Judges 17-18, How Low Can You Go?, part 1, Dr. John B. Carpenter

Judges chapter 17 and 18, in their entirety, hear the word of the Lord. 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 spoken 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 and household gods 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 could find a place.

And as he journeyed, 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 ten 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 was in the house of Micah.

Then Micah said, Now I know that the Lord will prosper me, because I have a Levite as a priest.

In those days there was no king in Israel. And in those days the tribe of the people of Dan was seeking for itself an inheritance to dwell in, for until then no inheritance among the tribes of Israel had fallen to them.

So the people of Dan sent five able men from the whole number of their tribe, from Zorah and from Eshtol, to spy out the land and to explore it.

And they said to them, Go and explore the land. And they came to the hill country of Ephraim, to the house of Micah, and lodged there.

When they were by the house of Micah, they recognized the voice of the young Levite, and they turned aside and said to him,

Who brought you here? What are you doing in this place? What is your business here? And he said to them,

This is how Micah dealt with me. He has hired me, and I have become his priest. And they said to him,

Inquire of God, please, that we may know whether the journey on which we are setting out will succeed.

And the priest said to them, Go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the

Lord. Then the five men departed and came to Laish and saw the people who were there, how they lived in security after the manner of the

Sidonians, quiet and unsuspecting, lacking nothing that is in the earth, possessing wealth, and how they were far from the

Sidonians and had no dealings with anyone. And when they came to their brothers at Zorah and Eshtol, their brothers said to them,

What do you report? And they said, Arise, let us go up against them, for we have seen the land, and behold, it is very good.

And will you do nothing? Do not be slow to go, to enter in and possess the land. As soon as you go, you will come to an unsuspecting people.

The land is spacious, for God has given it into your hands, a place where there is no lack of anything that is in the earth.

So 600 men of the tribe of Dan, armed with weapons of war, set out from Zorah and Eshtol and went up and encamped at Kiriath -Jerom in Judah.

On this account, that place is called Mahana -Dan to this day. Behold, it is west of Kiriath -Jerom.

And they passed on from there to the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of Micah. Then the five men who had gone to scout out the country of Laish said to their brothers,

Do you know that in these houses there are an ephod, household gods, a carved image and a metal image?

Now therefore consider what you will do. And they turned aside there and came to the house of the young Levite at the house of Micah and asked him about his welfare.

Now the 600 men of the Danites, armed with their weapons of war, stood by the entrance of the gate.

And the five men who had gone to scout out the land went up and entered and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, while the priest stood by the entrance of the gate with the 600 armed men with weapons of war.

And when they went into Micah's house and took the carved image, the ephod, the household gods, and the metal image, the priest said to them,

What are you doing? And they said to him, Keep quiet. Put your hand on your mouth and come with us and be to us a father and a priest.

Is it better for you to be priest of the house of one man or to be priest to a tribe and a clan in Israel?

And the priest's heart was glad. He took the ephod and the household gods and the carved image and went along with the people.

So they turned and departed, putting the little ones and the livestock and the goods in front of them.

And when they had gone a distance from the home of Micah, the men who were in the houses near Micah's house were called out and they overtook the people of Dan and they shouted to the people of Dan who turned around and said to Micah, What's the matter with you that you come with us with such a company?

And he said, You take my gods that I made and the priest and go away.

And what have I left? How then do you ask me? What's the matter with you? And the people of Dan said to him,

Do not let your voice be heard among us, lest angry fellows fall upon you and you lose your life and the lives of your household.

Then the people of Dan went their way and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him, he turned and went back to his home.

But the people of Dan took what Micah had made and the priest who belonged to him and they came to Laish, to a people quiet and unsuspecting, and struck them with the edge of the sword and burned the city with fire.

And there was no deliverer because it was far from Sidon and they had no dealings with anyone. It was in the valley that belongs to Beth Rehob and they rebuilt the city and lived in it and they named the city

Dan after the name of Dan, their ancestor, who was born to Israel. But the name of the city was

Laisheth the first. And the people of Dan set up the carved image for themselves and Jonathan the son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests to the tribe of the

Danites until the day of their captivity of the land. So they set up Micah's carved image that he made as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.

