Gooding, David: 15 - Two Sad Epilogues

When we began our studies of the book of Judges, we noticed its, uh, arrangement, its literary structure. We noticed in particular that there were two introductions, the first and the second. Then there came the list of the main deliverers, seven of them. They had some, some minor deliverers as well. We now should notice, can you up it a bit? That at the end, there are two epilogues, two quite distinct stories, which I have called epilogues. Detailed study would show that the two epilogues are related in subject matter to the two introductions. We shall not pause this morning to go into those details. In this lecture, I hope to be able to cover both the epilogues. I warn you in advance that they are very sad and sorry stories. Stories. The first of them shows the breakdown of the Levitical system, eventually at the end of the days of the judges. The second epilogue shows the breakdown of the all-tribal assembly. Since that is not so familiarly known to people, let me again explain what it was. Each tribe of Israel had its own eldership. Each town within the tribe had its elders. But for the nation as a whole, for affairs that, uh, uh, involved the whole nation, there was what we call the all-tribal assembly, a coming together of representatives of all the tribes. You find it, of course, in the very first verses of the Book of Judges, when the tribes as a whole wait on God and ask who shall go first into off into his inheritance. Hitherto the whole army has been together. Now they begin to peel off. It wasn't left to individual tribes to say who should peel off from the united army. That had to be decided by the all-tribal assembly, as they de- waited on God and decided who should go first, and decided that Judah should go first. In the second epilogue, the last portion of the book, you will find a repeat of that phrase, as the all-tribal meet to, all-tribal assembly meets together to face the need to discipline the tribe of Benjamin, and they inquire from the Lord who shall go first up against Benjamin, and the Lord replies, Judah shall go first. The all-tribal assembly dealt with the sanctities of life, in guarding the sanctities of life for those who had to travel between tribe and tribe. And if, for instance, somebody accidentally murdered somebody in one tribe, and he ran off to a city of refuge in another part of the country, it was not enough for the elders of that city of refuge to examine him and see whether he were genuine or not. They had eventually to bring him, if they considered him genuine, they had to bring him to the all-tribal assembly, who, if they considered his case to be true, would tell, uh, would deliver him back to his city of refuge. So the all-tribal assembly had to do likewise with the discipline of any tribe that outraged the rest of the tribes by its behavior. The all-tribal assembly, therefore. We shall, in the last epilogue, the second epilogue, the last section of the book, hear about this all-tribal assembly trying to function. And they make a horrible mishmash of their duties as the all-tribal assembly, and broke themselves the sanctities that they were supposed to uphold. So the last two sections of Judges, the last, the, the first and the last epilogue are sad reading, recording the decline of the Levites, and then the decline of the all-tribal assembly. When we move on into the book of Judges, a book of Samuel, First Samuel, we find, of course, an eminently famous judge, Samuel. He was also a prophet, but he judged Israel for a long period. Honorable and good man he was. But the subsequent chapters in First Samuel showed us that the judge system itself declined and had to be put aside, and was put aside by the institution of a monarchy. Now, these sad stories illustrate a point. Israel had been a direct theocracy. That is, the tribes lived independently, apart from the all-tribal assembly that was called in from time to time, but they lived as a theocracy. They believed God was their ruler and king, as Gideon explained to his contemporaries. And for some long time, that system worked because people newly come out of the desert with new experiences of crossing Jordan and the miracles of God under Joshua had a sense of the reality of God and lived in the fear of God. But when the fear of God wanes with succeeding generations, and God becomes less than a reality, and merely a doctrine or a theory of administration, then the whole power of theocracy goes. So it was at the end of the days of judges. The Levites, who were the servants of God, who dealt with his sacrifices, the people's sacrifices to God, and so forth, failed miserably, as we shall now see. The All-Tribal Assembly appealed to, to settle a case of outrageous behavior in Benjamin, instead of improving matters, made matters ten thousand times worse. The All-Tribal Assembly failed. Then, in the early days of First Samuel, the priesthood failed. The two sons of Eli were such wicked men that, um, the very sacrifices of the Lord became despised in the eyes of the people. They were utterly profane men, and therefore the priesthood declined. And when the priesthood declined, people lose their sense of the reality of God. Therefore, the old theocracy was called in question. Look forward, of course. The first king was a disaster. His name was Saul. The second king was a man after God's own heart and founded a long distant dynasty. And as we all know, eventually both the, uh, royal dynasty in Israel, and then the royal dynasty in Judah, were by God's permission taken away into captivity. And for the time being, that was the end of the dynasty of David. Was to be revived with the coming of our Lord, who should sit on the throne of his father, David. These declinings of the Levitical system, of the all-tribal assembly, of the, of the judges, and of the priesthood, then of the monarchy in Judah, are the pathways that point onwards to the coming of him who is the perfect Levite, judge, priest, and king. So let us now look at the text, and look at it here and there as we proceed, beginning in the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said unto his mother, The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from thee, about which thou didst utter a curse, and did also speak it in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me, I took it. And his mother said, blessed be my son of the Lord. And he restored the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, I verily dedicate the silver unto the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image. Now therefore I will restore it unto thee. And, uh, he took it, gave them to the founder, who made thereof a graven image and a molten image, and it was in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had a house of gods, and