SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Nick.
SPEAKER_01: Now and ever we confess.
SPEAKER_01: Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's try that again.
SPEAKER_01: Webb, you are right.
SPEAKER_01: Now and ever we confess Christ our hope in life and death.
SPEAKER_01: If you are visiting with us this morning, this is your first time.
SPEAKER_01: I want to welcome you to a body of followers of Christ whose only hope, we pray, is in Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's in life or in death.
SPEAKER_01: That's an important aspect to ground ourselves in, in a world that has lost its way.
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter which way you turn, our world doesn't know which way to go.
SPEAKER_01: They just do whatever is right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: They do it their way.
SPEAKER_01: There's no direction, no evidence that they know what way to go.
SPEAKER_01: And sadly, many churches and even individual believers are very similar.
SPEAKER_01: For the last few weeks, we've been looking at the lives of people that, in my terminology, have lived in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: Life in the middle isn't solely committed to God on the one hand or to the world on the other.
SPEAKER_01: It's living with hands and feet in both worlds.
SPEAKER_01: It's being stretched out, trying desperately to please God on the one hand and to live life our way on the other hand.
SPEAKER_01: And so we've looked in the Old Testament book of Judges at the Savior judges who were successively less holy, less devoted to God, more, maybe we can say apathetic.
SPEAKER_01: They were less dedicated to God and more in love with the world.
SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, Judges recounts an even more terrible history than that, than living in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, the book of Judges reveals that living in the middle rarely turns out well.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, living in the middle is an impossible place to be because you end up drifting one way or the other.
SPEAKER_01: Judges reveals drifting away from God and towards the world.
SPEAKER_01: And he does it for the first time in chapter 17, verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: He says, In those days there was no king in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's no king, there's no law.
SPEAKER_01: And if there's no king and no law, then everyone does what's right in his own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Instead of revealing the next Savior judge in Israel's history, this last portion of Judges, from chapter 17 to the end of the book, reveals a leaderless people doing their own thing.
SPEAKER_01: Israel, as God's people, is shown to be spiritually bankrupt and morally corrupt.
SPEAKER_01: So the shift from living in the middle to spiritual bankruptcy speaks very poignantly to our lives today as followers of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It gives us several principles, more than we can cover today, I think, that guide and help us understand what it's like to live in a world that's lost its way.
SPEAKER_01: What it needs, what we need as followers of Christ, to not live in the middle and to keep from drifting.
SPEAKER_01: We see this in the story of a man named Micah, beginning in chapter 17, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: It's a man of the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Micah.
SPEAKER_01: And he said to his mother, The eleven hundred pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse, and also spoke it in my ears.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, the silver is with me.
SPEAKER_01: I took it.
SPEAKER_01: And his mother said, Oh, blessed be my son by Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: And he restored the eleven hundred pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, I dedicate the silver to Yahweh from my hand for my son to make a carved image and a metal image.
SPEAKER_01: Now therefore I will restore it to you.
SPEAKER_01: So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a carved image and a metal image.
SPEAKER_01: And it was in the house of Micah, and the man Micah had a shrine in his house.
SPEAKER_01: And he made an ephid and a household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest.
SPEAKER_01: In those days there was no king in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: This account begins a series of what we might call mini stories.
SPEAKER_01: If you've ever read a novel that has one chapter that's kind of dedicated to one character, and then the next chapter kind of shifts to another person, and then the next chapter shifts to yet another person, and you don't get all of those combined until later on in the book.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I hate those kinds.
SPEAKER_01: This is chapter 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: It's all beginning around this guy named Micah and his home and what he does, but it begins to incorporate other people and other situations so that at the end we begin to realize this isn't just about one individual named Micah, this is about the whole of God's people in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And how much everyone, from the whole all the way down to an individual, just does what's right in his own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: Micah and his mother here at the beginning illustrate the principle that living in the middle can lead to believing that worship in general is a personal matter.
SPEAKER_01: It's just whatever I want to do.
