Judges 17 Bible Study / Podcast

Let's open up to the book of Judges chapter 17. Judges chapter 17 is titled

Micah's Idolatry. So this might seem like an odd story, but it's actually very relevant.

Because when God gives man the truth, or the true faith, there's always someone who comes along and tries to corrupt it.

Or in this case, they come along, Micah does, and he starts his own competing religion.

So in Israel, God instituted the tabernacle and the true priesthood.

But this man, Micah, what does he do? He makes his own shrine. He ordains his own priest.

And then it grows from his household to an entire tribe. The entire tribe of Dan will adopt this counterfeit religion.

And it really helps to corrupt a significant part of the nation. So that's kind of what the book of Judges is about from chapter 17 to the rest of the, or to the end of the book.

So as the scripture says, as I often say, there's nothing new under the sun.

So today we have the church of Jesus Christ. We have the true gospel ministry, but you know, same thing happens.

There are Micah's today who come along, people who come along and they set up maybe their own home gathering.

They try to start their own new religion, their own new take on Christianity.

And thankfully, most of the time it doesn't go anywhere, but you have to realize every false teacher is a potential cult leader.

So most of the time it doesn't work. It doesn't go anywhere. But in Micah's case, it did grow and it turned into an entire false religion that the tribe of Dan adopted.

Same thing today. There's false teachers. They start their own gathering, their own church, whatever.

And most of the time, thankfully it doesn't succeed, but every once in a while it will take off.

That's where we got things like Mormonism and Jehovah's witnesses. So now today there's all this confusion out there because there are competing versions of Christianity or different religions, a different take on who

Jesus was and what he came to do, different paths to God. That's what people are and it just causes mass confusion within Christendom.

True believers should know better. If you have the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will guide you into the truth. I do believe that, but there's just a lot of false movements out there and we have to be careful.

But this happened in Israel and it happens here in Judges chapter 17 with this man,

Micah. They have the true Old Testament faith, but Micah sets up his own house church, if you will, his own shrine with his own holy items and his own priest.

He kind of self -ordains his own son to be a priest. And then a better guy comes along, so he becomes the priest.

And yeah, it's kind of a strange story, but I think you'll see it is relevant, number one.

And number two, there are some things we we can draw from it to learn from. Okay, let's begin reading.

We'll read the whole chapter. It's only 13 verses. Judges chapter 17, starting in verse one.

Now there was a man from the mountains of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, the 1100 shekels of silver that were taken from you and on which you put a curse, even saying it in my ears, here is the silver with me.

I took it. And his mother said, may you be blessed by the

Lord, my son. So when he had returned the 1100 shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said,

I had wholly dedicated the silver from my hand to the Lord for my son to make a carved image and a molded image.

Now, therefore, I will return it to you. Thus he returned the silver to his mother.

Then his mother took 200 shekels of silver and gave them to the silversmith. And he made it into a carved image and a molded image.

And they were in the house of Micah. The man Micah had a and made an ephod and household idols.

And he consecrated 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 from Bethlehem in Judah of the family of Judah.

He was a Levite and was staying there. The man departed from the city of Bethlehem in Judah to stay wherever he could find a place.

Then he came to the mountains of Ephraim to the house of Micah as he journeyed.

And Micah said to him, where do you come from? I am a

Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I am on my way to find a place to stay. Dwell with me and be a father and a priest to me, and I will give you 10 shekels of silver per year, a suit of clothes, and your sustenance.

So the Levite went in. Then the Levite was content to dwell with the man, and the young man became like one of his sons to him.

So Micah consecrated the Levite, and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah.

Then Micah said, now I know that the Lord will be good to me since I have a

Levite as priest. Okay, so that's chapter 17 of the book of Judges.

And remember, chapter 17 is right off the heels of the story of Samson. And that's important because there's a few tie -ins.

First of all, Samson was from the tribe of Dan. And it's the tribe of Dan that's going to adopt this idolatrous religion that starts in Micah's house.

So number one thing we learn, when the judge dies, when the man of God dies, things quickly go downhill.

In verse six, we see those familiar words, right? That gets repeated in the book of Judges.

In those days, there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Now, although the judges were not kings, when

Israel had a judge, it helped to restrain evil. But when nobody was in charge, people just did whatever they want.

