The Meaning Of Life

https://biblehub.com/nkjv/judges/17.htm

Nope, it’s not a mistake. Today we start with The Book of Judges, chapter 17. Why?

Once again, we’re studying the Bible chronologically, and why opinions differ, the order I am following indicates that in the timeframe which Biblical events occurred, the events in Judges 17 occurred before the events of Judges, Chapter 1. And while I am on the subject, there are 66 books of the Bible, but there won’t be 66 volumes in this block; there may be more, there may be less. If you remember, we studied the Book of Job while in the middle of our study of the Book of Genesis, so both of those books were in Volume 1. And the reason we studied Job then, is because Job’s life and the events of his life, occurred during the same time period as the events in Genesis.

What is a “judge”? If you remember, God made Moses a judge, when the children of Israel had a problem they could not resolve, they went to Moses, and he either resolved it through his knowledge and understanding of God’s word, and if he couldn’t resolve it, he conferred with God. The same thing is happening now, God is appointing judges to resolve conflicts among the people, much as today’s judges resolve conflicts between people and determine punishments for those who do not follow the law.

A man named Micah who lived with his mother in Ephraim, stole 1100 shekels from her, and when she found the money missing, she put a curse on the one who stole it.

The Bible doesn’t say whether Micah was afraid of the curse, whether his conscious got the best of him, or what his motivation was, but he returned it to his mother. Because he mentioned the curse, I would assume that was the reason he returned it.

And as mothers do, she forgave him, then mentioned she had intended to dedicate the money “to the Lord” as ironic as that sounds, to make an idol for which to worship. Perhaps her intention was to make an image of God to worship to, but that is still a sin, a violation of the Ten Commandments. We worship God, not a carved image of Him. So she hired a silversmith, and he made her an idols which she gave to her son.

Now Micah set the idol up in a shrine, made an ephod which was meant only to be worn by the priests, and made other household idols and worshipped them.

So far in this story, there is nothing good. We have theft, we have a woman who chose to curse the one who took her money rather than praying to God about it, and we have idolatry, a lot of idolatry. I have no idea what these people were thinking, but it surely wasn’t about obeying God.

Then a Levite who was living in Judah, came by on his travels to Ephraim. He either stopped at Micah’s house or was passing by and Micah struck up a conversation with him.

Upon hearing he was a Levite, a member of the tribe God set aside to minister to the people, Micah offered to hire him to be his personal priest. And the Levite agreed, and somehow, Micah thought that would win him favor with God.

How much does this story ring true today? How many times do we do things we think will win favor with God in exchange for our sins.

First, your works are important to God. God wants you to do good works, to obey His commands. But good works alone will not save you. You have to love God, you have to accept God as your God. And you certainly cannot perform a good work as a substitute for praying, confessing your sins, asking for forgiveness (because it is not a given), and truly repenting of your sins.

If Micah had destroyed his shrine, gotten ride of the idols, prayed for forgiveness, then hired a Levite, it might be a different story. But Micah felt that hiring a Levite would compensate for his sins.

Do we act that way today? Do we perhaps, donate money to a homeless person, give money to a charity, or do something like that as compensation for our sins? Those things are great, and you should continue to do them. But it is no substitute for prayer, for asking forgiveness, or for repentance.

There is a very valuable lesson to be learned from this story. For that matter, there is a valuable lesson to be learned from every passage in the Bible.

Every passage we read, we find sin. And today, everywhere we look, we find sin.

And just when we thought things could not get worse, in chapter 18 we read about more sin. The tribe of Dan was wanting more land, so they sent scout to Ephraim looking for land. they topped and stayed with Micah, where they met the Levite priets. They asked him to prophesy for them, to tell them whether they would be successful at war, and the priest confirmed that God would be with them.

So the Danites scouted the land, found that it was good, and returned home. After the report they gave their brethen, the Danites formed an army and headed to the land to overtake it. Along the way, they stopped at Micahs house, took his shrine, his idols, and his Levite priest. They then went on to conquer the land they had scouted and afterwards, they set up their own shrine using the idols they took from Micah.

See how sin spreads so quickly? One man sinned, and now it has spread to the entire tribe of Dan. Before, it was Micah alone who set up a shrine and was worshiping idols, now, it is an entire tribe.

Sin spread quickly. We see something good happen to a sinner, so we commit the same sin, thinking the good luck will happen to us as well.

But we can’t do that. We have to remain true to God, that is where our genuine good reward comes from. We get ahead in life not from earthly things, but from obdience and love to God.

We can remain obedient to God and stop sin at our door, or we can participate in the spreading of it.

Remain true to our God.

Amen.