May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word. Are we in decline?

Are we degenerating so that morals and standards and behavior is getting worse?

I think if we went one by one here, if I just ask your opinion, we'd probably, a bit, we'd almost all of us say yes, just a feeling.

But in the wider culture, the question gets a divided answer. I had a professor at the University of Chicago, Robert Fogel, who had written a book in which he argued that we're improving, that America has gone through what he said were three great awakenings and is about to go through another, he said in 2000.

I wrote a paper in response to his book for the class in which I argued that he's wrong.

Okay, you take your academic future in your hands when you write a paper to a professor arguing that he's wrong.

I was arguing that we are declining and he called me into his office to discuss it and he plied me with questions and I didn't change his mind, but he did hire me the next year to be his teaching assistant.

And a couple of years later I published my paper entitled The Fourth Great Awakening or Apostasy. Is American evangelicalism cycling upwards or spiraling downwards?

My conclusion was B. Are we declining? William Bennett wrote in his book

The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, quote, in the past 30 years violent crime has increased 560%, illegitimate births 400%, there's been a tripling of the percentage of children living in single -parent homes, teenage suicide increased more than 200%.

That was written in 1994 and most of those factors have gotten worse since then, except for violent crime, which got better until just the last few years.

Teenage suicide rates have risen 29 % over the last decade after the 200 % increase before.

Births out of marriage have increased 40 % after the previous 400 % that Bennett decried.

But what's a sure sign of decline, I think, although harder to measure, is that what used to be disapproved of by most people is now often celebrated.

What was denounced as a sign of decline is now held up as a sign of progress.

Did you notice the term that Bennett used in that quote in 1994 for children out of wedlock?

Do you notice it? Hardly used anymore. Illegitimate. As we decline, we change the language to accept the signs of decline.

Are we declining? Of course, the question is who is we? Do we mean the country or do we mean the church?

Bennett and Professor Fogel, who was Jewish, was only interested in the country. My article was mostly interested in the church.

Professor Fogel said 20 years ago the Evangelical Church would lead the USA to new moral progress.

Interesting, a Jewish man arguing that the Evangelical Church is leading us into progress, just as it had, that he found, that it had led to the end of slavery.

Now, in our day, many American Christians feel the country is declining so badly, some even argue that what we need is a

Christian king, a constitutional monarchy, some strong man to set things right.

Here in Judges, we see the church in decline. Now since from Genesis, Israel is the church, the church literally is the gatherer.

That's what the word church means, gathering, it's the gathering of God's people. And here in Judges, God's people are gathered in Israel.

So this is church history. This is the last section of the book of Judges, starting in chapter 17, the last five chapters, in which before there's been this cycle of sin, then judgment and judge and deliverance and then rest and sin again.

And then the cycle starts all over. Now here at the end, that cycle comes crashing to a halt.

They've been spiraling downward like an airplane with its engine caught on fire. And now they crash.

The crash of Israel into degeneracy is presented in two parts, two parts like in Romans chapter 1, verses 18 to 34, that second half of chapter 1 of Romans, where the wrath of God is revealed and God gives people over to sin because of two things.

First, their man -made religion, their customer -driven worship, other words, idolatry.

And second, their sexual immorality. Two parts showing how low you can go.

The first part here in Judges with the story of Micah and the Danites and their perverted religion.

And the second part showing Benjamin is the new Sodom. Today, part one, how low can you go?

Part one is about how a tribe in Israel became idolatrous. It comes in two scenes. First, in chapter 17,

Micah and the Levites make. And second, the Danites take.

How low can you go? Stealing from your own mother is pretty low.

But that's how the story begins. An Ephraimite man named Micah, he lives with his mother and she had 1 ,100 pieces of silver.

It's a pretty good treasure. One day her silver is stolen and she pronounces a curse on the thief.

She didn't know who stole it, but she pronounces a curse on whoever stole my silver. Now, Micah is not what

Chinese would call filial because he stole from his own mother. That's pretty unfilial.

