trying to get away from what they have done.
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How did this breach happen? Their own violence.
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Their own violence caused them to go in there and do this.
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Hey, when they started wetting their swords and they were winning, they said, Hey, we're just going to go ahead and decimate it.
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So now, I've got 600 men that escaped to the Rock of Ramon.
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Right? These men now don't have anybody to carry on the...
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Good morning.
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Don't have any wives to carry on the tribe.
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And this vow was silly.
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It was a stupid vow.
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We have seen stupid vows here before.
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We had a stupid vow by Jephthah.
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Jephthah made a stupid vow concerning his daughter.
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And I have been asked multiple times.
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Let me just clear the air.
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I believe that he burned her.
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All right? There is some disagreements on that.
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But I've been asked multiple times.
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So let me just go ahead and tell you.
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I believe that he burned her.
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And I came to that conclusion based on that's the only time the word burn offering would have been used that he didn't actually burn somebody.
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Okay? So if anybody wants to ask, we can talk about it later if we can.
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Foolish vow.
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This is not only one foolish vow in here.
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They make another.
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So it says they came the next day.
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They built an altar there.
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And they offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.
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That was an act of worship to God.
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An act of burnt offerings of confession.
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Remember a burnt offering most of the time was a sin offering to be completely consumed as an act of repentance.
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Don't know for sure here.
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We do know it was an act of worship to Yahweh.
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Okay? And in verse 5 it says, The sons of Israel said, Who was there among all the tribes of Israel who did not come out up to the assembly of the Lord? For they had taken a great oath concerning him who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah, saying, He shall surely be put to death.
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Once again, another stupid vow.
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Do you understand that these people are more united in killing their own brethren than they have been for fighting against the Philistines? When they came into the land, when they were taking conquest of the land, what were they supposed to do? Every one of them.
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What are they doing to their own brethren? They're wiping them out.
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It says, So the sons of Israel, I'm sorry, verse 6, And the sons of Israel were sorry for their brother Benjamin and said, One of the tribes has been cut off today.
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What shall we do for wise for those who are left since we have sworn to the Lord not to give any of them in marriage? So, they go to the war registry.
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They say, Who didn't come up? It's those from Jabesh Gilead.
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That was a group of people that were their own brethren.
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We don't know if they were Benjamites.
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Whatever they were, they were Israelites and they didn't come up.
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How many ever it was to come up to go against war against the Benjamites.
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And they made another stupid vow that said if any of these people don't come, what are we going to do? We're going to kill them.
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Now, in Deuteronomy 23 and number 30, if y'all want to look up, you can.
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Both of those have to deal with vows.
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It says, Whatever vow you make before the Lord, if it comes off your lips, you better make sure you keep it.
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Or, you will be sinning before the Lord.
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Right? That's what it says.
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I think it's in the Numbers passage.
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Yeah, the Numbers passage, it deals with fathers and daughters making vows and then husbands and wives making vows.
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The blanket one is, if you make a vow before the Lord, you're to carry it out or you'll be sinning.
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If they had chose not to carry out this foolish vow, did God make a provision for them to be forgiven of that sin? Sure He did.
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It's called a sin offering.
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Sure He did.
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If you sinned before the Lord, what did you do? You went and made an offering before the Lord to have sinned against you.
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Whether it be a foolish vow, whatever that sin was, intentional or unintentional, there was a burnt offering that could be offered for that.
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These men don't even do that.
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They don't even want to take responsibility for their own actions other than they just want to go wipe out and try to let this means justify the ends is what we're fixing to say.
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So in verse 8 it says, And they said, Which one of the tribes of Israel who did not come up to the Lord at Mizpah and behold, no one came from Jabesh-Gilead to the assembly? For when the people were numbered, behold, not one of the inhabitants from Jabesh-Gilead had come.
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So the congregation sinned.
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That's very important.
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It doesn't say God sent them.
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The congregation, the leaders of the congregation, the elders of the congregation sent 12,000 valiant warriors there and commanded them saying, You go and you strike down Jabesh-Gilead with the edge of the sword with the women and the little ones.
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This is the one thing that you shall do.
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You shall utterly destroy every man, every woman who has lain with a man.
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Okay, now you see they're doing the same thing with the exception of one thing in here.
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And what was it? They're doing the same thing with the exception of what? They're going to save the virgins.
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They're going to save the virgins.
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So they go in there.
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This is the one thing that you shall do.