SPEAKER_01: It's whatever I feel like God is leading me to do.
SPEAKER_01: However, I want to worship is the way that I can do it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, strangely, this account begins by detailing that Micah, the main character in this section, is a thief.
SPEAKER_01: We're no longer talking about savior judges.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about a man in the middle of Ephraim who is a thief.
SPEAKER_01: And not only is he a thief, he's a thief that steals from his own mother.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're connected here to the previous story of Samson, because remember in the story of Samson and Delilah, they they tried to barter with her and to buy her out.
SPEAKER_01: The five lords of the Philistines each gave her 1100 pieces of silver, and so we're continuing that theme where this massive amount of money, probably in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money, Micah takes from his own mother.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we're just giving a little detail here that not knowing who took it, his mother pronounces a curse on the thief.
SPEAKER_01: And Micah heard it.
SPEAKER_01: So he confesses and he returns the money.
SPEAKER_01: But did you notice as we read through that that you you see no remorse?
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't even feel guilty about it.
SPEAKER_01: There's no repentance.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe there's a bit of fear about his mother's curse becoming reality on him.
SPEAKER_01: The mother does not correct the son in any way.
SPEAKER_01: There's no chiding, there's no discipline, there's no correction.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, she blesses him in the name of Israel's covenant God.
SPEAKER_01: This is a version, my friends, of spiritism.
SPEAKER_01: It's the belief that the gods can be manipulated.
SPEAKER_01: She seeks to turn her curse that is now on her son into a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in the previous account, we saw how Jephthah had to offer his own daughter as a sacrifice to Yahweh because he promised to give God whatever came out of his door first.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't try to reverse it.
SPEAKER_01: Here, a mother tries to reverse something terrible by seeking to manipulate God.
SPEAKER_01: It attaches cultural beliefs, ways that people engage the gods of their times, and attaches that to the biblical God in ways that scripture denounces.
SPEAKER_01: And then she goes a step further and she offers, she dedicates that money to Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: She's serious about it.
SPEAKER_01: I dedicate, it's it's it's there's a solemnity here.
SPEAKER_01: It's like coming to church and saying, I've gotten this from the Lord and I want to give it back to him.
SPEAKER_01: We might expect a positive outcome from this story.
SPEAKER_01: She receives the missing funds back and immediately gives them to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so we might think, wow, what an act of faith, what an act of devotion, what an act of worship.
SPEAKER_01: But what is her true intent?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're told in verses 3, 4, and 5 to make a carved image and a metal image.
SPEAKER_01: It's going to be placed in Micah's house along with an epid.
SPEAKER_01: That's a something that was on a priest's garment that served as a communication device between the priest and God.
SPEAKER_01: And Gideon made one of those too.
SPEAKER_01: And you'll remember in the account of Gideon that Israel turned to worship that instead of God.
SPEAKER_01: So it was a snare to them.
SPEAKER_01: He has a shrine, he makes an ephod, he makes household gods, things called teraphim, that all cultures in that time period had.
SPEAKER_01: You had household gods that belonged to that house, and those were the ones that you prayed to and you worship just in your own home.
SPEAKER_01: So he's got this little shrine in his house where all of these nice little things belong.
SPEAKER_01: Micah and his mother.
SPEAKER_01: Think about Micah for a minute.
SPEAKER_01: His name means something like, who is Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: Then you could interpret that in a critical kind of way and say, who is Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: That's not generally how those names functioned in that time.
SPEAKER_01: It was, who is like Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: Nobody.
SPEAKER_01: It was an identification with that God as one God who is like no one else.
SPEAKER_01: So we might assume that there's some religious worship of Israel's God in this family, such that they believe that Yahweh was truly no one to whom could be compared.
SPEAKER_01: He's Israel's God, he's their God, no one else is like him.
SPEAKER_01: And so Micah carries that with him forever.
SPEAKER_01: There's no one truly like Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: And so we would think that that might affect who Micah is.
