Judges 19:1 And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning on the side of mount Ephraim, who took to him a concubine out of Bethlehem-judah.
You probably have never seen two trillion dollars in your entire life. The fact is, you have probably never seen two trillion of anything in your entire life. Your naked eye cannot see two trillion stars, and I’m not sure you could see two trillion stars even with a telescope. So, once you get past a million dollars or so, it doesn’t really matter. The number is abstract. You have no idea what two trillion dollars even looks like. Yet, does that mean you shouldn’t take care with a thousand dollars that you are responsible for today? When the big picture is plain to us, it is all too easy to ignore the small decisions we make from day to day, whether it is in our family, our church, or our nation.
In Judges 19-20 you again have a couplet, two chapters that paint a really bizarre and sordid story. The upshot of the story is civil war in Israel, infighting among God’s people. They had been reduced to tribalism. They were people widely dispersed in the country, but they were not acting as a nation. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. But all this chaos and national turmoil really was the natural result of a bunch of small, individual decisions people were making.
That is where Judges 19 comes in because it is the story of one man, a Levite, and the Bible says he had a concubine. She “played the whore” against him. Then, she left and went to her father’s house. The Levite went after her, met his father-in-law, and retrieved his wife. None of this is good. All of this is bad. There are no heroes. When they eventually make their way home, they stop for the night at a place in Gibeah where there were Benjamites.
As the Levite is sitting by the gate that night, an old man comes out and insists that the Levite come to his house that night so he will be safe. The Levite goes to this man’s house, and “evil men of Belial” from the city surround the house and threaten this Levite and all that are his. Instead of confronting them, he sends out his concubine. They abuse and murder her. The entire nation is called to come up against these wicked men, the tribe Benjamin. This results in a civil war that costs thousands of lives.
Why this bizarre story? It is because you are seeing what individuals did, even good people like Levites. Here is a man who had a concubine, a woman who was immoral against this Levite. There are the men that surround this house and do wickedly. Here is wickedness on a grand scale that then scaled up to an entire nation in civil war.
In your life today it is all too easy to say, “Because I don’t know what two trillion dollars looks like, I’m not going to be a good steward of the thousand dollars I have.” It is all too easy to say, “Could God send national revival to American today?” and then totally ignore the important questions that confront you individually. What if we scaled your life, your actions, ethic, and integrity to your entire family? What if we scaled you to your church? What if we scaled you to an entire nation?
In this terrible story there are no heroes. The Levite is not a hero. His concubine is not a hero. The men of Benjamin are not heroes. They are all people that are tribal. They are fighting their own wars. Everyone is doing that which is right in his own eyes. The important lesson is that you cannot scale what you will not do.
You may not be able to change the world today. You may not be able to change your church today. You may not even be able to completely change your family today. But, you can ask God to help you know what to do and then take courageous action with the help of God on the decisions that confront you. Many times when we say, “I can’t make a difference,” it is an alibi for “I won’t make a difference.” Care about people and what is right. Start making a difference by doing right in your own life.