Judges 19 "Dismembered and Re-membered" (Part 4: Finding Christ in Night Country)

Into Night Country: Judges 19-21

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Part 1 set the theological context, Part 2 showed us How God Unmasks Monsters, Part 3. Continued a Litmus test of community evil, and this 4th part will conclude the chapter by considering how Christ comes to meet those in Night Country. As always, these essays are of most use if you read the Scripture text beforehand. There are four particular examples of evil in this Litmus test. The trigger warning for this essay is that it contains spousal abuse, clergy abuse, sexual abuse and rape, along with outrageous callousness throughout. May God grant us every grace.

A) God’s Spirit sensitizes us.

I imagine reading the scene in Judges 19:22-30 exhibits a variety of responses. I’ve tried to take great care in going over some of the story, but some of you may not have even raised your eyebrows that I read it. For some of us, maybe it does not even shock us, this kind of behavior, this kind of story. I was thinking about the story and think how normalized such a scene is in many of our imaginations. Many folks these days profit from such a scene or have participated or found pleasure in such scenes plundering God’s image bearers either for their body or for their possessions. Some of you have done so physically to another person. Others through the consumption of pornography, or utilization of OnlyFans or other such things. If that’s the case, if this story did nothing to you in its reading, it’s my prayer simply that this story will shock you to see your shame how God sees it—and He does see it!--and turn to Jesus. These things should shock us. They should shock us.

B) God Hears the groans of the abused.

Some of us have been victims of horrors like those described. And in this story, I pray that God’s disgust over abuse evident: We’re not going into chapter 20, because chapter 20 is a part two to this. God will bring it into judgement—God’s judgment. God doesn’t leave this silent woman without a voice on her behalf. And while the concubine is silent in the text, her every groan—like that of the blood of Abel, was heard by God (Gen 4:10; Gen 16:11).

C) God Sees and Goes to those oppressed in Darkness.

Not only does God hear. God sees it (Gen 16:13). The God who is the King evaluates the men of the city as “Worthless fellows” (v22). This is the same God who sent his Son to dethrone such darkness. This Jesus comes to make you used/abused and discarded whole, and He will not leave you on the threshold of hope trying to enter in.[1] In fact, because the desire of Jesus is for his bride is so strong (Songs 7:10), His desire sends him running out the door—not in the morning to clean up, but the night before to intervene--so that you can will not be subjected to the dominion of such demonic hoards. Mark this—Christ says we find Him outside where the concubine lies devalued, deserted, dishonored, and dying (Heb 13:13-16). Where the concubine dies in the Night Country, Christ shines His light. There is darkness in the square, and darkness with the old man and the Levite. But the Father wants you to see His Christ in the woman knocking at the door of a church that has a reputation of being alive, but is dead, has accumulated riches and comfort, and decided it needed nothing from her God (Rev 3:20). Where God Himself has done such a thing in the flesh, surely the church ought to be the place where the oppressed never find a door locked to their entry.

D) God will hold the Bystanders Accountable

Some of us I hear this passage and say, “I’m just discouraged because I know this stuff is going on; I know it’s going on, and I’m unable to stop it.” We think of the father in Bethlehem and how much he’s pleading, “Stay. Lodge here. You can be merry here. There’s plenty in the father’s house.” The man/husband/minister will not stay in the joy of the father’s house. And you watch as he goes away undeterred and unchanged—and the concubine follows him in going away entrusting herself once again to his care! You might be tempted in that discouragement to simply resign yourself to the evil that is in this world, so you shut yourselves behind closed doors. Did you miss those unseen characters in the story--The rest of the inhabitants of Gibeah who wouldn’t open their doors, who refused to receive sojourners, to grant safe refuge. Maybe those sojourners aren’t safe—if I welcome them then the men of the city will come after me…or maybe the strangers themselves are a danger to me. So much fear of man. So little fear of the LORD. The Bible calls one response foolish, and the other the beginning of knowledge (Prov 1:7).

