Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Character
- Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person. It is hearing from God and obeying. It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.
Judges 21 ends the book on a real downer. The people of Israel have no leader in their
midst and boy is it showing. We have
civil war. We have a nation rising up
against their brothers. We have a tribe
almost being decimated in genocide. We
have another group of people being slaughtered so that the tribe won’t be
decimated. Then we have the approval of
kidnapping and stealing to compensate.
This is really a chapter where character is in very short supply.
Look again at this list. I
am willing to bet all of us can look at this list and agree that all the
concepts here in this list are indeed bad things. None of us would ever say about something on
this list, “I’d really approve of that!”
No, most of us wouldn’t be caught dead participating in events like
genocide, kidnapping, and theft.
But before we’re too harsh on the Hebrew people, how many of us
are perfect? How many of us don’t know
what it is like to be caught up in something bad because we made a serious of
small bad decisions along the way? How
many of us can honestly say we’ve never done something that under other
circumstances we’d never want to do?
You see, that’s what character is all about. Character realizes what is right and what is
wrong. Character helps us make those
distinctions. And when we do get caught
up in something bad and we finally realize it, character helps us step back,
admit our fault, and get on the right track rather than continuing to head down
that bad path.
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