Sin is Sin is Sin

October 11
Some of the stories I read in the bible really trouble me. Today I read in Judges18-21 about the Levite whose concubine got raped by the leading men of the town of Gibeah. The story begins telling us the concubine played the harlot and then left him. In spite of her harlotry, he apparently still wanted to have her with him so he went after her and talked her into returning with him to his home in the hill country of Ephraim. On the way home they had to stop in the town of Gibeah to spend the night resting. An old man saw him in the town square and took him into his home, offering to take care of his needs. The story gets worse. Some men of Gibeah wanted to have relations with the Levite. That alone was the kind of sin so heinous I have trouble believing it actually occurred. To mke it worse, we learn later in the story these were leading men in the city.Still, the story gets worse. The Levite gave his concubine to them. They proceeded to abuse her all night and in the process killed her. This story is sick on so many levels it makes me nauseous to even think about it. When the Levite got home, he cut his wife into twelve pieces and sent her parts to the twelve tribes of Israel asking them to help him get revenge for his concubine’s murder by the Benjaminites. All the leaders of those tribes agreed they had to go against Benjamin or, at the very least, get the ones who committed the sin and stone them to death for their heinous act. Finally, as if the story wasn't bad enough, we next learn the residents of Gibeah, a tribe of Israel, refused to give up the men who had done the dastardly deed. Several thousand men of war from the tribes of Israel and almost all of Gibeah died because of the sin of a few. All but 600 men of Gibeah were killed. Out of 26,700 men of war in Benjamin only 600 were left and Israel lost another 40,000. No women were left in Gibeah because the whole city, including the men, women, and children was destroyed.


Two things strike me as important for us to learn from this story. It is a record of the decadent state to which at least one tribe had sunk without prophets and judges or a king overseeing their activities and demanding they behave as God would have them behave. We are told at the end of the story that everyone in Israel was doing what was right in his own eyes at that time because they had no king. In other words, they were ignoring the law of Moses. There is no reason to believe anything in this story was the perfect will of God. It is a story of the decadent state to which Israel had sunk as a result of having no godly leadership. When I consider how many women are killed daily in America by sex crazed men and how many homosexuals are told their sin is just a alternative lifestyle which they blame on some mix up in their DNA, I realize we are just as decadent, if not more so, in this country. Our great doctors and psycho-babblers tell homosexuals they can’t help their sin. They’re told, by men more perverted than they are, they were born with the desire to have sex with men rather than women. There is a sense in which those who make such claims are correct. All men are born with a bent to sin. No man is born with a burning desire to be pleasing to God. Without the intervention of the Holy Spirit of God in the life of man, he can’t help but be corrupt. That’s what Romans 3:17-18 is all about. The homosexual’s sin is homosexuality. The liar’s sin is lying. The murderer’s sin is murder. The thief’s sin is theft. And all will go to hell just as fast as the homosexual when they die if they do not repent.

So, the truth we need to glean from this story is that man is corrupt, he is not even able to be pleasing to God. If that is true, we would expect scripture to tell us it’s so. Oh yeah, it does; Romans 8:7 tells us, “because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,” So, if you find yourself doing those things on a regular basis that you know are displeasing to God and have no desire to repent, you must realize you are probably bound for hell for eternity if you don’t repent, believe in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross in your place for your sin, confess Him as Lord, believe God raised Him from the dead, and be baptized the remission of your sin (Acts 2:38, Rom. 10:9; Luke 9:23). And that’s God’s word for us today.