Video Transcript: Doing Your Own Thing: Judges

Video Transcript: Doing Your Own Thing: The Book of Judges

The Book of Judges is gripping. But sometimes it's also pretty gross. It's exciting. But it can also be disgusting. There's a lot going on in this book and some very lively characters, and it's seldom boring. But it certainly can be disturbing at times. So, let's look at this book of Judges and let's consider the main theme. It's a time when people do their own thing. When they don't recognize any king, not even God, as their King. The Book of Judges, begins with a couple of chapters giving an overview of things. Then it goes on throughout a big chunk of the book to tell us about different judges, rugged heroes who did various things. And then the last chapters from chapter 17, through 21, gives a few incidents that occurred at unnamed times during the period of the judges that are very revealing about those wild times. 

Judges chapter two gives us maybe as chilling the words as you'll find anywhere in the Bible here in Judges two verse 10. “After that whole generation of the people who had lived for the Lord under Joshua had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel.”  Think about that. They didn’t know the Lord. They were clueless about what He had done.

Why was this? Was it that the older generation didn't do well in passing along the truth and living it out? Or was it that you just got an ornery, obnoxious younger generation who wouldn't listen? Or was it both? At any rate, it's possible for a generation to come along who just doesn't know God and doesn't know the stories of what He's done. “Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. In His anger against Israel, the LORD handed them over to raiders, who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. They were in great distress. Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hands of these raiders. Yet they would not listen to their judges but prostituted themselves to other gods and worshiped them.” 

Now, when you read these words, it's almost like you've got a movie script writer who's written a script, and then a movie is made of it. And then a couple decades later, they use the same script for another movie with slightly different characters, but pretty much the same script. And that's what happens in Judges. Judges two, is giving us an overview of how things went again, and again, and again. “Whenever the Lord raised up a judge for them, He was with the judge and saved them out of the hands of their enemies as long as the judge lived; for the Lord had compassion on them as they groaned under those who oppressed and afflicted them. But when the judge died, the people returned to ways even more corrupt than those of their fathers, following other gods and serving and worshiping them. They refused to give up their evil practices, and stubborn ways.” 

So that's the basic description of how the story goes. Every 40 years or so, things get so miserable that people cry out to the Lord for help. He sends a rescuer. And then as soon as they forget the rescuer, they go right back to their old ways again. 

And when you read the book of Judges, you find that even the heroes are often more savage than saintly. These are the kind of times they are: the ordinary people are pretty bad. And that's kind of the focus at the end of Judges in chapter 17 through 21. But in the heroes that we read about from chapters 3 through 16, we, reading it today as Christians, often think, “What in the world? Are these the good guys?” Well, when the good guys are pretty bad, then just think about how bad the bad people really are. 

The heroes are more savage than saintly. Let's just look at a few of those. Ehud, one of the early judges, comes as a diplomat bringing tribute payment, and he pretends to have a secret message for King Eglon. And he's got this long sword strapped to the inside of his thigh, and he gets alone with the king to deliver this message, and as the king rose from his seat, Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh, and plunged it into the king's belly. And the sword goes all the way in, and that king’s fat swallows up the sword. And Ehud heads out the window and leaves the king there, that fat king wallowing in his own blood, and raises up a rebellion. Now, it did save the people from that nasty king, but it was not exactly the noblest and most upfront of deeds, to carry with you a hidden sword and pretend to be a negotiator, and then just shove a sword into a guy's gut. 

Then there's Jael. The judge Barack and Deborah, Deborah is a woman leading during this time when men are refusing to lead, and even Barack won't go by himself when the Lord says. He says to Deborah, “I won't go unless you go with me”. And so, Deborah says, “Well, then, the honor of the victory is going to go to a woman, and not to you.” And what woman does it go to? Well, Jael. After the battle in which General Sisera, the enemy has been routed, his troops have been defeated and Sisera is on the run, and he finds himself at the tent of a woman named Jael. And Jael smiles and welcomes the poor, tired, fleeing general into her tent and says, “How can I help you?” and offers him milk and shows him great hospitality and lulls him to sleep, and then grabs a spike and pounds it through his head. Well, once again, maybe you don't want to preach on this passage, and then say, “Well go thou and do likewise! Find somebody to lull them to sleep, be really nice to them, and then put a spike through their head and teach them a thing or two.” But that was how this particular wicked general was killed: by a woman. 