SPEAKER_01: But who is Micah?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he's a man who violated God's command to not steal.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus chapter 20, verse 15, Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_01: He's a man who violated God's command to honor one's father and mother.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 20, verse 12.
SPEAKER_01: He ordained his own son to serve as his personal priest in his private cult-like worship center, which was a violation of God's command.
SPEAKER_01: So apparently we have a play on words here where this man named Who is Like Yahweh lives like who is like Yahweh?
SPEAKER_01: He's nobody.
SPEAKER_01: What about his mom?
SPEAKER_01: Well, she does nothing to correct the sin in her son's life.
SPEAKER_01: She's merely glad to have the money back.
SPEAKER_01: Strangely, she dedicates the whole amount to Yahweh, but only 200 of the 1100 pieces of silver are actually used.
SPEAKER_01: So what happens with the rest of it?
SPEAKER_01: Sounds eerily similar to the New Testament account of Ananias and Sapphira who lied to God about the amount of money they got from the sale of a piece of property.
SPEAKER_01: Rather than give the money to the priests at Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was at this time.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, she turns them over to a silversmith who would take a piece of wood and carve that piece of wood into some sort of image and then overlay it with silver.
SPEAKER_01: And then probably there was, the text seems to indicate there was a second idol that was a molten image, where there was a form into which molten silver was poured, and it was a pure silver idol.
SPEAKER_01: So she dedicates tainted stolen silver to Yahweh and then promptly turns it over by violating his commands and directs it to be made into little idols for personal private worship.
SPEAKER_01: So Micah is a man who violates God's commands, and his mother has no regard for the Ten Commandments herself, where God said, You shall not make for yourself a carved image.
SPEAKER_01: At best, at best, this is religious syncretism.
SPEAKER_01: It's combining various aspects of religious worship from the culture around them, thinking, oh, we can incorporate that.
SPEAKER_01: We can make our own religious center.
SPEAKER_01: We can do whatever we want to worship our God, thinking that the spiritual movers of the universe are represented in these little tiny silver images.
SPEAKER_01: At worst, it's a direct violation of God's command.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, you can look at Deuteronomy chapter 12.
SPEAKER_01: Got it on the screen here for you if you don't.
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy chapter 12, God says, These are the commandments, the statutes, and the rules, you might say, that you shall be careful to do in the land that Yahweh, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess.
SPEAKER_01: So when you get in there, in the times of the judges, here's how you should function.
SPEAKER_01: You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations that you've dispossessed have served their gods.
SPEAKER_01: In the high mountains and on the hills, and in every green tree, you shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their asherem with fire, just like Gideon was told to do.
SPEAKER_01: You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place.
SPEAKER_01: It goes on.
SPEAKER_01: You shall not worship Yahweh your God in that way.
SPEAKER_01: Don't think that you can worship God in any old way.
SPEAKER_01: Don't think that God accepts worship in the way that the world worships.
SPEAKER_01: But you shall seek the place that Yahweh your God will choose out of all your tribes, to put his name and make his habitation there, and there you shall go.
SPEAKER_01: Not in your own personal shrine in your own home.
SPEAKER_01: Interesting, the word shrine in Judges chapter 17, verse 5 literally is house of God.
SPEAKER_01: Micah and his mother have fashioned a house for God in their own home.
SPEAKER_01: Micah was so out of touch with God's word and God's program that he thought it was good and right to have a house of God in which he worshipped Yahweh through idols made from stolen money.
SPEAKER_01: They worshiped God however they wanted, so they ignored God's commands about how to worship, where to worship, and what to do in worship.
SPEAKER_01: God's people disregarded his word.
SPEAKER_01: Now, lest you think that that's far out, which it is, bring it home and understand that this happens today.
SPEAKER_01: We blithely think that God accepts worship anyway.
SPEAKER_01: And we have the audacity to think God's okay with that.
SPEAKER_01: Just because the world believes that God can be worshipped through artifacts, through icons, through images, or through prayer beads in order to manipulate God doesn't mean that God accepts that kind of worship.
