The Leadership Auction: A Crisis of Godless Pragmatism Text: Judges 10:17-18
Introduction: The Vacant Throne
The book of Judges is a brutal, cyclical story of a people determined to hit rock bottom. The refrain that echoes through its latter chapters is this: "In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." But we must understand what this means. It does not mean that Israel was an idyllic libertarian paradise, a collection of autonomous individuals living in peaceful anarchy. No, when every man is his own king, it means that every man is his own god, and the result is not freedom, but a chaotic, bloody, and desperate slavery to sin. And a people enslaved to sin will always find a human tyrant to rule over them.
When the throne of God is declared vacant in the hearts of a people, a leadership crisis is the inevitable result. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does politics. A nation that rejects God as their king will not have no king; they will have any king. They will have a thousand petty kings in their own hearts, and they will eventually cry out for one big king to deliver them from the mess they have made. This is the story of Israel in the time of the judges, and it is the story of the modern West. We have spent generations systematically evicting God from our public life, from our schools, from our courts, and from our families. And now, finding ourselves besieged by enemies both foreign and domestic, we look around in a panic and ask, "Who will save us?"
This is precisely the scene we find in our text. Israel has been whoring after foreign gods. God, in His tough, fatherly love, has disciplined them by the hand of the Ammonites. They have offered up a half-baked, watery repentance, and God has essentially told them to go ask their new gods for help. But now the military threat is no longer theoretical. The Ammonites are mustered for war. The wolf is at the door. And in this moment of crisis, the heart of the people is revealed. Their solution to a spiritual catastrophe is to hold a political auction. They are in the market for a savior, and they are about to post the most worldly job description imaginable. This is not ancient history. This is the constant temptation of the church in every age: to solve a crisis of faith with a pragmatic, man-centered solution.
The Text
Then the sons of Ammon were summoned, and they camped in Gilead. And the sons of Israel gathered together and camped in Mizpah.
And the people, the princes of Gilead, said to one another, "Who is the man who will begin to fight against the sons of Ammon? He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead."
(Judges 10:17-18 LSB)
The Divine Summons and the Panicked Huddle (v. 17)
We begin with the catalyst for this crisis in verse 17:
"Then the sons of Ammon were summoned, and they camped in Gilead. And the sons of Israel gathered together and camped in Mizpah." (Judges 10:17)
The first thing to notice is that glorious passive verb: "the sons of Ammon were summoned." Summoned by whom? The text doesn't say, because it doesn't have to. Whenever you see this kind of language in Scripture, you are to look up. God is the one doing the summoning. The Ammonites think they are acting on their own geopolitical ambitions, but they are merely a rod in the hand of the living God. They are God's divine scourge, sent to discipline His wayward children. God will use the wickedness of pagan nations to corner His own people, to drive them out of their self-reliance and back to Him. The enemy at your gates is often a severe mercy from God. He is turning up the heat to force the dross to the surface.
The Ammonites camp in Gilead, the very land they are oppressing. They are the aggressors, on the front foot. And how does Israel respond? "The sons of Israel gathered together and camped in Mizpah." They are on the defensive. They are reacting. Mizpah means "watchtower," and it was a place of historic significance, a place of covenant-making between Jacob and Laban. But there is no sense that they are remembering that covenant here. They are not gathering at Mizpah to cry out to God from their watchtower. They are huddling together in a defensive posture, like frightened sheep without a shepherd. They are having a strategy meeting, but God has not been invited. This is the picture of a church that sees a threat from the culture and immediately forms a committee to discuss strategic initiatives and rebranding, rather than falling on its face in repentance.
The Worldly Job Posting (v. 18)
Verse 18 reveals the fruit of their godless committee meeting. It is a public announcement, a help-wanted ad for a savior.
"And the people, the princes of Gilead, said to one another, 'Who is the man who will begin to fight against the sons of Ammon? He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead.'" (Judges 10:18 LSB)
Notice who is talking: "the people, the princes of Gilead." This is a democratic, consensus-driven solution. They are talking "to one another." The conversation is horizontal. There is no vertical appeal. The silence is deafening. Where is the question, "Whom has the Lord appointed?" Where is the inquiry, "Is there a man who fears God and walks in His ways?" Those questions are not even on the table. Their apostasy has rendered them spiritually tone-deaf.
Instead, they ask, "Who is the man who will begin to fight?" This is the sum total of their criteria. This is the only qualification that matters. They are not looking for character, for wisdom, or for piety. They are looking for raw, kinetic, military prowess. They want a brawler. They want a tough guy. They want results, and they want them now. This is the essence of pragmatism. Pragmatism doesn't ask, "What is true? What is righteous?" It asks, "What works?" The princes of Gilead would be right at home on a modern political campaign or in many church search committees. We want the man who can get things done, the man who can raise the budget, the man who can pack the pews, the man who can win the election. Whether he is a godly man is a secondary, and often irrelevant, consideration.
And what is the salary for this position? What is the reward for the man who meets their one qualification? "He shall become head over all the inhabitants of Gilead." They are auctioning off their leadership. Power is the prize. They are not looking for a man to submit to as God's delegated authority. They are looking to hire a mercenary, and the payment is civil authority. They are turning leadership into a commercial transaction. "You win this fight for us, and we will make you our ruler." This is not a covenantal calling; it is a contract. And when you offer a contract like this, you must be prepared for the kind of man who will accept it.
The Leader You Deserve
This pragmatic, godless job posting sets the stage perfectly for the man who will answer the call in the very next chapter: Jephthah. Jephthah was the son of a prostitute, a man cast out by his own family, who had become the head of a gang of "worthless fellows." But he was also "a mighty man of valor." He was a fighter. He was exactly the man the princes of Gilead were looking for. He fit their job description to a tee.
And when they get him, they get everything that comes with him. They get his military skill, yes, but they also get his spiritual ignorance, his transactional worldview, and his pagan understanding of vows. Jephthah is the mirror image of the people who hire him. He is as pragmatic and as godless as they are. His tragic, foolish vow, which results in the sacrifice of his own daughter, is the rotten fruit that grows directly from the seed of the question asked in our text. When you choose leaders based on worldly metrics, you get worldly results. You get tragedy. You get what you deserve.
The True and Better Man
This entire episode is a dark portrait of our own desperate need. We too were besieged by an enemy we could not defeat, the Ammonites of our sin and the devil. We too were leaderless, having rejected our true King. And left to our own devices, we would have done just what Gilead did. We would have looked for a political strongman, a philosophical guru, or a religious celebrity to save us. We would have posted a job description looking for someone to make us feel good, to make us prosperous, to make us winners in the eyes of the world.
But God, in His mercy, did not give us the leader we deserved. He gave us the King we needed. He did not look for a man who would "begin to fight." He sent a Son who would finish the fight. Jesus Christ did not come because we offered Him the position of "head." He was already the head of all things. He came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
His qualification was not simply that He could fight, but that He was perfectly righteous, the spotless Lamb of God. He did not enter into a contract with us, but fulfilled a covenant for us. The reward He sought was not earthly power, but the glory of His Father and the redemption of His people. He is the leader we could never have chosen for ourselves, because our criteria are always hopelessly corrupt. The call of the gospel is therefore a call to abandon our godless leadership auctions. It is a call to stop looking for a man, and to bow the knee to the Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God has appointed as head over all things for the church, and for the world.