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Every man, every woman who has lain with a man and they found in the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead 400 young virgins who had not known a man by lying with them.
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So they brought them to the camp at Shiloh, which is in the land of Canaan.
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So they go in.
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They basically conquer the inhabitants of Jabesh-Gilead and they haul off in abduction 400 virgins.
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Do y'all not see their moral compass is gone? I mean, this still echoes what it started out in the beginning and what we heard in the end that every man is doing what was right in their own eyes.
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They're killing their own countrymen.
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And not one time have we seen them go through here and unify themselves to go in and slay the enemies of God.
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Not one time.
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God would have to raise up somebody.
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So we have solidarity when it comes to fighting against their brethren.
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I mean, if we looked at how many they killed, we could add them up.
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22,000, 18,000, 25,100.
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How many ever it was in Jabesh-Gilead, we don't know.
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They're slaughtering their own countrymen.
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So when you get to verse 13, it says, So the whole congregation sent word, spoke to the sons of Benjamin, who were at the Rock of Ramon and proclaimed peace to them.
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Now, do you remember how long? I think it was last week in chapter 20.
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They went to the Rock of Ramon there, I think four months.
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So this is a time frame, at least four to five months that this has taken place.
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So Benjamin returned at that time.
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They gave them the women whom they had kept alive from the women of Jabesh-Gilead, yet there was not enough.
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And the people were sorry for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
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Now, this was their own doing.
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But when you get to verse 15, it says, The people were sorry for Benjamin because the Lord had made a breach in the tribes of Israel.
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My understanding of that, if you want to disagree with me, we can talk about that, is that there was still the understanding by the Jewish people that God was orchestrating all of this.
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Is God culpable for the murder and abduction that just took place? No.
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But who ordained it? Who decreed it? The Lord did.
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It doesn't make Him guilty of it.
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When you get from 13 to 15, there's obviously not enough women.
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How many went to the Rock of Ramon? 600, right? There's only 400.
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So, there's a shortfall.
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There's the breach.
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And you get to verse 16.
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It says, So the elders of the congregation said, What shall we do for wives for those who are left since the women are destroyed out of Benjamin? Verse 17 says, So they said there must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin so that the tribe will not be blotted out from Israel.
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I will say this much.
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We get to this point.
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We do see there is still some Israel's solidarity in the sense that they understand that the nation is not made up of 11 tribes.
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It's made up of 12.
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And they are, to a certain degree, trying to preserve 12 tribes.
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They do understand that what has taken place, and we do know that it's taken place out of rage and fury that began with righteous indignation has now gone too far.
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But they understand that they're made up of 12 tribes, not 11.
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So they want to have the inheritance go to the survivors of Benjamin so that the tribe is not blotted out.
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And in verse 18 it says, But we cannot give them our wives the wives of our daughters.
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Once again, that foolish vow.
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That's foolish.
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They could have saved the bloodshed in Jabesh Gilead by just making a provision, saying we have sinned before the Lord, we have made a foolish vow.
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Let us give a burnt offering and seek forgiveness and marry off their daughters.
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But instead, what do they do? They want to hold to their pride and not repent in that area.
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So the son of Israel swore incursion to he who gives his wife to Benjamin.
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In verse 19, So they said, Behold, there is a feast.
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So here it is.
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Once again, the end is going to justify the means.
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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 the highway which goes up from Bethel to Shechem, on the south side of Labona.
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And they commanded the sons of Benjamin, saying, Go and lie in wait in the vineyards and watch.
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And behold, the daughters of Shiloh will come out and take part in the dances.
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Then you shall come out of the vineyards and each one shall catch his wife from the daughters of Shiloh.
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So, understand, they're fixing to have a feast.
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There's going to be a party, and this is something that takes place every year at Shiloh.
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At this point, the tabernacle of the Lord had not yet come to Shiloh.
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It was still at Bethel.
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We know that from chapter 20.
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So, they're going to have this festival.
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These men are going to wait in the vineyards.
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When they come out and the girls start doing their dance and whatever they're doing, these men...
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Does anybody's translation say seize? Nobody's translation says seize? Catch? Snatch? Hey, the word actually in the Hebrew is chatam, and it means to abduct or kidnap, to take by force.
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So, we see what they're fixing to do.
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They're going to go out, they're going to do the thing.
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These men are going to come out and they're actually going to abduct them.
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And they go, they catch, as it says, like they're a fly.
