"LEGO RELIGION"
Posted by: preacher30673 <preacher30673@...>
"LEGO Religion"
Judges 17
With LEGO's you pour out the contents of the container and "built your own" whatever. Anything your imagination could come up with was a possibility.
That's what we have here in Judges 17 — "Lego religion."
Doing that which is right in your own eyes is "LEGO RELIGION."
I. A CURSE FROM A MOTHER
In Judges 17, Micah's mother obviously forgot about the importance of her influence on her son.
As a result, Micah witnessed a couple of significant failures in his mother's life.
First of all, he witnessed:
A. Her loss of control
In verse 2, Micah comes to his mother and recounts an incident that had taken place in their home.
Some of his mother's money had come up missing. The evidence indicated that someone had stolen it, and in the heat of the moment Micah's mother cursed the thief.
We don't know exactly what she said, but it appears that she spoke a phrase of judgment or calamity upon the person who had wronged her.
Rather than keeping her cool and handling the situation with patience and trust in the providence of God, this mother "blew up," and cursed in the presence of her son.
This mother showed a loss of control to her son. Notice further that the failure he saw in her was not only her loss of control
B. Her lack of consistency
In verse 2, we find Micah's mother cursing. Then, in that same
verse, we find these words coming from her mouth: "Blessed be thou of the LORD, my son."
After cursing the one, who was anonymous to her at that point, who had stolen the silver; when she finds out it's her own son, she blesses him; she indulges his sin and shortcoming.
I am reminded of the words of James. James 3:10 says, "Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be."
Here was a woman with a Jekyll and Hyde tongue. She spoke like a saint with one breath and swore like a sailor with the next.
I. A CURSE FROM A MOTHER
II. A CONFESSION FROM A SON
See 2.
A. The reason of the confession.
Micah didn't confess his thievery out of guilt. He confessed it out of fear! I can imagine him
coming into the house when his mother finds the money missing, and he hears her cursing about it.
On discovering that she had been relieved of her treasure, Micah's mother became justly indignant. She scolded and called down curses on the one who had robbed her. This she did in her son's presence, and though she made no direct charge of the offence upon him, her conduct greatly disturbed his conscience.
Micah thinks, "Hey .. that's me she's talking about! I'm the one that's been cursed! I better confess this thing."
He obviously feared the consequences of her curse.
And so we read in verse 2 that Micah confessed! And the reason he confessed was out of fear! He said to his mother, "I took it."
B. The response to the confession.
Notice how this mother responded to her thievish son!
See verse 2.
You talk about a spoiled brat! Micah was a spoiled brat! Rather than disciplining him . . . she blessed him!
It's no wonder America is in trouble. We've raised a generations of Micah's and now we are paying for it!
If you love your children you will discipline them!
Children are like canoes .. they are guided better when paddled from the rear!
She congratulated him!
His mother did not chide or scold him for being a thief. She did not rebuke, but instead she blessed him.
Where is the discipline? Where is at least a word of correction? There is nothing but a blessing for this thief of a son.
I. A CURSE FROM A MOTHER
II. A CONFESSION FROM A SON
III. A COmpromise from both
We have a home described where the mother curses and the son steals. Yet, this same home is one where the name of God is spoken and the worship of God is mentioned.
Now let us read beginning in verse 3-6 and observed the compromise.
A. The mother provided the silver
She provided the silver that had been previously dedicated to God and had a graven image and a molded image formed!
The silver was dedicated to the Lord for the son to make a graven image. This was a total contradiction against the Word of God. This would be like a person saying, "The Lord wants me to steal so I'll give more to Him." It's a contradiction in values and Biblical principles.
"Wholly dedicated to the Lord." Now, let's follow the trail of this money. There were 11,000 pieces of silver dedicated to the Lord.
But, how much did she give? She only gives 200 pieces of silver to a silversmith.
There are a lot of people who "say" they have dedicated themselves and their resources to the Lord, but when you check them out they are more "talk" than "walk."
She says that she had dedicated this money to "the LORD," and the name she uses is "Jehovah," the covenant name of God. If you understand anything about Jehovah and His people, you know His first
command to them involved idolatry, and the prohibition against "graven" or carved images.
