When one has looked to self and not God

  

Judges 21:16-25

 

February 16, 2021

 

Then 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?”    And they said, “There must be an inheritance for the survivors of Benjamin, that a tribe not be blotted out from Israel.   Yet we cannot give them wives from our daughters.” For the people of Israel had sworn, “Cursed be he who gives a wife to Benjamin.”   So, they said, “Behold, there is the yearly feast of the Lord at Shiloh, which is north of Bethel, on the east of the highway that goes up from Bethel to Shechem, and south of Lebonah.”   And they commanded the people of Benjamin, saying, “Go and lie in ambush in the vineyards and watch. If the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come out of the vineyards and snatch each man his wife from the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin.   And when their fathers or their brothers come to complain to us, we will say to them, ‘Grant them graciously to us, because we did not take for each man of them his wife in battle, neither did you give them to them, else you would now be guilty.’”   And the people of Benjamin did so and took their wives, according to their number, from the dancers whom they carried off. Then they went and returned to their inheritance and rebuilt the towns and lived in them.   And the people of Israel departed from there at that time, every man to his tribe and family, and they went out from there every man to his inheritance.

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

If you desire to be a seeker of Truth, one of the first things one must do is answer the question that was asked many years later by a Roman leader named Pilate.  When he asked Jesu what is truth?  But if you desire to be a follower of Christ you must become a seeker of Truth, and as you study the Scriptures from Judges 17-25 you will see in Judges 17:6, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”  And in the last chapter of Judges 21:25, the very last verse.  What one understands is that each tribe down to each person was their own authority, each making decisions, on what was true and what was not.  God had allowed them the be seekers of a delusion, and that took them away from God’s authority to self-rule, 

As one who has studied the history of mankind, it becomes very clear that dad gave me some great advice, when he said, “We do not learn from history, if we did it would not be repeated.  If you have noticed more than haft of the USA population does not put any trust, in the leadership in Washington, they have become puppets of powerful people and truth is whatever they think.  But for those few of us who have chosen to follow Jesus, He alone is truth.  So, look to him not the media, not Washington D.C. only to Jesus, if you choose to be a Truth-seeker.

 

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice