At the end of Judges 16, which we were in two weeks ago, we had last week off, we learned an important principle that we must be concerned with today just as much as people in the Old Covenant needed to be concerned with it as well. That is this, that God is not mocked. The Lord God is zealous for His glory. Yahweh cares about His glory, He is concerned with His honor, with His reputation, and no one will be able to forever get away with mocking the Lord. They may for a time, and for some people that judgment might not come to the very last day, by that we mean the day when they die and they go before the Lord for judgment, but no one can or will be able to get away with mocking the Lord. And there's plenty of ways that people mock the Lord. We talked about that last time that we were together. But you would think that in the story of Samson, which we received a lesson on that, about how God is not mocked, that Israel perhaps would have learned their lesson in that regard. That after seeing all that play out and unfold the way that it did, that they would have learned from Samson that we can't mock God. We need to take God serious and our worship from serious. But, of course, you'll see that there's no change in Israel after Samson. In fact, we can even make the case that things got worse. So let's read our text. We're going to read all of Judges 17 tonight. It's only 13 verses. We're going to read it all and look at it as one unit. So the reading of the Word of the Lord, beginning at verse 1 in Judges 17. 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. 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. So when he restored the money to his mother, his mother took 200 pieces of silver and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a carved image and a metal image. And it was in the house of Micah, and the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod of a household god 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. Now there was a young man of Bethlehem in Judah. of the family of Judah, who was a Levite. And he sojourned there. And the man departed from the town of Bethlehem in Judah to sojourn where he would find a place. And he journeyed and he came to the hill country of Ephraim to the house of Micah. And Micah said to him, Where do you come from? And he said to him, I am a Levite of Bethlehem in Judah, and I am going to sojourn where I may find a place. And Micah said to him, stay with me and be to me a father and a priest, and I will give you 10 pieces of silver and a year and a suit, 10 pieces of silver a year and a suit of clothes and your living. And the Levite went in, and the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became to him like one of his sons. And Micah ordained the Levite, and the young man became his priest, and he was in the house of Micah. And then Micah said, now I know the Lord will prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest. That ends the reading of God's holy, inspired, and sufficient word. Let's pray really quick and ask him to bless our time in it. Father in heaven, we thank you for giving us this night to be together, where we can open up your word, and learn from it, and we do pray, Holy Spirit, that you would teach us, that you would give us understanding, that you would open up our eyes to see and our ears to hear, that we would be able to take from this account what it is you desire us to, so that we might glorify you with our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. So, this story seems a little disjointed from the previous chapters in Judges. I wonder if you think that as well, too. It seems like that to me. For one, there is no mention of a judge at all. We're in this book called Judges, or we've been calling it The Gospel According to Judges, and there's no mention of a judge at all in this chapter. There's not even any comment at all about what Yahweh thought of his people's actions. Now, we know in fact that these actions are bad if we understand what the scripture teaches about the things that we read about, but there's no commentary about the events being good or bad from the narrator. We simply just get to read what's happening. And it's pretty much going to continue like on this through the end of the book, actually. So through the next, up through chapter 21, five chapters. No more interjection from God about his thoughts on the events. We'll read a little bit about people's thoughts on the actions in the second closing section, but even there, it's just the response of the people in the events. There's no commentary from God himself, from the narrator, who's, of course, inspired. It's different than before. And actually, from 17 to 18 are one story arc. And then 19 through 21 are another different story arc. The events that we just read tonight are building up into what's going to happen in Chapter 18. And there's some really some debate about the timing of these last two sections, Chapter 17 and 18, and then 19 to 21. People don't really know which came first. And there's actually a lot of people think that the events of 17 and 18 came after the events that happened in 19 and 21, but there's no way to really tell exactly because, as you'll see, these events are just all about what's happening in Israel. There's no mention of other nations, so we don't know what kings were reigning in Philistine or in the other lands. There's no way that we can really tell exactly when these things happened. What was that? These are eternal problems, really, not so much internal threats being their own sin, I suppose. But yeah, this is internal. These are events that are unique to Israel. We don't see them interacting with people that are in the land that shouldn't be in the land at all. see a couple of specific people within Israel and their struggles. And so the timing of these events is difficult. There's no more judges, actually, unless we count Samuel, who is a judge, but we don't learn about him until 1 Samuel. And so there's no more judges in the book called Judges, and here we have five more chapters to deal with this book. So the timing of these events is unknown, other than that this is happening after Samson. It's pretty much agreed upon that these events are happening after Samson, and it's kind of like this is a microscope on two specific events that give us a general feel of what the whole nation is like and where they are at with God. So the inspired narrator of these events, again, who we think is Samuel, we're not 100% sure about that. Samuel, not Samson, that would slip up. We don't know if Israel, he doesn't tell us if Israel is doing good or bad at all, except for maybe verse six, which gives us that familiar refrain, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. So I want to think about that first for tonight. There is no king in Israel. And everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Actually, it's not really a commentary on if it's good or bad. I mean, it's just a statement. There's no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their eyes. Now, we would know that's bad because we know what the rest of Scripture says. But again, this section is weird. There's no interjection from the narrator to tell us, oh, look how they're messing up. The first thing to think about is that's not actually a true statement, right? There, of course, is a king in Israel. It's just that the people stopped recognizing him as king. Most certainly, even though there isn't a specific verse that I'm aware of, at least, before these events in Judges in which God declares he's their king, he certainly is still their king. And I want to prove this in a couple ways. And if anybody knows of a verse before Judges where God says, I am your king, I'd be happy to Don't worry that I was looking, I couldn't find one. But I still think that it's obvious that God is their king and they should have known that. They should have seen this and so we also need to understand as well at the same time that God is our king in the new covenant people of God today. So let's think about this though from the perspective of the people in the old covenant at this point. Number one, we see it in the function that God administers in his dealing with Israel. we see it in the function of how he deals with them. In other words, if Yahweh does the things that a king does, even if he hasn't properly revealed himself as a king at this point, he's still their king. We don't separate function from office. Stop searching your Bibles for king before these books, you guys. I know what you're all trying to do. I was trying to help you, actually. Save it for later. So if the Lord is functioning as a king, even if he hasn't called himself king, he's still then the king. And let me give you a couple examples of this, because not understanding this is what we see happening even in the SBC today, and it's causing a lot of problems. You have pastors and churches within the SBC having women get up to preach sermons to the whole congregation on the Lord's Day. And then they say that they're not violating scripture because, oh, well, you know, Sister so-and-so, she's not actually a pastor. She's just up here teaching at this time. She's preaching to the church on the Lord's Day. In other words, she's functioning in the main role that a pastor is called to function. And so in doing that, that functionally makes her a pastor. We can't separate the function from the office. Or a more sanitary example, if you got paid to wrench on cars all day, but you never received a mechanic's license, you would still be a mechanic, correct? Exactly. So office and function they go together. You can't separate one from the office and have them do the function. I think that they're not still that office. So if we don't recognize the office or see it be declared, we see obviously that the function makes it so. So to my knowledge, the Bible doesn't speak about God being their king with that specific word. The Hebrew word for king is malchakim. That's not used for God before our account here in the Judges. But the function of a king certainly is observable with Yahweh's actions. Think about it. What does a king do? What is a king's responsibility unto his people? What are the main responsibilities of a king? You think about this. There's a children's catechism. that we use. And it says, how is Christ the king? He rules over us and he defends us. If you think about what a king does, his job is to rule over people and to defend them. And of course you could break that down to smaller categories if you wanted, but primarily that's what a king does. Well, can we properly say that God is ruling over Israel and defending Israel in this time period? I think we can. He has redeemed them from Egypt, He's a conquering king who defended his people over and against the Egyptians. He brings them out of Egypt and he takes them to a new land, to his kingdom that he gives to them. He gives them then a law to live by, Exodus 20. He gives them the Ten Commandments. And then also a whole slew of ceremonial laws. The book of Leviticus is largely dedicated to explaining all of those ceremonial laws. And then also they get a whole set of judicial laws, laws that will help them to live in community with one another as well. And those are detailed especially. Our special attention is given to them in Deuteronomy. So he both rules over them through the laws that he gives them, and he's been defending them. He defended them from Egypt, and then when they come into Joshua and Judges, he defends them from the people in those areas as well too. And he applies to them the rules of the kingdom, and he bears upon them with those rules. It should be obvious to anyone that God is in fact their king. That's in part why verse 6 is so shocking. Of course they have a king. Their king is the king of kings. And that's our second point. God doesn't change. God, because he is God, is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and forevermore. Yahweh is king of the whole world, and he does according to the counsel of his will among all the hosts of heaven, among all the nations. And so then certainly, he would have a unique kingship in Israel at this time because they were his special people, those people that he had given a special set of laws to, and he was especially defending them. He chose to bless them through the covenant that he made with Abraham, which was pointing forward to the covenant of grace that was, even in this day, it was already in play, it was already enacted based upon the promise of what Christ would do, and it would be fully revealed by the person of Jesus in the new covenant, you know, the Son of God's first coming. Thinking in that realm, Revelation 19.16 says of Jesus, on his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of King and Lord of Lords. Now, it's true that Jesus is uniquely the King of all. All authority in heaven and on earth was given to him. Remember, we read that at the end of Matthew's gospel. The Son of God already had such prestige. Of course he did. The Son of God already had all authority in heaven and on earth, even before Matthew 28, 18. Absolutely he did. But it had to be stated like that at that point because the Son of God would now be eternally truly God and truly man. He was the God-man, you know, since his incarnation going on, and because he was faithful to the covenant of redemption, and he purchased salvation for those that were chosen him before the foundation of the world, that special role was given to God the Son there at the end of Matthew's gospel, the end of all the gospel accounts, in which Jesus, the God-man, would be the king of humanity, because he was true God and true man. But certainly, Jesus as just simply the Son of God who was eternal already had authority in heaven and on earth. He was already a king in that sense. He was developed in a new way or stated in a new way and declared to him for his glory there at the end of his life. his work for us as displayed in the gospel accounts. So when John writes what he does in Revelation 19, 16, when he says that he is the king of kings and the Lord of lords, he purposefully uses that phrase because it relates to an already known phrase for God. If you were to look back in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 10, 17, so before our account here in Judges, right before Joshua is Deuteronomy, it's the second giving of the law. Deuteronomy 10.17 says, So you see how John is calling us back by using the same language, right? In Revelation 19, he calls Jesus the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, but here in Deuteronomy, God is called the God of God and the Lord of Lords. It's very close. We're supposed to see that correlation at that point. And even before a passage here in Judges in which God is referred to as the Lord, as Adonai, even right before this, actually remember when Samson was finally humbled He called out to God, calling Him Adonai Yahweh. He was humbled by the Lord. He was blind. He said, O Lord God, hear me. He said, Adonai Yahweh. So clearly, they would have seen that God was their Lord at this point, and if God is their Lord, they also should have seen that God is their King. But it's not until, actually, until Isaiah that I could find it, at least, that God is plainly identified as their King. And this is a bit ironic, actually, too, because at this point with Isaiah, they had many human kings, right? By the time Isaiah was the prophet, I mean, we have Saul, David, Solomon, Absalom, all the way down through the line. Hezekiah, who was king in Isaiah's time? Uzziah, right? In the day of Uzziah, I saw the Lord standing upon a throne, high and lifted up. And so, there's been all these earthly kings, but finally, in Isaiah 43, 14 to 15, and some of those kings were good, most of them were terrible, right? In Isaiah 43, 14, 15, God writes to Isaiah, Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I send to Babylon and bring them all down as fugitives, even the Chaldeans and the ships in which they rejoice. I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. And there you have it. Yahweh is the Holy One, the Creator of Israel. Certainly He is. He built up that nation from one family, right? Abraham from Sarah. And he, Yahweh, is their king. Now Judges 17.6 and a few other places in Judges tells us that there was no king in Israel and that's not the reality. That's just what they thought. The Bible, so what you need to understand about when we read the Bible, the Bible never records any lies. It's simply, or it's not true, it does record lies. The Bible doesn't actually lie itself, it records lies. It just records what has happened and we have to understand it as we read it in its context. But the Bible's not specifically teaching you a lie, but it just records lies that did exist and it records lies that people believed. This error of theirs is them not recognizing God as their king is really just a symptom of their sin. It's a symptom of their lostness and it leads to all kinds of judgment and punishment and for them to fall into more and more kinds of sin. This error of theirs, it lacks wisdom. this lack of discernment on their end ends up leading to all sorts of depravity and shameful behavior, especially for one who is supposed to be in a right relationship with the Lord. And the same can be said for the New Covenant people of God as well. So, God is rightly, of course, the king of the whole universe, but many reject his lordship, obviously. You know, we could go to Where would you say is the most condensed area with people who don't love the Lord, if you had to guess? New York City, so we still keep it in the United States even. So it could be anywhere in the world. Who knows? There could be a little jungle where there's been no gospel at all. They have no idea who the true God is. God is still Lord over them. He is Lord and King over everybody, even if people don't bow to Him now and recognize His Lordship and His Kingship. But for us in the New Covenant, for people who are professing faith in Christ, we are affirming in that that we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Ephesians 2.19. And if we forget to recognize that God is king or neglect him as such, we too will suffer consequences. We will reap what we have sown. So it's important that we take note of what Israel is doing here because again, remember we've been talking about this before, There's obviously that true believers will heed the warnings of Scripture. People who aren't true believers won't heed the warnings of Scripture. They'll just let them roll off their back. They'll just ignore them. They won't pay attention to them. But true believers will hear the warnings of Scripture. So often Scripture speaks in such a way as if true believers could come under the wrath of God, but the reality is we know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because Jesus Christ took that condemnation upon himself. Nevertheless, we live in a world that is full of sin, and there is such a thing as church discipline, and so we have to speak in these sort of terms because not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, actually believes Christ is the Lord, right? That's what Jesus even taught in Matthew chapter seven. So let's consider the narrative to see what happens when a people that is in covenant with God mocks God and seemingly forgets who God is. Verse one, we're introduced to a man named Micah. He is an Ephraimite. We have some familiarity with them in this book, don't we? If we remember back to Jephthah's time as a judge, Ephraim was a people characterized by pride. You remember that? And their pride was a sure warning to us that if we act prideful as Ephraim, we'll also be humbled as Ephraim was humbled. And from the testimony of dear Micah here, we can't really say that there's been a change in the people of Ephraim. We're just kind of thrown into the store with him, and so Micah confesses his sin to his mother. That's good, right? Confessing your sin, that's a proper response. There are some details that are interesting here though, so look at verse 2. Verse 2, he goes to his mom to return to her missing money. He's in violation of the eighth commandment, right? Because he's stolen her money. And the Eighth Commandment forbids stealing. That's pretty simple. It's interesting, actually. He's stolen 1,100 pieces of silver. It's one-fifth of what was given to Delilah just in the previous chapter. I'm not sure if there's really a connection there or not, or if it's just a way for the author of the Judges to say that, look, again, this is a lot of money, just like he was doing with Samson and Delilah. Apparently, this is a wealthy Israelite. It's a lot of money to have. come up missing, but also, this would also be then a violation of the fifth commandment, right? He's not honoring his father and his mother by stealing from them. It's a double sin, as it were, to steal from our parents, isn't it? To take and hide from the people that God has given to you to care for you and to nurture you. That's actually even more than two commandments because we have to probably also assume that he's probably also broke the 10th commandment in this, right? He's seen all this money and he's coveting and he's like, oh, how many good things can I buy with this money? He probably thought of all the, you know, I don't know, what do they buy? Donkeys or whatever, you know, that you buy in Israel. I'm not exactly sure at that time. Land. Yeah. Whatever it was, he was coveting it and it caused him to steal it, stealing. I'm sure he probably also violated the ninth commandment as well in that too, because certainly we could probably ask or imagine his mom saying, you know, what happened to all the money? To which he probably replied, like, what money? Or, I don't know. You know, I'm sure he lied about his involvement with it as well. And so sin begets more sin, brothers and sisters. Don't forget that. Sin leads to more sin. Don't think that it's okay to get angry because that's all you're doing. It's attached to other things as well, and it's going to lead to other sins. Don't think that you can covet and then not fall into some other related sin as well, too. Down the road, sin begets sin. Listen to James 115. It says, then desire, evil desire that is, right? He's talking about evil, sinful desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. You guys, we cannot play around with sin. We don't entertain it like that. We must mortify it. We must put it to death because if we won't, it'll certainly lead to our death, either our physical death, and some sort of a tragic accident, which, you know, I mean, if you think to yourself here, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to drink. And so there's nothing, not sin to drink alcohol if you're 21. And I have to mention in this group that we're at, not a sin to drink alcohol, but it is a sin to be drunk. And so you get drunk and then you get in your vehicle and now you're driving drunk and then you blow through a stop sign because you're not thinking properly. Well, now you've killed