he made an ephod and teraphim and consecrated one of his sons who became his priest. In those days, says the historian, there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. But oh, what a decline. Consider first the man's name, Micah. It was a name to be borne by one of the famous prophets, one of the so-called minor prophets, Micah. Mikayahu, when spelt out in full, and means who is like unto Jehovah. A statement of the fundamental faith of Israel, with his belief in the one true incomparable God. None like him. I know not any, says God through Isaiah, there is none beside me. The incomparable God. And somebody gave the prophet Micah as a boy a name that expressed that fundamental belief of Judaism. And Micah grew to experience the reality enshrined in his name, didn't he? And his prophecy ends with that marvelous work, who is a pardoning God like thee? Or as our hymn puts it, or who has grace so rich and free? The incomparable God, the incomparable Jehovah, Mikayahu, Micah, if you will. And this man's name was Micah. And he had a house of gods. And look at the sublime ignorance of his dear ignorance of his dear mama. She had lost some money, quite a sum of money, and she'd been ap- apparently cursed on whoever had stole it. And her son, dear old Micah, he heard a curse, and conscience troubled him. Dear mama, he said, it is in fact I who took it, and I'm now going to restore it to you. Oh, she said, you are such a wonderful son, Maki. You are, you are really. I feel this is of the very Lord who's now restored my money, and I'm going to show my gratitude to the Lord by giving it to you, you see, so that you can make an image of it. So he gave it to the founder, and he made out of this silver an image. There is not the hint of a notion that Mama thought there was anything wrong in it. So far gone already from the basic truth, the found- foundational faith of Israel. So this Micah, he had the house of gods and made an ephod and teraphim and consecrated one of his sons who became his priest. La la la la. You think of all the rules and regulations given by God of the priesthood in the book of Leviticus and elsewhere. They don't register with Micah, in spite of his name. He made one of his sons priest. And there was a young man out of Bethlehem, Judah, of the family of Judah, who was a Levite, and he sojourned there. And the man departed out of the city, out of Bethlehem, Judah, to sojourn where he could find a place. And he came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah as he journeyed. And Micah said unto him, Whence comest thou? And he said unto him, I am a Levite of Bethlehem, Judah, and I go to Sodom where I might find a place. Micah said unto him, dwell with me, and be unto me a father and a priest, and I will give thee ten pieces of silver by the year, and a suit of apparel and thy victuals. So the Levite went in. And the Levite was contented well with the man, and the young man was unto him as one of his sons. And Micah consecrated the Levite, the young man, and the young man became his priest and was in the house of Micah. Then said Micah, now I know that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite for me as a priest. How absolutely ignorant of God's ways and words can you become? He hired a Levite and hired a Levite as his priest, and the Lord would bless him. Wow. Wasn't him to make priest anyway, to start with. I didn't know you could hire Levites. Did you? The Levites were God's possession. God claimed them in the place of the firstborn by the law and right of redemption. They were not their own. It wasn't for them to hire themselves out to anybody. They were the Lord's. That's why you feel strongly about servants of the Lord, don't you? They belong to the Lord. They're not hireable. And shouldn't hire themselves out to anybody. They are the Lord's. All this is lost on Micah if he, even if he ever understood it. Denied a house of gods, denial of everything that Jude, uh, uh, Israel stood for. Married a, a Levite to his priest. And he could inquire of the Lord through his Levite. And that shouldn't have been done anyway. It was through the high priest and the ark of God that the, uh, inquiry had to be done. Utter confusion. And in those days, the chapter eight goes, eighteen goes on to say, the tribe of the Danites sought them an inheritance to dwell in. For unto that day, their inheritance had not fallen unto them among the tribes of Israel, and they were down the south. So at this stage, some of them, the children of Dan, sent of their family five men from their whole number, men of valor, from these various places, to spy out the land and to search it. And they said unto them, go search the land, and they came to the hill country of Ephraim, unto the house of Micah, and lodged there. When they were by the house of Micah, they knew the voice of the young man, the Levite, and they turned aside thither and said unto him, Who brought thee hither? And what dost thou do in this place? And what hast thou here? He said unto them, Thus and thus hath Micah dealt with me, and he hath hired me, and I am become his priest. And they said unto him, Ask counsel, we pray thee of God, that we may know whether our way which we go shall be prosperous. And the priest said unto them, Go in peace before the, before the Lord is your way wherein you go. No right to advise him. Wasn't his job as a Levite. Well, anyway, the five men departed. They came to this city in the north called Laish. It was a city far off. It was at peace with everybody. It was, in the old English term, secure, without care. They weren't worried. They were at peace. They didn't feel any threat from anybody. They weren't doing anybody any harm. They were a long way off. These five men saw this city, and that they were far from the Zidonians and no- had no dealings with any man. So they came back south to their brethren and said, we've, uh, uh, we've found a suitable city that we could go and take over, you see. So they decided to go and attack the place and turn it into their inheritance. Well, this is how they went about it. And they set forth from thence of the family of the Danites of Zor- out of Zorah, out of Eshtaol, six hundred men go- with weapons of war. They went up and encamped in Kiriath-e-Arem in Judah, wherefore they called that place a special name. Verse thirteen: and they passed thence unto the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah. Then answered the five men that went to spy out the country of Laish and said unto their brethren, do you know that there is in these houses an efod and teraphim and a graven image and a molten image? Now therefore consider what you have to do. And they turned aside thither and came to the house of the young man, the Levite, even unto the house of Micah, and asked him of