Small Problem Big Problem! Series

It’s sounds a lot like Sodom. Only it’s not Sodomites or Canaanites that want to rape the Levite; it’s Israelites, the people of God! The Levite, in callous disregard for his concubine, pushes her out to the crowd, who violate her all night.

Judges 19:27-30 And her master rose up in the morning, and when he opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way, behold, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, “Get up, let us be going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey, and the man rose up and went away to his home. And when he entered his house, he took a knife, and taking hold of his concubine he divided her, limb by limb, into twelve pieces, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. And all who saw it said, “Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak.” (ESV)

The Levite’s callous disregard for his concubine leads to a callous disregard for her body. He divides it into 12 pieces and sends them to each of the 12 tribes of Israel.This is a call to arms, which implies a curse: If you fail to respond, expect a similar fate. What started out as small acts of indiscretion has now become a national crisis. The whole nation is up in arms over what happened in the little town of Gibeah.

So what is the lesson here? Well, first of all...

TURN FROM THE LITTLE SINS before they become big problems.

Forsake the small acts of indiscretion before they do irreparable damage. Renounce even those small compromises before they yield big complications.

I like what Bruce Barton said years ago: “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things” (Bruce Barton, U.S. writer and politician, 1886-1967; www.PreachingToday.com)

British Cycling was in a desperate situation. For nearly 100 years, from 1908 to 2004, British riders had won just a single Olympic gold medal. Their performance was so bad that a top manufacturer in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear.

Then the organization hired Dave Brailsford. What made Brailsford different was his relentless commitment to searching for a tiny margin of improvement in everything they did. He said, “You break down everything that goes into riding a bike. Then you improve it by one percent and you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.”

Brailsford and his team made small adjustments in hundreds of different areas. They redesigned the bike seats for more comfort. They rubbed alcohol on the tires for a better grip. The coach had the riders switched to lighter and more aerodynamic indoor racing suits.

As these one percent improvements accumulated, the results came faster than anyone could have imagined. In just five years the British Cycling team dominated the cycling events at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. They won an astounding 60 percent of the gold medals available. Four years later, at the London Olympic Games, the team set nine Olympic records and seven world records. (James Clear, Atomic Habits, Avery, 2018, Pages 13-16; www.PreachingToday.com)