And there really were not very many consequences. The second tie -in to the story of Samson, and this is really interesting.

Every once in a while, you make a discovery in scripture and it's exciting.

And I tried to look at some commentaries to see, is anyone else talking about this?

And I couldn't find much. But remember with the story of Samson, 1 ,100 pieces of silver, that is the amount the

Philistine princes agreed to pay Delilah for her to betray

Samson. So that's Judges 16. Delilah gets 1 ,100 pieces of silver from all these

Philistine princes. And now here in Judges 17, Micah's mother has exactly that much money, 1 ,100 pieces of silver and Micah steals it from her.

So that would cause me to think that Micah's mother is in fact,

Delilah. Now the Bible doesn't say that. And the commentaries I read, they didn't address this either.

One of them said probably not because the timeline wouldn't, it wouldn't line up.

But to me, to me, it looks on the surface that it's at least, at the very least, a possibility that Micah is the son of Delilah.

Which then makes you wonder, is Samson Micah's father? The name

Micah means who is like the Lord, which would make sense if Delilah's Philistine temple was destroyed by Samson and his

God, it would make sense to name their son, who was like the

Lord. Now, while this is speculation, I have to admit it is an interesting possibility, but that's my view.

As far as I can tell, I believe this woman, Micah's mother is in fact, Delilah.

I mean, the 1 ,100 pieces of silver is too big of a coincidence for me.

So Micah, she has, remember she received payments, Delilah did. She received what, five different payments of 1 ,100 pieces of silver, probably delivered to her separately.

So it looks like Micah steals one of these payments, probably in a box or a bag.

He takes 1 ,100 pieces of silver, and then he returns it to his mother. And they're obviously at odds with each other, and then they sort of make up.

And the two of them, they agree to use the silver to build an idol, a graven image.

Verse three says his mother, Micah's mother, she said, I had wholly dedicated the silver from my hand to the

Lord, all capital letters. That's, I've dedicated the silver to Jehovah for my son to make a carved image and a molded image.

Now, therefore I will return it to you. So you can see that they're blending the worship of Jehovah with idolatry.

Does anyone do that today? Does anyone take graven images and incorporate it into the worship of God?

Yeah. So like I said, this is relevant because people still do this today. But what they're doing,

Micah and his mother, by making a graven image, this is a clear violation of the second commandment.

God gave to Moses the 10 commandments. The second commandment said, you shall make no graven image.

You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. Now, Micah's mother, she might not have been an

Israelite. If she is Delilah, then she's a Philistine, right? And Micah would be half

Israelite, half Philistine. But either way, Israelites did this kind of thing, going back to the golden calf.

When Israel came out of Egypt, Moses went up on the Mount. And while he was up there 40 days and 40 nights, and people thought he was never coming back, what did they decide to do?

They decided to make a golden calf. And they worshiped it. And the golden calf, it blended the worship of Jehovah with idolatry.

Because the Israelites said about the golden calf, look, this is your God, oh Israel, who led you out of Egypt.

And then later on, you remember Solomon, he brought idols into the temple because as many foreign wives led his heart away from the

Lord. The point is the worship of Jehovah mixed with idols, this has happened before and it's still happening today.

What is this? It's a blending of truth and error. My friends, this is

Satan's most effective strategy, blending the truth with error.

I would argue this is what Roman Catholicism is. It's blending truth and error.

They have a correct view of the Trinity. They have a correct view of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They have the scriptures.

There's so much truth within the Roman church, but it's tainted by all the man -made tradition.

And they have extra books they've added to the Bible. And of course in their churches, and why that's a fair comparison, they have graven images.

They have statues in their churches where people bow down to statues of Mary and pray to Mary and bow down to the saints, statues and graven images of the saints and pray to them.

So that's what's happening here in the book of Judges chapter 17. They're worshiping

Jehovah and yet they're doing it with these idols. And you know, in fairness, as I mentioned,

Catholicism, even within Bible -believing Christianity, even within evangelicalism, you still get these offshoots where someone is evangelical, they're accepted as an evangelical, but then they kind of go off course and they form a cult.

Or they start teaching false doctrine. I think of Rob Bell years ago.

He was accepted within mainstream evangelicalism, and then he kind of went off and did his own things.