his welfare. Six hundred men girt with their weapons of war, who were of the children of Dan, stood by the entering of the gate, weapons included, of course. And the five men that went in to spy out the land and came thither took the graven image and the ephod and the teraphim and the molten image, and the priests stood by the entering of the gate with the six hundred men girt with weapons of war. In other words, they stole them. Reminds me of medieval Europe. You know, in medieval Europe, you were famous if you had the relics of a saint or somebody that was supposed to be a saint. You got a bit of his toenail or something of his hair or a bit of his bone, you see. These relics were powerful things, and pilgrimages came. That was good for the tourist industry and the church's finances. And if you had the relics, that bestowed on you great authority. And sometimes other rulers who wanted authority were in the habit of pinching the relics, you see, taking them off. Well, that's what these chaps did. They got to go out to Dan and found a new place. You wanted some gods, didn't you? So they stole these ones from Micah. And there was the Levite, you see, standing with the armed men, you see. Uh-huh. And uh, the five men departed and came to Laish, and so forth and so on. What were the armed men? They set forth from thence of the family of the Danites out of Zoar and out of Eshtaol, six hundred men of war, and they went up and encamped, and so forth and so on. They came to the house. You'll see. When these went into Micah's house and fetched the graven image, the ephod, this is verse eighteen— and the teraphim, the molten image, the priest said unto them, What do you? And they said, Hold thy peace, lay thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with us, be to us a father and a priest. It is better for thee to be a priest unto the house of one man, oh, sorry, is it better for thee to be priest unto the house of one man or be a priest unto a tribe and a family in Israel. And at that moment, the priest, the Levite, felt he had a bigger call. Dawned on him he had. And the priest's heart was glad, and he took the ephod and the teraphim and the graven image and went in the midst of the people. So they turned and departed and put the little ones and the cattle and the goods before them. So the Danites, the big party now with the armed men, had stolen all the gods out of Micah's house, and now they'd stolen his priest, who had gone with him on the terms that it was better to be a priest to a large company than to a mere family, you see. When they were a good way off, verse twenty two, from the house of Micah, the men that were in the houses near to Micah's house were gathered together and overtook the children of Dan. They cried unto the children of Dan, and they turned their faces and said unto Micah, that is the Danites turned, What aideth thee that thou comest with such a company? And he said, You have taken away my gods which I made, and the priest, and are gone away, and what have I more? And how then say you unto- unto me, What aideth thee? The children of Dan replied, Let not thy voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall upon you and thou lose thy life with the lives of thy household. Poor old Micah. He'd made his gods, and someone had come and stolen them by force, and his priest was left with nothing, no god, and no salvation, and nothing. Do you know who he was? Well, the other chap was, yes. We'll say they went. When they came to this city, Laish, it was afar off. It was at peace with everybody. Do you remember what the rules of Moses were, that when they came to a city afar off, what they were supposed to do? Yes, they were to offer peace, weren't they? And if it wanted peace and was prepared to come out and be tributary, they were not to slaughter it. The men of Dan weren't interested in Moses or his commandments or anything of the sort. They were looking for inheritance that they might live. They slaughtered the whole lot. They came unto Laish, unto a people quiet and secure, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and they burnt the city with fire. And there was no deliverer because it was far from Zidon, and they had no dealings with any man, and it was in the valley that lieth by Beth Rehob. And they built the city and dwelled therein. They called the name of the city Dan, after the name of Dan their father, who was born unto Israel. Howbeit the name of the city was Laish at the first. The children of Dan set up for themselves the graven image, and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. Did you ever read such sad words in all your life? What the grandson of Moses priests in an idolatrous shrine for long, long years until the captivity. Can we not see the irony of the situation? When the Israelites under Joshua came into the Promised Land. They were counseled to take the cities and destroy idolatry. Here go the Danites, seeming to be modeled after Joshua and company, and they're going to fight the locals and get an inheritance, and they take Laish and found there, established there, idolatry. Sad, isn't it? In such a short while, grandson of Moses. And And perhaps perhaps we should remember how soon Christendom corrupted itself and thought it was doing missionary work by Christianizing pagan religions. So that in Mexico, as you will know, and also in other parts of the world, supposedly Christian ceremonies are all mixed in with pagan ceremonies. And Buddhists in Malaysia, they go to the goddess of mercy in Buddhism or to the Virgin Mary without any difference. To them, it's one and the same thing. The decline of the Levites. We don't need to be exhorted that we have to stand, not in any sectarian mood, but we have to stand for the faith, do we not? Once and for all, delivered to the saints. The later epistles show us that even in the time of the apostles, what pagan notions had sometimes invaded the early churches. If the first epilogue deal- deals with the decline of the Levites, the second epilogue deals with the decline, as I say, of the all-tribal. It's not an assembly we read much of, but for its purpose, it was originally very effective. And to deal with the sanctities of life, and particularly of social intercourse, travel, guests and hosts. Many ancient cultures were acutely conscious. They were aware of, somehow vaguely, of God's protection, to, uh, uh, protect travelers, guests, and their hosts. Among the Greeks, they gave a special title to, to Zeus. They called him Zeus Xenios. He was the god that was supposed to protect travelers. You'll see, in the ancient world, traveling was a very dangerous affair, as you gather from Paul, as he talks about the dangers of traveling, particularly when he had money on him to give to the saints at Jerusalem. Or if you