The Downward Cycle of Sin

The book of Judges begins with God blessing Israel with wonderful victories over her enemies. The picture changes as Israel falls into spiritual decline and her enemies begin to make life miserable. The book of Judges graphically details the downward cycle of sin as it reveals what happens when God’s people become half-hearted about their relationship with the Lord and begin to compromise with sin. Someone has wisely said, “Sin will take you farther than you want to go; it will keep you longer than you want to stay; and it will cost you far more than you want to pay.” That is an excellent summary of the book of Judges.

The cycle of Israel’s decline is detailed in Judges 2:10-19, which begins with God’s blessings on Israel. Rather than responding with thanksgiving, Israel pursued her own pleasure and false gods which drew discipline from the Heavenly Father as He sold them into the hands of their enemies (Judges 2:14). God allowed the pressures of the enemy to build until Israel cried out for His help. When they called upon the Lord, He graciously raised a judge to deliver them, for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning (Judges 2:18).

Judges 2:19 is a key verse for interpreting this book: And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they reverted & behaved more corruptly than their fathers by following other gods, to serve them & bow down to them. They did not cease from their own doings nor from their stubborn way. This pattern put Israel on a downward spiral with their spiritual decline hitting rock bottom by the end of the book. Judges 17-21 emphasize just how backslidden God’s people had become. Judges 21:25, In those days there was no king in Israel… God should have been their King, but since He was not, …everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Their insistence upon practicing the “Burger King philosophy” resulted in all the chaos and confusion reported in Judges.

The shocking story of Judges 19 is about a Levite [a man set aside as a priest to lead Israel in worship]. When conflict arises in his marriage, his wife goes home to her parents. After four months of separation the Levite travels to her parents’ home and persuades her to return with him. On their way home they come to Gibeah, a town in the territory of Benjamin. They are taken in to spend the night in an old man’s house, which was the custom of that day when there were no Motel 6s! During the night an incident occurs very similar to the one recorded in Genesis 19. The townspeople ask the old man to allow the Levite to come out and engage in homosexual activity. The Levite instead sent his wife out to the men who raped her all night long. At dawn, they let her go. The woman fell at the old man’s front door and lay there until daylight. When the Levite opened the door, he discovered her body which he loaded onto his donkey. He took his dead wife home, carved her body into 12 pieces and sent each of the pieces to the 12 tribes.

Why such a horror story in the Bible? It tells us where sin will take us if we compromise with it. The book begins with a little apathy in not doing God’s will, but look where it finally takes Israel. Remember this was not pagan Sodom of Genesis 19, it was God’s covenant people. Sin is a slippery slope that gets steeper the further you slide down it.

Nowhere in Scripture is homosexuality presented the way our media presents it today. There is nothing “gay” or funny about it. It is abnormal behavior that is more debased than heterosexual sin because it departs even further from God’s intended purpose for human sexuality.

By the end of the book of Judges, evil had taken over the minds of the reprobate Israelites. What kind of man (especially a religious leader) would hand his wife over to a crowd of lustful men just to protect his own skin? How could he have slept during the night with all that was going on with his wife, and how could he leave without at least checking on her? What kind of cold-blooded man would dismember her corpse?

The graphic, shocking lesson of this story is that sin is never pretty but only becomes uglier if pursued. One horror of hell is that it is the final dwelling place of those whom Satan has molded into eternally sinful beings. We are all being shaped—either by God into saints fit for heaven or by Satan into demons fit for hell. The horror we have toward this terrible story is the attitude God wants us to have toward the slightest suggestion of sin and iniquity. Let us be like Joseph and run for our spiritual lives whenever sin beckons us with its pleasures!

Ralph Weinhold