E) God Lifts up the Humble

And if you are intervening for the vulnerable, or are vulnerable and oppressed yourself then the gracious call to faith is your need to lift up your eyes to a king who not only can restrain evil, but who can rule and defend you. And isn’t it into his hands that we entrust ourselves? Is the Christian not confessing that his/her life is already hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3)? That’s what we’re called to do so that thousands may fall at your right and your left—yet the terror of the night will not come near you (Ps 91:7). God’s people will stand firm in their faith, or they will not stand at all (Isa 7:9; 1 Cor 16:13).We all come from many different backgrounds, circumstances, activities, sins and victories; others of us have turned to Jesus even after participating in such atrocities, or being the recipients of them, or running from confronting them, and in this story I pray that each one of us are reminded of God’s mercies.

“Mercy in the Night Country?”

Where is mercy here? Well, mercy in Night Country, as I’ve set us up here, is absent. Mercy in Night Country doesn’t come from asking, “Who is Jesus here: The Levite, the father in Bethlehem, the old man, the concubine? When you go into Night Country in the Bible, oftentimes the way that it points to Christ is by turning the whole thing on its head. We find Christ when we recognize everything’s upside down here. So, when the light goes on, we see these characters as shadows or wicked forms of what the Lord has done properly and righteously. Think about it in this way: What did sinners do to Jesus and what did Jesus endured to save them. Can we talk about Jesus a little bit? Thank God. Let’s talk about Jesus for a moment. Here we have in a picture of the wickedness of God’s people as they depart from God as their King. But in the departure we long to return! In a shameful Levitical priest we turn away toward a great high priest, of the tribe of Judah, of the line of Melchizedek, one who will reign eternally as a priest and a king. And do you remember what happened to Jesus? Do you remember? Why did Jesus come? Jesus came to die having become sin for us (2 Cor 5:21). “He descended into Hell/Hades.” You remember that.

So why would God become a man? Why would he veil his glory and empty himself and come and live amongst people like this? … That’s right. He gave himself for other people. You remember where Jesus suffered? Outside the gate with the unclean things, with the dung heaps. Despised and “Othered.” And you remember he got some advice along the way to fulfill that mission from a self-help teacher named Peter walking alongside him when he talked about his suffering and his impending death says, Peter says, “This will never happen!” And what does Jesus say to him? “Get thee behind me Satan!” Strong words. Strong words. And in Matthew 26 when Jesus is being arrested in the garden, a sword flashes, cuts off the ear of one of the guards, and Jesus says “put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels. But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled? That it must be so.”

There’s that notion of angels again. Angels that you wish would intervene here. Angels that Christ knew he could call to intervene because they were his angels when he was going to suffer and die outside the gate. Christ who came to go outside so that you might enter into where you’ve been cast out from in the first place. You remember our first parents cast out from the garden, cast out from the presence of God for their own sin, and here we’re seeing sin. Sin giving birth to sin and death. Why does Jesus tell Peter, “Get thee behind me Satan” when Peter says, “You shall not suffer and die?” Have you thought about that? Well, see it in the wickedness of Judges 19. How does the Levite treat his wife in the midst of those who are going to use him, abuse him, and kill him? He takes one who was his bride, and he kicks her outside so that she might suffer so that he might live. That’s the priest in this passage. Jesus says to Peter, “Get thee behind me Satan tempting me not to undergo the suffering for which I came and the death which I must die, because I have come to seek and to save my bride. And I refuse to kick her outside. But I’ve come to go out so that she might come in. I’ve come to die so that I can present her pure in the peace of God in my Father’s house!”