SPEAKER_01: The application goes beyond that to how we evangelize, how we proclaim God's word, how we serve Christ together.
SPEAKER_01: More and more, the questionable and even ungodly and pagan and demonic ways of the world are being incorporated into how God's people follow God.
SPEAKER_01: And we do it without even thinking that it might be wrong.
SPEAKER_01: That comes from years, decades, and even centuries of God's people trying to live in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my friends, be vigilant and guarding your heart for Christ alone.
SPEAKER_01: Now and ever we confess Christ our hope.
SPEAKER_01: We go on in verse seven.
SPEAKER_01: To the next phase.
SPEAKER_01: There was a young man in Bethlehem of Judah who was a Levite.
SPEAKER_01: He's a Levite.
SPEAKER_01: And this man travels and he he ends up at Micah's home.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 9, there's some introductions.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10, Micah says, Hey, stay with me.
SPEAKER_01: Be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you ten pieces of silver a year and a suit of clothes and your living.
SPEAKER_01: And the Levite went in, he was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons.
SPEAKER_01: And Micah ordained this Levite, and the young man became his priest and was in the house of Micah.
SPEAKER_01: And then Micah says, Isn't this fabulous?
SPEAKER_01: Now I know that Yahweh will bless me and prosper me, because I have a Levite in my house as my priest.
SPEAKER_01: Verse six again is the first time in judging.
SPEAKER_01: That we find the phrase, in those days there was no king in Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: So as we move now into this next account of Micah and a Levite, they illustrate the principle that living in the middle leads to following God's ways through patterns that are selfish, that benefit us, that of personal value.
SPEAKER_01: Our historian here points to all of Israel, but especially Micah.
SPEAKER_01: Micah saw no problem whatsoever in installing his own son as his personal priest, even though he wasn't from the priestly Levite family.
SPEAKER_01: Micah merely did what he thought would benefit him.
SPEAKER_01: And it's no accident that this follows the account of Samson.
SPEAKER_01: Samson over and over and over again did what was right in his own eyes rather than living out God's calling.
SPEAKER_01: So Micah is yet another confirmation that Israel had abandoned God for her own preferences.
SPEAKER_01: But now we begin to see that this goes all the way down to the individuals.
SPEAKER_01: Micah looks out for Micah, especially when something better comes along.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, I have a chance to improve my situation.
SPEAKER_01: Why shouldn't I take advantage of that?
SPEAKER_01: Look what God has done.
SPEAKER_01: He brought a Levite to my door.
SPEAKER_01: I can make my own private worship center even better.
SPEAKER_01: I can hire this Levite to be my priest.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember, Micah was first presented to us as a thieving son and a blatant idolater.
SPEAKER_01: Now he's pictured as an opportunist, excited about improving his religious standing with Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Can this get any better?
SPEAKER_01: I've got my own household gods where I can worship Yahweh through my idols, and now I can have a Levite be my priest.
SPEAKER_01: Ironically, our historian tells us that Micah asks the young man to come in and be a spiritual father to him.
SPEAKER_01: Through an ironic wordplay, our historian lets us know that Micah, not the priest, is actually in charge because it gets flipped.
SPEAKER_01: Where instead of being a father to Micah, this Levite ends up being like a son to Micah.
SPEAKER_01: Micah's doing everything he can to control situations for his own personal benefit.
SPEAKER_01: He's in charge of the religious setup.
SPEAKER_01: We are tempted to do what's right in our own eyes when we live in the middle.
SPEAKER_01: And doing what's right in our own eyes tempts us to be religious opportunists.
SPEAKER_01: Here, faithfulness and obedience to God are replaced by personal benefit.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that last verse of chapter 17.
SPEAKER_01: Now I know that Yahweh will prosper me.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I have a Levite as my priest.
SPEAKER_01: If I just hire this guy, God will bless me.
SPEAKER_01: If I just do this, God will bless me.