But that's happened many, many times. Again, nothing new under the sun. You have the truth in Old Testament Israel, Micah decides to corrupt it with his own version of the

Old Testament faith. And people are still doing that today. So the worship, true worship of God in Israel, at this point, where would you find the true worship of the

Lord? You would find it in Shiloh. Shiloh is where the tabernacle was located.

That is where the true worship of God was. But now you have this perversion of the faith being created in Micah's household.

Now that probably doesn't mean when it says it's in Micah's house, that probably doesn't mean that, you know, it's just going on in his living room with two or three family members.

Clearly, his family has money. If Delilah is his mother, then they're a prominent family.

I mean, his dad was the judge. So they have money to burn. Like literally, they take 1100 pieces of silver and melt it down and waste it on an idol.

So they're probably being a wealthy, prominent family. They probably have something more like an estate or they're leading, you know, they're a leading family in running like an entire village.

There's some places in the country you go and there's a particular family that they're kind of in charge of the town.

That's probably what's going on here. It's not just Micah and his two family members in his house.

Literally, it's probably a whole complex, a whole village that's getting involved in this idolatry.

So it's bigger than it looks, I think. Verse five, it says, the man Micah had a shrine and made an ephod in household idols.

The word would be terrafim. They're just little images that represent different gods.

Sometimes they're used for divination and contacting the spiritual realm.

So this is not good. So Micah had a shrine and what did he do? He ordained one of his sons to become his priest.

So compared to the true worship of Jehovah, this is a counterfeit system. The high priest of the

Lord had an ephod. So what does Micah do? He makes an ephod. The high priest of the

Lord had a true ordination. Micah has a fake ordination for his son, who he makes a priest.

And that's just kind of odd, isn't it? For a man to ordain his son as his priest,

I don't know. It's not what you would expect. Usually it's the head of the household that would be the priest.

Before the Levitical priesthood, it was generally accepted that it was the patriarch or the man of the house that would be the priest, not the child.

Anyways, it doesn't say that Micah claimed that God spoke to him or anything like that, but you sort of figure he probably told people that.

It's almost like Micah views himself as the new version of Moses. And of course, Moses had his brother as the priest.

The big difference is that Moses actually did receive a word from God. Moses actually was ordained of God and Aaron was ordained of God.

And Moses and Aaron proved it by the parting of the Red Sea, the plagues upon Egypt, and all the rest.

You see, you should never just believe somebody. The purpose of miracles in the

Bible is to authenticate the miracle worker. So Moses, yeah, Moses set up a system of religion, but Moses proved that he was a man sent by God by working miracles.

So if somebody comes along today, let's say, and they start their own house church, they start their own religion, they're claiming to receive revelations from God, whatever they're doing, they're self -ordaining, you know, ordaining themselves and their friends.

Even if they get a following, you should never just believe somebody, but that's what, that's kind of the world we live in.

If you have enough followers, if you have enough money, if you're famous, people think, no, maybe there's something to it wrong.

What's the true test. The true test is the scripture. If what they're doing is opposed to the doctrine found in God's word, it's not of God.

You see, this is a very simple thing to figure out. If a religion doesn't line up with the

Bible, it is not of God. You know, that goes back to Catholicism.

It doesn't line up with the Bible. This religion here that Micah is creating, remember they're from the mountains of Ephraim.

He ordains his son as a priest. Well, a priest had to be a

Levite, but not just a Levite. A priest had to be a descendant of Aaron. These people are not even from the tribe of Levi, nevermind descendants of Aaron.

So by ordaining his son as a priest, Micah is contradicting Bible doctrine.

So we know it's not of God because he's contradicting the word of God. It's that simple.

So what's Micah doing? Micah is basically making it up as he goes along. This is what false teachers do.

They disregard the Bible or they twist the Bible, but they generally make things up as they go along.

And that's how I see Micah. He's really acting as a false teacher.

And even though he isn't the one acting as priest, he's the one orchestrating all of this.

But even still, among those watching, it has to look kind of bad that the only guy you can find to ordain is your own son.

Because I think everybody knew, even people in his family, even people in the town, everybody knew that the priestly tribe was the tribe of Levi.

So that's why Micah does what he does next. In verse 7, what happens? A Levite shows up into town.

And Micah interprets this, well, he must be sent by God then. Verse 7 says,

Now there was a young man from Bethlehem in Judah of the family of Judah. He was a Levite and was staying there.

