Epilogue Pt 1
Notes
Transcript
Exegetical Point: This story shows the desperate situation of worship and conquest in Israel without a Godly King.
Homiletic Point: Sin Compounds to death unless a Godly King steps in to rescue us.
Intro
Intro
Do you know about compounding interest?
You put your money in the bank and get a little in return. Then if you leave your money in the bank you get a bigger return next time, and a bigger return and so your money grows over time.
Sin is a bit like compounding interest, but in reverse. Instead of getting more and more good returns, it gets worse and worse. If you don’t deal with sin, it just grows and grows and grows into a disgusting monster. (maybe you can draw the ugliest monster you can think of on your paper and call it “Sin”)
Sin is like a weed. It’s like if you let a weed grow in your garden, if you don’t deal with it, it will flower, and then the seeds will blow all over your garden, and then those seeds will grow, then flower then spread, and so on! The weeds spread everywhere, and the problems compounds unless there is a decisive intervention.
The people of Israel have been living through a cycle of devastating oppression, all because of their own sin. The Lord has been delivering them when they call out to Him. Yet at the end of the day, they call out to the LORD to svae them in their dire straights, but then they’re right back to spreading weed seeds all over their garden.
Is it any wonder they are in a devolving situation.
Rebel - oppression - cry out - salvation...
This has characterized the body of the book - but now we are entering the Epilogue. No more tales of deliverance by Judges, just two main stories that play us out. Both show the desperate situation they are in by virtue of their sin. They have compounded their issues.
This book is a tragedy - no happy ending here. Only a depressive outlook that leaves us hungering for better leaders and better days.
The story that we’re looking at this morning is a big example of how sin compounds. One sin leads to another which leads to another. And I’m sorry to be so depressing with this message today, but I try to match the tone of the passage to the tone of the sermon, and there is no joy here. It’s an object lesson, a demonstration of how messed up things are.
In some respects this reminds us of our own time. We look around at the destructive and depressive state of affairs we live in, and we see that it’s from compounding sin. One thing has led to another and to another. We need a great intervention. A divine intervention to free us from the perpetual cycle of rebellion.
This story plays out in 4 chapters, and each chapter highlights some grievous sin or other.
Chapter 1: Theft & Idolatry
Chapter 1: Theft & Idolatry
There a few basic rules that you can find in almost every moral code. World over almost everybody knows that stealing is wrong. The reason that this knowledge is so well accepted is that God has encoded this truth into us. We inherently understand that God exists, and that he calls us to practice righteousness an shun evil.
Yet even if we suppress that truth and try to quell those voices in out head, God has directly spoken to humanity to explicitly tell us how we should live. Way back in salvation history God spoke from a mountain as he entered into a special relationship with his chosen people. He said:
“You shall not steal.
This was very clear. And is was part of the Law that God gave Israel, His people, as they were on their way to the Promised Land. This was a characteristic of how they were supposed to live with one another, both on the way to the Promised Land, and once they had settled in it.
But lets see how they were doing. What was life like in Israel after they had spent several generations in the Promised Land:
Judges 17:1–3 (ESV)
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 ears, behold, the silver is with me; I took it.” And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the Lord.” And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother.
Here’s a guy named Micah who stole 1100 pieces of silver from his Mum (maybe Delilah?)
He gave it back because she had cursed him. He was fearful of the curse.
She blesses her son (to undo the curse?). She so relieved to get it back, she doesn’t seem to be perturbed by the fact her son stole it from her.
Lets Go back to God’s Law for Micah and his mum living in Israel. Here’s what is says:
“ ‘Cursed be the man who makes a carved or cast metal image, an abomination to the Lord, a thing made by the hands of a craftsman, and sets it up in secret.’ And all the people shall answer and say, ‘Amen.’
So Micah’s mum is not the only one uttering curses - God pronounced some pretty serious curses.