Another hero: Gideon. Gideon is at a threshing floor hiding from the enemy Midianites, and the Angel of God comes to Gideon and says, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior.” And Gideon says, “Well, if the Lord is with us, why have all these bad things happened to us?” and Gideon is griping about how he's been treated, but the first thing God says to him is, “You need to go destroy that idol of Baal in your father's own household.” Now you notice Gideon can't understand why the Lord, the God of Israel, would be upset with the Israelites, and his own father has an idol of Baal right within his household. And Gideon, after destroying that idol is not exactly Mr. Strong Faith. He again and again and again and again is asking for signs from God to show him that it's really God's speaking to that he needs to go out and do this. And finally, he wins a great victory, he has his great moment, when by faith he triumphs he and just 300 men outfoxing the whole army, and God causes that army to fight against each other. Then what happens afterward? He makes another idol. He marries many wives, and a son of one of the women who's not his wife, murders all the other brothers. And that's the story of another hero. 

Well, it just keeps going on. Jephthah is yet another hero. Who's he? Well, his mom is a prostitute, he's a chieftain, running a band of outlaws and adventurers who’re just grabbing what they can and all of a sudden, he's the one who's asked to help rescue Israel from some oppressors. And so, he agrees to do so. But he makes a promise. He says, “If God gives me victory, first thing I'm going to do when I get home is that whatever comes to greet me, I'm going to sacrifice to the Lord.” And what happens? He comes home from a great victory and his beautiful daughter, his only child, comes out, and the bonehead sacrifices her. He makes this terrible vow and then he carries through on it. And this guy is one of the judges, one of the heroes. 

And then there's old Samson. Samson makes for some very lively reading and he does some amazing things with his tremendous strength that God gives him. But what kind of man is he really? He's hot-tempered. He's supposed to be a Nazirite who keeps himself pure for the Lord, but he eats stuff from the body of the carcass of a dead lion. Lions were unclean animals. You weren't supposed to touch unclean things and Samson's doing all of this. He is used by God through his hot temper to rescue Israel from the Philistines who are oppressing them, but not because Samson is such an all-around wonderful guy. He decides that he likes women who are pagans. He likes Philistine women. And so, he sees a woman, his parents say, “No, you shouldn't marry her! Can't you find a good Jewish girl?” He says, “I want her.” Okay, so they have the wedding. Samson gives a riddle at the wedding about the lion that he took honey from. And the people whom he gives the riddle to can't figure it out. So, they get really mad. And they tell Samson's wife-to-be that if she doesn't get the secret out of him, they're going to kill her. Well, she begs and whines and nags. And finally, he gives the secret, and she gives it to those guys, and they win the bet and Samson has to give them some clothing. Well, how does he solve that? He goes out and kills 30 guys and takes their clothing and then hands it over to the people that he lost the bet to. What a wonderful guy! 

He fell for a prostitute. One time he spends all night with a prostitute. He gets up in the morning, find out the Philistines and barred the gates of the city. What does he do? He just grabs the gates of the city, rips them out of the post, these big, heavy gates, and carries them 30 miles. He says, “You guys want to lock me in? I'll take your gates 30 miles away, have fun with that.” But again, his tremendous strength of body is not exactly matched by tremendous strength of holiness and of wisdom. And ultimately, he goes after another Philistine woman, Delilah and she's paid off by the Philistines to get his secret out of him. And finally, he tells her the secret, that he belongs to the Lord, his strength comes from the Lord, and that he's never cut his hair his entire life as a sign of dedication to the Lord. She has his hair cut off, and he rises up thinking oh, he's going to take down these Philistines again. But he's lost his strength. And they haul him off, they gouge out his eyes and finally, Samson's hair grows again. And they bring him into the temple of Dagon, one of their idols, to mock him. And he's standing between two pillars that are holding up that whole temple with 3,000 people in it. And he prays one last prayer, “Lord, let me get vengeance for my two eyes and let me die with the Philistines.” And he pulls down their temple and smashes the whole lot of them and kills more by his death than he did by his life. Now, this is a man that God uses to break the hand of oppressors. But he's not exactly someone of admirable and holy character. 

