There Was No Godly Leader…

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 Bethlehemjudah.

I am reading through Judges right now and the thing that has really come to my attention the last couple of times that I have read this book is how wicked and confused life becomes when there are no Godly male leaders.

In Judges 1, the leadership of the children of Israel is given by God to the tribe of Judah.  As long as Judah is leading the other tribes up into battle, Israel is victorious.  After Judges 1, we do not hear of Judah again until chapter ten.  I am not sure what happened, but they stopped leading and Israel fell into sin and bondage.

Occasionally, God would raise up a judge to deliver them when they finally came to themselves and would cry out to Him for help.  Without fail, after a few years of deliverance and serving God, they would turn away from God and be brought back into bondage.  This cycle continues through the book of Judges, all because the leaders did not lead them to serve God.

In Judges 4, we see a weak Barak needing a woman to help him lead.  In Judges 6-8, we see God using Gideon in a great way, but he failed to teach the next generation because the Bible says, “…as soon as Gideon was dead…the children of Israel turned again and went a whoring after Baalim, and made Baal-brith their god.”

In Judges 13-16, Samson is the leader, but he has serious character flaws and moral problems, which end up being his downfall.  In Judges 17-21, things get more and more twisted and evil, as the Bible says 4 times “…there was no king in Israel” (17:6, 18;1, 19:1, 21:25) and 2 times “…every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (17:6, 21:25).

The problem was that there was very little Godly men who would stand up and lead.  The men who did lead had some pretty serious character flaws.

The though for today is?

• Men, are you walking with God?  Are you a Godly man?  Do you love the Lord with all your heart?  Are you setting a good example and willing to stand up and lead your family, in your church, and in your world? Are you failing to teach your children like Gideon and have moral problems like Samson?
• Women, are you praying for and supporting the men around you to live for God and lead?  Even a weak leader like Barak was victorious because there was a Deborah behind him.