So no idolatry, and especially no idols of God himself. And you can’t just say “What i do in the privacy of my own home is none of your business.” Worship is a public “health” issue and it is worth cursing when done is secret, how much worse would it be if you tried to do it in public?
How are things going on this front in Israel?
Judges 17:2–3 (ESV)
And his mother said, “Blessed be my son by the Lord.” And he restored the 1,100 pieces of silver to his mother. And his mother said, “I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image. Now therefore I will restore it to you.”
Things are so bad, that the mum thinks it is a laudible thing to make an idol, and not just any idol, but one dedicated to YHWH!
She’s taking the Lord’s name in vain! How can he be blessed in the Lord for this?
How far they have fallen! They have become just like the evil tribes they were meant to destroy - making and worshipping idols.
Idols aren’t as big a deal in the scientific age - but it has been a huge problem down through history. People thought their gods would embody the object and then they could revere and worship their god via the idol. Often stone or timber with gold/silver overlay, it was meant to be a physical representation of their god.
So for worshipers of the true God of Gods, YHWH, how are they supposed to make an image of him? He has revealed to them no physical form! He has no body! And plus, how are you meant to try and present the limitless God in a little object chiseled by a man?
Yet here is this woman, so happy she god her money back, that she makes an “offering” to commission the creation of an idol.
We see the effects of compounding sin, over generations of faithlessness, they are so mixed up that they cannot perceive how abominable their practices are, and how what they think is a good thing, is actually pure evil.
This is the age we live in, where there has been increasing faithlessness across our generations. Now there are those who wander around thinking they are “doing the right thing” by following their heart, leaving their spouses, not disciplining their children, supporting their friends and family in their pursuit of evil.
But friends we do not sit here unaffected by the world. There are probably effects of the ethics of our age that we don’t even realise.
The answer is to do what these people would have done - go back to the Word! They should know God’s law!
That is why we spend 30 or 40 minutes every Sunday just looking at God’s word, and then reading it out loud. That’s why, although it is not a command from God, regular devotional Bible reading is highly encouraged. If we are engrossed with what God says, we will be less likely to fall into the trap of “serving” God with abominations and cursed actions.
Our hearts will still be sinful, unfortunatley. We need a deep work in order to be able to fulfill God’s law.
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”
If only there was a Godly King who could set things right! Who could show them how to worship God rightly, who could teach the people, who could lead them away from evil, and who could deliver them even from their own sin!
Chapter 2: Made Up Religion
Chapter 2: Made Up Religion
Mohammad, Buddha, Joseph Smith. What do all these names have in common? They each invented a religion. The while these are the most famous, they are by no means the only ones! There have been countless attempts to make new religions over the years.
Often these new religious endevours are billed as the “real” version of faith that they already believed. Joseph Smith famously founded the Mormon church after being unsure which Christina denomination was the right one to go with until he had a revelation from “God.”
It’s a bit hard to imagine what’s going through the mind of a religious innovator like this, but we can guess.
Some may have been deceived by demons.
Some probably had delusions of grandeur and imagined it, or took an idea and ran with it.
Some probably thought they were doing others a favor and improving “faults” or problems with their religion.
Some were probably completely unaware of the implications of their actions, and the people they would deceive with falsehood.
In this “chapter” we have a striking example of religious innovation. We don’t know what these people were thinking, but i would take bets on it being a combination of all those things - demons, delusions, imagining they were making improvements, and a dash of plain old stupidity.
This story tells us the development of a cult. I don’t just mean cult in the way we think of it, as a small group with weird fringe views. I mean it in the sense that there is the development of a worship apparatus. There will be their own priesthood, temple, “holy” relics, and so on.
But this is strange. This is the kind of thing that God expressly commanded his people about. Israel already has a bunch of instructions on how to do proper worship and where to do it. In fact God said, when you take the promised land:
But you shall seek the place that the Lord your God will choose out of all your tribes to put his name and make his habitation there. There you shall go,
And there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and you shall rejoice, you and your households, in all that you undertake, in which the Lord your God has blessed you. “You shall not do according to all that we are doing here today, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes,
The tabernacle was the mobile temple complex for Israel, where they were to worship God.