So again, and again and again, we find that in the book of Judges, even the heroes are often more savage than they are saintly. That's how grim a period, this is when everybody's doing his own thing, when everybody's doing what's right in his own eyes. Even the leaders are not very much in tune with God. But here's another thing: the Lord does use flawed believers to carry out His plans. Some of these judges are listed in Hebrews 11 has some of the heroes of faith who did mighty exploits, by God's power and by the faith that they had in God. And so, God, thank God, does use very faulty and flawed people like these judges, maybe even people like you and me. 

But this was a wild, wild, lawless time and that comes out again and again, as you read in this book. And let's get back to what we saw originally. There is spiritual amnesia. They didn't know the Lord. They didn't know what He'd done for Israel. They just forgot about these things. And God would send punishment and enemies, then He'd save them. But they would not listen. They forgot, and then they forgot, and then they forgot and then they forgot and then they forgot and then they forgot and then they forgot. Getting a little tired of this movie yet? Well, God got mighty tired of that movie. And when you look at Israel and its enemies, during the time of the judges, there were various different nations that came in and oppressed them. But who was the real enemy? Well, it's like in the comic, strip Pogo: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We who keep forgetting the Lord, we who keep forgetting what He's done for us, we who keep forgetting to trust Him. There's other enemies out there, and they can make our lives miserable. But the real enemy is us. And that's the enemy we really need to face.  

Now, in the epilogue of judges, those last five chapters, it's repeated again and again: “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did what was right in his own eyes. In those days, Israel had no king.” They're not even honoring God as their king. “In those days, Israel had no king... In those days, there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.” That is the last verse of the book of Judges, and a summary of the whole mess. A period in which people did their own thing. 

Now we've seen what it was like in the lives of the judges themselves, and if even the heroes could be pretty savage, what about those who weren't considered among the heroes? Well, it really It gets ugly there and that's what we see in these last few chapters of Judges. You see homemade religions where they just make it up, where your rent a priest and pay him off, where there's rash curses and oaths, where there's live-in lovers and unfaithfulness, where there's perversion, and sexual wickedness and gang rape and chopping up corpses and civil war and multiple massacres and total wipeouts of villages and populations, and getting wives by murdering a whole town and then grabbing the women or kidnapping women from somewhere else. That's a real quick overview of those chapters, and if you look into it in a little more detail, it is very ugly indeed. 

Let's start with a little bit of homemade religion from a guy named Micah. Micah steals from his own mother and his mother utters some terrible curse about what's going to happen to the person who stole from her. And so, Micah gets a little scared, and he returns the money. And when Michael returned 1100 shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I solemnly consecrate my silver to the Lord for my son to make a carved image and a cast idol. And I'll give it back to you, oh, son, you're such a good boy, you are so nice to be honest about stealing that money, and we worship the Lord. And we know that the Lord loves carved images and idols. So, let's make this nice, cool, carved image for the Lord!” Of course, God's second commandment was, “You shall not make for yourselves an idol in the form of anything in heaven above earth beneath, and you shouldn't bow down to them or worship them.” You don't use idols to worship the Lord.

Well, this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some idols and installed one of his sons as his priest. “In those days, Israel had no king. Everyone did as he saw fit.” You want a king? Hey, son, want to you want a priest? Hey, son, you want to be a priest for a while? You look like the pastor. I made this idol after Mom cursed me. And then we, you know, we got the money together, we made this cool idol that God really likes. Hey kiddo, let's have some religion together, homemade religion. 