someone. Now you've broken the sixth commandment as well too. And so again, sin begets sin. Sometimes it can be physically in that sense or sometimes it is simply It will be indicative of the reality that we're deceived about our salvation and are actually still spiritually dead. So, it's important to put sin to death. Romans 8, 13-14 says this, So again, Not that putting sin to death, forsaking sin and pursuing righteousness, not that those good works save us. They don't. Doing that doesn't save you. But we do them because we have been saved, because we have been declared righteous by Jesus. Christ's work and his righteousness applied to us through the faith that he gives us, that is what saves us. That and that alone. And the spirit that he has given to us, by the spirit that he's given to us, we are then to put to death the sin in our life that remains. People who aren't saved, Romans 8 says, they live according to the flesh. They indulge their sin. They let sin lead to more sin, without repenting, and it leads to death, as the Apostle says in Romans 8, and as James says in chapter 1 of his book too, they both said that sin leads to death. And again, it's either physical in the moment, in the sense of what we might call a tragic accident, or just through continued spiritual death. And then eternal death, because you have rejected the Lord and preferred your sin throughout your life, rather than repenting of your sin. So, continuing on in verse two, it appears that Micah's mom may have had her suspicions about her son and his character, because look at what Micah says. He says, the 1,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, about which you uttered a curse and also spoke it in my ear, behold, the silver is with me. I took it. Here it is. So, he says, You know, I heard you say this curse. So, I mean, parents, and you guys will all be parents someday, Lord willing, hopefully, you know, a rightly timed curse could be used to convict your children of the sin that you suspect they have committed. I've never tried that, you know. I can't imagine myself being like, Lord, curse the child who ate all the graham crackers and left the empty box in the cabinet. I couldn't imagine myself. No, that could be Silas, Oliver, Nora, or Maisie. It could be any of the four. Not Sophie, not yet. But nevertheless... Perhaps this is an astute mom. I mean, she seemed to have picked up on what was going on here. She had a suspicion that Micah was the one who did this, and so she cursed the thief that if he didn't return it, some curse, some punishment would come down upon him, and she set it in the range of Micah being able to hear it, and it worked. The money comes back. Micah owns it. This is good. He even said he took it, right? It's not like he said, oh, I found the money outside. He's not a good guy, I don't know. I'm just trying to give it as it comes. I'm not trying to justify him at all here, because you're going to see it gets even super weird from here. Mom says, blessed be my son by Yahweh, by the Lord, all caps. So far, so good. Well, we have no idea how long it was at all. But the reality is too, parents do rejoice when their children own their sin and repent. At least that's kind of what it looks like is happening. He is giving it back at least. Well, that's not our call always. But then look at verse 3. He gives her back all the money and she makes a vow to use restored silver to make a carved image and a metal image. Like what? What are you doing, lady? Now we're gonna violate the 4th commandment. Excuse me, the 2nd commandment, Exodus 24. It's clear there should be no graven images that are supposed to represent who God is. In the Old Covenant and in the New Covenant, God is not to be worshipped through the use or assistance of images or statues. Again, God is not mocked. To do so would be to mock God. But then, verse 4, She takes only 200 pieces of the silver, keeping 900 of the promised pieces for herself. And she gives 200 of those pieces to the silversmith to make these idols. And they're keeping these items for worship in Micah's house. And then, verse 5, we read that Micah also has a shrine, and he makes an ephod, and he has all these household gods, and he even ordains one of his own sons to be the priest, to be the person responsible for conducting worship And Ephod, if you don't remember what that is, it's a piece of clothing that priests would wear. There's a detailed explanation of it in Exodus 28 for Aaron and his sons. ornate piece of clothing made with gold, blue, purple, and scarlet thread. They would also cover them with precious jewels like diamonds and sapphires and rubies. And they would have, even on some of the jewels, they'd have the names of the tribes of Israel inscribed on them. No clue as to what this ephod is like. It's probably not exactly like that Exodus 28 version, but here's the point. Israel is in a really bad place. they have so forgotten Yahweh that in the span of five verses we see eight out of ten commandment violations. The whole first table of the law has been violated, all one through four, and now at least from what we read there hasn't been a violation of commandment six and seven, Micah hasn't murdered anyone or committed adultery that we can read of, though perhaps we can say he's spiritually done those things in the way that he has set up his son to be the priest. He's spiritually set him up to die and to be a spiritual adulterer at that point. But what Micah has done, by virtue of him being an example of Israel as a whole, is he has made a new religion. He has a false god. These household gods that are, there's many of them, metal images, wood images. And he's worshiping at a false place. He's worshiping at his house. It's in his home. He's supposed to go to the tabernacle to worship there. He's supposed to go to the synagogue in the local town when those would be formed, to the temple when that eventually would come soon after him, or when Solomon reigns. And then he also has a false priest. He's ordained his son as the priest. And you couldn't just, not just anybody could be a priest in Israel. So false god, false priest, false place of worship. It's a whole new religion that he has formed. And here's what happens, and please remember this. If you don't worship Yahweh, you will worship something else. It's just, it's just a reality. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about that. This is what that is telling us. You will make up rules and you will worship something because you were created to worship. God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden so that they would worship Him. It was a garden temple. They sinned. They, in a very real sense, worshiped themselves in doing so, and people ever since have offered worship to created things rather than the Creator. Even if it's an idol that just simply exists in your heart. something within you like an ideal, a desired life, or whatever, we end up worshiping something or someone else if it's not going to be the true God. And in doing so, we mock the true God, giving to something else what He alone deserves. And this is always selfish. Every single time. It is always selfish. In some way or another, it is a testimony to one's use and abuse of God, whether the true God or the false God you've created. Because even the false God you've created or the ideal that you've created, really, as hopefully you'll see here in just a moment, that's really about you. It's about you getting what you want. And hopefully you'll see that in a moment. Let's continue on because this is an especially bad case here in the life of Micah. We know that Micah has a false god, false place of worship, false priest, and we even know that Micah at least somewhat recognizes his foolishness because he knows that he has a false priest. Because in the next section, we're introduced to a Levite. So verse 7, there's a Levite who was stationed in the land of Judah, from the family of Judah, and he sojourned, meaning that he was traveling, looking for a place to stay. That's what sojourning is. And he stays in Ephraim where Micah was. Micah meets him and he finds out that he was a Levite. We get those details in 8 and 9. Then verse 10, Micah offers him a proposition to be his own personal priest and a father to him. And in doing so, Micah will take care of him. He'll give to him a salary, 10 pieces of silver, and I forget what he said, 10 pieces of silver a year, and then also his clothes, that he would need a suit of clothes for his living. I assume room and board, yeah, he's going to live there because that's where the worship is happening. He's staying with him. Micah wants him to be, quote, a father and a priest, end quote. Verse 11, the Levite likes the terms and they struck a deal, but he ends up being like a son to Micah rather than the father, we read. I take from that that the Levite then simply always ended up being obedient to Micah. He never led like a father would lead, right? He ends up being a son to him and just following the foolishness of Micah. And Micah is foolish. There's no discernment. Like, why did this Levite leave Bethlehem? Maybe he's a wicked Levite. I mean, clearly he doesn't seem to be a man of uprightness, a man of principle, right? Because if he was, He should have seen the false priests, the false place of worship, and the false gods, and he should have started flipping those tables over and calling down curses upon Micah if he didn't repent. If he was a man of principle, if he was a real priest in the house of Israel, he shouldn't have been okay with all those things. That's not what he does. This might be the closest thing that we have in the Old Testament to a person who is excommunicated from a church in our day and age and then simply just goes to a new church and then town over with no history and just start to worship him like there's no big deal. We have no idea what is up with this Levite. He doesn't seem to be a man of principle, that's for sure. There's no discernment on Micah's end and no good intentions either. Verse 12 simply reaffirms that the Levite agreed to the deal, but verse 13 shows us the real horror of this whole account. The whole thing from Micah has been about subjugating God, which truly is an impossible thing to do, yet people are so alienated from God because of their sin that they actually try to do it. Right, so to subjugate someone means to bring them under your domination and your control. Now, nobody could do that to God, right? Nobody's strong enough to do that, actually. But that's exactly what Micah thinks he's doing here. And he's, sadly, even doing it to Yahweh. He's not even delusional about who he's doing this here to. He is selfish, and he's using and abusing his God, and in this case, he seems to recognize that it's Yahweh even. Look at verse 13, this is how the chapter ends. It says, Now I know that the LORD, all caps, right, it's Yahweh, will prosper me because I have Levite as a priest. That's all it takes. I can have a Levite as my priest, and God will bless me. Oof. Major oof. It's bad. It's just so bad. Worshipping God for Micah is simply a means to an end. It's a means to blessing. That's what every false idol is as well. And it's how to turn the true God into a false idol as well, to simply make knowing and worshipping God as a means to get what you want. If a person has an ideal about their life, certain accomplishments or accolades, perhaps certain status or certain social media status, a certain amount of money in the bank, a neighborhood to live in, whatever the focus of their life