SPEAKER_01: If I just do that, I'm getting closer to doing what God exactly wants.
SPEAKER_01: And so God's going to have to bless me now.
SPEAKER_01: Micah's belief demonstrates that he is an opportunist.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, be vigilant to bring glory to Christ alone in your worship.
SPEAKER_01: To not make your faithfulness an opportunity to benefit yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Micah's belief that his new priest will magically improve his religious standing demonstrates the principle that living in the middle promotes twisted religious beliefs.
SPEAKER_01: Micah knew that Levites were set apart as God's chosen servants in Israel's worship.
SPEAKER_01: And so now, in his mind, having a Levite as his priest would put him in an even higher standing with God, in line for direct divine blessing.
SPEAKER_01: That's nothing more than pagan Canaanite practice of manipulating gods.
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing more than declaring, if I do this, then God must do that.
SPEAKER_01: I can twist God's arm into doing something for me.
SPEAKER_01: This Levite is a human good luck charm.
SPEAKER_01: That shouldn't surprise us since we've already seen that Micah and his mom have no problem mixing in idolatry with their worship of Israel's covenant God.
SPEAKER_01: But underneath that surface level, our historian is showing us that Israel has become no longer a people living in the middle, but a people living in the world.
SPEAKER_01: They're living like the Canaanites around them.
SPEAKER_01: They've adopted the morals and the religious practices of the pagan peoples around them, and they don't even realize that it went against God's word.
SPEAKER_01: They think that it's bringing them more in line with God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Sadly, Christians and Christian organizations today do the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: We incorporate worldly ideologies, thinking that it will aid our service to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now, our intentions might be good, they might be positive.
SPEAKER_01: I think we could say that Micah's intentions, at least some of them, were righteous.
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to say, listen, God ordained the Levites, God chose the Levites.
SPEAKER_01: That's a good thing.
SPEAKER_01: But adopting the actions and beliefs of the world system to achieve good intentions departs from God's order and calling.
SPEAKER_01: For example, you will hear the call to become more and more like the culture in order to reach the culture for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You'll hear that the message of Christ is foolish and offensive to those who are perishing.
SPEAKER_01: So we must tone it down to show love to those who are living in sin.
SPEAKER_01: Some argue we need to minimize the offensive parts of the gospel or add other elements to the gospel to make it more palatable for those living in sin.
SPEAKER_01: Church of Christ, if your hope is in Christ for life and death, be vigilant to guard the gospel and to adhere to God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Because if we live in the middle, we will promote twisted religious beliefs.
SPEAKER_01: Now, as we shift now in chapter 18 from Micah to the young Levite, our historian illustrates living in the middle also leads to ignorance and apathy towards God's word.
SPEAKER_01: We need some reminders, though, about Israel's history that would have been familiar to our historian.
SPEAKER_01: Levites were descendants of Jacob's son Levi.
SPEAKER_01: They were set apart by God to serve him as priests.
SPEAKER_01: However, only the sons of Aaron, Moses' brother, remember Moses and Aaron?
SPEAKER_01: Only the sons of Aaron were full priests.
SPEAKER_01: Moses was a descendant of Levi as well.
SPEAKER_01: But only the sons of Aaron were full priests.
SPEAKER_01: All other Levites assisted the sons of Aaron in the service of the priesthood.
SPEAKER_01: So you can see.
SPEAKER_01: In Numbers, uh oh, I don't have that up there, do I?
SPEAKER_01: Sorry guys, I messed it all up again.
SPEAKER_01: Living in the middle leads to ignorance and apathy towards God's word.
SPEAKER_01: Numbers chapter 8, verse 19 tells us that it was the sons of Aaron that were the priests.
SPEAKER_01: So here is this Levite now being offered a place of service as a priest.
SPEAKER_01: He's offered pay.
SPEAKER_01: Do you notice that?
SPEAKER_01: It's a paid position.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that anything that you should pay priests or you shouldn't pay priests.