But he is superstitious enough that when she calls down a curse on whoever stole the silver, he's afraid and he confesses what he's done.

He confesses in verse two, the 1 ,100 pieces of silver that were taken from you, mom, about which you uttered the curse.

Notice how prominent that is. That curse is really sticking in his mind. And also spoke it, the curse in my ears.

So I heard it. See how obsessed he is by that curse. Behold, the silver is with me.

I took it. So he's not necessarily conscious stricken. He's more afraid. His mother said not, how dare you steal from your own mother?

What kind of son steals from his own mother? No, she said, blessed be my son by the

Lord. Now, some people think that sounds noble. She's forgiving. She's gracious.

But I think it more likely shows that she's just overly indulgent. That's why she's raised a son who's a thief.

She didn't hold him to account for probably for anything he's done. Here he steals from his own mother and she's not holding him to account.

One cause of decline is when sins and crimes aren't punished, beginning in the family, when children aren't disciplined.

When everyone is constantly affirmed, told how great you are. My darling could never do anything wrong.

Here Micah has stolen from his mother, been frightened into giving it back because of a curse, and he is, he's blessed.

When children are raised without consequences, with only praise and blessings, you know, told you just, my darling, everything you do is great.

Well, they decline. So when Micah restores the 1 ,100 pieces of silver to his mother, his mother not only blesses him for it, she effectively gives at least some of it back to him in the form of a silver statue.

But what makes it worse is she dresses up her indulgence as if it were a sacrifice to the

Lord. Notice, by the way, she's definitely talking about the Lord, all capital L -O -R -D,

Yahweh, in both verses 2 and 3. In verse 3, I dedicate the silver to the

Lord from my hand for my son. There's that indulgence again.

It's practically a gift to him as a reward for stealing and then being afraid of a curse.

He stole from his mother. He's just afraid of a curse because he's superstitious and he's rewarded for all that. Which is it, by the way?

You notice her statement? Is the silver being dedicated to the

Lord or is it for my son? Because she says both in the same sentence.

Now, it sounds good to say it's consecrated, set apart to the Lord. That sounds really good and religious.

But it's really for her son to add to his idol collection. The silver, supposedly dedicated to the

Lord, she's actually using the name of the Lord in vain instead of breaking the third commandment, is to make a carved image and a metal image, breaking the second commandment.

Now, therefore, I will restore... This is the mother speaking. Now, therefore, I will restore it to you.

Restore? Like the silver belongs to him. He deserves it, which he doesn't. The indulgent mother is doing her part to lead to the decline of Israel by raising a spoiled thief.

But the main point, the obvious breakdown, the sign of decline is that she believes that making an image, an idol, is pleasing to the

Lord. You know, notice that. She's not thinking, I'm making another god besides the Lord that the

Lord won't like, but I don't really care what the Lord thinks. No, she thinks she is pleasing the Lord by doing this, by making this image.

Like she's never even heard of the second commandment, but she probably has. She and her son are so confused, they're so detached from God's ways that they honestly think that the

Lord is worshiped with exactly what He prohibits in the Ten Commandments.

Now, we think we'd never do that. We're not declined so far as to fall into idolatry.

But over the last generation, about half of the membership of Eastern Orthodoxy in America is made up of outsiders who have converted into it, and many of them evangelicals.

So thousands, think about that, thousands, probably tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of evangelicals who had said that they believed the

Bible, they agreed, hey, it's fine to make an image of something that's on the earth beneath, mainly

Jesus and the other saints, and to bow to it, to do exactly what the second commandment says not to do.

How do people decline so far? Now, this isn't like murder, which you might do in a rage.

I doubt any of you will do it, but if you think of it, if you ever attempted to do it, it'd be something you'd do in a rage without thinking.

It's not adultery, it's because of lust that you know is wrong and you're not thinking carefully and you'll be ashamed of later.

This is something people do, like Micah and his mom, totally contrary to God's commands, but they think the

Lord is pleased with it. They imagine that this is a virtuous, this is a good, this is a religious thing to do, making these images.

