Judges 19

Good Morning “Sin Mourners.”  Today we are in Judges 19.

If you’ve read Judges 19, chances are you’re once again in awe, disgusted, saddened, perhaps feeling something you’ve never felt or at least don’t regularly feel.  What you’re experiencing is mourning.  Broken hearted lament over the incredible depth of sin seen in this chapter.  It’s the kind of mourning Matthew speaks of in Matt. 5:4.  Broken, lament over sin and its depth in our lives and those around us.  Perhaps you felt something similar after reading the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  This story mimics that one.  Man has once again sunk to the same depths.  

The old man from Ephraim clearly knows bad things will happen if they stay out in the square all night.  It’s a hint of the depth of depravity in that area.
 
The perpetrators in this story are Benjamites.  They were Gods chosen, from the tribe of Benjamin.  And what about the Levite Priest?  How had they sunk so low?  

How could things have gotten so bad?  Notice the chapter begins with “In those days Israel had no king.”  It’s a nod to similar passages throughout Judges that continue with, “Everyone did what they thought was right… in their own eyes.”  When God is not the center of a nation, of a people, of a family, of a marriage or an individual… we are destined for depravity.  Apart from God and His Word we go our own way (Isaiah 53:6).  We conform, like the Romans did,  to the patterned thinking of the world around us (Romans 12:2).  

Have we already?  Consider the world around us.  We live with the continual acceptance of the murder of millions of babies.  Human trafficking, mostly women and children, was the nations 2nd highest grossing industry in 2020 - $150 billion for the sale of people. (It’s now arguably the 1st.)  

We are left with our jaws agape after reading something like Judges 19.  We tend to want to protect our children from exposure to it… “don’t read that.”
We wonder how they got so depraved, and how Gods people allowed it?   We mourn that level of sin.

In the midst of our world, perhaps the greater question is “Why aren’t we mourning continually?”  Why don’t we feel this horror all the time?  Is it because “they’ve” changed the rules, and redefined Truth?  Is it because, whether we realize it or not, as we’ve back burnered God and His Word - we’ve conformed to the opposite of it instead of being transformed by it?  

These are important things to consider, for God gave us His Word to apply.  Are we so much different than Israel?  Check out Roman’s 1:18 - and let it marinate.  

I know this is heavy!  Love you all!  Dig in!