Then somebody else comes by who's really part of the class, who is supposed to take care of God's tabernacle, a Levite. They're supposed to serve the tabernacle of God, and this traveling Levite meets up with Micah. And Micah says to the Levite, “Live with me be, my father and priest. And I'll give you ten shekels of silver a year, your clothes and your food” So the Levite agreed to live with him. Then Micah installed the Levite and the young man became his priest and lived in his house. And Micah said, “Now I know the Lord will be good to me, since this Levite has become my priest.” Its prosperity religion. The traveling Levite is just looking for somebody to pay him off, and he'll do whatever they want, even be a priest for this idol that's been made, because, “Hey, I can make ten shekels a year. Good deal.” And what does Micah want? Well, he wants a bit of religion from this Levite and this Levite is is going to be an improvement somewhat on his own son, because we know Levites are more professional, and we like to have some professional religion around here, and the Lord is going to be good to me. God's going to pay me off. And the Levite is going to work for cash. And this is what religion is about: the ability to prosper. And this guy is a positive preacher. 

There are some spies that come along from the tribe of Dan. And they're wondering what they can accomplish. And the Levite told the spies from Dan what Micah had done for him. And he said, “He hired me, and I am his priest.” Then they said to him, “Please inquire of God to learn whether our journey will be successful.” The priest answered them, “Go in peace, your journey has the Lord's approval.” Whoa! Man, we love hearing a guy who's a positive thinker. We love having a preacher who tells us exactly what we were hoping to hear anyway. And so, he tells the people of Dan, “Yeah, go for it. God's with you all the way guys.” Well, they liked the sound of that. Then these men went into Micah's house, and they said, “You know what, we like this priest, and we like the stuff he does.” So, they go into Micah's house, these men from the tribe of Dan, and they took the carved image, the ephod, the other household gods and the cast idol. And the priest said to them, “What are you doing?” Well, they answered him, “Keep quiet. Don't say a word. Come with us and be our father and priest. Isn't it better that you serve a tribe and clan in Israel as a priest rather than just one man's household? Oh, don't you want a promotion? Don't you want to enlarge your borders?” The priest was glad. He took the ephod, the other household gods and the carved image and went along with the people. 

So long Micah! I have got greener pastures and a higher paycheck, and more people to impress. And so, Micah is mad that they're stealing all of his gods, and that they're stealing his priest. But the men of Dan say, “Aw, come on. You better just shut up. If you don't, we're going to kill you.” And so, Micah backs down and they make off with that Levite that he had hired and make off with his idols and then they claim the blessing. They took what Micah had made, that idol, and his priest and went on to Laish, against a peaceful and unsuspecting people. They attack them with the sword and burned down their city. The Danites rebuilt the city and settled there. There the Danites set up for themselves the idols. They continued to use the idols Micah has made, all the time, the house of God was in Shiloh. So, there you have it: an homemade religion of a man and his mother, then it kind of expands to hiring a hired professional priest and making some idols. And then a whole tribe comes along and buys out the priest and the idols and goes and massacres a whole town and takes over their territory. Well, there's one slice of life in the time of the judges. 

Here's another slice: we've got someone who is himself, a pastor, or Levite. He's a minister with a mistress. He's got a concubine and the live-in has an affair. She runs off, has an affair with another guy and moves out. But then she may come back, and she goes back to her father's house. And so, this minister, this Levite goes to her father's house, and they talk a while they talk a while. And finally, they agree that the girl will go back home with this minister. Well, they have to decide where to stay for the night on their trip back. And they say, “Well, we better not stay in Jebus formally, what would later come to be called Jerusalem, because those Jebusites, you really can't trust them. They're a bunch of pagans. Let's go to Gibeah where we've got Israelite people living. You know, that'll be a safer, better place to spend the night?” Well, not quite. They find that the people of Gibeah are acting like those at Sodom had acted earlier. And the men of the city come and they want to they want rape, and they're threatening. And so, what is the minister the Levite do? He shoves his girl, his mistress out the door and says, “Have at her,” and then locks the door again and stays with his host. 

And so, all night long after giving the woman to the wolves, they rape her. And the next morning, she's lying on the steps at the door to the house. And he opens the door and sees the woman lying there, and he's a real sensitive kind of guy and he says, “Get up. Let's go.” Well, she doesn't move and she's not just in a bad mood. She's dead. They’ve killed her. Well, he being a very good righteous man, thinks, “This is an outrage. You know, I gave my wife to them to rape her and they went and killed her. Boy, that's a bad deal.” So, he chops her body up into 12 chunks and mails the chunks or sends them out to the different tribes of Israel and says, “This is what horrible thing has happened. It happened in Gibeah, which is a town of the people of Benjamin. They won't punish and so we need to do something about it.” 

