Judges Chapters 17 & 18
How about a
journey through a pretty strange passage that reflects the pretty strange
condition of the professing church? I am referring to Judges chapters 17 and
18, a description of much of the church and many of its pastors, congregations,
and its popular “personalities.” I should hasten to add, that it also gives a
pretty good description of seasons of my own life – I am sickened as I write
that, but it is true and I might as well confess it and you might as well know
it…maybe the confession will help someone.
Now there was
a man of the hill country of Ephraim whose name was Micah. And he said to his
mother, “The 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you
uttered a curse and also spoke it in my hearing, behold, the silver is with me;
I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the LORD.” He then
returned the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother, and his mother said, “I
wholly consecrate the silver from my hand to the LORD for my son to make a
carved image and a cast metal image; so now I will return them to you.” So when
he returned the silver to his mother, his mother took two hundred pieces of
silver and gave them to the silversmith, who made them into a carved image and
a cast metal image, and they were in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had
a shrine and he made an ephod and household idols, and consecrated one of his
sons, so that he might become his priest. In those days there was no king in
Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Judges 17:1 – 6.
Let me encourage
you to read chapters 17 and 18 so you’ll have a context for this journey, even
as we begin with these first six verses. What do you see in the above passage?
What are the incongruities between this passage and the Ten Commandments?
Between this passage and the faithful worship of Yahweh [the LORD]? Had you
been a neighbor of this family, what would you have thought? What might you
have said to Micah and his mother?
As we ponder these
strange, yet not so strange, chapters in Judges, allow me to suggest that we
focus on what we know and not on what we don’t know. The Bible tells us what we
need to know and God doesn’t appear to be interested in satisfying our curiosity
about things we don’t know. I am not sure why, but one of the challenges in
facilitating many small groups is that people want to focus on what the Bible
doesn’t tell us, as opposed to understanding and obeying what the Bible does
tell us. Perhaps this deflects attention from our own lives and how we are to
obediently respond to the Biblical text. We are quick to talk about others, about
how others ought to behave and think and speak, but we are not keen to submit
ourselves to the Word of God and allow the Holy Spirit to deal with the depths
of our hearts and minds and souls. We would rather amuse ourselves in
conjecture than submit to the searching
work of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.
What we know is
that Micah stole eleven hundred pieces of silver from his mother and that she
didn’t know who the thief was. It’s a pretty good hunch that eleven hundred
pieces of silver was a whole lot of money – these people weren’t poor. We also know
that Micah’s mother uttered quite the curse regarding the person who took her
money, and she wasn’t quiet about the curse either – she said it loud enough that
Micah heard it and it must have frightened him.
In his fearful
state Micah confesses to his mother that he is the thief, and she responds by
saying, “Blessed be my son by Yahweh.” Let me point out that it wasn’t the Law
of God that convicted Micah of his theft, but rather his mother’s curse that
scared him into confessing his theft and returning the money. Now how is this a
blessing from Yahweh? Conviction of sin would have been a blessing, conviction
of sin leading to confession and restoration would have been a blessing, but I
don’t see how being frightened by his mother’s curse was a blessing from
Yahweh. Yes, God can use our fear of the consequences of our sin to drive us to
repentance and confession, I’m just not sure that this is what we see here, and
I think subsequent events confirm this…for what happened after the money was
returned?
The mother says
that she is going to “…wholly dedicate the silver from my hand to Yahweh for my
son to make a graven image and a molten image…”
What is wrong
with this picture? How does this thinking and behavior line up with the Ten
Commandments? How in the world did this woman have such confused thinking and
such misconception concerning the True and Living God and the Law that He gave
to Moses?
This is what I
ask myself about the professing church today. This is what I ask myself when I
look back at my own life and see confusion and misconceptions regarding the
holiness of God, the truth of Christ, the call to obedience to His Word. What
idols have I made in the past? Are there idols in my life today? What idols
have we, His People, set up in our corporate temple? Are we so foolish as to
make idols in the name of Jesus Christ, just as Micah and his mother made idols
in the name of Yahweh?
Keep in mind
that Micah and his mother were convinced of the sincerity of their beliefs. Otherwise,
why would they have invested themselves so readily and deeply in not only
making the idols, but in setting up a system of worship in their family that
would come to include the employment of a Levite to serve as priest?
This is a
strange passage, but it is not so strange when we consider that it reflects the
condition of the professing church, that it reflects a danger that we have
faced down through the ages, and that it reflects an ever – present abyss into
which the most sincere of us can fall into.
Now my idols may
not look like your idols, just as my temptations may not be your temptations;
but not only do we face the temptation to religious idolatry, we also face the
temptation to make our idols a religious benchmark for others – in other words,
we may find ourselves insisting that others destroy their idols only to adopt
ours. Furthermore, let us not be deceived into thinking that we could never
make what God once used in our lives for good into an idol, it happens all the
time – consider how Israel did this very thing with respect to the bronze
serpent (Numbers 21:6 – 9; 2 Kings 18:4).
Is it possible
that we have idolized things, people, experiences in place of worshipping the
True and Living God? Have we taken experiences or people or particular perspectives
that God has used in our lives and made them idols in place of being wedded in
purity to Jesus Christ? Are there images that we cultivate that are other than
the image of our Lord Jesus Christ?
I need to ponder
these questions.
What about you?
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