stayed in some hotels or inns, you had to be careful that the innkeeper didn't murder you in the night and take your money. Well, there is the famous story of how Paris of Troy came to visit, uh, Prince Menelaus in his Greekan kingdom and seduced his wife, Helen, and went off with her to Troy. A very, very famous story, of course, which outraged the Greek sense of the sanctities of life and how guests should behave and how, uh, you should behave towards guests and hosts. The all-tribal assembly, therefore, in, uh, Israel, among other things, had to deal with the sanctities of life and person, sex, marriage, word, and oath. Is what it was meant to do. And so the story is told us in simple, vivid, sometimes gory detail of this Levite who had a concubine, and she went home to her father's house. He came from Ephraim. She went home to Bethlehem, Judah. Her husband arose and went to bring her back for loyalty to him. In the manner of the ancient world, notice the charm of it. When the father of the woman received the Levite into his house, you didn't say, well, I- I've come for my wife, please let me go. I- I'm on the flight back this afternoon. You who went, you were entertained, and you tried to leave the next day. No, you mustn't leave the next day, you must stay on. And so the father persuaded the Levite to stay nearly a week. That's the custom, the social custom of the day. That's how guests should be treated, and so forth and so on. A very interesting vignette of ancient hospitality and entertainment. To this day, if you go to Turkey and they invite you in, they'll offer you food at once. Don't say no to the food. Don't say I can't stomach that, whatever it's like. It's the height of discourtesy to refuse the food they offer. And you mustn't have pity on them and say, poor souls, they can't afford it. That would insult them as well. You must take the food. It's a sense of hospitality. It's almost a sacred right with them. So it was here in this ancient days, and the father, the woman's father, treated the Levite very well, and he stayed perhaps longer than he should. At last, one day he insisted on going, and it was late in the day. And so as they journeyed, uh, they came to a city called Gibeah, and they went to lodge there. Sorry, they came to a city of Benjamin, Jebus, and they want, uh, the servant, Levite servant, wanted him to stay the night in Jebus. That is a city that eventually became Jerusalem, but at this stage was still, uh, held and lived in by Canaanites. And the Levite said, demurred. Not good to go and stay the night in a heathen city like that. He moved on. He would feel more comfortable in a city of Israel. Moved on to Gibeah, which was in the hands of the Benjamites. No one took any notice of them, except an old man who came through. That was also already a dereliction of the duty of hospitality to strangers. This old man, however, received them into his house. What happened next, gentlemen, I needn't repeat. You have read the story. A sad and sorry story of outrageous immorality it was. They suffered worse immorality in Benjamin, a city of Israel, than they might have suffered had they gone to a heathen city called Jesus. We have to remember, don't we, what Paul says in one Corinthians five. There were Christians that were for allowing immorality in a Christian church that would have shocked even the pagan Greeks. Well, of course, when the Levite got home with the corpse of his, uh, concubine, took a knife, cut her up, sent her parts to all the cities of the nation, who were duly shocked. And of course, this being the trouble, and when it happened, it was the all tribals assembly's responsibility to deal with it. So they set about dealing with it. That was a simple matter. Gonna choose out some army people and to go against the Benjamites. Uh, the Benjamites they went, only to find themselves defeated. We see at once that discipline of offending brothers is not a thing to be entered on rashly, is it? As though it were an easy thing to settle by superior force. So then they met and wept before the Lord and inquired of the Lord who should go up for us first? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. Twenty eighteen. And so they went forth. But, uh, the Israelites were worsened in front of Benjamin again. Which, of course, led to great heart searching, you'll see, and weeping. Do you remember the first introduction to the book? When the man of God came to them, to Bochim, and rebuked them for their sin and carelessness, and they wept before the Lord and the ark of his covenant. So here again, if they're going to discipline Benjamin, it better be with chastened hearts and repentant hearts and tears and weeping before the Lord. Well, they went up to deal with Benjamin. Well, it was a serious offense, anybody knows it was a serious offense. But look at the punishment they meted out. They slaughtered them all. Left them with no wives. A decimated tribe with no wives. One might ask whether the discipline was proportionate to the offense. Was this a sensible decision? For now, the s- the crime is bad enough, but they'd nearly eliminated Benjamin from among the tribes by the ferocity of their discipline. And then there was an extra trouble. In the sudden spate of spirituality, they'd taken a vow before God that they would never give the Benjamites any of their daughters to wife. Well, if the Benjamites couldn't get wives, the whole tribe would die out. So now the all-tribal assembly is faced with a bit of a problem. They can't go against their own oath, that's sacred. They are the people that look after the sanctity of oaths, but mm, but um, mm, um, the Benjamites will have to have lies, so mm, how can we get round our oath? Someone had a bright idea. There were some people that didn't come to help us, and they should have come, and they'd broken their oath of allegiance. So we are just to go against them. So against them they went and slaughtered them, hit like the thigh, to take their women to give to the Benjamites. And then there weren't enough, uh, women to go around. What do you do now? So they hit upon an idea. We can't give our wives to the Benjamites because, you see, we are under an oath. They just slaughtered the other people, and they ostensibly they were under an oath too, but just slaughtered them in, in blood, in cold blood, for doing far less a thing than the original crime anyway. So they thought, now there's a festival of the tribes, and at this festival the virgins come out and they dance. What a delightful spectacle it was, you see. It's a festival, you see. They said to the Benjamites, you stand your men near at hand, and when the virgins come out to dance, you see, uh, you rush out and capture them, take them off. And if their parents come and make a fuss, we shall see you're all