becomes about getting one or a multiple of these things, if it's the focus of your life, that ends up turning into an idol, an idol of the heart. But whatever it is, it's ultimately put back on them. It's the ideal life that they want for themselves, through some sort of a feeling, or again, accomplishment, or status, whatever it is. People do it all the time. It's a so-called American dream. It's also the worship of any false religion, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, Muslims, Buddhists, all of them are practiced for what the practicer gets out of it, some sort of reward, some sort of pleasure that they get. And so for many professing Christians, such as this person Micah here, although he wouldn't have called himself a Christian, of course, right? They wouldn't know that term yet. Many people take the true faith and do the very same thing that he's doing with it for themselves as well. They treat it as a means to get what they want. It's what's known as the prosperity gospel, or the health and wealth gospel. It's the idea that says, I'll do these good things, like go to church, do good deeds, read my Bible, whatever it is, I'll give to the offering, and God, for me doing that, God will give to me good health, and he'll give me money. That's what it is. He'll give me a big house, he'll give me a dope car, because you know what, I'm going to a youth group all the time, I'm not hanging out with those guys, I'm going to the youth group instead, or whatever it is. It's paganism, plainly. It's an attempt to use God so that you get what you want. And friends, that is not what worship is about. You see that, I hope. We worship in the new covenant because God has regenerated us. He has caused us to be born again. He has made us born again. He's given to us faith and sealed us with his spirit. So at that point, we desire what he wants. We desire to please him and we worship him, not by creating our own standards like Micah did. We worship him in the way that he wants us to worship him. Because we trust him, we know that he's right. We worship in spirit and truth. We don't add to that, we don't take from it. Meaning we worship God in accord with what he has instructed by his true and trustworthy word. Why do we worship on Sundays? Why do we gather as a church on Sundays? Because it's what we see happening in the word. How come when we come to church we don't all have a time of dancing together to worship the Lord? Because it's not instructed to us in the word. We worship a spirit and truth. We gather with others who have been changed to hear from men who God appointed to preach his word. And we participate in prayer and the other means of grace, all according to what God has instructed. You see, Micah did need a priest. We all do. But we need a priest greater than a Levite. We need the one to whom the Levites pointed to. He also came from Bethlehem, and he's the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God. It's Jesus, our great high priest. He passed through the heavenly places so he could become our mediator and so that we can worship God with pure desires and a clean heart because of who Jesus is and what he has done for us. And so I would urge you guys to search your own hearts. We must make our calling and election sure. Are we worshiping God because he's worthy of worship? and praise him and thank him for mercy? Or are you worshiping God because you want the benefits that you believe come with worshiping God? And only you can know the difference. And the great thing about God is that if when we search our hearts, we find ourselves to be convicted for the things that we discover, We understand that even conviction is a gift from the Lord, from our merciful God, and he's the one who grants repentance as well. So repent if you need to. The ironic thing about those people who worship a false god, or some ideal that they think will give them pleasure, or even a true god for selfish motives, is that whatever they desire, even however good they think whatever it is that they are going to get for worshiping, and doing the things that they think God wants. It's not as good as what you receive for worshiping the true God as he commands. Even if this life is filled with trials, what's to come in heaven, in the new heavens and the new earth? It blows away any sort of happiness that could be enjoyed in this life, and people end up settling for their small plan, what they think they really want, instead of finding true joy and happiness in worshiping Jesus. It's ironic. and it's sad at the same time. So let's pray. Father in heaven, to see the state of the nation of Israel, this people that you entered into a covenant with, to be at such a low spot is truly humbling to us, Lord, because we know that so many in our day And this nation that we live in, which is very easy to be a Christian and which is very, there's no, there's not often a high cost that comes with it for so many people. So many churches make it easy to believe. And we see the same sort of thing happening here in our country when all across Western civilizations where people who profess to believe in you simply only seem to believe in you for the gifts that they might get for doing so. The Lord help us, God, to know that the true gift that we get in worshiping you is in fact you. That heaven wouldn't even be heaven if you weren't there. And so help us to desire no good apart from you, Lord. We pray that you would sanctify our hearts and that you remind us of how much it is that we need to depend upon you and how much it is that our only hope is the gospel. Christ's righteousness applied to us through faith, not our own good works at all. We know and we confess that to be true, Lord. to be all glory and we praise your holy name in jesus name we pray amen