Mon.’s Devo - We Need a Savior

Read: Judges 19:1-20:48; John 3:22-4:3; Psalm 104:24-35; Provers 14:22-24
This is my least favorite story in the Bible to read. Everything in me cries out “UNJUST”! This is what happens in a nation that has no leader and no standard. Their leader was suppose to be God and the Levites, and their standard was suppose to be the law, but they had long abandoned both. This guy is actually a Levite that should have been the spiritual leader and known the law.
Yesterday we read about a lone Levite and today we read about another one. I don’t know what they were teaching in their Levitical school but these two left on their own. This Levite had no backbone to stand up against his “father-in-law”. He didn’t even call his daughter his wife. He called her his concubine which is a woman used to make sons. He finally pulled himself away from partying with her father and left at the end of the day. He made it as far as Gibeah where an older man offered him and his concubine a place to stay. When threatened, he threw his concubine out for them to rape all night long. When he found her dead, he defiled her body even further by cutting it into pieces and sending it to the other tribes as a summons to fight for her. (That one will leave you scratching your head.) All I can say is that I hope he died in the battle also.
I need to calm down after reading this one every year. Women were just property. This event led to a huge battle where the tribe of Benjamin was almost snuffed out. Twenty-five thousand of them were killed.
In John, we get to retreat to the river and get baptized and cleansed from reading the first story. John’s disciples were upset that Jesus was now baptizing more people than John but John explained to them that it was never about being popular. His mandate was to introduce the Messiah to the world. Now it was time for him to take the stage and for John to stand aside in total support. (John was a Levite who was trained right!)
Lord, there is always injustice in the world. Help us to know how to pray and how to deal with what we see. Forgive our nation and cleanse our land and start with your church. Start with us.