right, you see. We, the all-tribal assembly, will see you're all right. So now the all-tribal assembly approves of rape and And stealing. stealing. Somehow get out of all the muddles that they got themselves into, by their totally unspiritual and unwise decision for the discipline of Of Benjamin. Benjamin. The old tribal assembly, set to s- to maintain the sanctity of hospitality, the sanctity of oath, the sanctity of sex, has now itself broken the sanctities of oath and the sanctities of sex as well. Judges ends on a very sad note, doesn't it? And I don't want to detain you any longer in thinking about such sad things. But I suppose there's a lesson for elders. I cannot speak from experience. I have never been an elder and have never been in that difficult situation. But the exercise of discipline, even within an assembly, is a very delicate job, isn't it? Not to be entered into without prayer, and perhaps weeping before God that something so bad has been done as calls for discipline. Remembering ourselves also, lest we be tempted. Lest by unwise and extreme discipline, we make matters worse rather than better. The breakdown then of the Levites, the breakdown of the all-tribal assembly, followed in first Samuel by the breakdown of the priesthood. And in first Samuel eight and nine, the breakdown of the institution of judges. That meant that the theocracy that once was the principle of government in Israel now ceased. People had lost their sense of the reality of God. And where people lose their sense of the reality of God, to talk about the Lord governing even the churches goes by the board, because people don't have a real practical sense of the reality of God and dependence on God. And therefore want to substitute some other organizational. But as we comforted our hearts at the beginning, God allowed them to set up a king. The first one was a disaster, the second man, a king after God's own heart. Who should one day prefigure as a prototype, the man that should be born of his royal line, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, to sit on the throne of David, his father. And God, who foresaw the beginning, had it all planned. Thank God for that. That man's failure in all these departments, even the failure of his redeemed people in these departments should lead them inevitably to the point where the only solution could be the coming of the one who was the true judge, the true Levite, the true high priest, and the true king. His name be praised. He shall never fail. And so I end my little part in the study of this book with you, but our time still abides. We have, according to the directorate, twenty minutes now for contributions and And questions. questions. Would you explain the word prototype over against type? Oh. Question is, would I e- e- explain the word prototype over against the word type? I'll do my best, sir. Uh, let me immediately confess that prototype is a thing I invented anyway. It has no authority, you'll see. That you'll see. I do so because the word type, as used in many Christian commentaries and commonly used amongst us, the tabernacle is a type of Christ or something like that, we know what we mean, but it gets itself into trouble because our use of the word type is strictly not what the New Testament means by the Greek word tupos, which is type. You'll see. So, for instance, in one Corinthians ten, Paul, listing the sins of the Israelites in the wilderness, says that these things were types. The word he uses is the Greek word tupos, translated rightly, of course, in the King James, something like examples. They weren't types of our behavior. They were examples for us not to follow, but to avoid. Hence the meaning of the Greek word tupos in that context, an example to be avoided, of course, as it so happens there. Or if you come to the Epistle to the Hebrews, Moses was charged to make the tabernacle according to the pattern showed him in the mount. The Greek for that word pattern is tupos. He was to make the tabernacle according to the type, the example, the model that was showed him in the mount. Now we are apt to say that the tabernacle is a type of Christ, but the Epistle to the Hebrews says somewhat differently. The type was what God showed to Moses. Moses then made the tabernacle according to that type, and therefore the Epistle to the Hebrews calls the sa- the tabernacle and the sacrifices antitypes, figures of the true. Antitypes. We use the word antitype in the direct opposite meaning, of course. We say the tabernacle was the type, and Christ is the antitype. Not according to the terminology used by Hebrews. The tabernacle is the antitype because it corresponds to the model, the tupos, shown by God in the mountain. That's why, and for certain other reasons too, I prefer to use a term prototype. One of those other reasons is this, that when the New Testament refers to the old, it uses the word fulfill. Sometimes it uses the word fulfill in the fulfilling of a prediction. Where shall Christ be born? In Bethlehem Ephrata. How do you know that? Because Micah chapter five gives us the prediction that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. So that scripture was fulfilled when our Lord was born in Bethlehem. That's easily understood, for Micah five was a prediction. But when it comes to the Passover, we listen to our Lord speaking to his apostles in the upper room, as he sits down to eat the Passover with them, he says, I desire to eat this very intensely, for I will no more eat of this until, now mark the word, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And for a moment, that, uh, raises a problem, doesn't it? It's one thing to fulfill a prediction, but then the Passover was never a prediction. The Passover all down the centuries was a memorial of the past, not a prediction of the future. It was Israel remembering how they came out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb and the power of God at the Red Sea. How then can our Lord talk of something that wasn't a prediction being fulfilled? And it is that in particular in mind that I use my little term, you're not not at all obliged to use it. I use my little term prototype. In the sense that, the illustration I give from my youth, when the early aeroplanes went over our school, they did occasionally, once in a blue moon, we all ran out to see them. They were such new devices. We now look back on them and think of them rather crude affairs. They were extraordinary things, and for always breaking down, of course. But they were able to fly a little bit because they had incorporated into the airplane that business of the aileron, the special shape of the wing, flat at the bottom and curved at the top. That means that when the air is drawn underneath, the air underneath is more air than the air at the top, and