And so, what happens next? The Benjamites come out of Gibeah, they won't give up the town of Gibeah. They band together with Gibeah, this town that had done such horrible things and they fight with the Israelites who have come against them. And the Benjamites cut down 22,000 Israelites in the battlefield the first day. Second day, they cut down another 18,000 Israelites. Third day, 25,000 Benjamites swordsman fell, and the men of Israel have routed finally, the Benjamites army. Then they go back throughout the whole land held by the tribe of Benjamin, and they wipe out all the towns. They just put them to the sword, including the animals and anything they found. All the babies, all the children, all the men, all the towns they came across, they set on fire. They just wiped-out Benjamin except for 600 Benjamite warriors who had escaped. “Oh no. What have we done?” said the Israelites. “We wiped out one of our fellow tribes and all the women are dead! The whole tribe is going to disappear. That'd be too bad!” Well, there's 600 Benjamite warriors who’ve survived but no Benjamite women have survived. So, they got a problem on their hands. Because all the men of Israel have sworn they will never give their daughter to a Benjamite. So, what do they do? Well, when you're in that position, and someone says, “Well who gives this woman to this man?” The father is going to say, “I don't! I swore I'd never give my daughter to one of those guys!” So they're in a pickle. They’ve got 600 Benjamite men who need wives. What they're going to do? 

Well, option number one: whose families can we kill? They take notice, they say, “Well, you know what? That town of Jabesh Gilead. When we were gathering all our army together to fight the Benjamites and slaughter them, Jabesh Gilead didn't send anybody. We should just kill them all. We’ll kill all the men, we’ll kill all the little kids, we’ll kill everybody except the unmarried young girls, the virgins. And so that's what they do. They wipe out everybody in Jabesh Gilead and they get 400 virgins. Hey, that plan went pretty well, but we got a problem. The math doesn't work. We’ve got wives for 400 Benjamites. But we need 200 more wives. What we're going to do now? 

Well, option number two, what girls can we kidnap? There's an annual festival at Shiloh for the Lord. You know, a lot of this terrible stuff goes on, in the name of worshipping the Lord. But anyway, there's a festival for the Lord. They say, “Well, we can't actually give our daughters to these Benjamites. But here's what we'll do. There's this dance. And when it's kind of dark out, and when the girls are going home, let's just tell the Benjamites, “You know what? We're just going to kind of look the other way. And when the girls are leaving the dance, you guys just pounce on the one you want and grab her and carry her off; and you got yourself a wife. And so that's what the Benjamites do. The girls are dancing, and they jump out of their hiding places here and there and they grab a girl and cart her off. And pretty quick 200 girls have been snatched and 200 Benjamites have their wives. Why that worked out nicely, didn't it? Well, that's the kind of age the age of the judges was. 

We've seen what the heroes were like, we've seen what the ordinary people often behaved like, and we can say, “Phew! Good thing we don't live like a bunch of savages like those people did back then! What a disgusting mess. Good thing we're a lot more civilized and a lot more advanced. We don't wipe out entire villages, just killing men, women and children. What a bunch of barbarians!” Oh, well, in the most advanced nations in the world, the nations of Western Europe and Japan and the United States, 60 million people killed in World War II. The Nazi death camps in Germany. Germany was the most advanced civilization in many ways: in scholarly, and in music, and in art. And they had these terrible death camps. People on all sides were bombing entire cities. It wasn't just the Nazis; the British and the Americans would firebomb Dresden and deliberately tried to start fires throughout the whole city, wiping out whoever was living there. It was the United States that chose to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Boy, it's a good thing we're so civilized! Those people who live back then were inefficient and they were not much good at killing at all compared to our modern ability to slaughter and kill and wipe out whole populations. 