You see, it’s Christ who could have on the cross, when they’re taunting him and mocking him, “Hey let’s see if he’s the son of God. Let’s see if he’ll call Elijah. Let’s see if something will happen.” And Jesus refuses to have angels intervene. Because he says if angels intervene, I will live, and they will die. If angels intervene at that moment, he looks out on all who are mocking him, and he says, “Father, forgive them. Because they don’t even know what they’re doing.” Jesus comes as the light of the world into Night Country. Into Night Country and the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Don’t you see? It was Jesus who came into Night Country and Zechariah, another priest, a faithful priest, rendered it rightly when he said, “The sunrise from on high has come and has dawned on us who have sat in darkness.” This is – I’m not trying to show you who is the hero in Judges 19. There’s not a hero there. That’s the point. I’m trying to lift up light on that so that when you see the darkness, you say, “I want no part of it! Let me into the house, not of this old man, but into the Father’s house in heaven. Let me in!” And the father says, “There’s only one way in. My son. He’s the way. He’s the truth. He’s the life. Nobody comes to the father except through him.” Because all sin – listen – all sin will be brought into judgment. And it will reveal God’s glory as he punishes those who do such things. But today. The day the Lord has not returned. Means today the Lord is calling you as the king saying, “Bow the knee to me. Confess your sins and turn from them, and place your faith in Christ where on that cross your sins were judged.” Will you receive that gift? Because if not you will live and die in the Night Country. And I want you to remember this Jesus who came and established this new covenant that the Lord says in Ezekiel 16 so that we know that he is the Lord and that we might remember our sins and be confounded never opening up our mouth again because of our shame when he atones for all that we have done.

Conclusion:

I want to close this with the words of another Levite, Zechariah, as he looked to the birth of Christ: “The sunrise from on high has visited us with healing in His wings.” This Sunrise is the incarnate Son of God, of whom David prophesied, “He protects all of his bones, not one of them will be broken” (Ps 34:20), and who declared to His disciples,

“This is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way Christ took the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:19-20)

When Son of God came he came in our flesh and blood and offered himself up to death on the cross (John 1:1-14; Phil 2:1-5)). He did not leave that flesh and blood in the grave but raised it up and glorified it. Jesus offers you and me His body and his blood—one in which no bone is broken. The Night Country tells you and me that if you’re coming to Jesus, we’ are coming to him with ruined bodies full of broken bones. Apart from Christ we are only a body full of broken bones.[2] The Lord says, “Here I’ve come to a broken people, but I’ve come and remained whole throughout the process so that when you partake of me, I can make whole what was broken. I can heal what was broken. I can raise one who is reaching out on the threshold of hope to enter in. One who says I’ve been used and abused beyond any semblance of a human being. There’s nothing left that someone could look on to recognize or to honor. And Christ says, “That was me too.” Christ says, “Me too.” Isaiah 53 prophecies to it and we are to see him there on the cross, and we are to remember him and come to him in our brokenness and receive his wholeness. We are to remember his shed blood, and we are to remember that he didn’t stay in the grave, but he put sin in the grave. And we are to walk in the newness of life remembering he is risen again. We are to take His flesh and blood and eat and drink as we are transformed into His glorified likeness (John 6; 2 Cor 3:18)

And I think that’s why that fifth century liturgy of Saint James says, “Let all mortal flesh keep silence.” What will you say? Christ our God descends, our full homage to demand. Why? So that we might be made whole. Why? So that we might glorify God, not merely that. And in doing so also enjoying him forever in the fullness of light. So that we who were dis-membered and discarded might be gathered in and re-membered in him as members of His one body. It is Jesus alone who promises to bring you out of the Night Country and into everlasting day. If He lives then darkness has not overcome the light. Isn’t that why the church is called a lamp stand in a dark world, and the Holy Spirit its oil? Let us shine brightly and shout by the Spirit whether it is from a hilltop, or a threshold door, “Our Savior lives.” Amen.

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[1] Though I was not aware of it at I preached the sermon from which this essay derives, Diane Langberg’s. On the Threshold of Hope: Opening the door to healing for survivors of sexual abuse. (Tyndale Refresh. Carol Stream, IL. 1999) would be appropriately applied in many ways to the present argument.

[2] I am borrowing this phrase as a description of the church from Thomas Merton’s essay of the same name in New Seeds of Contemplation. New Directions. New York, NY 2007 (reprint edition).