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They catch them a wife from the daughters of Shiloh and they go to the land of Benjamin.
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It shall come about that when their fathers...
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Now, listen to this.
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This is absolutely illogical.
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And it shall come about that when their fathers and their brothers come out to complain to us, that we shall say to them, give them to us voluntary because we did not take for each man of Benjamin a wife in battle.
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Now, whose fault was it? It was their fault.
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We continue to read down.
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It says, but if you don't do this for us, then you're going to be guilty.
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Well, it wasn't their fault.
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It was these bloodthirsty men whose righteous indignation had been then overbear with violence that they slaughtered them.
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He said, okay, so give them to us voluntarily because each one did not take for his wife out of the land of Benjamin, nor did you give them to them else you're going to be guilty.
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Those men would not have been guilty for what they had done.
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So the sons of Benjamin did so and they took wives according to the number of those who danced and whom they carried away.
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And they went and they returned to their inheritance.
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They rebuilt the cities and they lived in them and the sons of Israel departed from there from that time.
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And every man to his own tribe and family and each one of them to his own inheritance.
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So it somewhat comes to a peaceful ending.
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Everybody goes off.
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They go back to their land.
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They go back to their inheritance and they begin to populate.
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Well, we know that things get worse because in chronological, this is at the beginning of Judges, although it falls at the end because it's bookend with this last statement.
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There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
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Anybody have any questions so far? And then 50 or 60 years ago, a musical comes out called Seven Brides for Seven Brothers based on this account.
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Oh my goodness.
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This is the brothers going and taking the daughters of these town people that's near them because no one wanted to give these men a wife.
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Yeah, I've used this when somebody talks about a biblical model of courtship.
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And I always say to them, well, are you going to use the Benjamite model? You know? Just to let you know.
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We can pull inferences from Scripture and we can draw conclusions on courtship and all of that.
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I think that's good.
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We can learn some of those as Andy teaches through Ruth and all that.
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Hey, there is no biblical model of courtship.
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There's not one.
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I mean, if we're going to look at models, well, this would be one.
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You know? Wait till they go out there and they're dancing and grab you some and abduct you a couple.
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You know? But you do see this last section that we have.
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You know, the Levites were not doing what they were supposed to do.
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That's what all falls.
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Once I said in the beginning, this last section falls as a Levite who led them off into idolatry and another one who failed to do his responsibility to teach the law and protect his family.
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That's how all of this came about.
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It was a failure on the Levites' part to do their responsibility as to teach God's law, to be the intercessor for God's people, and to be an example of God-fearing men that led their family.
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That's not what these men were doing.
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And it wound up almost costing the extermination of the land of Benjamin.
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And as we were reading this, you see the bloodthirstiness and the ravageness of Benjamin.
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And it's not this week, but I think it's next week when Keith reads through Genesis, there is a curse that's given to Benjamin.
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He says, you will be a ravenous wolf and you will take prey on people.
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And that's exactly what Benjamin did.
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And it's interesting that we end with the almost extermination of the Benjamites.
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And then when we go into Samuel, where's the first king going to come from? He'll come from a Benjamite, which is Saul.
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And he was not a man after God's own heart.
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He was one of the people's own choosing.
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And he wound up being a failure as well.
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Any questions concerning this? How far away is Shiloh from Jabesh Jileh where men were killed? Could they have heard about the situation? Well, we know they did hear about it because they sent the 12 pieces of the chick.
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Remember? They chopped her up and they sent them out to the 12 tribes.
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So we don't know who all...
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Andy may know specifically.
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But I don't know what tribes were in Jabesh Jileh.
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That could have been a group of people.
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We know that tribes came.
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All the tribes showed up in solidarity to fight, but nobody came from that city.
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So we don't know who they were.
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We just know that...
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We don't know what tribe, I should say.
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How far from Shiloh it was, I don't know.
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When I was teaching...
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Well, this used to be Jack's class.
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When I was teaching in here, I don't know who was here then, but I had a big map.
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It was like huge.
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I had everything on it.
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I used to mark all over it too.
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But I could show you on there because everything was marked on there.
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I just know that the men of Shiloh had heard about the men of Jabesh Jileh...
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Sure they had.
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And then they were afraid of not giving their dogs.
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I don't...
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Yeah.
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I would imagine that this had not been going on.
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This whole excursion had taken, we know, at least four months because the time that they had fought, there was three days of fighting.