God was going to show the people a special place where he would set up a permanent temple complex.
Lets see how things are going on this front in Israel:
And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and household gods, and ordained one of his sons, who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.
Everyone was doing what they felt like.
That included Micah taking it upon himself to set up a shrine. A small temple complex complete with his own priesthood and holy implements.
God had been very clear about how his people were to worship him. See the Law!
He even gave some clear examples of how much he abhors innovation, going beyond what God commands:
Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the Lord, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they died before the Lord.
We have no right to be inventive in worship! Even Aaron's sons got no warning!
How are things going in Israel a few year later?
A Travelling Levite came to visit. Levites were the priest class of Israel.
Micah convinces him to stay and operate the idolatrous shrine. How? with a sweet salary and benefits.
Levite agrees:
And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and was in the house of Micah. Then Micah said, “Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as priest.”
Superstitious Micah - thinks that priests are talismans that bring good luck. Where is obedience to God’s revealed will?
The Levites gained their office by being zealous for the holiness of God, and here is one who has sold out with this abhorrent false worship.
No idea about the Word of God - it would put all of this straight!
Compounding sin. theft, idolatry, their own temple, their own implements of worship, now co-opted priesthood.
We live in an age where people feel free to make up any form of church that suits them!
Let God tell us how he wants to be worshipped!
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”
If only there was a Godly King who could set things right! Who could show them how to worship God rightly, who could teach the people, who could lead them away from evil, and who could deliver them even from their own sin!
Chapter 3: Calling Evil “Good”
Chapter 3: Calling Evil “Good”
Israel was supposed to be on mission.
Israel’s mission in the Promised land:
“When my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them and break their pillars in pieces.
God sent them to wipe out evil.
They couldn’t just go kill anyone, only the nations that God had appointed for desctruction because of their evil.
God set the boundaries of their land and inheritance for when they got there.
How did it go earlier on in Judges?
The Amorites pressed the people of Dan back into the hill country, for they did not allow them to come down to the plain.
Dan failed to take their inheritance.
How is it going now In Israel?
In those days there was no king in Israel. And in those days 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.
Dan was looking for an alternate inheritance, different to the one
And they said to him, “Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.” And the priest said to them, “Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the Lord.”
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
Reject the lies of the “religious” who say that the things that are an abomination to the Lord are “good”
What right have they (or you ) to proclaim as acceptable what Jesus hates?
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”
If only there was a Godly King who could set things right! Who could show them how to worship God rightly, who could teach the people, who could lead them away from evil, and who could deliver them even from their own sin!
Chapter 4: More Theft & Idolatry
Chapter 4: More Theft & Idolatry
They said, “Arise, and let us go up against them, for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good. And will you do nothing? Do not be slow to go, to enter in and possess the land. As soon as you go, you will come to an unsuspecting people. The land is spacious, for God has given it into your hands, a place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.”
And the five men who had gone to scout out the land went up and entered and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 men armed with weapons of war.
And they said to him, “Keep quiet; put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest. Is it better for you to be priest to the house of one man, or to be priest to a tribe and clan in Israel?” And the priest’s heart was glad. He took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image and went along with the people.
But the people of Dan took what Micah had made, and the priest who belonged to him, and they came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword and burned the city with fire. And there was no deliverer because it was far from Sidon, and they had no dealings with anyone. It was in the valley that belongs to Beth-rehob. Then they rebuilt the city and lived in it.
And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves, and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land. So they set up Micah’s carved image that he made, as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.
Flee false religion!
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”
If only there was a Godly King who could set things right! Who could show them how to worship God rightly, who could teach the people, who could lead them away from evil, and who could deliver them even from their own sin!
So What?
So What?