It's for the Lord, they think. And when it comes to the Eastern Orthodox, they say, oh, this is the worship of the early church.

It isn't. They will feel very self -righteous about it. And if you, like many modern

American Christians, think that any way people worship God is good, any way, you know, as long as they're sincere, they mean well, like Micah and his mom mean well.

They claim to be giving to the Lord, it's good. God is pleased with it, he accepts it, and so should we.

It's better than a lot of other things they could be doing. Right, that's the way we think. And in this age of rampant pornography and immorality and selfishness, that if people are drawn to some religion, any kind of religion, it doesn't really matter, well, then that's good, no matter what it is.

If that's the way you think, and that's the way of thinking is very common in our culture, widespread, then you too could get drawn into some sect that says that they have the way to worship, that they preserved it from ancient times, which they really haven't, or they have a new revelation, even though it's totally contrary to what

God has revealed. God does not accept any kind of worship.

He expects worship to be done his way. If he's revealed something about worship, then he expects us to follow it.

If he's revealed like, like sing psalms, hymns, spiritual psalms, preach the word, maybe about who could be a pastor or who can't, we're supposed to follow.

If we don't, if we think, well, we'll just do our own thing, we have a, we have better ideas, we've improved.

This is modern times, we can do things differently. We have a worship style that we prefer. We think we know better than what the

Bible says, maybe on women in church leadership, that's a big issue these days. Then we show that we're arrogant.

We've made worship really about ourselves. And so we'll custom make it to what we think looks good.

Here the indulgent mother says to her thieving son, I'll consecrate to the Lord, which is really for you, to make a likeness of something that we bow down to.

And then we'll, whatever, we'll make up any excuse, whatever it is, just to explain why the second commandment doesn't apply.

Or maybe we'll just not think about it. Notice verse 4, she only gives 200 pieces of silver to make the idol.

She had 1 ,100 pieces of silver. What happened to the other 900? So she didn't even consecrate the whole thing to the

Lord, like she said, only two -elevenths of it. She didn't even keep her vow.

Another sign of decline, broken commitments, empty words.

But out of the 200 pieces of silver, she had an idol made for Micah to add to his shrine. And Micah then had an ephod made, which is kind of a sleeveless garment for the upper body, like a shirt or an apron over the front, decorated for priestly use.

Then we have things like embedded into jewels or whatever. It's one of the pieces for worship, for religion. He had other little gods made, statues, and ordained one of his own sons as priest, never mind that only sons of Aaron can be priest, like they didn't mind any of the commandments about worship.

So he set up his own little religion here to suit himself, worship his way, religious equivalent of Burger King, have it your way.

How did he think he could get away with that? Well, because in those days, in verse 6 says, there was no king in Israel.

That's the theme of these last five chapters of Judges. There was no king in Israel. There was no one to enforce the law.

So everyone did what was right in his own eyes. And everyone else said, you do you, whatever floats your boat,

Micah. Who am I to judge? Now, enter the Levite. Now, he's not named in chapter 17.

He's just a young man of Bethlehem. A good Levite should know, of course, that all this is wrong.

There's supposed to be school in the law and worship. So he should know all this is wrong. But this young Levite man was looking for a place to start a career.

And he came as he was looking for his job searching. And he came to Micah's area. And when

Micah met him, Micah probably thought something like, I know, probably thought deep in his mind. And I know that to have a really first -class mini temple like I'm trying to do,

I need a Levite. You know, my son, he's doing best he can. He's just not quite cut it. He's not a

Levite. So in verse 10, Micah advised the Levite to be his personal priest for his personal religion.

Notice that means that Micah knew enough about the law to know that Levites were supposed to handle the worship.

So once he was totally ignorant of it, he knew something of the law. It just never occurred to him that he actually had to follow it.

One of the commitments that such reformed churches like us, apart from other churches, is supposed to be that reformed churches are totally committed to doing worship

God's way. What in the horribly awkward term is called regulated principle of worship.

We don't look at worship like we're doing a favor for God. I think that's the way many modern American Christians look at worship.