it gives it natural lift. They discovered that from the birds, and so they applied it. The jumbo jet that goes over at thirty five thousand feet is a vastly different thing from those early wooden paper and elastic band airplanes that we knew. But that basic principle of flight that was in those early machines is now expressed in the jumbo jet at an enormously higher level of sophistication. Therefore, I call the first thing a prototype, an early model, an early expression of that basic principle that would later be fulfilled at a much higher level. So take the Passover itself. It wasn't a prediction, but it was surely a God-intended prototype. It embodied the principle of redemption from the wrath of God through the sacrifice of a Passover lamb and its blood, sprinkled on the doorpost to protect the, uh, the Israelites from the angel of God's wrath. That was the early principle of redemption through the blood of a Passover lamb from the wrath of God. A prototype at that literal level of a principle that was later to be expressed at the infinitely higher level in the death of him we still call the Lamb of God. We're redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish. So that I say, tend to say, not that the Passover was a type of Christ, though carry on using it if you like, uh, there's no law against it. I would tend to say it is a prototype of the coming bigger thing. You'll say. Does that begin to make any sense at all, sir? Hello Hello there. there. Beginning and end of your, uh, message here, you refer to the Lord as a, uh, a Levite in addition to a priest or a high priest. Did you mean anything different by that, or that's not? Well, no, I was saying that in him the shadows of the, of the law are all fulfilled and no withdraw, if you see what I mean. The, uh, Levite, uh, was there to serve the tabernacle, yes, and to do all the tasks related with it, you see, and so forth and so on, and fulfilled his duty as part of that scheme. In my understanding, our Lord fulfills the whole scheme. You may say, but in it he was, uh, the high priest and not a priest. Well, actually, he wasn't a priest at all in that system. As Hebrews makes it clear, he wouldn't have been allowed in the temple of Jerusalem, would never have attempted to go into the innermost shrine of the temple in Jerusalem. He wasn't a priest at all, let alone, uh, not even an ordinary priest in that system. But that system passed. I think he fulfilled it all, if you see what I mean, at a higher level. Mm-hmm. Yesterday you, uh, you made reference to, um, what is the fault line for many things, and how the Lord Jesus himself said, uh, this is a perverse and wicked generation. Yes. Um, it seems to me that we generally hold the local assembly, the local church, and how we function in it as a type of an all-tribal assembly, as a theocracy type government. I see. So we could say that, uh, part of the failure within assembly, Mm. as we see it, is again that that form of government, by definition, Mm. loses all its effectiveness when the people under that government themselves have lost the reality of the living God. Well, sir, I would agree with you that so-called assembly principles, that the phrase that people use, they don't work themselves. You can't press a button and they work. Assembly principles have to be worked and can only be worked by people who have a sense of the reality of God and dependence on God's Holy Spirit. I'm not quite sure if a local assembly is an all-tribal assembly. It's run by elders, presumably. I'm not quite sure that in the Christian world there was an all-tribal assembly, except if you think of it in terms of the apostles, uh, meeting together as apostles and declaring that they all agreed on the faith, do you see? Whether you can think of a, an assembly as an all-tribal assembly, eh, eh, as to say that has, uh, control over relation of one assembly to another assembly and so forth. I did not mean that. No, I think you didn't, no, surely. What I, what I, in my mind, I think of that Acts fifteen, and perhaps I have it not right in my, the way I pictured it in my mind, but it, to me, it was an amazing thing that there were apostles present there. Mm-hmm. And even though there were apostles present there, in finding the answer to the dilemma, they don't get up and say, we're apostles, this is what we say in that setting. I find that amazing, the humility of these men too. Mm-hmm. That being apostles, they would not take that place like that as men. And then that in the end, it's James, who wasn't an apostle, that seems to then get up with after much genuine dialogue, sincere dialogue, and pointing to Peter's experience, and then its consistency with the revealed scripture, renders his personal conclusion and judgment, which at that point seems to please all that are there in the whole of the assembly now follows that lead in unity. Oh, surely. Yeah, they they they, um, uh, what, uh, Paul and Barnabas wanted to secure was secured because people had come down to their part of the world and taught the believers that the apostles at Jerusalem didn't agree with Paul and Barnabas. And therefore, Paul and Barnabas went up not to be told what they had to believe, but to get a statement from all the apostles contradicting the rumors that came out that, uh, the apostles at Jerusalem disagreed with Paul. And so in Jerusalem, all the apostles standing together, all agreed together, as against the Pharisees who said, some Pharisees who believed, who said that the Gentiles must be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to be saved. So yes, they all agreed together. And as apostles, it is instructive to see their humility one with the other. You'll see as they waited on God. It is the fact, the balancing of that is, that when Paul writes in his letters, such as to Galatians, he doesn't hesitate to say, I, Paul, tell you, because he was an apostle. Yes, there's a one in the corner there, Henry, if you don't mind. One more, I asked for permission. Did you, he gave you permission? He gave me permission. Oh, that's marvelously kind, though, isn't it? Would it, would it be okay, following that same trajectory then, would it be okay to say that in ideal, the people of God are never to be governed in the sense by men saying, this is what we say, in, uh, removing from them the sense that, after all, they submit not to men, but to God himself being the one the whole assembly obeys and follows. That, that is, that is true, sir, in theory, that, uh, an assembly should, uh, uh, be dependent on God and waiting on God and open to be convinced of God's will. There are situations, are there not, like there were in Crete. Uh, it is doubtful whether Paul ever wrote a, a, a, a, a, a left, whether Paul ever appointed elders in a church he didn't found. But