SPEAKER_01: In this context, though, it goes contradictory to Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 1 through 6, where God specified how Levites would receive their income.
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy chapter 18, verse 6 also says that God said the Levites would go to the place that Yahweh had defined and identified to serve him, not where the individual decided to serve.
SPEAKER_01: So this Levite, if he wants to serve as a priest, he needs to go to Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant resides and where Israel went to worship, not in the home of Micah.
SPEAKER_01: This Levite doesn't join other priests in serving the Lord, according to Deuteronomy 18, but instead he functions in the place of another man who wasn't qualified to serve in the first place.
SPEAKER_01: And he's ordained to serve by Micah, not by God, not by the high priest, or even by another set of Levites.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing about this situation follows God's established patterns for Levites serving as priests.
SPEAKER_01: And have you noticed that we don't know anything about this young man, this Levite, other than where he came from?
SPEAKER_01: Except where he last lived.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 17, verse 7 and verse 8, we don't know his name or his background.
SPEAKER_01: Our historian leaves those details out on purpose.
SPEAKER_01: It's part of the intrigue that's developed in the story.
SPEAKER_01: But more information is provided at the end of the account in chapter 18, verse 30, where it says, And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan, the son of Gershem, son of Moses, and his sons, were priest to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.
SPEAKER_01: So they set up Micah's carved image that he had made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.
SPEAKER_01: This is astonishing.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm kind of skipping ahead here.
SPEAKER_01: In the next phase of the story, a tribe of Israel fails to follow through in their obedience to God, and they decide we don't have enough land to occupy, so we're going to go find new land.
SPEAKER_01: And on the way they stop by Micah's house and they end up taking Micah's idols, and they end up taking Micah's priest with them so that he can be a priest to a whole tribe, and they go and destroy another people group and occupy that land, and boom, here you go.
SPEAKER_01: And oh, by the way, this young man that came to Micah's house in the first place, his name is Jonathan, the son of Gersham.
SPEAKER_01: Moses grandson.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, that Moses.
SPEAKER_01: So he's a descendant of Moses, not of Aaron, and thus he's not qualified to be a priest in God's program.
SPEAKER_01: He's qualified to serve as the assistant to priests.
SPEAKER_01: But do those details matter to Micah?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Jonathan's descendants become a group of priests forever pictured as those who ignore God's law.
SPEAKER_01: But this is the history of the age.
SPEAKER_01: Micah's mother disregarded the law by having idols made.
SPEAKER_01: Micah disregarded the law by setting up his own worship center, ordaining his own son as priest, and then helping the Levites disregard the calling.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone in this account is indifferent and apathetic to what God had said.
SPEAKER_01: At best.
SPEAKER_01: At best, they're ignorant of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: At worst, they display an unimaginable contempt for it and instead adopt the world's patterns for their worship.
SPEAKER_01: So glad that's not us.
SPEAKER_01: Hope you catch the facetiousness there.
SPEAKER_01: Or is it?
SPEAKER_01: What does it say about our view of God and his word when God says that we are to be in the world as followers of Christ, but not of the world?
SPEAKER_01: What does it say about us when we are trying desperately to live in the middle as everyone else does?
SPEAKER_01: What does it say about us and our view of God's word when we are told not to love the world or the things in the world, but we still join in the pleasures that appeal to the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life?
SPEAKER_01: Are we so much different than Israel who did whatever was right in her own eyes?
SPEAKER_01: We can only live in God's ways when the word of God motivates our thinking and our living.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, we will do whatever we think is best rather than what God has commanded.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, be vigilant in stirring up your love and devotion for Christ and His Word.
SPEAKER_01: It's the only thing that will draw you out of the middle and toward Christ and away from the love of the world and the things in it.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we skipped over a significant section in chapter 18 that I mentioned briefly in those days in verse 1 of chapter 18, the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking for itself an inheritance to dwell in, for until then no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them.
SPEAKER_01: It's not exactly full of detail.