Isn't this amazing? This recovered silver was dedicated to the Lord, yet Micah and his mother saw nothing wrong with taking some of it and commissioning someone to make two idols—a graven image and an a molten image, one that was carved and the other that was cast.
Look at this family: thieves, liars, cursers, idolaters...and they considered themselves religious. We are living in a culture that is drowning in religion but it is not Christianity.
In addition, Micah secured an ephod (garment worn by the High Priest) and dedicated one of his own sons as a priest.
B. The SOn provided the SHRINE
(5)
And, if you were going to have some idols, you would need a place for them, so Micah built his own house for his gods. He had his own personal shrine for his gods
He turned away from the true living God and turned his house into a house of gods!
When a person gets away from God, one sin leads to another. It is a chain reaction. Micah not only had these gods, he had a whole collection.
Micah set up his own shrine of worship. He had his own self-made religion.
He set up his son as priest, and he was not qualified to be a priest. He was from the tribe of Ephraim, not Levi. He was not from Aaron's family.
Micah is an example of people today who claim to love God, but will not submit to Him and obey His Word. Some of these folks claim, "I'll go to heaven my own way; I'll believe and obey the parts of the Bible I want too; I'll worship the Lord however I want."
For a person to say he loves the Lord and reject His word is a contradiction. Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments."
Micah was religious. But it was the kind of religion that sends you straight to hell.
Look down to verse 6, "In
those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes."
The Israelites did not do what was wrong in their own eyes. They were convinced they were doing what was right. Their society was filled with violence, idolatry, gross immorality, pagan beliefs, yet, they thought they were right. Their value system, moral standards, religious doctrine and practices had lost touch with reality and absolute truth. They ignored God's direction and it lead to confusion, corrosion, and corruption.
Man became law unto himself. This was the problem. This is our problem today in America.
Now along comes a man with a priestly pedigree (7-13), so Micah offers him a job. Micah thought it would be nice to have a real priest, a Levite, instead of his son.
See verse 13. Micah assumes God will overlook his disobedience and bless him now because his priest is a Levite.
So blind and grossly partial Micah was in his judgment, that he thought one right circumstance would answer for all his significant errors, in making and worshipping images against God's express command, in worshipping God in a forbidden place, by a priest illegally appointed.
Micah is convinced that the Levite's presence will secure for him the favor of the Lord. If Micah happens to prosper, however, it won't be because he hired a pseudo
priest to endorse his idolatry. Micah thinks the Levite gives
him legitimacy; in reality, the Levite is nothing more than a good luck charm, and the Lord doesn't deal in luck.
God is in the business of blessing truth, not man-made religion.
The sad part of the story is that Micah now thinks he has the favor of God because a genuine levitical priest is serving as his private chaplain. Micah practiced a false religion and worshiped false gods (with Jehovah thrown in for good measure), and all the while he rested on the false confidence that God was blessing him! Little did he know that the day would come when his priest and his gods would be taken from him and nothing would be left of his religion (18:24).
Conclusion
Micah's confidence was just as false as his consecration was. They were both based on superstition, not on God's Word.
We can say Micah was utterly sincere – but totally wrong. Sincerity is nice, but gets you nowhere if it is not coupled with truth. A person who sincerely thinks they can swim across the Pacific Ocean will drown just as surely as the person who isn't as sincere.
You and I can do nothing to gain, merit, or obtain the favor of God. The favor of God comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.
What a small mark of evidence will suffice, for an ungodly man to think himself "almost a Christian." A short formal prayer offered up once a day; a chapter of the Bible read once a week; one attendance at church on the Lord's Day; a small coin given for religions purposes; those, together with a fair reputation for good morality, are held to be a sufficient proof that his name ought to go on the Christian list, though all the time he is a stranger to the power of Christianity, and has had no experience of having had his heart warmed with the constraining influence of the love of Christ.
IN HIS ETERNAL GRIP,
Pastor Jimmy Chapman
Victory Baptist Church
706-678-1855
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