he had worked in Crete, and Titus with him. And when he writes to Titus, because of the Cretan character that he delineates, he says to Titus, now there are false teachers, uh, going around, uh, with those believers, whose mouth must be stopped. Now that's an apostle talking. Whose mouth must be stopped. It does come a point when apostolic authority will, will put its foot down and say, no, you don't. This is the gospel, you'll see. And elders, I suppose, eh, eh, eh, where there's a question of false doctrine, somebody comes to your church and preaches, uh, that Christ was fallible, uh, in the sense that, uh, he didn't know the truth and, uh, some of his statements were mistaken, you would have responsibility as elders, surely, to stop his mouth. So can the man in the corner... Now I give you permission to speak. Thank you. Uh, this has been a tremendous diagnosis of the problem. I wondered if maybe you could help us with a few thoughts on how to maintain the, the sense of the reality of God. They lost it, and it was, it turned into really a horrible thing. And when the Lord's people lose it, all there is is a shell. Do you have any thoughts along that line? Well, I have a few. They, they, they, they, uh, probably weak, I suppose. I was hoping, uh, Larry, to get particularly the the advice of the the older brethren here for that very reason, you'll see. I think one, behind it, it lies the constant exercise of genuine prayer, a waiting on God. I think in private, at any rate, there ought to be confession and, uh, a grieving over our sinfulness and not taking it all with Satan, it doesn't really matter. Secondly, I think we ought to pray that, uh, uh, those of us who teach God's word shall be not content with just cliches, but are to teach it as it comes across to the believers as the authoritative word of God. Now, I'm the last person to talk like that, but I fail very so very often, but there is a need to demonstrate to believers that this is not just a sermon that the preacher has made up. This is the word of the living God. That people's confidence in the word of God might grow. Uh, to say something very rash now, I talk on the tabernacle sometimes and its simplicities, you see, that's a very good model, uh, to use. But I've noticed it in the congregations when the word is being expounded and they begin to see the accuracy, the sublime accuracy of those pictures of the Lord Jesus, how they fit together. You'll see an expression go over the faces of the believers. They may not be conscious of it themselves. It comes across, this is God's word. When that happens, you've done something more than pass on information. You have instilled into folks, or at least the Holy Spirit has, a confidence this is the living word of the living God. It encourages them to seek God in his word and provokes obedience to him. So that is another thing that, uh, needs to be done. I, uh, I theoretically, am I not an elder, but pastors who can come alongside folks in their difficulties and help them in their faith. I'm not a past- uh, an elder, as you know. My experience is that there are more people, believers in middle life, when health fails, when nerves get frayed. Many more bad believers in life and middle life doubt the assurance of salvation. And they don't like to confess it to others. This is part of our pastoral concern. So to preach that such folks' faith may be strengthened. We need to guard ourselves in preaching, don't we? This is a very up the corner thing, this is. But I once, after a meeting, was called to see a senior woman, believer of many years. But she was in a very anxious state indeed. Fears were going round like turbines. She told me she wasn't a believer after all, for all these years. I said, how is that? Well, she said, we had a preacher came, and he said, if you are a believer, you don't fear death, and I do. I can't be a believer, therefore. Ooh, the churning round of the emotions. So she said, well, she trust the Lord now then, and that seemed to quiet her for a while, but way came the emotions. You know what? I tried to help the dear lady, but I'd like to take that preacher, whoever he was, who with a loud voice told other believers that if you are a believer, you don't fear death. I'd like to take him and put him in the middle of a twenty-acre field and station a wild bull coming at him at fifty miles an hour and see what the preacher would do. He'd stand, wouldn't he, and say, I don't fear death. I wouldn't stand five minutes. I wouldn't even think nature would take over. Run for his dear life. Because God himself has put the fear of death into our hearts. He's put it into the sparrow, takes one drop of corn, looks around to see if there's a hawk. That's how God preserves the birds. He's put a natural fear of death in us, and the body will fight death. We need to distinguish in our talk, what a believer doesn't need to fear is dying. That's another story, because beyond death, what happens beyond death for the believer is glory, isn't it? We need to be sensitive to people's conditions and talk wisely, therefore. But that's only a small matter. I was hoping to hear from you, gentlemen. I rationally talked about these two epilogues. Please, what have you to tell me? Could I make one more brief observation? Yes. The, the matter of Micah that strikes me, while all that is being set up, the house of God is still in trial. Yes, so it says. That's right, yes, sir. Andrew, can you cite the verse to us? Well, the last verse of, uh, chapter eighteen. And they set up Micah's graven image, which he made all the time that the house of God was in. Ah. Yes. Yeah, very significant statement. Thank you very much for reminding us. Spite of the fact of the house of God being there, and all the time it was there, here was this chap putting up his rival house of gods. Sad, isn't it? But the real thing, as you say, was there. And that's not comforting ourselves by singing in the dark. As we come over to First Samuel, there was a very godly woman, in spite of the corruption of the Levites and now of the priests, a godly woman by the name of Hannah that went up every year to the house of God in Shiloh. Yes, and dedicated her s- child, her firstborn, to the service of the Lord in the tabernacle at Shiloh, yes, and started a great revival thereby among the people of God. Mm-hmm. Yeah, sir. I was wondering if, I don't want to get away from the subject, and I was wondering because the only two passages that I was considering is, uh, Jacob's prophecies about his sons and his comment that Dan would be as a serpent, Yeah. as a viper who would bite. The horses here. And the fact that they bring idolatry here. And the other passage is the mention of the twelve tribes in the Book of Revelation, and the fact that Dan is not mentioned. Not mentioned, is