Sermon 1497 - The Stature of Dances - 2nd Message…..(Sun am 12/8/96)

DANCING ON THE RABBLE AND RUIN IN OUR LIVES AND IN THE LIVES OF OTHERS

When a Levite’s concubine played the whore and returned to her father’s house, the Levite went to get her. On their way back to their home, they stopped in a place called Gibeah to spend the night. The perverted men of the city demanded that the host send the Levite out so that they might know him in the intimate relationship that a man has with his wife. The host had assumed responsibility for the safety of the Levite, so he sent the man’s concubine out to them, thinking that since they were perverts they would not harm a woman. But, the woman’s dead body was so mutilated that the Levite cut it into twelve pieces and sent a piece to each tribe so that they could have a witness of the kind of perversion that existed in the tribe of Benjamin.

When the Benjaminites refused to turn over the guilty perverts to the Elders of Israel, the eleven tribes went to war against the tribe of Benjamin. When the war was over, only 600 men of Benjamin were left, and they had no wives. Although the Elders of the eleven tribes had made a Holy Vow not to give their virgin daughters to the men of the tribe of Benjamin, God gave them a merciful plan whereby the men could have a wife and the tribe could be spared.

When the daughters went up to Shiloh to do a Birth Dance (Khool) before the LORD, the men of Benjamin each took one of the dancers and carried her back to his house and made her his wife. Thus the tribe of Benjamin was spared. Later, the Apostle Paul, from the tribe of Benjamin, stood up and, eventually, wrote a great part of the Bible. And, in Eternity-Future, the New City will have a gate that has the name of Benjamin on it because eleven Elders made a merciful decision to let the men of Benjamin take a wife from among the virgins who were dancing.