God just really needs my worship and I'm doing him a favor to worship. And since he's a beggar, beggars can't be choosers,

I'll just give him whatever worship I feel like suits me and he'll be pleased with it. But no, that's not the way to view it.

We're not doing God a favor with our worship and he doesn't have to be pleased with whatever we do as long as we're sincere and we're talking about the

Lord. No, worship must, Jesus said, must be in spirit and truth. It must be God's way.

Now, sometimes we might disagree on the somewhat of the fine print on what that exactly is, something we can only sing psalms, but it doesn't say only psalms and sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

In 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul mentions they're singing in the spirit, which obviously isn't psalm singing, so they were doing something else sometimes anyway.

But I respect those wanting psalm singing because they're trying to worship God's way, not the newest fad or just the tradition they grew up with.

That's what a lot of people think. Others think women can be pastors, and that's the big issue now.

Even though 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 12 speaks clearly to that, it says, I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over men.

You can spend a lot of time arguing over what exactly that means, but it does so there's a difference between men and women in the leadership of the church.

People in churches with women pastors, they've read these scriptures before, but whatever, they make up excuses, or they just kind of ignore them, slide past them, think it's for that day, whatever excuse they make.

They think they know better. They think they have a way that works better, like Micah here with his man -made religion.

Micah makes the unnamed priest an offer in verse 10, stay with me and be to me a father and a priest, ignoring that the law says that only sons of Aaron, not just any

Levite, can be a priest. This Levite is not a son of Aaron, he's just a plain Levite. Interesting how the idea of being a priest is connected with being a spiritual father, be the father to me.

This early, even in the Old Testament, as though people who make up their own religion to suit themselves, they kind of all kind of end up thinking alike, don't they?

Micah names the pay and benefits. Here's his salary package, 10 pieces of silver a year. They still got 900 pieces of silver left over that his mother didn't sink into the idol, so they got enough.

And a suit of clothes because you want your priest looking good. And your living, which

I guess means room and board. The Levite thinks, that sounds pretty good. And the unnamed Levite took the offer, he moved in and seemed, by all outward appearances, to be like a son to Micah, even though he called him his father.

I don't know how that works. But Micah ordained him. The question is, who gave Micah the right to ordain a priest? Well, that thought never occurred to them.

They never asked that question of themselves because all of this isn't made up, it's just to look good, it's to make the customer feel good.

And that's what man -made religion is supposed to do. He declares in verse 13, Now I know, says

Micah speaking, Now I know, I'm certain, he says, that the Lord will prosper me.

That's the Lord again. Notice that, he really thinks that the Lord is going to prosper him for his idols and for his total violation of God's commands of worship.

He thinks he's got God on a leash now, he's got God under contract. The Lord is bound to send blessings his way. He says, because I have a

Levite as priest. God will totally ignore all his idols because he has a Levite as priest. How low can you go?

So low, so self -deceived, you make up your own religion and you imagine that God is now certain to bless you for it.

How low can you go? But if it's not just an odd family, like Micah's out there, doing their own thing, doing whatever is right in their own eyes, because there's no one with power to make them obey

God's law. What if an entire tribe of Israel also makes their own religion and is so deceived that they think it's a way to worship the

Lord? Scene one, chapter 17, was

Micah and the Levites make, they make their own religion. Scene two in chapter 18 is the

Danites take. Chapter 18 begins echoing chapter 17, verse 6.

In those days, there was no king in Israel. We can kind of fill in the rest ourselves by now. Human nature is such that when there is no authority using power to force people to keep the law, then they don't.

Things fall apart. Society declines. People go from bad to worse.

What used to be only the sins of rare individuals, like the spoiled Micah, takes over the whole society.

Here are the entire tribe of Israel. Now, here, the story of the decline of Israel into religious apostasy, before we get to the moral degeneracy of the next story, is the first mention of the quandary about whether Israel should have a king.

From here into 1 Samuel, we'll struggle with whether Israel should have a king.

Now, of the pluses and minuses of whether to have a king, Judges adds the law of nature that when there is no king, people do what is right in their own eyes.

And what is right in their own eyes, like here with Micah and now the Danites, may be very wrong in God's eyes.