he? So, I was wondering if maybe there were brief comments related to the book of... is it related to the book of Judges, what we're seeing here, or are there other passages that we should study? Well, yes, uh, uh, Dan here, he had his part down in the south, as we read, but he felt it wasn't enough, and so some of them went north and established themselves in Laish and s- established idolatry from the word go, you see, bad enough. In the time when the ten tribes split from the two tribes under Jeroboam the first in Israel, Jeroboam told the people it was too much for them to go up to the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. So he set up other houses. He set up one in, uh, Bethel, and he set up one in Dan. He set up a high place in Dan at that very Laish. If somebody, if you go to Israel and you, you get dare to go up so near the Syrian border or the Lebanese border, you can stand there on Dan where this actual thing, Jeroboam set up his high place. Center of idolatry it was for years and centuries. Ahab came along and increased it, increased the size of the place. So it became synonymous almost with idolatry, did Dan's high place. Mm-hmm. Yeah, hello. Yes, the verse which was repeated, um, seventeen six, in those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes. Sounds like a complaint that, uh, if they had had a king, perhaps these things would not have happened. He seems to be advocating the cause of a king. Any comment? Well, that could be so, that there was no king, and so what do you expect? Things went bad, everybody did what was right in his own eyes. Actually, it seems to me that argument is a known sequitur. There was no king. That didn't give everybody right to do what was right in their own eyes. They did it, but they had a law of Moses. And as our brothers reminded us, there was a tabernacle and an ark of the Lord and a covenant in Shiloh, and they were all supposed to go up there. And moreover, the priests, which is sometimes forgotten, the preach had a res- priests had a responsibility to teach the people the law. Do you see? So that, uh, uh, just because there was no king, it didn't mean that they automatically, therefore, did what was right in their own eyes. They shouldn't have done what was right in their own eyes, there being no king. But of course, they did what was right in their own eyes as a matter of fact, a lot of them. And hence, and eventually, uh, God allowed them a king. Yes? That just reminds me that whenever I read that, I often think that in some sense, when they say there's no king, really, the idea to me is they didn't recognize who the king really was, and that was Jehovah. That- that's right, yes. And the Lord your God was your king. That is right, you see. Uh, uh, uh, people argue, do they not, in one Samuel in chapters eight and nine, whether, uh, uh, the king was something God utterly and completely disapproved of and never should have been. I can't bring myself to believe that when God appointed David, he didn't intend David as a prototype of the Messiah. It was the first king and his attitude that was false. But among the people of God, yes, Aaron as high priest becomes a prototype of our Lord's better priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. You see, Moses becomes a picture of Christ. You'll see, in that same way, David becomes a forerunner of the Messiah, so that I can't think that David was against God's will. Saul, God himself allowed to teach them the folly of depending on a big man instead of still depending on the Lord. And that is the advice that Saul gave them when Saul, uh, the Samuel gave them when Saul was officially appointed. It'll be all right if you still follow the Lord and depend on the Lord. Yeah? You'll say that that God should have been their king and was their king. Oh, sorry. One New Testament comment that might, that to me, you asked what do we have in regard to these passages. Mm-hmm. What we see in the degeneration that takes place in the book of Judges is from fighting their enemies, they're fighting one another. Mm-hmm. From cutting one their enemies off, they're cutting one another off. In the book of Galatians, it says in chapter five, uh verse sixteen, walk in the Spirit, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. In verse eighteen, if you are led of the Spirit, you're not under the law, and the works of the flesh are stolen. In verse twenty five, if we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another, works of the flesh. Walk in the Spirit, led of the Spirit, live in the Spirit. As you mentioned just now with Saul, there was a man of the flesh, confidence in the flesh. And what results if we don't walk in the Spirit, led of the Spirit, living in the spirit, by love serving one another, if you don't do that, you bite and devour one another, it says in verse fifteen. You begin to turn on one another. Mm-hmm. And you lose sight of who the real enemy is. Mm-hmm. And I believe also along with that, what happens is when you lose the sense of the reality of the truth of the living God, then we begin to rely on the flesh, the works of the flesh, the means of the flesh, fleshly means to try to keep the thing going, and we end up turning on one another, fighting, devouring one another. All that is true, sir, and thank you for it. Uh, and let me add, if I may, simply, on the basis of First Corinthians, his tremendous exhortation to the Corinthians, and they needed it as particularly as Greeks, to get back to dependence on Christ and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Now, this is an unfair criticism, but I use it just for practical measures. I was in an assembly somewhere, I won't mention where, and they said their young people didn't come out to the meeting. I said, why is that? Well, they say, if you don't put on a better show than is on TV, we're not coming. And sometimes I find a flutter of misgiving in my heart. I know that you have not all our teachers, and that we need teachers that God has made teachers. And not to do that, and to put up people who are teachers that are not gifted of God to be teachers, it it makes life difficult for believers. On the other hand, for believers to come because he's a famous preacher or something, instead of coming to wait on God, whoever the preacher is, I think that is a vastly important thing, to cultivate the fact that in the in the assembly, we come to wait on the living God. And he is our source. Let him use the vessels that he has appointed. But we don't come just because it's a famous preacher. We come to wait on God, to see what the Lord will say and do with us. I think it is enormously important, and I'm grateful to those who, in my youth, emphasized the importance of the lordship of the Holy Spirit in the gatherings of the church.