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Then they ran off and they hid themselves for four months.
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I would imagine that word had got around that there's something going on between the Benjamites and the extermination of them almost.
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What are we going to try to do? Because it says the congregation sent them out.
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So there was another meeting.
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Where they met, I don't know.
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We don't have those details.
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We know this.
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Sending 12,000 valiant warriors into the land of Jabesh Jileh to kill every man, woman, boy, and girl except for virgins was an ungodly thing to do.
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But it was a vow that they had taken.
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So just like Jephthah and they held to, hey, God's going to hold us to this.
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Let it come out.
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Whatever comes out of your mouth before the Lord, this is what we're going to do.
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I just wish that they would have been their oath and vow to obey God's laws and statutes.
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They would have been faithful to those and faithful to kill their brethren.
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That would have been...
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Obedience to the Lord would have been better than sacrifice.
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You made a comment in verse 24 a while ago.
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You said something to the effect of it seemed to come to some type of a peaceful ending.
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But in 25, it says why.
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I mean, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
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I mean, men are pretty happy with themselves when they get to do what they want to do.
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You know what I'm saying? No, they were content doing what they wanted to do.
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Yeah.
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So if we had a line and we could go back, so from chapter 3, verse 6, in that middle between 6 and 7, then look at the degradation of the nation from that point on.
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I mean, however long this was, whether it be 350 years, whatever, you had the degradation of the constant going down, the downward spiral of the nation.
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You're right.
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They liked doing what was right in their own eyes.
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And it's a terrible situation when men who had the written oracles of God, had a written covenant from God.
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And they said, you know what? We're going to do it our own way.
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You know, on the surface, when we look at this, we go, hey, look, man, these men entreated of the Lord back in chapter 20.
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And that was like, oh, wow.
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You know, if you're reading it, like you read a book, you're going, man, this is great.
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They've been treated to the Lord.
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Things are going to get better.
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And it looks like they are when they start slaying the Benjamin.
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The next thing you know, wait a minute, they've actually almost killed all of their brethren.
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Almost killed all of their brethren.
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The elders were really slick, weren't they? The elders that had given all the advice? Yeah.
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That's another thing you can think about how the Book of Judges often talks about.
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If Joshua died, and if the elders who outlived Joshua.
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So if you think about this, it kind of helps us understand the times.
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The Levites were all messed up.
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Elders were all messed up.
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Everybody's doing what's right in their own eyes.
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What a mess.
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Yeah, the only, if you were to read this, all of this, and y'all can disagree with me or point something else out, I'm fine with it.
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And we get to the only people you see faithful? Hans Finneas.
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And he's just got one little snippet.
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You know, he's before the Lord at Bethel.
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But what do we know about Finneas at that time? He was the one that stopped the plague when he ran out there and he shoved the spear through the man having sex with the Midianite woman in front of the tabernacle.
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So the only person that we can say was faithful, like faithful, faithful, that we could look at his character would have been Finneas.
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And we just had just one little snippet of him in this book.
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And he was the one that entreated them before the Lord.
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You know, and that's when the Ark of the Covenant was at Bethel had not yet been moved to Shiloh.
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Once it goes to Shiloh, then that's where it stays.
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Any other questions about the book itself as a whole? No? Okay.
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Yes, sir.
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It's interesting how they prayed to the Lord every day after they went to war with the Midianites and they prayed to the Lord and the Lord said, you need to go and kill some more of them.
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But why didn't they do that same thing when they went to Jabesh? Why didn't they consult the Lord? Because that bookend, they did what was right in their own eyes.
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They came up with their own plan.
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They understood that what they have done was we have caused this issue, but we're going to fix it.
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Like Andy said, the elders were slick.
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We're going to fix this.
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What we're going to do is we're going to go up to Shiloh.
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And because we messed this up, we're going to fix it by abducting the 200 deficit women that we need.
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And that's what they did.
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They tried to make it look like they were doing what was right.
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Did they solve the problem? Well, they solved the problem of not having enough women for the 600 men.
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They fixed that problem.
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But I mean, you probably had some angry fathers and brothers at the dance at Shiloh.
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Yeah, because they were already planning on these men coming out to complain.
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And how many of them, after they had already slaughtered a whole city, I mean, we're going to go, you know what? Yeah, we're not going to let you take our daughters.
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They were probably somewhat fearful.
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Don't know for sure.
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The text doesn't say that.