Oh, and they were so sexually immoral and their pastors were so bad. Well, AIDS has spread throughout many parts of the world. In South Africa, it spread especially quickly, and think about this: in a survey, over half of the pastors in South Africa had been unfaithful to their own wife. And the average pastor had had five affairs. Boy, we've advanced and come a long way, haven't we? 

Births out of wedlock in Britain and in the United States went from 4% in 1960 to 40% by 2000. People just sleeping around, having kids when they want. That's not counting all the abortions and all the babies who were killed, but boy, we're so glad that we're not so sexually immoral like they were back in the time of the judges. Well, before we declare ourselves civilized, we better pay more attention. A pollster, Gallup, the foremost polling organization in America did a major poll and it summarized the poll in four words: “Religion up, morality down.” People were claiming to be religious; they were claiming certain beliefs and their behaviors were becoming worse and worse. Sounds like the time of the judges. They're very religious: they got their idols, they make stuff up. But the morality was not going anywhere because they did not recognize God's authority and would not obey Him. Israel had no king. Everybody did his own thing. 

And today, throughout the world, the prosperity preachers are everywhere. The preachers who are driving luxury cars and wearing fancy wardrobes and living in splendid mansions and encouraging their people to believe that, “If you hire a superb prosperity preacher like me, and if you come to my church, you're going to be blessed! You are going to prosper in everything you do!” Well Micah and his priests couldn’t have said it better. The prosperity preachers are always going to be out there. People who claim to be in it for religion, but they're really in it for the money. Jesus said, “You can't serve both God and money. So, when you read the book of Judges be really careful not to say, “Oh, just ancient history. Yawn! I'm so glad we've become more civilized.” 

And consumer religion. The church of your choice, whatever is valuable about a church is if it caters to your tastes, and to your opinions, and you do not recognize anybody else's authority. You want a church that encourages you to do just your own thing. 

Now, in all of this, there are two main strategies in leaving God behind in forgetting and forsaking Him as they did in the time of the judges. One is to deny that God is real. The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” And so that is one approach. But there's another one too, and that is to say, “God is whoever I dream Him up to be.” You make up your own god. As it says in Psalm 50, verse 21, “You thought I was all together like you.” God says to us, “You thought I was just like you.” Micah can say, “I'm making this idol for the Lord.” The Lord doesn't want us making idols of Him or idols for Him. God hates idols. You can't just make up your own god and then declare it to be the Lord. Now, these two strategies are very common. Deny that God is real altogether and become an atheist or make up the religion that you would like to dream up, that makes you feel good. There is a downside, “Consider this, you who forget God, or I will tear you to pieces, with none to rescue.” God in His mercy did send rescuers in the time of the judges, but only when the people called out to Him for help. And forgetting and forsaking is a good way to get yourself torn to pieces. 

A few examples from today of people who forget God or deny him altogether and some even acknowledge that it's their own preference. Not that they actually have any evidence. Thomas Nagel is a professor at New York University. He said, “I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God… It's that I hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that... I have a cosmic authority problem.” A cosmic authority problem – that’s the judges’ problem. He does not want there to be a king. He wants to do what is right, in his own eyes. That's the authority problem. And one way that people use to comfort themselves with their cosmic authority problem is to say, “We're just here by accident, and there is no God who made us and we're not responsible to any God.” And Nagel is very aware of this. He says that scholars use evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind, and he thinks that's really kind of strange. It's a big stretch. He says these explanations often defy common sense, but at least they eliminate God. 

Darwin, (Charles Darwin, the great scientists of evolution) enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning and design as fundamental features of the world. Now why would you want to get rid of purpose and meaning and design? Well, behind purpose and meaning and design is a God who reigns and you want to get rid of that reigning God, so you have no king and can do your own thing. 

Sometimes it's not professors but singers John Lennon, the singer of The Beatles, wildly popular. “Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try. No hell, below us above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today. Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say that I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one.” Now, let's see what would happen if we imagined God away. And if nobody paid any attention. In that same song, Lennon said, “Imagine no possessions.” When he died he was worth 500 million dollars. Okay? He imagined a certain kind of world, but then he lived in another manner. And by the way, imagining killers away, doesn't make them go away. He was shot by someone else. And so, imagining alone will not relieve us of a true King who's reigning. It will only relieve us of the benefits from living beneath His reign and place us in the realm of chaos, that mess that is described in Judges. 

