2 Corinthians 3:17; Judges 21:25
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): I think worldly men ought to be told that if religion does not save them, yet it has done much for them—the influence of religion won them their liberties.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): We have reason to be thankful for our religious liberty, to the good providence of God—We breathe the air of civil liberty.
MARTIN LUTHER (1483-1546): There is also another kind of “liberty,” when people obey neither the laws of God nor the laws of men, but do as they please. This carnal liberty the people want in our day.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): It opens the door for every form of licentiousness.
PHILIP MAURO (1859-1952): We have, in the days of the Judges, the only democratic period of the history of Israel. Therefore, while those who believe God and look to His Word for their light and guidance in this dark world will study the period of the Judges mainly for the spiritual lessons to be learned, it would be the part of wisdom for those who are shaping—or trying to shape, at least, the political destinies of the world at this critical hour, to learn from that book what conditions must inevitably develop in any society where there is no king, and where every man claims liberty to do “that which is right in his own eyes.”
WILLIAM JAY (1769-1853): In reading their history, we may peruse our own.
C. H. SPURGEON: I have heard very stupid people say, “Well, I do not care to read the historical parts of Scripture.” Beloved friends, you do not know what you are talking about when you say so.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): A man who has no respect for history is a fool, and he will soon discover that, when he finds himself repeating the errors of those who have gone before him—“As they were in the days of Noah,” Christ says, “even so they shall be in the days of the Son of Man,” Luke 17:26. “As they were in Sodom,” He says, “even so they shall be.” That’s our Lord’s view of history.
PHILIP MAURO: According to man’s most cherished notions, the change from the autocracy of Moses and Joshua to the democratic era of the Judges was a great advance, and it should have introduced a period of unparalleled prosperity and progress in all departments of human activity. No conditions could be imagined more favourable to the development of all the possibilities of what is called “self-government.” The people of Israel had a splendid start, a land abounding in the richest products of the earth, and the incomparable advantage of good laws.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): But although they lived in God’s good land, yet because [they lived] not by God’s good laws, nor had any supreme magistrate, therefore all was out of order.
PHILIP MAURO: The days of the Judges were days of increasing moral corruption and violence.
ROBERT HAWKER (1753-1827): Sodomites were also in the land, Judges 19:22,23.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): “They do what is right in their own eyes,” without inquiring whether it be right in God’s sight or not.
JOHN MILTON (1608-1674): Licence they mean when they cry Liberty.
WILLIAM PRINGLE (1790-1858): Licentious freedom.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): They who are slaves to their lusts are the worst of slaves.
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES: From the point of view of morality, the problem is not so much immorality but the total absence of morality—amorality, a tendency to doubt all types of moral standards. Indeed, some would go so far as to say that all those who acknowledge moral standards live an incomplete life and do an injustice to their personalities. These people claim that what was once called sin is nothing but self-expression. The old foundations are being shaken, and the old boundaries and hedges are being swept away. This has become an amoral or a non-moral society. The very category of morality is not recognized at all, and men and women are virtually in the position of saying ‘evil be thou my good.’
CHARLES SIMEON: The language of their hearts is, “Who is Lord over us?”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): When wickedness abounds, and goes barefaced, under the protection and countenance of those in authority―then “the wicked walk on every side,” Psalms 12:8; they are neither afraid nor ashamed to discover themselves; they declare their sin as Sodom and there is none to check or control them.
JOHN TRAPP: Now may they do what they will―for no man must find fault.
C. H. SPURGEON: Deep is our shame when we know that our judges are not clear in this matter, but social purity has been put to the blush by magistrates of no mean degree.
HORATIUS BONAR (1808-1889): Nay, we glory in this as “progress,” “culture,” and “enlightenment,” as freedom from the bigotry of other centuries and the narrowness of our half-enlightened ancestors.
C. H. SPURGEON: Sodomites cannot have much love for righteous men.
JOHN CALVIN (1509-1564): Innate corruption always carries with it a contempt for religion, and a spirit of licentiousness.
JOHN NEWTON: The religion of the Gospel was, perhaps, never more despised and hated than at present.
JOHN CALVIN: “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time,” Amos 5:13. When therefore Amos says, that the time would be evil, he means, that such audacity would prevail, that all liberty would be denied to wise men. They would then be forced to be silent, for they could effect nothing by speaking, nay, they would have no freedom of speech allowed them: and though they attempted to discharge their office, yet tyrannical violence would instantly impose silence on them. Similar was the case with Lot―he was constrained, I have no doubt, to be silent after having often used free reproofs; nay, he doubtless exposed himself to many dangers by his attempts to reprove the Sodomites. Such seems to me to be the meaning of the Prophet, when he says, that the prudent would be silent, because these tyrants would impose silence on all teachers—visiting them with some punishment, or loading them with reproaches, or treating them with ridicule as persons worthy of contempt.
C. H. SPURGEON: What is this but trampling upon liberty of conscience with arrogant tyranny?
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): Wicked men ever study to dress up religion and its professors in the most forbidding colours, while every glaring vice is palliated with some soft name, or pleaded for as commendable.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men,” Acts 5:29. “For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard,” Acts 4:20. Their grand words are the Magna Charta of the right of every sincere conviction to free speech.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): The very genius of Christianity is a spirit of freedom, and all its precepts are opposed to tyranny.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): No man has any right to enforce his opinions upon his fellow. This is plain enough and we have to bless God for the inestimable privilege of civil and religious liberty.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ (1794-1872): The necessity of liberty for the Gospel, and of the Gospel for liberty, is now acknowledged by all thoughtful men.
C. H. SPURGEON: And if we are ever to maintain our liberty—as God grant we may—it shall be kept by religious liberty—by religion!