SPEAKER_01: Other portions of Scripture reveal to us that God said, I've given you this portion that is sandwiched in between the tribe of Judah and Ephraim.
SPEAKER_01: But when Dan went to settle in that area, they they refused to be trusting and faithful to God to drive out the peoples of the land.
SPEAKER_01: And so they ended up being integrated into those peoples, and in the end they realized there's not enough space for us because we didn't do what God said.
SPEAKER_01: And so they take matters into their own hands and they say, we need to find out more space.
SPEAKER_01: We need to go and find out where we can live somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: And so chapter 18, verse 2 describes that.
SPEAKER_01: Reminiscent of Joshua sending out spies to go into the land and spy it out, they do the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: The spies go to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and they stayed there.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: They recognize the voice of the young Levite.
SPEAKER_01: And they turned to Sai.
SPEAKER_01: So they bring this Levite to Sai and say, Hey, what are you doing here?
SPEAKER_01: I got a good gig.
SPEAKER_01: This is just a really great situation.
SPEAKER_01: At home, I can't be a priest, but here I can be a priest.
SPEAKER_01: And I get paid for it, I got all my needs met.
SPEAKER_01: This is a good gig.
SPEAKER_01: And they say, well, verse 5, inquire of God, please.
SPEAKER_01: We want to know if we're doing the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: He responds in verse 6, go in peace, the journey on which you go is under the eye of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Now that that could be interpreted positively or negatively.
SPEAKER_01: He just says, Yahweh's watching you.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: Or, uh oh.
SPEAKER_01: Now they interpret it positively.
SPEAKER_01: They go and they find a spot and they return to their people and they then go back and attempt to take that land.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 8 describes the report to their people.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 9 reports their decision to go.
SPEAKER_01: So in verse 11, we see the movement.
SPEAKER_01: 600 men of the tribe of Dan, armed with weapons of war, set out into Zora and Eshtaol.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just their war party.
SPEAKER_01: We find out later that they're coming with their families, their children, and all of their livestock.
SPEAKER_01: They are moving and they're going to take over somebody else's community regardless of what happens.
SPEAKER_01: And along the way, they stop at Micah's home in verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: They ask the young Levite, How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: What would you say in response to the question, How are you today when there are 600 armed men standing outside your front door?
SPEAKER_01: That's what's happening.
SPEAKER_01: There's a small army here of 600 armed men with more people on top of that, all kinds of animals, and they say, How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Well, fine, I guess.
SPEAKER_01: But notice what happens.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 17 the five men who had gone to scatter out the land went up and entered and took Micah's carved image, the Ephid, the household gods, the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed for war.
SPEAKER_01: When they did that, the priest says in verse 18, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Shh.
SPEAKER_01: Keep quiet and come with us.
SPEAKER_01: It's better, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: To be a priest of an entire tribe than over one family?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, come with us and we'll take care of you.
SPEAKER_01: This demonstrates that living in the middle heightens the allure of personal gain.
SPEAKER_01: Come and be our priest.
SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
SPEAKER_01: Would it be better to be a household priest or a priest over an entire tribe?
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna give you a larger congregation, better pay, we're gonna take care of all of your needs, and all of your descendants will be our priests in perpetuity.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, this priest shouldn't be a priest in the first place, and some priest he is, this grandson of Moses perpetuates Micah's idolatry in the name of God rather than rebuking the idolatry.
SPEAKER_01: And none of that matters to the priest now because there are 600 fighting men at his door, and it would be nicer to be priest over a larger group of people.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters in Christ, be vigilant in guarding your heart against the desires of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: Here is Micah left standing alone.
SPEAKER_01: In front of him are the desires of his heart, and he gives into it.
SPEAKER_01: And Micah is left standing alone.
SPEAKER_01: He mistakenly believed that having a Levite as a priest would bring him blessing and protection.
SPEAKER_01: Of course, the gods that he had made were now being taken from him.