The man departed from the city of Bethlehem in Judah to stay wherever he could find a place.

And then he came to the mountains of Ephraim to the house of Micah as he journeyed. And Micah said to him,

Where do you come from? So he said to him, I am a Levite from Bethlehem in Judah, and I'm on my way to find a place to stay.

So Micah, he meets this man who just so happens to be a

Levite. Micah is busy working to build his new religion. So this just seems like a great opportunity.

So what does Micah do? He wants to hire the Levite. Okay, my son as priest, that's not a great situation.

This guy, this guy will really get my new religion off the ground. I'll have my own

Levite as priest. So Micah offers the Levite a job. He offers him a salary.

He offers him food. He offers him clothing and a place to stay. And his position would be a position of honor among Micah and his household, which again could be like a whole village.

But this statement in verse 10 seems strange. Micah says to the

Levite, dwell with me and be a father to me and a priest to me.

So be a priest and by being a priest you will be a father.

Okay, so the, I'm just saying the comparisons to Catholicism, they sort of, the applications sort of write themselves here.

But why would Micah, and this is a younger man, why would he, let's say, let's say

Micah is 50 years old and this man is 20. Micah is going to call him father.

I mean, it's just an odd thing. One commentator says this, the title father here is a religious title.

It's the same as calling someone a Pope. The word Pope means

Papa or father. Okay, so that's the commentator saying that, not me, but that's what he's calling this lofty religious title.

So Micah is going to clothe this man with an elaborate religious, you know, vestments, you know, he has religious looking clothing and ephod.

He'll be surrounded by graven images and what he lacks in salary, because 10 shekels of silver per year isn't really that much, but what he lacks in the pay,

Micah makes up for it with these lofty religious titles like father.

Of course, in the New Testament, what did Jesus Christ himself teach? Jesus in Matthew 23,

Jesus forbids such religious titles. Jesus said, but you do not be called rabbi for one is your teacher, the

Christ, and you are all brethren. Do not call anyone on earth, your father for one is your father.

He who is in heaven. So it's, it's just odd that father would be used as a religious title.

Of course, when Jesus says, don't do it, but even back then for him to call him father, the whole thing, the whole thing is just weird.

It's perverse. It's corrupt. So the Levite, and it's going to get worse in the next chapter, it gets a lot worse.

So the Levite, what does he do? He agrees to all of it. And he says in verse 11, or it says in verse 11, the young man became like one of Micah's sons.

Verse 12. So Micah consecrated the Levite and the young man became his priest and lived in the house of Micah.

Then Micah said, now I know that the Lord will be good to me since I have a

Levite as priest. What is that? It's superstition.

Yeah. I have a Levite in my house. This is going to bring me good luck. That's what he's saying by having a

Levite in the house. That's going to bring me blessings. Even though what he's doing is directly contradicting the word of God.

So by saying, having a Levite in the house will bring me the blessing of God. That's not the way it works any more than having a cross around your neck is going to bring you good luck.

Or having a medal of a Saint, you know, St. Christopher hanging in your car will protect you from misfortune.

That's not how it works at all. And let me just say, if there's somebody listening who maybe has a medal of St.

Christopher or something like that, or you do go to a church where they have graven images and you bow and pray to me, you know,

I'm not against you. I am for you. I love you enough to tell you that that is against the commandments of God.

I know it potentially could offend somebody, but I want you to be blessed. I want people to be blessed by God.

And you cannot be blessed by God when you are openly disobeying his commandments.

Everything Micah is doing, he's doing it in the name of God. But the book of Judges is presenting this as it's a corruption, it's false religion.

And Micah is going to pay a price in the next chapter. You know, we need to love the truth above all.

And we need to love other people. And when we love others, we're willing to tell them the truth.

And we need to tell them the truth in love. And that's what I'm trying to do this morning.

Maybe you're part of a cult, maybe a home gathering where the guy teaching is clearly at odds with biblical

Christianity. You need to get out of there for the sake of your soul. And I can give examples of, of situations where that's happening.

And I won't do that on the radio, but my friends, people are getting caught up in false religion.

They're denying the commandments of God, denying the gospel. And we need to love people enough to confront that and to show them we care by plucking them out of the fire, so to speak.

But this superstitious, we have a Levite now, so we're going to be blessed by God, not the way it works.