In those days, when there was no king, the tribe of Dan hadn't been able to get their land.

Their land was supposed to be in central Israel, kind of west, near the coast, near Philistine territory, but they hadn't been able to overcome the

Canaanites, who were forced back up into the hills. It's kind of hard to farm up there in those hills. And by now, they had given up and were looking for easier places to conquer.

When there is no king in Israel, there's no one to put your enemies under your feet. And so, they send out some scouts, five of them, to look for a nice place.

They happened upon, the scouts did, happened upon Micah's house where they spend the night. When they were there, in verse 3, they recognized the voice of this, so far, unnamed

Levite, because it turns out he's a big name. They've heard him before.

They've peppered him with questions, who brought you here? What are you doing in this place?

As if it's an out of the way, kind of obscure place. What is your business here? It is business, after all.

All man -made religion is business. Maybe the business of keeping the family prosperous, or the business of keeping curses, and diseases, and disasters away, or the business of teaching the kids to be good and successful.

Or for the priest, the clergy, it's not personal, it's just business, strictly business.

Just a job, it pays the bills, keeps the roof over my head. Man -made religion isn't a church where we're the family of God, brothers and sisters, members of a body.

It's just a business. The unnamed, big -name priest explained that Micah hired him, 10 pieces of silver, a clothing allowance, and a parsonage, not bad.

And so, they asked him to inquire the Lord, probably using the urim and the thummim, or some kind of lots, or whatever, to see if they'll succeed on their journey, finding a good place for Dan.

He says that they will, and he sends them off with a blessing, go in peace. The journey on which you go is under the eye of the

Lord, in verse 6. So, when they found a suitable place, they remembered that priest.

He was right. They found a city in the far north of Israel, Laish, which is remote from everywhere else.

So, there's no allies nearby they can make alliances with to defend themselves. They're quiet and unsuspecting.

And so, they went back down to where the Danites lived in the hills, terrorized by the Philistines. You know, they have no more...

Samson is the last of the judges. He was from Dan. He had fought for them. They have no more superheroes like that fighting for them.

And they told their people, their tribe of Dan, they found the perfect place. It's a perfect place.

Spacious, lacks no good thing, plenty of water, nice cultivated fields. They compel them, do not be slow to go, to enter in and possess the land.

God has given it into your hands, in verse 10. So, Dan listened to the scouts, and they all pick up, and they head north, far north of Israel, with 600 troops armed before them on their way.

They retraced the route of the scouts, leaving one city along the way and named after them on the way.

So, generations later, people were saying, this is where Dan camped on their way up north. And so, they happened on their journey upon Micah's house.

Now, the five scouts saw the rest of Dan in verse 14. Do you know that in these houses, there are an ephod, household gods, and a carved image, and a metal image?

Think about what we should do about that. And we have these 600 armed men. Now, if they were zealous law -keeping

Israelites, they'd know that such things should not be among God's people. They'd go in there, they'd destroy those idols, and give

Micah a lesson on how to worship God. But instead, they turned in, they met the young unnamed

Levite, and asked him, you know, about, what are you doing here? How's it going? Maybe he'd like a promotion, a bigger salary, a higher profile, more clients.

Maybe they made it sound spiritual. We feel that your gifts are not being fully utilized here.

We have a ministry that gives you more opportunities to reach more people, something like that.

The 600 Danite troops stood outside the house, it says right outside the gate, their weapons at the ready, probably for intimidation because they're not nearing war, there's no reason they should have their weapons with them, making quite an impression.

And the five scouts went in and they took the carved image made with 200 pieces of silver that Micah's mother said she consecrated to the

Lord, the ephod and the other so -called gods. The Levites stood back there with the 600 troops for the third time, those three times he mentions that the 600 are armed for war.

In verse 17, even though they aren't anywhere near the battle yet, they're there for intimidating. The unnamed priest,

Levite, asked, you know, what are you doing? They start to bring out his religious stuff.

And they gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. They responded to verse 19, keep quiet, put your hand over your mouth, and come with us and be to us a father and a priest.