SPEAKER_01: But we know that gods who cannot defend themselves or their place are not gods at all.
SPEAKER_01: And so this group of the tribe of Dan, the Danites, take this priest and they take all of Micah's religious shrine with them, and they keep on going, and they decimate an entire community that's isolated from everyone around them.
SPEAKER_01: They rebuild the city for their own and they settle in it and become.
SPEAKER_01: Their own tribe in their own land for the first time.
SPEAKER_01: But the Danites in that situation illustrate that becoming like the world opens the door for all kinds of selfish power plays that oppose God.
SPEAKER_01: The Danites ironically steal from the one first portrayed as a thief.
SPEAKER_01: Guess you get what's coming to you.
SPEAKER_01: Be sure your sin will find you out, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: Micah stole from his mom, they end up stealing from Micah.
SPEAKER_01: They use their advantage in numbers and strength to get away with it.
SPEAKER_01: And then they go and decimate an entire community of unsuspecting people and get away with it just because they can.
SPEAKER_01: They decide that what God had given them was not sufficient because they didn't trust God to truly give it to them.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they go their own way doing their own thing just because they can.
SPEAKER_01: And even more interesting, the city that they end up overtaking was in the territory that God originally gave to the tribe of Naphtali.
SPEAKER_01: So they refused to obey God by taking what he had given them.
SPEAKER_01: They steal from a man of Ephraim, and then they steal from what belongs to the tribe of Naphtali.
SPEAKER_01: Because they could, they then set up their own religious center in the tribe of Dan with Jonathan, the descendant of Moses, not Aaron, as their priest.
SPEAKER_01: And that continued for a long, long time.
SPEAKER_01: And if you go to the book of 1 Kings, you will find that what eventually happens in this northern region of the tribes of Israel is that Dan becomes one of two places.
SPEAKER_01: This city and this tribe of Dan becomes one of two places where a golden calf was set up.
SPEAKER_01: Because a future leader of these northern tribes decided, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I don't want all of my people going all the way to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh there.
SPEAKER_01: I want them to stay here.
SPEAKER_01: And so he set up a golden calf and said, Here, O Israel, is your God that brought you out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Just like what Aaron did way back when.
SPEAKER_01: So no longer are people going to Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant is.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they go wherever it's right in their own eyes.
SPEAKER_01: All because they saw the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, and they said, We want what we want.
SPEAKER_01: Be vigilant, my friends, in trusting God's provisions for life, lest you believe that you can do better than God.
SPEAKER_01: So we begin to now see the importance of what the Apostle John said in 1 John 2, verses 15, 16, and 17.
SPEAKER_01: Where he said, Do not love the world or the things in the world.
SPEAKER_01: Do not give in to the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the pride of life.
SPEAKER_01: See, loving the world leads to losing the true Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we see in the book of Judges.
SPEAKER_01: Loving the world leads to losing the true Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Ignoring the Lord's word leads to living with the consequences of divided allegiances.
SPEAKER_01: And people who follow their own way reveal that their true loyalties lie with the world, not the covenant, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is why John concludes his short New Testament letter with the words, My little children, keep yourselves from idols.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, keep our hearts forever true to you.
SPEAKER_01: We know that we are tempted by the things in our world.
SPEAKER_01: We know that we can be discouraged even and troubled by the way that the world around us just seems to be circling down the drain.
SPEAKER_01: And so we are tempted, Lord, to do just what the people and judges did.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Lord, keep us true to you.
SPEAKER_01: May our eyes always be focused and vigilant.
SPEAKER_01: May we always be ready to affirm Christ, our hope and life and death.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, but Lord, we need you to always be the forefront of our thinking, the forefront of our desires, so that we, when tempted by the trees of knowledge and good and evil in our life and in our in our own worlds, that we would hear your word and be vigilant to it.
SPEAKER_01: May you always, Lord Jesus, be our true vision and our true King, that we might not go our own way.
SPEAKER_01: This we ask for your glory.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.