Friday, March 11, 2011

Judges 17-19

This is some tough reading, but I know God has a word in this for us somewhere.  In fact I am so sure of it that I am going to preach from this passage on Sunday.  Hope you will be there.  Baptism during 2nd service.....beautiful little Rylan Robertson will be baptized and her mama and daddy will be joining the church.  It is also the 99th birthday for the Girl Scouts of America.  We will have some of those young ladies in attendance as well.  Lots of reasons to celebrate on a beautiful Sabbath Day.  Hope you got outside today and enjoyed the warmth.  Patty and I took 1/2 the day off to play a round of golf.  Didn't play very good but it was a joy to be out and enjoy the early springlike weather.  Our prayers are with the folks in Japan.....so much loss of life and property.


Do you ever think the world is upside down?  Certainly this story of Micah is an upside down world.  1st he steals from his mother, then he gives it back, she blesses him for his kindness(?) and rewards him by giving him what he has previously stolen.  If that isn't enough......he builds and idol, ordains his own priest and then has the audacity to think that God will surely bless him because he has his own priest now.  That's not enough so he hires a passing levite for 10 shekels of silver per year.  Now he figures he is really in like flint.  And what is this Levite thinking....that God is for hire.  Reminds me of Balaam in the Exodus story.......being bought to put a curse on the Israelites.  God's word, God's promises, God's people are not mercenaries to be bought and sold except that we have already been bought at a very high price by the blood of Jesus.

Chapter 18 continues to reveal the lack of Faith that is permeating Israel.  The tribe of Dan has not conquered and possessed that which God has given them at the end of the Exodus.  They are looking for easier land to take and their eyes wander into their neighbor Ephraim's territory.  Ephraim hasn't been totally obedient either.  Their is part of their tribal territory that is occupied by pagan's.  The tribe of Dan sends spies and then a small army to take possession of this city for their own people.  On the way, they stop at Micah's place; they steal his idol, his ephod and his priest.  Always room for another priest and God's blessing when you are going into war because you failed to take that which God has already bequeathed to you.  Did I say that these stories portray a world that is upside down?  Before these men are through they set up a rival tabernacle to the one established by God at Shiloh and institutional idolatry comes to Israel.  Before this we saw evidence of household idols and idolatry, but this is on a much bigger scale.

Chapter 19 is so vile that many Old Testament scholars do not comment on it, but it reveals how low Israel has sunk in its moral turpitude.  There is no hospitality to the alien.  There is sexual debauchery much like that which we read about in the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah.  How can this have happened in a few short centuries since the crossing of Jordan?  It certainly should cause us a moment's pause and force us to reflect upon the slippery slope that it seems that America is on.  Perhaps the key to this moral slide is found in the statement, "Israel had no king and every person did as seemed right to them."  Once we begin to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong, we begin to measure everything by what feels good to us and we immediately begin to elevate our judgments, our values, our desires to places that belong to God and God alone.  There is a King.....in fact there is a King of Kings and a Lord of Lords and he has shown us what is right and good.  To ignore his imperatives is to flirt with a most disastrous possibility......even a fate worse than death.

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