A common phrase is “believing in yourself”. And John Lennon was one of those. Another of his songs a lesser-known song, “I don't believe in Bible. I don't believe in Hitler. I don't believe in Jesus.” Notice he put Hitler and Jesus right next to each other. “I don't believe in Buddha; I don't believe in Beatles I just believed in me. Yoko, (his wife), and me. That's reality.” Believe in yourself. 

A nastier singer Marilyn Manson, a guy who grew up in an evangelical home and he named himself after the suicidal actress, Marilyn Monroe, and the serial killer Charles Manson. He gave himself the name Marilyn Manson. He said, “Everything's a lie – Pick the lie you like best, and I hope mine's the best.” Well, what's his lie? “We hate love. We love hate”. Another of his lines, “Kill God, kill your Mom and Dad, kill yourself.” Well, if that happens to be your favorite lie, then you pick that lie. There is no king in Israel. Everybody does what's right in his own eyes. You think it's right to be kind and loving? We hate love. We love hate. Kill God, kill Mom and Dad, kill yourself. Whatever you want to do, pick your lie. 

Here's an email that I received from a Wiccan person. She wrote, “Religion is a choice. There is no such thing as a true religion. I will say there is no true religion. We each have our own views and needs as far as religion is concerned.” What that’s saying is there is no real God, I just make up my religion based on how I think of things and what I feel I need at the moment. I don't know how anybody can be comforted by knowing that their god is one that they just made up, but that is the case here. There is no king. Everybody does what's right in her own eyes. 

It starts young. We're all self-centered. The littlest babies as they are first learning to speak, one of their favorite words is “Mine!”. Another favorite sentence: “I do it myself!” And for all of us, it seems our three favorite people are me, myself and I. And that's the philosophy of the book of Judges. No king. I'm my own boss. I do what pleases me. James explains this whole dynamic in the New Testament. He says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you?” There sure is plenty of fighting and quarreling in the book of Judges. “Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but you don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. And when you do ask, you don't receive because you ask with wrong motives that you can spend what you get on your pleasures.” You're a prosperity person. You want God only to make you rich and give you pleasure.” You adulterous people! Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?”

There's a lot to learn from the book of Judges, and then from the rest of the Scriptures that comment on these things as well. We need a king. We need to be saved from ourselves and saved from doing our own thing and what's right in our own eyes. Jesus said, “If you hold to My teaching, you are really My disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” When Jesus was on trial before Pilate, He said, “I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born. And for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to Me.” The book of Judges is when people forget the King who sets them free, when they forget the truth that sets them free. We need King Jesus. And we have such a King if we will accept Him by faith, and submit to Him as our Lord, as our Ruler, as the one who directs our lives. 

And this has implications for national life as well. Whatever nation you're in, when you forsake the authority that has been revealed in the Scriptures, when you forsake the living God and try to just make up your government as you see fit, you're headed for some trouble. One of the founders of the United States, Samuel Adams said, “Human rights and freedoms may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of Jesus, the great Lawgiver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.” We've seen what kind of chaos it was in the life of Israel during the times when they had nobody to govern them, when they had no rule of law, when they had forgotten God, and His laws. And we can sink back into that kind of state again, if we're like the people of Israel, who forgot the Lord and forgot all that He had done and abandoned all that He had commanded. And so, we can realize the severity of our own sin as we read the book of Judges and the patience of God. Because again, and again, and again, He rescued them when they cried out to Him and He did not abandon the work of His hands. And still today, we can call to Him as individuals, as the church, which is often falling into terrible disrepair, as nations which have sinned terribly, and which have all kinds of disgusting behaviors similar to those described in the book of Judges. We need to return to God. And that's what Judges calls us to do. God said through the prophet Isaiah, “I am the Lord and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret from somewhere in a land of darkness… I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right. There is no God apart from Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none but Me. Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no other.” And in the book of Judges people kept forsaking this God and making up their own god and following their own ways and ignoring or forgetting the truth. But there is no other truth. There is no other God.