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I could say, man, they may be somewhat fearful that what are they going to do? Are they going to slaughter us and take them if we don't willfully? Because the word says voluntarily give them to us.
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In other words, the deduction would be if you don't voluntarily give them to us, what are we going to do? We're going to take them.
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Yeah, we're going to take them.
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And it's interesting that the word is used is catch.
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And then when you get to it's catch and carried away.
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So you got in verse 21, it's catch or seize or abduct, depending on what translation you have.
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But the word means to abduct by force.
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And then you get down to 23 at the end.
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It says, and they took according to the number of those who had danced and they carried them away.
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They carried them away.
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It solved the problem of not having enough men to carry on the seed.
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But this was no way to carry out a lever, right? Wall of when your brother dies, you carry on the seed within him.
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No, it's weird because you think about how I was an outside.
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I'm just trying to think.
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We got a minute, right? Yeah, we had time.
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If I was an outsider and I opened my Bible and I read that, you can almost understand how people don't understand.
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And this represent, it was really, that's a wild scene.
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I mean, I'm trying to picture it.
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I would want to be the last one or the first one caught.
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I mean, you could almost understand because you don't put it in the context that it's in.
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The people can so misrepresent the scriptures unless you put it in.
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It's right.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, you have almost genocide.
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And when you read that you have, I have had discussions with certainly with Muslims and others that say, Hey, you know, here it is.
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Your, your text says genocide was okay.
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I said, you tell me where it said genocide was okay concerning this situation.
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Now I can take you to the, the, the wiping out of the Amalekites and why God had those conversations.
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Why God said, wipe out the Amalekites and what we'll get.
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And Samuel, we get into that.
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That's part of that becomes part of the mosaic legislation.
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It's added to it.
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Why they did that.
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And why did God say, you go in and you wipe out the Canaanites? Because God says, they've been a fence to me and they're enemies.
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And he says in the book of Kings, and some people don't like this, that God had actually created the Canaanites for destruction.
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That's what God made them for.
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That's hard for people to swallow.
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But if you believe in a God, who's a God in heaven, he can do what he wants and he didn't take counsel with men, then you don't have a problem with it.
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Huh? Yeah, he can do what he wants.
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You know, all souls are in the hand of the Lord.
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He can do what he wants to with them.
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He didn't ask me.
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And if he asked me, my counsel would be wrong, but I will say those are difficult passages to, to read and go, especially when, you say, hey, when you go into that city, you kill every man, woman, boy, and girl.
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And here's the kicker that always bothers people.
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It's the infant, you know, but that's what God said to it.
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And he said, he did it because he's called it.
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The word is carzine.
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They're under the band.
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That's the, that's the Hebrew word for destruction.
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They're, they're dedicated for destruction.
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And that's what God said.
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All right.
37:37
Five more minutes for disagreements.
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When you have a garden, you just kill, when you have weeds, you just kill the big weeds? I don't have a garden.
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You kill the medium weeds? You kill the weeds that are gonna be weeds? Oh, sure.
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Yeah.
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You kill, you kill the bad stuff.
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Yeah.
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You kill the bad stuff.
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I can't even grow stuff.
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I kill everything.
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I kill the good stuff too.
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Sybil kills plastic plants.
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Like, Oh look, another victim came home in the van.
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Dude, she wilts plastic stuff, dude.
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Awesome.
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Well, Judges was a difficult book.
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Very difficult.
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Difficult because it has been said, I'm sure Andy said it earlier on before we took our hiatus for the last year, that we're not better than the judges.
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So if that has been what has been conveyed to anybody in here, that is not the case.
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We are not better than any one of them.
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But let me tell you this without a shadow of a doubt, we are better off than them.
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And we're better off than them is because we have the complete revealed written word of God.
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We as believers now have implanted within us the power of the Holy Spirit that we don't have to do the things that they did.
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We have complete revelation.
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It's here.
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Now, our responsibility as the complete revelation of God is to obey.
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That's what we have to do.
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So we are better off, not better than, but better off.
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Good.
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Pray for us, Dan.
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Heavenly Master, Lord, we thank you for this time of study, Lord, what it teaches us, what you are, God.
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I just ask that as we continue in worship today, Lord, with everything we do, we are pleasing to you and you alone.
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Thank you for your mercy.
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We thank you for your kindness.
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Lord, we even thank you for to our punishment.
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We just ask these things in Jesus name.
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Amen.