“Religious Decay” – FBC Morning Light (3/22/2024)

Well, good Friday morning to you. I hope you've had a good week and looking forward to a good weekend. Of course, this coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, and we're rapidly approaching the coming Easter Sunday season, and looking forward to that time as we do every year.

But today, we're focusing in the Old Testament, reading in the book of Judges. We'll read chapters 4 and 5, and then jump all the way to chapters 17 and 18. There's a reason for that. Chapters 17 and 18 summarize one kind of corruption, or illustrate, I should say, illustrate one kind of corruption that dominates the period of the Judges, and then chapters 19 through 21 illustrate another kind of corruption.

So today, we're going to read in chapters 17 and 18 just how corrupt the land had become spiritually, and then next week we'll be reading 19 through 21 that illustrate how badly corrupt the land had become morally.

But today, chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 and 5 is a story of Deborah and Barak doing battle against Sisera and his forces, and it's a highly dramatic story. Deborah comes to Barak and says, you know, you're to go fight against them, and Barak says, I'll only go if you go.

Deborah's a prophetess, and he considers her to be almost kind of like a good luck charm. If you go along, then okay, I'll go. Or maybe he's looking at that as a test, like, just how sure are you of this prophecy?

Either way, Deborah says, okay, I'll go, but, you know, a woman's going to get the glory for this. And, you know, Barak and his forces end up routing Sisera and his forces and defeating them, but it's a woman, Jael, that actually kills Sisera, and it's a pretty gruesome account.

But here's what I want us to see. So you have these couple of women who play a key role in the defeat of Sisera and his army, but the key verse in that whole thing is in verse 23 of chapter 4. It says, On that day God subdued Jabin, king of Canaan, in the presence of the children of Israel.

It is God who subdued Jabin, the king of Canaan. Sisera was his military commander. God did it. So he used these women, he used Deborah as a prophetess to prophesy and tell Barak to go do it, and he used Jael to take that hammer and the nail and to dispatch Sisera for eternity, but it was God who subdued.

It's God who gives the victory, that's an important thing. And then when you jump to chapters 17 and 18, you have this story of Micah and a Levite that comes to Micah's house, and it's really a tale of religious spiritual corruption.

Here is a Levite who's supposed to be adhering to the proper worship of Yahweh, the one true God. And he comes to this man's house, the man has made himself a shrine out of silver, he stole it from his mom, and then he finally, you know, he feels guilty about it, so he gives the silver back.

His mom makes an idol, sets up this idol, and you know, Micah is kind of worshiping this idol, has made his son a priest before him, and then the Levite shows up and he's just trying to sojourn, looking for a place to stay.

Micah brings him in and says, oh, be a priest for me. He says, okay, I will. He's a household priest, he gets paid for it. And then along comes the tribe of Dan, and they're looking for other territory, they realize that this Levite is there, they eventually convince him to leave Micah and go with them.

They'll pay him better, and be a priest for the whole tribe. The whole thing smacks of idolatry, superstition, greed, mercenary priesthood, it's just spiritually corrupt through and through. And this illustrates what happens when the fidelity to God's Word, and fidelity to the worship of the one true God, as he is in the ways that he has prescribed, and we go off on tangents, wanting to worship him in the way that we want to worship him, and wanting to serve other quote-unquote gods.

We wouldn't call them that, but they become these things that become idols to us. This is just, this is what happens. This is what happens. This is why when you look across the landscape of religion in the United States, you see all of this.

You see superstition, you see greed, you see mercenary priests, pastors, so-called televangelists, and so on. You see idolatry. Why? Why? Because the proper worship of the one true God, according to the Word that he has given to us, has been compromised, if not altogether abandoned.

Let this be a warning. Let's be faithful to our God and to the worship of him. So we do pray that you would help us to be faithful to you, we would worship you in spirit and in truth, and avoid this spiritual corruption that is illustrated in the book of Judges, we pray.

In Jesus' name, Amen. All right, well I hope you have a good rest of your Friday, a wonderful weekend. Gather with God's people in the Lord's house on Sunday. We look forward to that. Amen. Have a good day.