Exactly what Micah had said to him earlier, father and a priest. But, of course, it's fake. What kind of father leaves his children because he gets a better offer somewhere else?

Here's their offer. Is it better for you to be a priest of one man, an embarrassingly tiny ministry, or to be a priest for a tribe and a clan in Israel to a megachurch with a video ministry?

It's an easy choice when the priest is all about cash or the profile. The priest's heart was glad in verse 20.

He liked this. This is an easy choice for him. He took the ephod and the household gods and the carpentry. In other words, he's helping them take out the stuff.

Now, the idol, he said, hasta la vista, Micah. Now, Dan continued his trek to the far north with their children and the livestock and everything in front this time.

There are troops in the rear, in verse 21, in case Micah came after them for his stuff. And incredibly,

Micah did. He got together a posse with his neighbors, the local neighborhood watch, and came after Dan, probably just a handful of guys.

And when they got near, in verse 23, they shouted after them, probably demanding their religious paraphernalia back.

You know, give us our stuff back. And the men of Dan replied, you know, what's the matter with you?

Something really has to be a matter with Micah that he comes chasing after 600 heavily armed soldiers with just his gang of friends from the neighborhood to get his fake religious stuff back, which a lot of that stuff he stole himself from his own mother.

But Micah replies in verse 24, you take the gods that I made, you're taking my self -made religion.

Then, how then do you ask me? What's the matter with you? You've left me nothing.

Except, of course, the 900 pieces of silver that his mother still has. Never mind that. He sounds like he was raised by an indulgent mother who'd never taught him.

There are consequences, like what could happen to you if you yell at 600 heavily armed troops.

The Danites say back in verse 25, they have a little more self -control, a little more sense, I think.

Do not let your voice be heard among us. Otherwise, be quiet, lest angry fellows fall upon you.

Otherwise, we lose our temper and you lose your life and the lives of your household. Micah was indignant that the silver that he originally stole is now stolen from him, but then he saw that they were too strong for him.

And when there is no king, then might makes right. Notice verse 27 says the

Danites take what Micah had made. They take what's made, not

God's. They took a priest who could be bought. Then they take a city that could not defend itself.

They didn't have the faith or the courage to take the land that had been originally allotted to them. And so they went for easy pickings in the far north of Israel.

Dan becomes the northern boundary of Israel. You talk about Dan, that's the edge, the far northern edge of Israel. So nine times in the

Old Testament, when they want to speak of all Israel, they'll say from Dan to Beersheba in the far south.

In 1728, a surveyor, William Byrd II, was mapping the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina and came upon a river, which because it was along the northern most boundary of North Carolina, he named, can you guess, the

Dan. That's how the Dan River and Danville got his name. Speaking of names, finally at the end in verses 30 and 31, we learn the name of that Levite man that was so recognizable to the

Danites. They recognized his voice, the illegal priest for hire. Dan sets up Micah's stolen idol, made from stolen silver, with that Levite and his descendants as priests.

It's their religious center until the northern kingdom of Israel is destroyed in 721

BC, about 500 years later. So that's how long this shrine lasted in Dan.

All through the books of Kings, every northern king is condemned for the illegal shrines in Bethel in the south and Dan in the north.

Far from God being pleased with any kind of worship, 1 Kings 12, verse 30 says, this thing became a sin.

Man -made worship is a sin that God judges and destroys people for.

And who presided over this sin? For generations. Jonathan, the son of Gershom, son of Moses, Moses's own family, his grandson, and then his descendants, preside over this sin.

How low can you go? Moses's family leads

Israel, the church, into sin that eventually leads to their captivity. That's how low you can go without a king.

Of course, the problem with human kings, as we'll see later in the history of Israel, is that they, like Moses's descendants, lead us into sin.

What we need, what really we cannot do without, is for God Himself to be our king, to become man in the flesh,

God in the flesh, and to rule over us. We need for His kingdom to come. We need for us to confess to Jesus, like Nathanael in John chapter 1, you are the king of Israel.

Jesus is our king. And these days, now, there is a king in Israel.

The question is, do you confess Him as your king?