Now we also have to look at this situation from the other man's perspective. Let's just say for a moment,

Micah really didn't know any better. I don't think that's true, but let's just say for a moment, let's say

Micah is totally clueless and he doesn't even know that what he's doing opposes the word of God.

Well, the Levite should have known better. Not the Levite did know better.

And yet for this cushy position, the Levite for this religious title, for food and a place to stay, what is he doing?

He's prostituting himself in this idolatrous endeavor. Matthew Henry writes this about the situation.

Micah thought that it was a sign of God's favor to him and his images that a

Levite should come to his door. Thus, those who please themselves with their own delusions, if providence unexpectedly brings anything to their hands that furthers them in their evil way, they are apt to think that God is pleased with them.

This is an important thing to remember. Just because things seem to be going well for a person, that doesn't mean they have the blessing of God.

A pretty basic principle in scripture that, you know, God's people oftentimes are persecuted.

God's people sometimes suffer. People in this world that are unsaved and have no hope for eternity, oftentimes they are allowed to have a good life because that's all, that's all the goodness they're going to get because they're not going to get goodness in the next life.

Point is you can't look at a person and well, you know, they're doing well and that means they have

God's favor. That's not necessarily true. Not at all. But based on everything we've looked at here in Judges chapter 17, what's the overall takeaway?

What do we learn? Well, we learn that wherever the Lord has established his truth, there's always going to be somebody who tries to corrupt it.

Today, the Lord has established his truth in the Christian church and there will be people who try to corrupt it.

There will be counterfeits for biblical Christianity. There will always be men and women too,

I suppose, who seek to build their own religion, their own version of the faith.

They may ordain themselves or, hey, we're going to ordain my friend and he's going to be our pastor and we're just going to have our own thing going.

This is how cults form. This is how false religions form. One clear example here, as far as what

Micah was doing with the blending of idolatry and the worship of Jehovah, if a church, this is,

I don't, I don't think it could be more clear. If a church has graven images in it and people are bowing down to graven images in a church, that's the most obvious example of blending the true religion with false religion.

The apostle Paul said about the church in 1 Timothy 3 .15, that the church is the pillar and the foundation of the truth.

At this point in the Bible, Judges 17, the word of God was in Shiloh. They had the tabernacle.

They had the ark of the covenant. They have the 10 commandments, but Micah had a false shrine with a false priesthood and graven images.

But today the pillar and ground of the truth, that's the church. God's truth is found within the

Christian church. That's where God's word is proclaimed. But there are counterfeit churches, just as Micah had the counterfeit false religion.

There are counterfeit churches where instead of God's word being proclaimed, worldly philosophy is taught.

Instead of sound doctrine, it's false doctrine, where the word of God is ignored, if not openly contradicted.

And along with apostate churches that have abandoned the truth, new gatherings are forming.

People, they want to get together and deconstruct. Let's help each other deconstruct.

See, that's the new word for it. It used to be called apostasy. Today it's called deconstruction. And they may even talk about God and some of these gatherings and apostate churches.

They might even have the Bible and read from the Bible once in a while. But what they're doing is they are opposing biblical teaching.

So we have to be on guard. And whatever you do, I'll leave you with this. Number one, if you are a follower of Jesus, get into a good local

Bible -believing church where the minister preaches the Bible and he preaches and teaches it in context.

That's the key. Number two, test all things, hold fast to that which is good.

Don't assume that because you see the word church or because someone is talking about God, that that's an actual true gospel ministry.

Remember what Jesus said? He said, many false prophets have gone out into the world. Micah here is, in a sense, him and his priests, they are false prophets.

And number three, I want to leave you with some encouragement because while in the Old Testament, there was a particular location where the

Lord was to be worshiped, right? In Shiloh, where the tabernacle was. Today, that's not the case.

You know, today to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth, you don't have to drive to Asbury University.

You know, you don't have to go to some holy place. You don't have to find a shrine to discover the presence of God.

Jesus said where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst.

If that gathering, if that church has the true gospel, Jesus Christ is in the midst.

And living here in Western Massachusetts, there are still, even in the year 2023, there are still plenty of good

God honoring churches all throughout this land that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and him crucified and risen.

And that salvation is by grace, through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast.

I'll close with the words of Christ in John chapter four. Jesus said, but the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and in truth.